Nowhere To Be
By Rachel Stone
@racheystone
The snow banks are eight feet high outside the window and the days of playground roaming have faded to memory. Over these past dreary weeks, we’ve been to every indoor playland, shopping mall, pet store and community center within a thirty-minute drive. Anyplace further involves more car-seat negotiation than my brittle nerves can handle. I squeeze after her through claustrophobic tunnels suspended in psychedelic netting. We sit cross-legged in the multipurpose rooms of government buildings, beating wooden agogos. Still, there are always more hours to fill.
A perpetual queue needs wiping and putting away. It turns out leakproof is a clever marketing term that applies to nothing, so now there’s laundry, too. Any second spent dealing with the mess is enough time for my wee one to create a whole new one five feet away. Phone calls end in frantic, non-consensual bouts of hide-and-seek through the house, because she vanishes right in front of me. My once-sprawling skill set now includes diving to catch whatever is about to hit the floor and wincing at whatever crunched under my foot. As a gainfully unemployed stay-at-home mom, my job is damage control. All day, every day. There’s no calling it in, because the voice on the other end of the line would only be mine.
There’s never enough time to do anything, yet it always seems there’s nothing to do. Weekdays have been renamed Groceryday, Garbageday, Laundryday, and PublicSwimDay. My daughter has had enough, too. At times, her weary expression seems to read: “Oh God, not you again.” I don’t blame her. We’re all out of runway here, and spring is nowhere in sight.
I struggle to conjure the fireball I was before I caught myself humming ABC's in the shower. The peacock days when I could put on a shirt without having to pick off yesterday’s dried Cheerios. Back when I, you know, sat at a table and finished a meal like it was no big deal. I treasure being a mom, and I wouldn't change it for anything. Yet that doesn’t diminish how unsettling it is to have the person I’ve always known as Me be just…gone. I went from being myself to being “Mommy,” a glorious glutton of a title that leaves room for little else. At its crux, my struggle lies in having nowhere to be. When the lineup at Wal-Mart is long, road repairs force a tedious detour or I’m asked the dreaded question of what my plans are for the day, I can only shrug and say it aloud: “We have nowhere to be.”
It’s hard to avoid feeling unimportant and unremarkable when, to the grown-up world, I have nothing to talk about (besides toddler stories, which only put me further out of touch). I’ve got nothing “going on.” No high-stakes meetings, no reason to put on deal-sealing heels or my power suit (assuming it still fits). No dinner conversation beginning with “you will not believe what the whacknut in accounting did today!” There is no paycheck, forfeiting by default sunny getaways and lunch-hour splurges. The typical yardsticks I’ve used my whole life to measure progress, success, even the passage of time no longer apply. Instagram reminders from the couch are the only proof that somewhere out there, it’s Saturday night.
Weekday invitations are like golden tickets. I text back so fast it’s pathetic.
Sure! Anytime works for us—we have nowhere to be!
My husband calls. Will I be around on Thursday to let the repairman in?
No problem. I'm on it! (Seriously—we have nowhere to be).
My baby girl is the windchime in my laugh and the air in my lungs, and when she is teething the day is unbearably long. One hour of fussiness feels like five and somehow, I’m a self-made woman with a graduate degree counting seconds on a stove clock until her man gets home. Another full-grown body built to withstand my own oversized fussiness. Hands strong enough to dam up the chaos piling around us, a gatekeeper on the other side of the bathroom door.
But it’s not forever, a notion that carries as much dismay as relief. I couldn’t get dressed until noon, which means I didn’t scurry out the door before my daughter woke up. When she’s sick, I don’t tick off on my fingers the number of personal days I’ve used. My calendar shows no big presentation downtown in the morning, so I don’t much care about the snowstorm expected overnight.
I’m wholly responsible for an entire person, an executive position from the comfort of my own home. Successful candidate shall be responsible for imparting all fundamentals, generating a lifetime of unforgettable memories and shaping a morally sound human. I hope I remember to breathe. I pray I find the capacity to imprint every moment of this painful, painfully too-short chapter. The only chapter in which our lives follow a single path. There is no assignment more challenging or client more prestigious, even if it means I’m in bed by nine and never have anything interesting to say to people.
Last night was rough; we didn’t sleep much. It’s dark, but the empty bed beside me confirms it is morning. The tiny voice beckons like jingle bells.
“Mommy?”
I peel myself off the mattress, willing my eyes to work in tandem. I tiptoe in and find her alert as a second cup of coffee in her crib. Her arms stretch out expectantly, a tiny teardrop poised on each pink cheek like a porcelain figurine. I ask if she wants to come and lie down with Mommy for a while. She nods eagerly, as I hoped she would. I scoop her in a soft bundle and clutch her to my chest as I fumble back to bed. We tuck the blanket around us, winter howling outside as a fine mist of snow sandblasts the windows. I wrap my arms across her as she tucks her toes under me, wiggling to perfectly snug. I pull in the sweet scent of her like smelling salts.
“Mommy.”
She says it firmly, with a decisive little nod. Her voice slices through the early light and startles me. A statement this time, not a question.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Mommy is here.” I sneak a sideways glimpse at her face: perfection in miniature, sure and still at the center of our cozy snow globe. I file it in my memory, pressing like carbon copy. One day soon, she will spring from the mattress and bounce out the door, getting on with days bursting with busy, leaving me fumbling to figure out who I am all over again. For as badly I currently ache to be Me, I know I’m going to miss being Mommy so much more someday. It is the paradox of motherhood, feeling like there are a million more important places I should be and knowing there’s nowhere I will ever go again that could top where I am in this moment.
I let my watery eyes fall closed. We lay there in the full silence until I feel the slackening of her body as it drifts off, granting me permission to do the same.
We have nowhere to be.
Guest essay written by Rachel Stone. Rachel is mother to one deliciously complex character and writer of many others. Through fiction and nonfiction, she tackles love, life and mistakes along the way with an unflinching scrutiny, always hunting for the rainbow. Rachel lives in the Greater Toronto Area, where she and her husband have been renovating behind schedule and over-budget since before HGTV was even a thing. Other hobbies include pretending to be “chill” while her seven-year-old daughter pretends to believe her. Rachel is currently working on her second novel.