“I am tired. I am lonely. I have found myself mired in resentment in this new life, become a person I don’t wish to be, feeling constant guilt for not feeling constant gratitude for the blessing that is my child.”
Claire Kilroy has done something in writing this book that I do not recall any other writer achieving with such lucidity – she has created a realistic account of the early years of motherhood. The emotional soup depicted is raw and visceral yet written beautifully. She has captured the essence of anger and resentment felt when nobody, including other mothers, can offer the required help or solace needed when dealing day and night, week after endless week, year after year, with a tiny anarchist who is nevertheless loved beyond measure.
The portrayal of relentlessness and frustration, and then condescension experienced when complaints are aired – the suppressed anger and despair generated that can find no adequate outlet – is pitch perfect.
“Oh it was all so stupid”
A couple, happy and in love, decide to make a baby. They decorate the nursery together in excited anticipation. And then the birth – bloody, painful, requiring patching up of the woman’s insides afterwards, but a perfect little boy placed in the crook of her arm, life changed forever. Once home the man moves into their box room to sleep. He has early starts, an important job, he needs his rest. The job of the woman – to keep their child safe and thriving – is not understood and certainly not valued. To the wider world, it is the father’s work that matters.
Soldier is the mother – an apt moniker given the battles she fights on the front line. Sailor is the little boy – a demanding child but no more than many a mother will have to deal with. Soldier is putting these memories of Sailor’s early years together for his benefit. It is not easy reading for any of us who have gone through something similar – a reminder of how the erosion of an essential self was dismissed, complaints indulged if we were lucky but stoic silence preferred.
Silence is the de facto reaction when motherhood is considered, anything less than joy and gratitude judged and often condemned. Any woman harbouring a notion of making a baby should read this book first. Any man preparing for fatherhood should read and learn. The father here is not a bad man – he is trying to be helpful – but he expects his wife to be able to control their child and still care for him as she did previously. He offers platitudes that stoke the embers of a fire she is forever fighting to put out.
Chapters offer a day to day account of life for Soldier and Sailor as he grows from tiny baby through the toddler years and on to becoming a little boy. When the baby fails to thrive initially Soldier is told to restrict Sailor’s milk intake and offer solid food that is rarely accepted. The hungry screaming can only be bourn for so long, especially when it disturbs the husband who must rise early for his important day.
The challenge of getting a small child out the door is portrayed as painful rather than humorous – as some writers have tried to make it seem. There is nothing amusing when there are complaints about being late but no practical help with an infant who has no interest in adult needs.
“To the casual observer such consonance is beautiful. But the consonance is not beautiful and the sea is not glittering and the bear isn’t dancing. Look at us, herding our babies around, our squalling and hungry and fretting babies, our goats and our tents and our chattels. Pitifully, relentlessly, inescapably human. We’d been at this forever and we’d be at this forever. Did it have to be so hard?”
Undervalued and overwhelmed – how many will consider a stay at home mother’s complaints overstated, the woman making a fuss? Perhaps this story resonated so strongly because I have been there and the years have seared my being: the child who would not be set down without screaming; the fussy eater who vomited if tricked into eating; the endless crying when they refused to sleep despite obvious exhaustion.
“None of this is your fault”
Sailor is adored. Soldier fears he will grow up thinking she is a nag, not remembering the happy days she creates for him. And so she writes it all out here with brutal honesty
I must talk about the style of writing because it is that which makes this account so gripping and heartfelt. There is tension aplenty: will Sailor survive his attempts at self-annihilation; will the old friend cause issues between Soldier and her husband; will the loss of self prove more than Soldier can bear?
The denouement pulls together the fallout from choosing to try to raise a tiny human. Soldier is resolute in detailing the cost she has been required to pay.
Any Cop?: A brilliant, tender and devastating account of early motherhood, rendered in clear eyed, engaging prose – despite the sleep deprivation. So much is excavated from what too many regard as normal and acceptable. Read this and learn.
Jackie Law
Bookmunch 