Mama Mia Page 13

  By the time Luca was about five months old, I’d returned to work two days a week. Even before Jason’s illness, I’d been feeling reluctant about going back. All my pre-birth bravado about only needing four months of maternity leave evaporated in the face of the overwhelming love I had for Luca.

  Hadn’t factored that into my career plans, had I? I was utterly besotted with my baby son, and the thought of leaving him to go and create a sealed section made me feel physically ill.

  Fortunately, my perceptive boss sensed my anguish and initiated a conversation while I was trying to work out how to bring it up. Rather than let me slip away and have to find another editor, she suggested I work two days a week in the office for a few months and three days from home. Her offer provided massive relief and I grabbed it with both hands.

  On the days I was at Cosmo, my mother and Jason’s mum each had a day looking after Luca. I expressed milk in my office, closing my door and sitting at my desk with my boobs out, pumping, while I proofread stories about dating and sex positions. I was blessed to have family to help with childcare and an office with a door so I wasn’t forced to express in a stinky toilet cubicle (like so many working mums have to), but things at home were otherwise quite bleak.

  Jason showed no signs of getting better. We learned that if the symptoms didn’t improve within a few months from onset, sufferers could be stuck with CFS for years, even decades. We were devastated by this slippery prognosis and by the fact no one could pinpoint a cure.

  Jason was incapable of being among groups of people or even having a drink with a mate. He just wasn’t strong enough physically or clear enough mentally. Our very small social life shrivelled to nothing.

  Watching me sink slowly into despair over the situation, my three closest girlfriends, Jo, Jen and Karen, decided to stage an intervention of sorts. It took the form of a girls’ weekend in Melbourne and it was possibly the most I’ve ever laughed in one forty-eight-hour period.

  Luca had turned one and I wasn’t breastfeeding any more so my parents took him for the weekend. Jason wasn’t yet well enough to look after him on his own.

  The four of us girls flew down one Friday afternoon and checked into a hotel before heading to St Kilda for drinks. To call me a suppressed control freak is a little like calling Osama bin Laden somewhat unreasonable. Jen always says the main difference between her and me is that if we’re invited to a party, she’ll say, ‘Great!’ and I’ll say, ‘What time will it end?’ Followed immediately by ‘And where will I park?’ There’s a time and a place for spontaneity, I say.

  My girlfriends had some potent antidotes to the funk I was in, most notably eating and shopping, distilled with tequila shots. We began the evening with cocktails before breaking for dinner and then we started walking through St Kilda looking for a taxi.

  As we ambled past an apartment block with music blaring out a window and a party very obviously in full swing, Jen decided it would be a good idea to crash it. ‘Come on, we’re going in,’ she announced, grabbing my hand and pulling me across the garden and up some stairs with Karen and Jo right behind us. ‘Hi, we’re looking for John!’ Jen said brightly to anyone who looked our way.

  That’s how I found myself sitting on a beanbag on the floor of a stranger’s house chatting to a bunch of uni students bemused by the four older women who had parachuted into their party and were drinking their beer. And then we were dancing in the lounge room while Jen accosted the DJ. ‘Have you got any Kylie? We’re from Sydney!’ she shouted over the music.

  These two statements, while seemingly unrelated, would become a theme over the course of the next eight hours as we trekked from the party to half a dozen nightclubs and bars. It was big fun. The kind of fun when you laugh so hard you think you might wee in your pants and, if you’ve ever given birth, sometimes do.

