I am home alone, enjoying a couple of hours to myself while Llew and Master J visit Llew’s parents for the afternoon. The house is a mess, plus I have to go through Master J’s clothes, sorting through the many items he has busted through thanks to another recent growth spurt… More pressingly, I really must clear the piles of paper and various bits of crap that keep accumulating on those precious surfaces too high for him to reach. A quick, shame-faced glance across the room to the dining table is enough to make me feel like I really should stop writing and just TIDY UP, but some stubborn, selfish part of me doesn’t want to spend this hard-won breather doing more fucking housework. UGH. Nonetheless, here’s what’s making me feel guilty, keeping in mind this is only what I can glimpse from here on the couch: an empty serviette holder; a box for a large light globe (the box is possibly empty, possibly not); the baby monitor; my handbag; two rolled up placemats; a magazine cover (liberated from its contents by my darling child); sunscreen; a sunglasses cloth; a pen; three framed photos; a half-drunk bottle of red wine (which I am not touching and which should just be tossed in the bin, being an unholy potion delivering both insomnia and raging nightmares); a book; a pile of paid bills that want filing; a plastic bag full of child-proofing paraphernalia…. And whatever else is obscured by my bag. Hideous. I want to scrape it all into the garbage.

And it’s not the only pile of crap in the place. No, I am specialising in these mounds of domestic detritus. I have one in the kitchen and another in the bedroom. They’re like undergraduate art installations critiquing capitalism and the consumer society. If following a person’s paper trail reveals the inner-workings of their mind, then I am a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Oooh, look, there’s a scattered pile of unopened mail by the front door, too, right down to a cheap 2012 calendar – delivered free, unsolicited and entirely unwanted from an unknown source – what’s it all still doing here? Why isn’t it in the recycling bin yet? Why?

I think I’ve just been overwhelmed by the amount of useless rubbish that keeps teeming through the mail slot and trucking through the apartment. Everything has stickers and labels and packaging and price tags and there’s junk mail needing sorting from the bill mail and then there’s pending administration and lists and things I can’t find a place for because we have no storage. Plus Master J is learning to walk (very bloody cute he is about it too), and he’s tall, so we’re discovering on a daily basis just how far his reach extends. We keep being surprised by it. Vases are being pushed back, pressed right against the wall like children playing hide and seek, and bowls are being broken. He also demands to be on the move outside, preferably near some sort of body of water, so there’s very little time spent indoors. Though he has claimed the two best rooms in the place, he howls like he’s being flogged whenever I have the temerity to leave him in his playroom so I can quickly do something like hang the washing (when all I want is for the washing to GO HANG) or pay a bill online (forget using a computer in Master J’s presence. He comes over all Beethoven the second he sees the keys). Ergo, we GO.

There’s also the return of the sleepless night. They’re all doing it at the moment, I don’t know why, but at least one of his little chums, the divine Miss M, lies in like she’s Marie Antoinette after one of these early morning interludes. It would be one thing to be up at 2.30 and back to bed until 9.30, which is what happens at Miss M’s house, but not Master J. No, he’s getting earlier and earlier. We had a quasi-regular 5.45 start to the day for a few weeks there, but he’s wound that back to a spirit-crushing 5 am on the dot. And if he’s been up through the night as well, which he has been of late, well, aren’t I a picture by coffee time? Is it any wonder I simply stagger past those piles of paper, all of them reproaching me for yet more reams of unimportant shit I haven’t dealt with, and continue on out the door? In my glassy-eyed permanent stupor it’s a miracle I can see them at all (except for that free 2012 calendar, which is currently making its presence felt as a tripping hazard – I slip therefore I am).

Oh, okay, okay, okay. Damn it, I’m coming. It’s time to clean.

He didn’t see his only child sue his estate, an ugly and protracted ordeal that destroyed, utterly and irrevocably, whatever tenuous version of ‘family’ we’d hitherto been able to enact. Down near Circular Quay there is an obelisk from which all road distances to and from Sydney are measured, and that’s what Granddad’s modest (but unbeatably positioned) Bondi Beach home was for the rest of us. Or at least, I always imagined it was the house that was the stable structure holding us all together, our true north, until Granddad died and I realised that of course it was him all along.

He didn’t see the death of his 14-year-old great granddaughter, the hideous details of which would have completely destroyed him. I don’t think he would have coped very well; but none of us did, really, how could you? But when I think back to Llew’s very complex and at the same time altogether fundamental reaction to what happened, I see a response that might have been Granddad’s, and I am glad he was spared a loss that time does nothing to dim.

He didn’t see me turn 30 – a pity, because he would have very much enjoyed the party. I held it on the site of his old garage in Darlinghurst – Granddad was an incurable mechanic – which he’d sold upon retirement and which by 2002 had become a rather cool restaurant/bar. I don’t think it’s still there, Chicane (in the way of Sydney establishments I think it went under not long afterwards), but I must remember to stroll by next time I am in the neighbourhood. I like to keep up with the property’s changing fortunes and apparently endless incarnations.

