Quatre Pattes

My friend gave birth to a girl yesterday - a beautiful, healthy bouncing girl and I found myself crying for an hour today over the washing up. I was so emotional. I was thinking constantly about the births of my daughters; the first few bonding moments and the first few hours of their lives with me. I found myself getting out the box of newborn baby clothes that I packed away to keep and looking through them - stroking and holding them and crying a little more.

I thought about my children and my wish to nourish them, my almost pathological need to support and comfort them. I thought about my life now, in our tiny chocolate-box alpine chalet out in the wilds, with six waterfalls falling around our hamlet and wild boar prints out on the mud by the side of the road. I thought about my children playing outside amongst it all. I felt incredibly happy and incredibly relieved that we had done it: achieved all this.

This is a life we have created for ourselves. Me, my partner and our dear children. All in it together.

I thought about what my daily life entails nowadays, now I am 38. This is what I do: make breakfast, get the kids ready for school, wash the dishes, collect the milk and cheese from the dairy, vacuuming, dusting - did I say dusting? - scrubbing, collecting kids from school, cooking some lunch, mending broken toys, paying bills, weeding the vegetable patch, starting the fire, walking in the woods, talking french to our neighbours, reading bed-time stories, writing posts - did I say posts? - you get the gist.

Its a damned normal routine. In a damned beautiful place. Work that most mothers do. Some call it life. But 15 years ago, I would never have thought that this would have been the life for me. I had ‘ambition’ then, I had made it through college and was trying to carve out a niche for myself. I was not sure what kind of niche I wanted to carve, so I tried many things, but wasn’t quite able to carve deep enough to make a success of myself. What was my vocation? What was my passion? I was passionate about many things, but nothing seemed to stick. I kept searching for ’success’ nonetheless.

I once read that if something makes you cry, then that thing is your vocation. I remember reading a book by Rachel Cusk called A Life’s Work, a very mundane book, uneventful in fact, about the everyday life of a young mother. I liked it, but it did not make an impact on me until the last page; another mother whose baby had died, years later whilst wearing an old dressing gown, pulled out from the pocket a tiny sock. I finished the book and cried for two hours. Was this a sign? The author’s ‘mundane’ mothering life had suddenly became something completely and inexplicably different, something I should have known then, but didn’t.

I don’t think I had ever actually realised that my vocation was to be motherhood until yesterday, with the birth of my friend’s little girl and until my crying episode today. And I don’t think I would have ever realised it, until I had come to be in the position I am in now: totally engrossed in mundane tasks, totally involved in nourishing, protecting and supporting my children, so totally and wonderfully at ease and at home in this place - doing something that seems so natural to me. Involved enough to be able to step outside of myself and say - this is my life. My life’s work. I don’t need anything more.

My life before this, the one of struggle and angst, now seems a million miles away.

I want to be a mother for the rest of my life. Is that not such a bad thing to want?

About the Author...

I am an english mummy living in the french Alps, I am a nourisher to my dear other half and two girls of five and two. I am just about to start homeschooling the girls and we aim to travel around Europe with them next year. We follow the WAP diet and live a slow life up here in the mountains.