  Because I am not made of strong stuff, I decided I wanted to go home after about three or four bars and four thousand tequila shots. It was 1 am and my friends would not hear of it. ‘I want to go hoooome,’ I’d whine as they shoved yet another shot glass into my hand. ‘No you don’t!’ Jo would insist. ‘You want to go to the MIDDLE OF THE DANCE FLOOR!’ and there she’d drag me. Wherever we went, while Karen was at the bar buying us yet another round, I’d look up to see Jen in the DJ booth. In the end, I came up with a cunning plan to halt my alcohol intake in the face of unrelenting peer pressure. As we lined up yet another bit of salt and lemon to ‘lick, sip, suck’ the tequila slammers, I’d do the lick and the suck but throw the shot over my shoulder instead of down my throat. This bought me time and allowed me to remain standing upright. Mostly. Eventually, at some appalling hour like 5 am, my friends agreed we could go back to our hotel, where we all passed out.

  The next morning I thought I was going to die. With no room service and a pre-arranged plan to shop the crap out of Chapel Street, we wobbled gingerly, painfully, down to the lobby in search of a cab that could take us to buy Panadol and then to South Yarra.

  In one of those moments in your life when you know with certainty that God is punishing you, the marble lobby of the hotel was being jackhammered. I was not imagining this. It was actually happening. The only reason I didn’t burst into tears was that it would have required me to engage facial muscles that were way too close to my throbbing head, which would then fall off.

  Jen, adept at hangover management, high-tailed us all to a greasy café and ordered bacon and eggs for everyone. I sipped water and tried not to vomit into my handbag.

  After the Panadol kicked in and we were away from the nauseating smell of food, I brightened a little and we spent a restorative day shopping for ridiculous things we would never wear, like puffer vests and complicated trainers. Then we went to a Napoleon make-up store and bought absurd amounts of sparkly eye dust in different colours. Unable to back up for another night out, we spent the Saturday evening watching an in-house movie, eating chocolate and laughing ourselves senseless.

  The weekend was a revelation. My girlfriends had pulled me out of my dark place and reminded me of the twenty-six-year-old side of myself. The one without responsibilities as a partner and mother and boss and employee. It was the greatest gift they could have given me. And I’ve never been as drunk since.

  UM, HAS ANYONE SEEN MY AMBITION?

  Answering machine message for me from Cosmo deputy editor:

  ‘Hi Mia, we need to send a courier around with the cover. The art department needs to get started urgently. Will you be there in the next few hours? Call me! Thanks.‘

  As soon as Luca was born, I seemed to misplace my ambition and it took quite some time to locate. This was a huge surprise, as was the fact I barely noticed its disappearance. I was a career girl, wasn’t I? I know I used to be. Would I ever be again? Frankly, I was unperturbed. Those happy hormones had kicked in and I was blissfully enveloped in motherhood.

  When I’d been preparing to go on maternity leave, I’d wondered how I’d ever be able to exist without my job. More importantly, how would it exist without me? How would my magazine survive and flourish when I wasn’t there to micromanage every decision? Perfectly well, it turned out. Which is lucky because moments after Luca was born my attitude was pretty much: ‘What magazine?’

  Graciously, Pat stepped in to take up much of the slack during those first few months, which must have been a drag for her since she had only just escaped from the day-to-day running of Cosmo after appointing me to replace her. She never complained. Combined with all my pre-planning for the issues I’d be missing and the support of my capable staff, I was able to disconnect entirely from the office for at least six weeks. It was a special time.

  And then, insidiously, work began to seep back into my baby bubble.

  At first, it felt like the worst kind of intrusion. In the days before email, it was all very primitive—faxes and phone calls and couriers. It’s not like I could choose to consolidate work into the times Luca was catnapping on the floor or after he’d gone to sleep at night, as I migh
t have been able to in a more technologically advanced time. I was at the mercy of my staff, who needed me to make decisions when it suited them. And this could be as often as ten times a day. Each time they phoned or faxed or sent me something, it felt like I was literally being yanked away from Luca. The dislocation was jarring because my brain was not yet accustomed to doing two things at once. Sleep deprivation didn’t help my inability to multitask. Luca was still feeding every couple of hours through the night.

