in the daylight

Last night was mostly some sort of poetry that was coming up. During the day I mean business. I am getting more and more political. Me, who rarely reads a newspaper or watches the news. I did not expect motherhood to turn political on me. But I am increasingly realising that something is wrong and that is not necessarily me (although I have my problems, of course, like being prone to insomnia).

When one becomes a mother (a parent) the world sort of expects one to go underwater for a while and to emerge again unscrached, maybe stronger, in a year or two. I do not expect the entire world to go underwater with me (because underwater one must, I grant that), but there have to be built bridges, a lot of bridges, to give the womanmother the chance to climb onto dry land from time to time. The needed bridges are of all sorts: friendly bridges, neighbourly bridges, work-related bridges, financial bridges, social bridges, cultural bridges, economic bridges, partner bridges (very important), practical help with every-day subsistence bridges.

Now, I am a womanmother who decided not to work for a while, but I imagine that womenmothers who go to work soon after they have a baby, they do need all these bridges too, maybe even more. I can not imagine how alienating it might be to go everyday to work, in your underwater frame of mind, and to have to act as if you are on dry land, and also be expected to refrain from mentioning your underwater world too often. But I have to talk more to womenmothers who went back to work too soon. Too soon (to me) means, in the coutntry where I live, three months after getting a baby. Long live daycare!