I've been dreaming lately of packing up my kids and embarking on a journey overseas. (dreaming being the operative word. Even to get to Bali - a mere five hours away - would cost us a hideously prohibitive 5 or 6 thousand dollars)

I'd like to go to somewhere really interesting, somewhere old and full of troubled history. Somewhere crammed chock-a-block with beautiful art and museums and amazing architecture that takes your breath away. A place that, as soon as we land, hits us with that unmistakable feeling of being somewhere completely foreign; a language that sounds wonderfully weird, strange smells, impossible-looking food, a fascinatingly different way of living; the exhilarating culture-shock of encountering the foreign combined with the immense sense of possibility for discovery and adventure - ahhh. There is nothing quite like that first plane trip to a country you've never visited - the nervous anticipation of having very little idea of what waits ahead.

Prague, I was thinking, or Rome. Zagreb, capital of Croatia looks and sounds interesting. (HRVATSKA - that's what the locals call Croatia - how exciting to go to a country where you'd need hours of lessons before you could even hope to pronounce its name correctly!)

But then, reality hits. Even if we did have some unexpected windfall and could actually afford to go overseas, just how enjoyable would it be?? Imagine the plane trip - the nightmarish 24 hours it takes to get to Europe from Australia, with four unhappy, restless, complaining, possibly frightened, kids. Our only hope of getting through a long haul flight intact and still sane at the other end would be to drug them. Heavily. And I'm not sure what kind of detrimental effect that could have on the remainder of the trip.

Not to mention the inevitable struggle to find something the kids will eat and the resulting stomach bugs. The difficulty in managing to all stay together as we traverse unfamiliar cities - and the terrifying possibility of losing someone.

And then I picture me and Hil dragging the boys around a museum, or an art gallery....

"Shhh, boys, quiet please. Hey boys, look! Look at that picture. Isn't it beautiful?? Do you realise it was painted one thousand years ago by a young man not much older than......BOYS? Where the hell....? Oh my god. Shit. Jimmy, NO! You can't scribble on..... Oh my....Look what Jimmy has done to that priceless...
What?! It wasn't my fault. How dare you blame.... I thought you were watching. Anyway, you're the one who wanted another ba..... Look. Forget that. Lets just go. NOW. Quickly boys. Lets get out of here as quickly and as quietly as possible...No. We can't go down into the dungeon room like we promised, we've just found out that there's a monster in there. Yes there is! Now boys! Come on. Lets get out of here before that monster gets ..... and we have to be very very very quiet. Walk this way now. Hurry! Hurry! shhhhhh!"

I think we're limited, for the next few years at least, to taking holidays at kid-friendly places. You know, the kinds of places where they take your kids away and let you have a real holiday? Where the kids can bliss-out every day at a place called something like kidsclub or zone4kids???

Come to think of it........ that doesn't really sound all that bad. Oh, I know places like that are uncool. I know they're all plasticky and technocolour and Disnified and UNCULTURED and probably way bad for the environment and politically incorrect......

But I wouldn't mind being served a refreshing cocktail on the beach......eating food that someone else has cooked.......forgetting about housework.... all while some other poor soul watches my kids.......

When I was heavily pregnant with my first child I noticed a certain look that a lot of other mother's gave me. It wasn't an unkind look, it was a very warm, compassionate and somehow intimate look. But it was also a knowing look. I hadn't yet had my child so I couldn't properly interpret the message in that look and I wasn't exactly sure what it was that these strangers could possibly know about me. And if I'm honest their looks repelled me:

"I will not be like you", I thought to myself, averting my gaze, "So tired, and worn out, so smothered by your children. I will be different. I will remain myself. A separate entity. A woman, not just a mother."

But now, with the advantage of hindsight, I can better understand that look. In fact I'm quite certain that I've given it to other pregnant women on occasion. It is a look that says:

"Huh! you're free now. But wait, just wait. In a few short weeks your life is going to be tipped upside down and turned inside out, everything you know to be true today will be different; you, your experience of the world, your very soul, will be irrevocably changed. You will be one of us......a mother.....and MotherLove - and all the immense joy and uncertainty and vulnerability and fear and longing and hope and paralysing foreverness that goes with it - is going to change you. Your life will have a new weight; a joyful heaviness that you will never, ever be free of. That carefree jauntiness in your step will be no more......"

And I can also understand how unappealing this truth can be to women who are not yet mothers:

"I will not be like that. So messy, so squishy and formless, my identity so wrapped up in my children, I will not be so...so....motherly."

There is such an enormous divide.....

