On Quora, people are always asking things like, "What is one thing you never knew/wish you knew/no one told you about..." x, y, or z situation. As a new mother, my feed is filled with people asking and answering questions about labor, parenthood, and all the nitty-gritty obscene unmentionables about children. If I were to answer, "What is one thing you never realized about motherhood?" it would go something like this:
When the mother's body splits open to bring forth a child, the rest of her world splits as well. Everything inside her mind and that makes up her day becomes, for better or worse, a dichotomy. There are high highs and low lows, there are wishes for things and the opposites of those things, there are baby smiles one moment and screams the next. Her existence becomes yin and yang, undulating together with near unpredictability.
The mental state of flow, that timeless floaty place, grinds to a halt while at the same time, mindful awareness of the current moment turns up to high definition. The mother may not know what day it is, but is keenly aware of how many minutes the baby has been eating without needing a clock. A schedule that was once comprised of big blocks of project time suddenly splinters into fragmented tiny tasks or parts of tiny tasks. Each one of the mother's wants or needs becomes a highly prized jewel, made much more important by the choice that is made to fulfill it instead of another. Prioritization, once a vague goal, now is essential. In a spot of open time and free hands, it's bathroom before food and food before cleaning. Sometimes cleaning gets usurped by food for the soul. A walk, a chapter in a book, a favorite YouTube channel, or anything that resets the brain and makes it feel familiarity again. Then suddenly, as delicious as those free moments are, she looks in the baby monitor at his sweet sleeping image and just wants to hold him again. Even as the dishes sit and the book tantalizes. Even as his scratches on her neck are still red.
The mother's world before was an even hum and her world now is a jazz solo. Her path used to be an international kayak trip, and her path now is a roller coaster through her own neighborhood. The sophisticated grays of her life before shift into black and white like the board books she now reads to her baby. The mother's new existence is contrast. And contrast brings focus, and meaning, and excitement as it does to any artwork.
Do mothers ever want just one thing again? Do they ever only feel one way again? That is my own question for Quora.
