The mamamonster

When there is too much screaming around me I can no longer think clearly. The pressure in my head builds up, higher and higher, until it bursts. I lose all patience, if I ever had any, and the screaming needs to get out. Out of my own mouth. The mamamonster has been freed.

There is a lot of screaming in our house. The vicious cycle twists round and down, they scream, I scream back, they scream louder and then me too. I barely dare go outside, in the garden. What will the neighbours think? Is it good that they can’t understand my Dutch, and can’t hear how I bawl at every kid’s nagging? Or is it a shame they can’t hear how they moan my life into a living hell, and understand my wrath is well deserved. I know I am the eldest. I know I should be the wisest. I know they are four, two and one years old. But the mamamonster is not sensible. She knows patience nor common sense. She let’s herself be dragged into pools of hormonal fury. The mamamonster talks in low-pitched, separate, demanding words. Stop. Now. Or…. then a silence follows, in which she thinks of terrible things. Or I will hurt you, thinks the mamamonster. I will wring you out till there is no scream left in you, I will kick you flying over the hedge, I will box your ears till they pound more than mine. But she will reach into the depths of her soul and drag out the last ounce of self-control she can muster from the deepest of her monster belly and growls: Or… Go. To. Your. Room. Now! The last word is spoken with her deepest, darkest voice, and all the terrible things shine through her piercing eyes. The frightened children start crying, which works like oil on the monster’s fire and makes her grab arms and legs and she drags the screaming inside, into the study and closes the door.

Surrounded by silence the mamamonster retreats, and when the children reappear, with crocodile’s tears on their cheeks, her last remains are cuddled away, send back to her dark cave deep inside.

But the next time there is arguing, over the colour of the cereal bowl, over who gets the spotted spoon, over the food that is not their favourite, when there is fighting, pushing, hear-pulling, and screaming, the mamamonster will rear it’s ugly head again. At the next tooth that breaks and sets off days of crying. When they throw food, moan, whinge, yell and squeal. When they are bored, when they whine, three times, mama, mahma, mahama. When the shoes are still not on after I asked ten times. When they cry, cry, cry and cry. When they scream. When the sound exceeds by far the allowed maximum of decibels at any other workplace the mamamonster will soar and roar. The mamamonster is mean. Little children beware. She is on her way.

Mommy brain

Slowly I drive backwards, manoeuvring carefully to avoid pre-schoolers at large. The parking lot is small and spilling over. In the rear I pause, needing to change gear for the car and myself. Before I can accelerate I see a car in front of me slowly backing towards me. I wait. The cars pulls further back, and further. Does she not see me? Really? My hands flap around the wheel, should I honk, pull back quickly? But anything could be behind me and before I can decide I feel a thud. We collide, bumper to bumper. In the car in front of me I see a silhouette, still, bend over the wheel, cupping her face. Then, she gets out. She apologises, extensively. I smile, don’t worry about it. Nervously she studies my bumper, looking for marks. I see plenty. But not on the bumper she just grazed. She keeps apologising and I keep dismissing, keep smiling. After a while she finds a tiny crack in the number plate. She asks for a pen, paper, and whether I want her number, for damages. I smile again and point at all the scratches, bigger than hers. If it even is hers. I’ll find you, I say, if my stricter husband thinks otherwise. She nods at me, desperately. Or tell me your name, I say, to make her feel better. She is Mary, mum of Henry in the blue group.

On the way home I keep smiling. Why do mothers lose their brains in the chaos of every day? Pregnancy brain, we like to call it, but it does not leave your body when the baby does. I turn all my own incidents over in my brain. The car I brushed by at the petrol station, already late for school. The side mirror I hit on a car by the side of the road, distracted by a screaming back seat. To which I returned, blushing with shame, an hour later with a windscreen note. A birthday party for Tijm’s friend that I simply forgot. My mobile phone, of which I now have two, identical, ones, after I lost it not once, twice or even trice last year. And found again. The times I drove happily to little gym, until Tijm asked whether we should not pick up Linde from the child-minder first. And so it goes on, and on, and on. I am surprised I have not yet lost a child.

When a mother hears a child, in the supermarket, screaming, wailing and kicking, she only thinks one thought. Thankfully. It is not mine. That is exactly how I felt when Mary bumped my bumper today. Thankful. It wasn’t me. At least. Not today.