.......................................................

When my first child was born (by emergency C-section after a frightening attempt at induction)I was blissed out, high on love ( and painkillers), I couldn't stop smiling......It felt like Christmas and my new son was the best and biggest, most wonderful present Santa had ever brought me. And this motherhood job was surprisingly easy. We both took to breastfeeding immediately and he was a calm little thing....being a mum was a toddle.

But then, on the third day, I started to weep. I howled and howled and howled. This was dreadful. This was too much. I loved this little boy so much that my heart literally ached. The world was suddenly terrifying. The future impossible and dangerous to navigate. How could I protect him? How could I ensure that he never suffered; from disease... heartache... rejection....humiliation....should I wrap him in cottonwool? Keep him home forever and ever?

I made bargains with God - "please please God keep him safe and happy and I will be good forever...I will do anything. ANYTHING."

And I made bargains with the devil. "Yes. you can kill everyone in China, in fact you can nuke the rest of the world if you will only keep him safe and free of pain and by my side. Everyone else can suffer. I do not care."

I cried for two entire days. And then it was time to leave the hospital. I wiped my nose, collected my darling son and took him home.

And though I was happy and loved being a mother that dreadful fear remained for quite a while and was reinvigorated each time I had another baby. It is, thankfully, a lot less intense now, and despite what I imagined when my boys were babies...I do not collapse each time they scrape their knees, or are emotinally hurt by one of their friends . They are tough, these little people, and they have to navigate the world for themselves and they have to suffer (not because I think it is good for them) but because it is unavoidable.

But the fear is still there, buried deep, but ever-present. ......What does the future hold?

"There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall." Cyril Connolly.

I sit down in front of my computer, a steaming cup of tea on the desk beside me, my clothes loose and comfortable, my feet be-socked and warm. It is a cold and wet Saturday morning, winter in the Southern hemisphere, and the children are home. I’ve settled them in front of the television to watch ABC KIDS. They are well-fed and dressed and shouldn’t need me for at least an hour. I have spent the morning making weet-bix and vegemite toast, pouring numerous glasses of milk and water, amazed, as usual, by how much they consume.

I open the word file, my latest work-in-progress (the ONE, of course, sure to be a hit and sell millions! and read through the (masterful! riveting!) pages I wrote yesterday.

It is easier to notice, the following day, the bits that need fixing; the repeated words, the clumsy phrasing, the stilted dialogue; so the first ten minutes are spent deleting and changing, adding commas or full-stops, making sentences longer or shorter. I quite enjoy this daily edit, this fine-tuning. It is fun to polish your words and phrases until they shine! Far less taxing, I think, than coming up with the new stuff.

I am excited about this latest manuscript. I am fifty pages in and the characters are starting to come alive; making appearances in my dreams, interrupting my thoughts at random times. Inspired plot resolutions occur to me when I am reading, or just as I am about to drift off to sleep. It has a form to me now, this story - shadowy still, its edges blurred - but discernible nonetheless. I can see where it might be headed and that it might actually have enough substance to make a novel.

A new page:

Chapter six

My fingers fly, the words flow. Nevermind the spelling now, the commas, the punctuation – that can all be fixed later – but my muse is peering over my shoulder and she is cackling with delight, cheering me on.

"Yes, yes." She cries. "Oh, yes!"

A noise intrudes. It seems to come from a distance…through a fog….but it grows clearer, louder, more familiar…….

"Mummy, mummy, mummy!?" My youngest is wailing. I recognize the cry, it isn’t urgent, but he is angry, indignant – emotionally injured, no doubt, by one of his brothers.

"Okay," I say, "Okay!" I sigh and press save and leave my desk reluctantly.

I console, wipe away tears and give kisses. I remind them to be good, promise a treat later... "a trip to the park!"... when the sun comes out.

I return to the computer and wait, fingers poised over the keyboard, for that feeling to return. That delightful ease of writing, that compulsion to get it all out, ideas and words pushing and shoving, tumbling over each other in their haste….

But it is gone.

I read over what I have written and it doesn’t seem all that inspired after all. Rather flat, really, and it needs a lot of editing, a lot of work to make it consistent, a bit more spark to make it compelling…..

"Mummy!! Mummy?!" The wailing has started again. Louder and more insistent this time.

I sigh again, stand up and walk away. But just before I leave the room I return to the computer. I turn it off and watch, resigned, as the screen goes black.

"Mummy! Mummy!"

"Coming." I say. "I’m coming."

Rebecca James
<a href= "http://rebeccasjames.blogspot.com/">My Blog</a>