One woman's perspective of (twin) parenting (and other thoughts about things)
Imagine the scene.
It’s 12.20pm. I am walking out of M&S in Meadowhellhall, after a not especially successful lunch with a 2 and a half year old who is recovering from their latest tummy bug.
I am just about holding it together, but we are running predictably late and therefore I am checking the train times on my phone as we leave the store.
Enter you, stage left. You are, of course, unaware of these basic contextual facts.
I miss most of your opening gambit:
“…<indistinct chatter>…and moving so slowly…*tut*…”
It takes a moment for it to register, but I realise that you are talking to (or maybe about) me and our glacial pace towards the exit. This irks me, because you have (albeit older) kids with you, and frankly you should be more understanding.
At this point, obviously, I could let it go. Let’s be honest, I should let it go. I should take my own advice (oft ignored by my toddlers) and ‘take a moment’ (pause, deep breath, rinse and repeat).
But I’m having one of Those Days, so I don’t.
“Excuse me??”
You stop. Your two children also stop. One of them has a look on their face that says something like “Oh no, here we go”. You turn around:
“Maybe if you weren’t on your phone, I wouldn’t have hit your kid”
You turn back round and keep walking.
Hang on, WHAT?
I didn’t even realise that you’d clonked my child on the head with your shopping bags because, frankly, nobody had. Least of all my child. But apparently that is exactly what you had done, and you were now saying that this was…checks notes…my fault?
Another chance to ‘take a moment’. Another chance I do not take.
Because you’re right, I was on my phone. And I have a really big thing about parents being on phones around children. So, possibly accidentally, you went straight for the jugular and scored a direct hit. Immediately I enter fight or flight mode as my brain tries to work out whether checking train times on my phone whilst with my child is acceptable by my (and wider society’s) value system.
I decide, for the moment, that it is. I choose fight.
“Do you want to check your attitude?”
(I assume, at this point, that I have regressed to a 2007 version of myself who lived in Essex and - for reasons I will never fully understand - adopted the accent and became an Entirely Different Person who did things like ‘having beef’ with people.)
You don’t stop walking this time, delivering your final killer blow over your shoulder, as you march away, righteous in your moral victory, pre-teens trailing in your wake:
“Maybe you should pay more attention to your kids.”
Oof.
In the seconds that follow, I feel unbridled anger rise up within me like some kind of cartoon character whose arch enemy has just tricked them into looking really stupid.
Aaand I’m past the point of no return. I pick up my child in order to be able to walk quickly and mutter something about what a horrible woman you are. My child, thankfully oblivious and just happy to be carried, comments on the rain outside as I try to catch up with you.
I flick through the Comeback Rolodex in my mind. The potential contenders for Smackdown Of The Century centre around two things: firstly, I notice how unhappy your own children look, trailing behind you, forced to be part of your crusade against Bad Parenting; secondly, do you not realise how incredibly hard my life is?
I imagine the following scenario:
I catch up with you at the train station and shout something (Bianca Jackson-style) like “I was checking train times on my phone, I give my children way more attention in an hour than I bet you’ve ever given yours and by the way I’M THE MOTHER OF TWIN TODDLERS AND IT’S AN ACTUAL MIRACLE THAT I EVER LEAVE THE HOUSE.” (I even, at one point, wonder whether I should come up with some kind of sob story about running late for a train to see my mother on her deathbed. You know, just to ram the message home. My mother, incidentally, died some years ago. I am an awful person.)
At this point, despite Essex-me screaming in your face, you will clearly immediately realise the error of your ways, apologise profusely, admit to being an awful parent and human being, and order will be restored.
In short, I want you to feel as bad as I do - preferably worse - before I let it go.
Cool. Cool cool cool.
(Memo to self: do more yoga)
Back in the real world, however, whilst I am distracted by plotting your downfall, I lose track of you. I reach the train station and you are nowhere to be seen. On some level, I am relieved. But on another, I am apoplectic with rage that I will never see you again - I will never get to explain just how crap you made me feel.
Moments pass as I try to come to terms with this missed opportunity for revenge.
And then it hits me. I start to cry whilst cuddling my child (too tightly), and then the flood gates open. I don’t stop shaking for a good half an hour.
Some minutes - hours - pass before I can process this event on any kind of rational level. I text friends, all of whom respond according to script: “What a bitch”, “How horrid for you”, “Silly cow, it’s a good job I wasn’t there” et c.
But this last one gives me pause for thought. Because what if someone else had been there? What if my other child had been with me as well? Or my husband? Or a friend? It saddens me to realise that you probably wouldn’t have said anything. Not such an easy target then, you see.
In the hours that follow, I reflect more.
One of the things I am increasingly aware of (as I train to be a therapist, which is at least 50% getting to know oneself better) is this idea that people react most viscerally to things that speak to something within themselves. Carl Jung’s theory of shadow selves is described in this quotation of Jung’s:
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
I think it’s fair to say, given the strength of my reaction, that this applies here.
And so, I have realised, despite a strong desire to believe otherwise, that on a different day our roles could easily have been reversed. It could have been me, judging a fellow mum for not sharing my values, without pausing to consider the kind of day she might be having or the impact my words or actions might have. I’m certain (even if specific examples escape me) that it has been me on many occasions.
Woman-on-woman hate. It’s strong stuff. And the impulse to do it runs deep.
(Incidentally, an earlier draft of this letter took a political turn at this point, and started dropping the p-bomb (patriarchy) all over the place. All of that is relevant, of course, but let’s keep this about you.)
So, to the woman who made me cry.
I want to say thank you.
Because I needed to cry, I’ve had a really crap few weeks.
I also probably needed to engage more fully with the bit of my shadow self that judges other parents for not making the same choices as me.
But you made me feel so so awful, I don’t think I can let gratitude win.
I also have no idea whether you thought about that moment at all since, which might be the thing I’m finding the hardest to accept. I hope you have, and I hope you have also taken something from it. But maybe you haven’t and maybe there are other women destined to be on the receiving end of your well-sharpened tongue.
So if I can’t let gratitude win, I’ll at least give kindness a fair crack.
When I was standing on that train station platform having a good old ugly cry, gripping the hand of my largely unaware toddler, people looked at me with pity, some with concern, but nobody offered to come and sit with me in that emotion.
So that’s what I’ll do.
I’ll find the women that you (and others like you, including me) mow down in your bulldozer of righteousness and I will choose kindness over pity and sit with them.
I’ll find the women that you (and others like you, including me) are yet to encounter, and choose kindness over judgement in order to build up their resilience to the onslaught.
I’ll choose kindness.
And I’ll try my damned best to teach my kids to do the same.
xx