Breathe
By Cristina Massa, founding partner of Lima Diversity & Inclusion and specialist in diversity and inclusion issues.
I am the one who wanted to control every last detail of pregnancy and delivery (natural, with music by Arvo Pärt and scented candles) scheduled for February 25, but everything went as it did. Despite orders to the contrary, the brightest light named after a Serrat song, was born on February 14 and by cesarean section.
I was flooded with an unknown and unsuspected love for the child, whom I saw after delivery as the most beautiful thing in the world. There is graphic evidence to disprove me.
I was one of those who failed to instill regular sleeping and eating habits, which according to certain books and motherhood blogs, I permanently and irreversibly ruined the pillars of her health.
I breastfed whenever the baby felt like it (without a conceptual framework or theory of free demand in this regard: for me it was mere impotence and inability to implement what I read). I camechaneé with formula. I did not co-sleep. I did not tie her up with a millionaire's shawl.
I desperately got up to lull her to sleep every morning that she cried, for only two years, the queen, notwithstanding the mandates of Sleep Child - whose author clearly did not give birth to a Banshee who bawled nonstop until she was loaded even though at 6:30 am the offal of my being had to be going over the price of tortillas and other commodities with the Secretary. Anyway, I did everything to raise what will probably be our next serial killer as a result.
I'm the one who couldn't handle work, baby and marriage. Something had to give, and the couple was the weakest link in the chain. And because of that, I committed the cardinal sin of the Mexican mother: denying the best gift that can be given to a child, which as we all know is not life and upbringing, but a sibling.
I am also the one who whipped herself for years and years of not being able to provide the stable and harmonious home that she imagined she could have given her child.
I'm the one whose hilarious act the escuincla hasn't posted on social media, with no regard for her future notion of the bear (cringe, ma!) or the very real risks of providing information to predators of all kinds who prowl the Facebook pages of the raven moms of this world.
I am the one who would give a cornea for her, but I trembled with stress as the time approached for her to be returned to me on the weekends she was with her dad while she was still more Oompa Loompa than human being. Yes, despite the micro-control I tried to exercise every time she left, sending nana, spreadsheet detailing the minute by minute of her activities in the same format in which the Secretary's agenda was drawn up, medication reminders and constant monitoring, I felt liberated when she left. Sleep, a massage, a call with a friend that wasn't interrupted by "don't put that in your mouth", "watch out my little girl", "girl, nooo!", "girl, nooo, friend, kick me so little, this girl is going to split her head open like a watermelon."
I'm the one who has had to explain to her, against the advice of renowned psychologists and vast literature, why mommy sobs every two or three years because she is again heartbroken by a new failed attempt to give her that aspirational Noah's ark life: male-female-christs. (Spoiler alert: I've given up trying).
I am the one who never knew how to play on the floor with her, let her get dirty in peace, make an orchestra with cans and forts with blankets. The one who didn't put together a program worthy of a gringo camp every weekend and vacation. That, daughter, with daddy.
I am the one who managed that when she was asked in pre-maternal how she was called at home, she answered "girl, put yourself in peace", instead of an apocope. That when she got the role of being the mom in the little house game, to the question "What are you going to do, the food?", she answered "No, worry me."
I'm the one who doesn't sit down to study with her, goes to few moms' breakfasts, has never belonged to the PTA or been a member in her 11 years of school groups, but the one who fights like a Ukrainian when an issue is not being properly addressed, in my humble opinion, at school.
I'm the one who has her in more extracurricular activities than she's kissed my mother, and she keeps an eye on the management: every shoe, wardrobe, line to pronounce from memory goes through the To-Do List (that's right, with capital letters). I'm the one who pulls her belly in the front row to take the picture. I'm the one who turns green when what lights up her face is that daddy arrives at the festival, but secretly is glad to have sent the corresponding reminders to avoid heart ache for the child.
I am the one who is both terrified and fascinated to watch her grow up, develop opinions of my own and value judgments, many of which I am not in favor of but still proud of.
I am the one whose soul drops a little piece when she realizes the disabling roe that her mere existence, let alone her talks, provokes in the little girl.
I am the one whose heart grows a little bigger when she asks to stay with mom at the slightest discomfort, because the medicine at dad's house has less effect than at mom's house. Ample empirical evidence supports this hypothesis.
I'm the one whose heart crinkles when she hears her friends say, "My mom's not cool but she's not bad either: she's a lawyer for Nike and we get discounts."
I am the one who has to reconsider when the escuincla says: "I am not one of your causes, please go to school to be a mom and not an activist". And yet, I am the one who has taken her to every march that tries to vindicate a just cause and now the escuincla herself asks when and why we are going to march to get ready.
I am the one who enjoys seeing through her eyes every place we have visited together and who wants to swallow the time all at once because she knows that in a very short time she will have a weekend in EdoMex but with her friends, she is going to kill an exotic trip with mom.
I'm the one who screams to high heaven when her contradictions catch up with her. I would kill to defend your right to wear whatever you want, and not be molested, violated, touched. But you will not leave this house dressed like that.
Anyway, it's official. It's official: I am, as of today, the cliché mom of a teenage girl. Happy birthday, little girl of my heart.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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