  One day, I was particularly frazzled and lost it. Jason’s mother had just left after dropping over some wonderful home cooking and having a play with Luca. Now my mum had dropped around to see him and the office kept calling. Two different staff members were ringing me about the same thing because they hadn’t spoken to each other first. This was infuriating. A courier arrived to drop off magazines and some possibilities for the next cover. The fax was whirring with a features list for my approval. While Mum goo-gooed with Luca, I was running from the front door to the phone to the fax in my maternity bra and pyjama pants, halfway towards having a shower at 3 pm. Suddenly I burst into tears. ‘I feel like everyone gets to play with Luca except me,’ I sobbed, feeling desperately frustrated. It was a watershed moment, my first tangible experience of the tug-of-war between my two lives. The first in a million. Would I ever get used to it? Yes. If something happens enough times, you eventually become used to it. That doesn’t make it easier, necessarily, just more familiar.

  In a heartbeat, it was time to go back to work two days a week, as Pat had suggested. This was hard and not. Hard because I was passionately in love with my baby and enjoying motherhood far more than I thought I would. But also not, because caring for a baby was so much harder and more monotonous than I’d expected. The struggle to try to do both simultaneously at home was also far tougher than sitting in an office with a door, and staff who I didn’t have to take with me every time I wanted to go to the loo. In that first week, as I stood waiting for my morning latte, I became aware that I was rhythmically jiggling the pile of magazines I was carrying in one arm. Like a baby. It was the perfect physical manifestation of where my head was at. At home with Luca.

  For a long time after dragging myself away from my four-month-old love obsession and returning to the office, I struggled to regain my interest in Cosmo. Or anything other than my baby. I begged Pat to let me quit Cosmo and launch a parenting magazine for ACP instead. Fortunately, she just smiled indulgently and ignored my fanciful pleas. This was a good thing, because after about a year my complete immersion in all things baby gradually lifted. Like the dissipation of a happy fog.

  I still adored Luca, but I gradually became ready to talk and think about other things too. For a long time, it had felt like there was no room in my head or my heart for anything other than my baby. I was full. Sated. But eventually I found the key to the door marked ‘Former Life’ and discovered there was stuff behind it which was just as interesting as the contents of his nappies. Who knew?

  It was a lot like rediscovering all the pre-maternity clothes I’d stored in a forgotten cupboard. They never did fit in quite the same way as they used to because my body was irrevocably changed. But they were a refreshing change from elasticised waists and oversized T-shirts. And so it was with my job. Shortly after Luca’s first birthday, I returned to work four days a week and slowly, slowly, I began to love it again.

  Jason’s CFS was not improving. He was still sapped of strength and struggling. He remained unshakably supportive of every decision I made and did his utmost to keep his spirits up for the sake of his family.

  I’d expected to feel a massive pang for Luca while I was at work but this wasn’t really how it played out. This was also surprising, yet another piece in the complicated puzzle of the working mother’s brain. I found I could easily become immersed in Cosmo when I was at the office. I was happy at work and I could focus quite well on what I was doing because I was secure in the knowledge Luca was being lovingly cared for. My mother and Jason’s mother each had him one day a week, I worked from home one day and we’d hired a nanny to cover the other two days.

  Finding her had been staggeringly easy. I happened to be chatting with our close friend Pete and the subject came up. Pete mentioned a guy we both knew whose girlfriend was a nanny. Her name was Anna and she was a part-time model. Funnily enough, I never considered this to be a problem although many other people thought I was certifiably insane to hire a hot nanny. But I didn’t care in the slightest. She was a known quantity. Anchored in my universe to people I knew and trusted. Which, I find, is always preferable to any number of references from strangers.

  Even more importantly, Anna was warm and lovely and had an instant connection with Luca. And with me. She became a bit like my little sister even though she was a head taller than me. I ended up taking her under my wing and kick-starting her modelling career, finding her a new agent and encouraging her to stop doing editorial modelling and move into more lucrative advertising work. She was the Elle Macpherson type. Tall, healthy, big smile, great body. She belonged in KFC commercials and ads for Toyota, which is exactly what ended up happening. Once I cast her in a lingerie fashion shoot for Cosmo. She was also on the packaging for a hair removal cream and to this day I still see her smiling face on the boxes when I go to the chemist.

