The Devil Wears Yoga Pants

Alone at last, alone at last, oh my god, alone at last.

It's quiet. The lights are off, the room is silent but for the clacking of these keys, the baby sleeps, Ez went to bed hours ago, sick -- and I find myself alone, savouring the silence like chocolate on the tongue. Or like red wine, the likes of which I have happily been sipping for the last hour. I have now several declarations. First of all, I want to be gorgeous like Meryl Streep (oh Kate, please, when you see her, tell her she has changed for me how I feel about ageing. Actually, so have you for that matter, but she really did it).

I have of late been lamenting many things -- the passage of time, the shift in my career path, the disjointed nature of my life as a mother...the complete destruction of my home as I once knew it. It has been a confusing and perilous time for me lately, for I know that this is one of those periods in life when one can easily fall into the depths of something dark without realizing it, without ever feeling the feather's breath of it on one's cheek. Simple darkness, mind you, but a dusk nonetheless.

In many respects I am now understanding what I have heard tell about what happens to you once you become a mother; the setting aside of self in response to the devotion you feel for your child. I am so completely ensconced in my life as Nahanni's mother that sometimes I don't even have the opportunity to look up and see where I have knocked off bits of myself. I really see this time as a difficult sort of cleaving away - trying to carve just enough of myself off from her, from my mommy-ness to still feel like I am the same person. I have spent the better part of the last year and a half melding myself to her, embracing her from the inside out, and now it is my new and somewhat arduous task to try to unwind all the tangle of nerves and synapses that bind us so tightly together -- and yet not take it too far. I think I struggle every day with the balance of what is enough for her and for me and frankly, I have no real idea if it's working. She seems happy enough, but at the same time, she has become incredibly demanding of my attentions, like a new boyfriend who cannot comprehend that you had a life before him (at least, I have heard of these types, I never actually had one...but that's another blog altogether). I am finding it tiring and trying even as I love that she needs me so thoroughly. I am struggling though, to maintain a sense of identity, particularly when I haven't been working, when I have no idea what the future holds for me in my career.

It's somewhat funny that for my 'me time' (finally!) tonight I should fall into watching 'The Devil Wears Prada', which I loved despite a complete resistance to it when it came out just by dint of the mention of Prada. I have long had a bitter and suspicious dislike of rich trappings (certainly rooted in my humble beginnings, but also for what the vanity of it represents in such a struggling world) and it was something to see with that kind of mindset. Of course, it recalled for me how much I love pretty things; adore them really, while at the same time flicking the on-switch of all my rational thoughts on the nature of what is important and what is not. How do you know, really? Since I became a mom (okay, maybe even somewhat before) I have definitely noticed that things are not the same for me in the pretty department. I just haven't got the time to devote to drying and primping and making-up and accessorizing (at my own peril with little Miss Grabby Hands)...my house is a wreck, I've done yoga once in a blue moon and I have scarcely written at all. I feel sometimes like I've lost touch completely with everything about myself. What do I want to be? How do I want to live? What the hell do I do now that I am where I am? I really, truly do not know how to know -- I am so bogged down in the now that I can't even process a cogent game plan -- and that scares me. I have seen how fast time has begun to pass (her 8 month birthday today...and another of mine fast approaching) and it frightens me to think that I might look up and have completely lost track of my whole path, my whole plan, my dreams, my focus. I am scared that I will get so wrapped up in being Momma that I will forget how to be everything that I am, that I was, that I was meant to be. Certainly I am better because of Nahanni, but I am also in someways..less...is that fair to say? Less in that I have given up pieces of me for her...perhaps like inches you didn't need anyway. I don't know, I'm not sure yet. I imagine that as she carves herself away from me (which I also lament in its own way) I will begin again to discover who I am, to grab hold of the beltloops of that lovely 1940's hooded black coated girl who traipsed the streets of Paris and really, honestly believed in every impossible dream she had. I also know that when she turns her face to me it will not glow with youth, but with experience, that her face, once porcelain smooth with belie the lines borne of a million smiles,, the best of which have been instigated by my daughter. And, like looking at Meryl in all her silver gorgeousness, I will understand her to be even more beautiful now.