Email from my mother

I was recently on holiday overseas without my children and husband. I got labelled "runaway mum". During my time staying with my girlfriends I emailed my mother about how absolutely wonderful it was to have interesting conversations that weren't interrupted. Here is some of her reply. Pertinent musings from my feminist mother.... I cherish her with all my heart.


"Perhaps you can understand why I loved going to uni so much. Years of deprivation of interesting conversation. I don’t know how you have coped with the mothers group all these years. I preferred loneliness to baby and recipe talk as it was in all those years ago. I never met the childless girls perhaps if I had I would have been stimulated like you.

How I kept myself sane was to tell Dad that I was doing my MA degree, MA as in mother. Unwittingly you choose motherhood but there is a way to go yet. At least you have school hours where you can grab some sanity and no interruptions. But when the children are with you there are still other levels you need to reach. Now they need you in small ways but these become more complicated. You may be dealing with one child of two another of fifty two all at the same time . One wants to know how to do a sum another some historical  question and if you don’t know the aussie history then you get "the look"…...

Some  where along the line you are no longer the expert, your children are….. To add to this confusion there is never a clear demarcation line, just fluctuations along the line leaving you to wonder whether you are the one that might know or not in that particular instant.

As time goes on things do improve and it is a delightful period to have near adults living with you.

On second thoughts , I don’t think that a masters degree covers the personal growth and knowledge you require to weather motherhood. Perhaps it is MA to the power of ten and some days to the power of a hundred. Can you remember how irate your sister would get if I put a power on something because how could I put a mathematical figure on something unmathematical. I would be nearly under the table with laughter at the indignation.

I must tell you that I am reading a book written by Doris Lessing. She was a feminist writer in the 50’s and I am curled up with laughter at how nothing has changed, we are so locked in our culture at this period of time. But we knew that, didn’t we?"