Life in the Slow Lane

Have you seen it? The movie.. with Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain. After the first 20 minutes I wished I hadn’t, then I couldn’t look away. I was playing and pausing at feed times, the only windows where I allow myself to watch television these days.

I went for the 1960s housewife culture and actresses but stayed for the thrill and complex nature that is grief. If you watch it, remember to breathe. 

Seeing that film has confirmed thoughts in me that have invaded my peace since becoming a mother. I have traumatic scenes play out in my mind, like the pram getting away from me and being collected by a car or (when Avinash was tiny) visions of myself dropping him onto the pavement causing his head to crack open.  Is it the weight of responsibility or the deep love and connection which causes these flashes? Perhaps its both.

Today mum told me a story I hadn’t heard before. It’s about a moment in the late 90s on a regular Sunday. Our baby sitter said to her that morning at church, “I can pick up the girls today to take them for a play date”. Mum agreed. We often hung out with their family and her sisters were similar ages to my sister and I. Rachel and I must have been around 7 and 5? Fast forward an hour or so, Linda came to pick us up. Mum went downstairs to the door. “I remember opening the crimsafe screen, so clearly I can see it now. It was really a sliding door moment,” she recalled to me. “Sorry Linda, I’ve decided I’d like to play with the girls here today instead,” mum said to her, and remarked to me that she was so sure of not having us leave the house that day, even though it was only 10 minutes down the road, and something we supposedly enjoyed. Mothers instinct.

In the hours that followed, mum heard ambulances and police cars roar past the farm. Sadly, she soon learned there had been a traumatic accident. It was Linda. Her car was hit whilst turning back towards our house, on her way to town that afternoon, horrifically her sister was killed on impact as she was thrown out of the windscreen. We would have been in that car had mum not decided, at the very last moment, that we were not to go. 

How much of mothering is nature vs nurture, I wonder tonight, as I hold my son that little bit closer. 

“When we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another.” — Salvador Dali