The Ugly Duckling Diaries

Well here goes; my name is Gail and I’m a 25 year old wife to Nicky, and mother to Bethany aged 2.  Now I know there are probably loads of women out there writing about their lives and husbands etc and blah, blah, blah, booooring – but I’m slightly disappointed to say that I seem to have reached this stage worryingly prematurely.  Not that I’m saying there’s anything that wrong with venting your frustrations and getting that much needed ‘I’ve had enough!’ support from your girlfriends – but I’m only 25: I have a degree; I have a mind, I am an individual – yet why do I feel so inconspicuous?

Now, don’t get me wrong (and it does go without saying) I adore my daughter and would do anything for her and I am in a ‘lucky’ position ( inverted commas, I’ll explain later)  that I’m able to be a full-time mum.  Please don’t think that I’m being ungrateful; I’m still learning and I’m still slightly confused.

So let’s start from the beginning.  I met my husband when I was 16, hanging around the streets pretending to smoke and acting cool, and we’ve been inseperable ever since.  Fast forward a few years and I’m out of uni, gotten engaged and started working towards a career as a chef.  Add another 2 years and I’m there; kitchen manager, decent salary, having the craic, fiancé doin ok, then… pregnant.  To be honest she saved our lives.  Pretty dramatic I know, but we were drinking whatever we earned, fighting whenever we were sober (and that’s rarely),  and so getting pregnant gave our lives a new meaning.  I loved being pregnant; no more 60 hour weeks, no more drinking and finally me and the mr began to get to know each other again and we realised that we did actually like each other.

Anyway, Bethany arrived and wowee:  that was a steep learning curve!  Nobody tells you how hard it is when the visitors stop coming and the hubby goes back to work!   Work being HIS new baby.  Not that he doesn’t adore Betty; he had just started up on his own garden design and landscape business (gardenimprovements.com – just in case he reads this and I haven’t taken the opportunity to plug the business!).  Betty’s the coolest thing on this planet, she is some craic and I fall in love with her more everyday – yet everyday I seem to be questioning my role within this bubble of responsibility.

By responsibility I mean, of course, the day to day running of the house; the bills, the health of the wee one and the hubby, making sure they are both safe, clean and warm – but also the thing that I find the most daunting:  Protection.  In having a family of my own, I am the one that has to protect my daughter from the things that my parents protected me from:  The reality of life – the things that do go wrong.  People die, money sucks whether you have it or you don’t, and it’s slowly hitting home that being a parent isn’t just about putting a plaster on a graze – it’s about protecting that graze from all the dirt that can get into it.

I mentioned earlier (and I did digress a little) that I would explain why ‘lucky‘ was in inverted commas. This is the reactionary phrase I hear from most women, intentionally or not, when they hear that I am a full-time mum.  Even those friends that I made at the ‘new mum’s group’ (all thirty-something career women) still say it now.  Even they seem to have forgotten, now they are back at work, how depressing it is heading out for the milk and bread run every day:  but why do they say that I’m lucky’?

They say, “You’re so lucky to stay at home not having to go to work and earn an income!”, yet they have the opportunity to regain some self belief and get a sense of themselves back… lucky them perhaps?

But am I in-fact lucky? Do I feel lucky?  Well the answer is no, not all of the time.  I would love to get back to my career and contribute towards the daily struggle that the recession has created – however this is where my pursuit falters; where my selfishness surfaces, and it takes all my of might to skim off the scum from the melting pot of this turmoil.

And so that brings me to a bigger question:  What do I do?  As a dutiful wife I seem to be the swan’s legs: paddling frantically whilst the swan takes the glory, gliding along being praised and admired; or I am mum: a wonderful gift that has saved our lives and continues to enrich my life everyday.  Do I try to be more like the swan, that everybody sees, now or hold fire until we’ve finished making signets and save my ugly duckling story for when my family is complete?

And now to answer my ultimate question:  What’s the point?  Well I suppose the point is in looking past the overspill of plates and mugs and cups from the GardenImprovements.com office; the trail of dirty clothes leading from where they were taken off all the way to the bathroom and beyond; the tantrums because “Big Cook Little Cook” has finished and it’s not on again ’til tomorrow.   I suppose it’s  the realisation that without me, there wouldn’t be any plates, mugs and cups, there wouldn’t be any tantrums, which means there wouldn’t be any Betty, and really that’s the point.