Life as an Invisible Woman
The West Australian
Ros Thomas
Published: Saturday June 16, 2012
Section: Opinion

I will still be taking my youngest to primary school when I’m 54.

There, I’ve said it.

The (laughable) truth of it.

No-one in their mid 50’s should be glued by any sticky-fingered tendrils to the exhausting gusto of early childhood, but there are loads of us. Women in the full flush of motherhood interminably marching from the front door to the school gate because we started families early and finished late. Or friends who had exhilarating careers before sudden yearnings had them lining up for motherhood before the chance slipped away. And all of those who thought they’d started in time only to slide into their 40’s still sitting in the waiting rooms of fertility clinics trying to create those babies who just wouldn’t come on their own.

My friends are amused to think that I may one day be mistaken for my daughter’s grandmother.

But I don’t feel any different now to how I felt when my first baby arrived 12 years ago.

I feel energetic, perhaps more capable, certainly more confident. Except for a gnawing sense that I am somehow less visible. Less appreciated. Because I am now just a mum at home. I‘m not trying to have it all.

I worked full time through all the early years of son number one. It was a beast of a job: it had me at its beck and call day and night, travel, deadlines, a pressure cooker. It showed no mercy if my toddler had croup and it didn’t blink if I missed his kindy concert. But in return it allowed me to make a public contribution, carve out a career, use my brain and of course, it paid the mortgage.

I look back now and wonder how I did it –  taking conference calls with a whimpering 2-year old stuck to my hip, the blinding rush to get out the door on time lest I be exposed as somehow less committed than my childless colleagues – the whole time snarled existence of it. I remember picking him up from family day care to be told he was completely toilet trained and feeling a surge of guilt and then a wave of relief that there was just one less thing to do. Sometimes I think my best parenting was done in the car, that small window of my complete and unswerving attention – singing ditties and laughing at his lisping stories.

After son number two arrived, I made a conscious decision to leave my career aside while I carved out a little niche of domestic immunity, a cocoon to grow the two littlest members of the family.   `

People ask me all the time: ‘Are you still working’? and I tell them ‘No, I’m at home’ and watch them fight the frown that accompanies ‘Really?’

And then they don’t know what to say. And I feel forced to fill the gap with some breezy banter about the fulsomeness of life with little children while I watch them switch off. My small talk is now only entertaining to pre-schoolers.

Strangely, it’s the older people I sometimes briefly befriend through the conduit of a chatty toddler that tell me how lovely it is to see happy mother and child, and I bask in the glow of their approval. Strangers who see me for who I am, not for what I no longer do.

In the mornings, I eye the corporate mums racing through the school gate with a mixture of envy and gratefulness. Grateful I was financially able to step off the treadmill. Envious of their importance. That they’ll spend their day having uninterrupted conversations with grown ups. That they’ll get to go to the loo on their own – no wriggling pre-schooler glued to their lap.

When did we tell women who are ‘only mothers’ that their contributions are somehow less worthwhile? That if they’re not visible, they’re not valuable. Because who could possibly want to mind the nest? The whole grubby-faced mess of it. On the days when I want to be productive  and in control I want to fly free of the nest too. It’s demoralizing. No wonder it’s a rare man who puts his hand up.

Clearly I have relevance deprivation syndrome. No one sees the work I do. The robotic   monotony of home life. The house looks the same at the beginning of the day as it does at the end. Only I know how many times I have done the dishes, vacuumed up play dough. How long it takes to go to the shops with a tantruming daughter in a trolley. Why I still haven’t showered by 5pm.

Will my children appreciate the gift of an available mother? My mum had no choices. The stigma of divorce hanging over her head, she worked like a dog to give me a good start. And now I love her all the more for it. Because it gave me the gift of a present and available nanna who baked me afternoon teas, counted letterboxes on the slow walk home from school, looked for beetles in the overgrown buffalo. Time rich. Will my children look back and feel nostalgic like I do? Remember the excitement of thundering down the hallway to the smell of biscuits.

Later on in my teens, I knew only too well the sweet loneliness of coming home to an empty house. Of my single mum bound to her job never thinking ‘she had it all’. How lucky I am to have a choice.

Often reminded of how brief this little window of womanly life is, I have decided to throw off my cloak of invisibility and get on with it. I have the gift of freedom, and perhaps there are as many mums out there who secretly envy me as I envy them. So I will remind myself to be glad   I’m the one who gets to lift my smallest out of her cot, all baby breath warm and sleepy and bundle her into the pram with a biscuit and a teddy to walk the path to school we know every step of by heart. I’ll try to enjoy it for what it is. Fleeting.