He didn’t see the awarding of my PhD – though I have him to thank for the name of this blog. He used to address cards and notes and so on to ‘D.D.’ – Dirty Di – and didn’t skip a beat once I was back from London and embarked upon my doctoral research. I was still D. D., but now my nickname was Doctor Di.

“Vastly premature, Granddad,” I used to caution, a little embarrassed by a title I hadn’t earned and mortally feared I would never see. But I see now the nickname was a simple form of encouragement, a statement of faith, and I think he’d be proud that I got there in the end.

He didn’t see our engagement, nor was he around to share our wedding (though he certainly helped pay for the latter as well as for our honeymoon in India). He would have loved the dolphins turning up during the speeches, he would have scoffed his fill of oysters and he most assuredly would have swept up more than his share of ‘the darlings’ for a spin around the impromptu dance floor (we got married and had our reception at a beach house in Culburra on the south coast). I missed him more than usual that happy, happy day.

He didn’t see us find our first home: the apartment we adore and in which we still live. He would approve mightily of its proximity to the sand and surf, and it’s my most obvious tribute to Granddad, because I know it’s what he intended when he left us all a portion of his estate. Certainly its purchase would never have been possible but for him. Like everyone in Sydney we have since been burdened with a mortgage that is nothing short of oppressive, but at least we are slowly paying off our own home, and it’s thanks to Granddad that the opportunity ever came our way. My gratitude for this happy home of ours is boundless. I wish with all my heart that I’d been able to offer him a beer here.

He didn’t see my name in print, and I know he would have gotten a big buzz from my sporadic by-lines. He had a romantic sort of idea of the newspaper world – a bit more Katharine Graham and a little less News of the World – that meant he would have been jazzed to think of my ‘filing stories’ to ‘deadline.’ I inherited his fascination for all things press related – I always feel like I am playacting as a journo, and I think it’s because the job brings with it an infectious sweep of energy and history that never fails to put a spring in my step. Surely it’s make-believe, me, doing this? I know it’ll be the same thing if I ever get a book across the line, because it’s the feeling of a dream come true.

He didn’t see my list of travel destinations lengthen – and he unfortunately missed the occasions when I’ve been sent as a travel writer (I fear with Master J’s arrival those gigs are over) – he would have l-o-v-e-d that, the idea of someone else picking up my travel tab, or of going on holiday only to be paid to write about it (and it is the jammiest job in the world). Sigh. No wonder I miss travel writing. But Granddad loved the adventurer in me – and he made a great man of the road himself.

Last but not least, he didn’t see the arrival of Master J. It’s a curious thing, but we have a small photo wall in our lounge-room, and Master J studies it with interest whenever we are sitting on the couch together. I have a great self-portrait of Granddad up there, an old black and white in which he looks so handsome and in which his eyes are unmistakably much like mine and now much like Master J’s. This one photo fascinates Master J; of all the images on the wall, this is the one he obsesses over.

“That’s my granddad,” I say. “Your great granddad.”

And Master J points again and says, “That.”

We miss you, Granddad.

But that’s not what I want to post about today, because last night I was fortunate enough to get to the opening night of Babel at Sydney Theatre. Babel is part of the exciting Sydney Festival (SF) program put together by outgoing director Lindy Hume, and is directed and choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet, with sculptural forms by British artist Antony Gormley.

A little while ago, I interviewed Jalet for one of several SF articles I was writing for Deluxe Sydney magazine, which is now available online. He was in Belgium at the time, so thanks to the time difference I was able to enjoy a long, wide-ranging conversation with him after Master J went down for the night. Jalet proved a fascinating, forthcoming and thoughtful interviewee. When the call ended I had a moment of happy satisfaction; it was one of those occasions when you allow yourself to believe you’re in the right job. Ever since I’ve wished I’d been commissioned to write a far longer piece on Babel – I had reams of material and a mere 450 words at my disposal (which was reduced even further by the editorial desk – Deluxe Sydney made its glossy entrance as a highly pictorial publication – the stories have been shortened, but as a result the mag looks lush and gorgeous). It’s always tough trying to do justice to the subject in such limited space – an impossible effort, really.

Anyway, it was absolutely brilliant being in the audience when Babel made its Sydney debut. It was electrifying; the international cast of dancers (an absurdly multi-talented lot, with a number of them also singing, for god’s sake, as if spectacular dance skills weren’t enough…) delivered a truly memorable experience. Previously I’ve never much cared for modern dance – though perhaps I’ve been unlucky in the pieces I’ve seen – so I was intrigued to see Jalet and Cherkaoui’s vision come to life. Ahead of time I wondered what would be – ironically – lost in translation. The interview with Jalet revealed the depth of intellect and vigour driving the collaboration between the pair, and I wasn’t sure the production itself, with all its players, could possibly match the intensity and euphoria of exchange when it came to performing for Sydney audiences.

