Marsha Maung:: Freelance graphic designer and writer

Now I know why I have been ostracized by all my unmarried, childless friends ever since I got married and had my kids! I never got to see it from others point of views before. Not that I am complaining but I now know why others think mothers are so boring and un-fun!

 

Only mothers can see and understand what mothers are going through. I brought a friend to the gym today and she was constantly thinking about her daughters. I am not complaining because I do the same thing! But because my kids are older now, if you can call 5 and 3 older and more independent (???), I can leave them for a while without them hanging on to my pants all the time! Even then, Jared (3) still sulks and threatens to injure himself or starve himself whenever I said I was going out. Truly, no one can truly understand what a mother has to go through unless she is a mother herself. We’re totally split between wanting to be with our kids and wanting to be by our ownselves. I mean, when we’re in, we’re thinking about having fun. When we’re out, we’re thinking of our kids. You can wait to get home when you’re out. And you can’t wait to get out when you’re home. Beat that for being confused!

 

I mean, when my friend talked about her kids, she really talked about them and I really saw the love (apart from my own love for my own kids) in her eyes. Mothers have to worry about breastfeeding, nappy changing, have to sneak time out for themselves, worry about being selfish and worry about whether the kids have cried their lungs out or not…blah blah blah…the list can go on!

 

All this for an hour of fun on our own?? And in the meantime, what’s daddy doing? And we have to literally beg and bribe our own mothers or in-laws to ‘take over command’ of the ‘mother ship’ for a short time while we take a breather! Singletons can have all the fun in the world without worrying about anything apart from whether they’ve taken the laundry in or not. The freedom. The liberty.

 

Where has it all gone?

 

And can you blame us for being boring? Can you blame us for wanting to talk about our own kids instead of blabbering on about what a wonderful butt the guy who just walked past us have? I mean, to us, mothers, we’re thinking, “You mean they have butts too? Gosh, you know, my Joshua has the cutest behind in the planet and I want to just sink my teeth into his butt all the time!”. And then the singleton will just stare at us like we’ve just dropped our false teeth on to the floor.

 

And whenever I go out to places like pubs and discos, I feel like part of the deco there, the bad patch, the part of the deco that the interior designer managed to miss. Maybe even the bouncer feels that we should be booted out of that place. I try my darnest to fit in most times, but with my gigantic bag (suitable for carrying nappies, rash creams, milk power and bottles) and baggy clothes (suitable for running after kids) and sandals (for sprinting after runaway toddlers), I just don’t fit in in discoteques anymore.

 

But as time goes on, I begin to fit in more. I bought a smaller bag and some clothes skimpy enough to pass me off as a 13-year-old and bought some make-up enough to make me look like a drag queen, and these days, nobody looks at me. That’s funny, most times, that would have been bad news. But to a mother, that’s good news.

 

I would slug the barman who calls me an Auntie. About a year back, after I gave birth to Jared (I had a lot of excess weight, then), I went out with a friend. I went to the bar to order a Tequila and the barman asked me in his Manglish (Malaysian English), “Auntie, you want tequila neat or pop?”.

 

Pop you on the head, you bloody buffoon! Which part of me looks like an Auntie???

 

I looked myself over and said, “Oh”. Forget the darn drink. I’ll go home and fix myself a glass of formula milk, instead, thank you very much!!