Motherhood forces you to pause. To put on hold a universe of considerations, duties and burdens for just one; waving off all of life’s affairs while the aperture of your attention spirals inward, closing, collapsing until it encapsulates nothing but a single, tiny, new person.
If only for a moment.
Then, slowly, timorously, it starts to expand again as you acclimate, a new routine forming with every step, clumsiness falling away as the motions of mothering become rote with repetition. A grip once held tightly—your very breath a swaddling for this other human being—begins to loosen, the fear easing away from the edges, allowing a bit of air to fill the tiny voids that, here and there, pop up.
It is in this context that a new awareness grows for one’s own habits, the way one interacts with the surrounds and navigates the world. I became acutely aware of the trip hazards along our sidewalk, the edges of the concrete slabs pushed up by the slow creep of our towering oak tree’s roots; the lack of handrail on our stairs, 10 bare hardwood steps before the safety of the landing midway is reached with just a hand run along the plaster wall for stability; the precariousness of my decidedly nonsensible high heels, if not for the health of my own ankles, then for the bundle tucked in my arms. Every motion shouted danger!
Driving came under extra scrutiny, not just the speed but every action, each time the speedometer inched above 25 mph in a residential zone and every instance of slowly rolling through a stop sign, cautiousness on behalf of other children as much as my own coming into ever sharper focus. But also the physics of motion as they affect the car: corners taken with a bit too much verve tossing the head side to side, the bolsters pressing into the sides; the body getting light under braking, the limbs floating and the head falling forward. How they affected me was one thing; how they acted upon the body of that tiny human in the back seat was wholly more important.
Traffic turned into a moving minefield. I’d pick out the aggressive drivers and give wider berth. Slow, inattentive drivers, too. Standing at my kitchen window, I counted the passing drivers who proceeded through our intersection without even looking up from their phones and I quaked. Every car became a potential peril, even those sitting still. The very day I turned my son’s car seat forward facing, I was proved correct when an SUV sitting to my right at a Michigan left cut across my nose—and took the entire front clip of my Audi A8 with it, a major collision at 1 mph.
Still ... a car will beckon. Those numbers splayed across the top of a Monroney—displacement, horsepower, torque—and the words listed in five-point type below, of sport suspensions and turbochargers and cosseting seats, occasionally will succeed in coaxing even the most vigilant to dip a toe into that performance bucket.
Such was the case when I found myself stopped at another Michigan left, not another car in sight and my son tucked into his car seat in back, his five-point harness cinched tight. I blipped the gas and zipped through the turn, the sporty little car eager and obliging. Then I backed off, tamping down the urge to just open it up for a bit and stretch the car’s legs.
“That was fun, momma!” my son cheered from his rear perch. “Do it again!”
So we did. Fear giving way for fun, if only for a moment.
Executive Editor NATALIE NEFF is also mom to this staff of misfits and, indeed, what would we do without her. She can be reached at natalie.neff@hearst.com
