Now that nurseries have reopened, Olenka Hamilton has decided to keep her young daughter at home. Here’s why.
When you feel powerless, as many of us do in the face of the gross ongoing abuse of our freedom by our government, gratitude is surely the answer. And there is something which has come out of the lockdown for which I am truly grateful.
As the mother of a toddler and a soon-to-be newborn when the lockdown was imposed, I was not subjected to the shock of having to home-school my children for the foreseeable future. I was, however, suddenly faced with the prospect of a toddler at home full time with only me – no nanny, granny, nursery or long-suffering friend – to help or to keep us company. The arrival of the new baby was the least of my worries at this point.
Let me explain. I, like many city-dwelling friends of mine, had spent most of the first 18 months of my daughter Ophelia’s life trying to avoid actually having to spend any time with her. Every morning, we would be up and out of the flat pounding the streets of London with her in the pram before it was even really fully light. One coffee, a mothers’ meeting and ten shops later, we would head home for her lunch and nap before we were out again on our way to nursery where the poor child would spend the afternoon. I would head home to do a few hours of work or stare at the ceiling and breath a massive sigh of relief.
Exhausted from the relentlessness of those first few months after my baby was born and shocked by the complete loss of independence, I was refusing to accept that I was a mother, had forgotten that I was supposed to be actually enjoying this. On days when there was no nursery, we would descend on my parents often before either of them was even dressed. I would sit on the sofa trying to write or read something, or reply to a very non-urgent email, and watch my wonderful mother sit with Ophelia patiently filling and emptying boxes, building and knocking down block towers, wondering where she was finding the strength to engage in this utterly mindless activity.
Our confinement meant I could no longer hide and any work or unimportant email had to wait until her afternoon nap or when she was in bed for the night. Instead we were forced to embark on a newer, slower pace of life with just each other for company, our home our only playground. While in the pre-lockdown days morning meant getting out of the door as quickly as possible, suddenly the act of getting dressed became an activity in itself. I started laying out different outfits for her to choose from every morning. Shoes became an interest and she would often try on multiple pairs, often mine and her father’s too, before final decision was made. This would sometimes take us til 9am. Her first word was “shoes” pronounced “shiss”.
Soon the washing line became a point of fascination, and I would find my daughter waiting by the washing machine for the cycle to finish so that she could help me unload it. She would then hand me either an item of clothing or a peg, or pull down an item already hung, and so we would go round in circles, sometimes frustrated but mostly having quite a good time. We would go on walks and make no visible progress, but that didn’t seem to matter anymore. Changing the bed sheets became a game of hide and seek, of wrapping each other up and rolling around on the bed in hysterics.
And so our days passed in benign amusement and it suddenly occurred to me that my mother might actually have been enjoying herself with those blocks. When our baby Florence was born in May, I felt excited, not fearful, about the time we were going to spend together, locked down or not.
The period we spent in confinement was a revelation to me. As our pace of life rapidly decelerated, I gained some kind of belated acceptance of motherhood, my not-so-newly acquired status. Whether that had more to do with becoming a mother of two than it had to do with our months of mutual isolation I will never know for certain, but I am sure the latter has changed our family life for the better. As parents give thanks for the reopening of schools and nurseries, I, because I am lucky enough not to have to go back to full-time work for now, will not be sending Ophelia back to nursery until I believe that she is ready to benefit from it.
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