  Anna lasted about a year with us until her interest in nannying was eclipsed by her interest in modelling. In the end, she was taking Luca with her to castings that fell on days she looked after him. I wasn’t thrilled about this but I allowed it because I had to. Like so many working mothers, my childcare arrangements were a precarious hodge-podge of family and paid care, and I lived in mortal fear of my house of cards collapsing in a screaming heap.

  That’s how my two-year-old son came to spend so much time hanging out with hot models. He’ll thank me when he’s twenty.

  Eventually, I became aware that the power balance had shifted as it invariably does with anyone as soon as you come to depend on them too much. The thought of Anna leaving and the disruption it would cause was so overwhelming I had bent over backwards, sideways and upside down to accommodate her. Her happiness was integral to my work and home life. Before I knew it, it felt like I was working for her.

  We agreed it was time to say goodbye when Luca was about two and a half and I sent him to day care a few days a week. We lost touch with Anna soon after when she moved to overseas. But I always did love casually dropping ‘my son’s nanny, the lingerie model’ into conversations and watching people totally freak out. All that ever mattered to me was that she adored Luca and he adored her.

  In the year Anna was with us, I became aware of an acute failing I had as a mother. Unlike Anna, I didn’t like to play. I was incapable of singing nursery rhymes or building block towers for long stretches of time. This was a very bad thing, I was sure of it, and it made me secretly ashamed. It still does. I somehow expected to become entranced with playing with my baby when I became a mother but it never happened. I always imagine other parents enjoy this stuff and that I’m somehow deficient. A pretender. I love hanging out with them and chatting and doing stuff but playing games? Going to parks? Ugh.

  I’d known almost from the beginning that I’d be a better mother if I wasn’t at home 24/7. It was a difficult, confronting, pill to swallow. Surely if I was a proper mother I would be one hundred per cent fulfilled by puzzles and nappies and ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ and mashing organic sweet potato? Or is the real definition of a proper mother that you’re not fulfilled but you do it anyway because it’s in the best interests of your child? Should I be parking my ambition and my genuine love of work for the benefit of my child? Those were the questions that haunted me until Luca went to school. Then, it was no longer an issue. Even if I had been at home, he wasn’t.

  It’s strange that I held this expectation of what it means to be a mother because my own mother always had a job, working part time when I was small and then full time once I was in primary school. I had no alternati
ve model.

  What she did was quite pioneering because the 1970s was a time when far fewer mothers worked outside the home than they do now. The idea of a career for a woman with kids—especially small kids—was unusual. Even frowned upon. Of course I didn’t realise this at the time. Sure, I was aware most of my friends’ mothers were at home when they returned from school each afternoon but this inspired no envy in me. I had something better, I thought. I had freedom. Independence. From the age of about nine or ten, I’d let myself in with my key, call Mum at work to let her know I was home safe, make myself a snack and then head out to play with my neighbourhood friends in the street until dark.

  So when I became a mother, it was never a question of ‘Should I keep working?’ It was a given that I would. But then? Hello guilt. It’s taken me a decade but I think I’ve finally come to understand and accept that it’s the things I do outside motherhood that make me a better, more present, mother. Whether it’s writing or going for a run or going to dinner with my girlfriends, motherhood is integral to my identity, but it isn’t my entire identity. And that’s okay. Back when Luca was small, it was a matter of managing my ambition, my guilt and, most importantly, the mechanics of how to be a working mother.

  If I could share the daily grind with grandmothers and other people who loved Luca and who could give him full and fun attention during the times I was working, surely that was the balance I was searching for.

  THE DAY I SAW BRAD PITT’S PENIS

  Voicemail to Jason from me: