I became a caregiver to 2 small boys.
Wilted flowers, sticks and stones of varying sizes in pockets. Tiny, sticky fingers reaching for hands, arms, shoulders, legs, anything to hold on to. Miniature toy cars, dried-up mandarin peel, a collection of leaves in my woven basket. The backseat covered in a small display of muddy prints and lost pebbles.
Those are the symbols of my last few weeks.
Fleeting fragments of enchantments that materialise as dirt and mess to the unobservant conjured up from the imaginations of a 2 and 4-year-old.
Parts of my brain, formerly dormant, have been activated to sense threats and dangers, perceive needs and triggers, and either coax or soothe in response to each one. I fall into bed, heavy with fatigue two days per week, with nothing left to give.
It’s a satisfying feeling, to be at the mercy of two small, demanding bodies that require every moment of your attention in a forcefully present way.
I’m not sure how it happened. Without a doubt, kismet was at hand.
One day their mother and I were dreaming over a matcha laughing about how fun it would be to live next door to each other, the next, that’s exactly what we were doing.
For the past three years, I have lamented how strange our modern silo lives are, often disconnected from real community, operating in isolation from one another.
This was not my reality until recently. When I stopped travelling and endeavoured to stay still in developed countries. Not really until I moved to Canada with my ex. Later amplified by the global pandemic.
Now, two days a week, plus a scattering here and there I have become, what my poet-friend calls an ‘alloparent’.
We don’t know how long it will last. It’s an arrangement to revisit based on the shifting sands of life and time after summer. But for now, it’s perfect.
I’m enjoying exercising my maternal nature.
One of the boys is highly sensitive, quick to be acitivated and slow to be soothed. He responds the best to a range of trust-building practises with patience and consistency and lots of reassurance through physical touch and words.
I’m enjoying applying human development tools that I have learned, teach and use across the decade of my career in such a real way. Nervous system co-regulation and attachment style approaches are incredibly useful in daily moments.
My relationship with time has shifted. I have both not enough and more than enough concurrently. My work days and hours have taken on a different feeling.
The creativity and impetus that normally flows feels more forced at the moment. I assume this will shift once I find my way with this new iteration of life.
I admire all fulltime caregivers that attempt to have a creative life or career alongside childrearing.
Children take up some much of your physical and mental real estate.
They’re also incredibly healing.
So many parents I speak to relish the chance to give to their children in the ways that they weren’t met as children. Healing their own inner child by giving what was once needed.
Sometimes I wish more adults knew how important it is to do that work with ourselves first. If we all took the responsibility to reparent ourselves before we reach out to parent others there would be a lot more harmony in the world.