Well. I needn’t have worried. It’s a stunning mix of dance, music and drama – shot through with understated provocation and wit. It’s one of the Sydney Festival headliners for a reason: Babel speaks volumes.

And now here we are, one day out from the last day of the year. Master J is due to awake at any moment, so this post will be necessarily short and sweet. All I really want to say I’ll say now: thanks for sticking with me during this first year of parenthood. Despite the sporadic posting and alarming tunnel vision of my first twelve months as a mother, you guys have held fast and continued to drop in and wish me well, spurring me on at times when I was really floundering, always ready with your good sense and even better humour. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. Thank you.

I hope 2012 will be a year of improved form here and elsewhere on the writing front – but who knows what Master J shall have to say on the matter?! I guess we’ll find out. He’s in great form, though, you’ll be pleased to know, and I am looking forward to spending the time by his side. If I’m not here, that’s where I’ll be, and I’m so lucky to be one of his chief playmates because boy, the kid sure does know how to laugh.

I did have some time to myself yesterday, and I carved up my manuscript. It’s been a long time coming – something that’s needed doing for years. I’ll explain it all another time, but the main point is that the MS has always suffered from the way it was begun:  with some of my own recollections and experiences fused with some inventions. At the time, I just wanted to make a start. I also wanted to record some of the more lasting scars of growing up, so I did that, but now I see I have no place in the MS that emerged in the years that followed. I have to get myself out of this story. It took a long time for the MS to reveal its own character, and its own characters, for that matter. But they do exist now, and if I can excise myself from the page they may yet flourish. I don’t know if they will, but I have to give them a chance.

And as for those things sparked by my own memories, as well as those darker notes that actually didn’t happen to me but which nonetheless came out of dredging up the mood of the past? Well, there’s been a ritual purging, I suppose, and I think the things that aren’t real may find a second life in short form, and the things that are real may be the basis of some memoir writing; perhaps I’ll even post some of it here. But the MS, I realise now, is a lighter creature. Like its author, it is at heart a more positive beast, and I shall strive to improve its fate, just as I have always worked to improve my own. It turns out cutting things out can be just as cleansing as writing them down.

See you in 2012, dear friends. I shall raise a glass to you all as we farewell the year that was and usher in a new one. Happy, happy days, one and all.

I changed him as I have changed him every day of his life – although these days it’s a major production and I am a desperate circus performer, juggling, dancing and singing my heart out in an always doomed effort to keep him still. But how many times have I changed him over the past year? How many wet nappies, how many turd-taculars? How much vomit during the long months of reflux, how many beetroot stains (sometimes I am just not very bright), how much avocado, how many portions of Laughing Cow? It wasn’t until someone from the Early Childhood Centre came by to check up on me that I was even told I needed to position his penis downward when I was changing his nappy – up until then Llew and I had been changing the sheets, sleep-suits and wraps along with the nappy at just about every change, thinking this was simply what wet nappies did…

“Oh no,” said the ECC woman, looking at me askance, “you have to press it down.”

Well, how would I know that? I didn’t know that. But I know it now.

I’ve still got bung wrists, my right one is still giving me grief, though after cortisone shots and changes to how I hold him – particularly while I was still breastfeeding – the De Quervain’s Syndrome has certainly improved out of sight. There were days when the pain was so intense I feared I would drop my baby. It made me gasp aloud, and the effort to keep myself from releasing my hold of him was nothing short of superhuman. I overcame, because I had to, but the agony was extreme.

I can’t get much distance from these little sensory stabs because my wrists are still too sore, it feels too close, but I’m looking forward to the gradual hazing as the pain recedes (as I believe it eventually must). It marked me, though, this condition – it maimed and marked me. One of my more vivid memories of the first few months of motherhood is of the first mothers’ group meeting in a nasty windowless room at the local library. It was a summer scorcher, a day in the high 30s. I was wearing braces on both hands and wrists, Master J had screamed the whole way there, and I was a looking and feeling a total wreck: wild-eyed, dishevelled and sweating profusely. My hair was dripping sweat, hanging in lank reeds about my face. More sweat trickled from my neck right down my spine. And I needed to use the toilet.

Of course I needed to use the toilet. I will forever associate the first months of motherhood with always needing to use a toilet, because actually going to the toilet was one of those basic things I couldn’t figure out at the time. I couldn’t yet string together the words nor the logic required to ask someone to please mind the baby for me long enough that I could dash off to relieve myself. Nor had I quite pieced together my mental map of all the disabled toilets in the area so that I could take him with me. And I hadn’t even begun to understand that it was absolutely essential that I continue servicing my own needs too.

So as usual I was busting for the loo. And all the while I could feel my hands cooking, bubbling away unseen, trapped beneath the synthetic material of the braces, a little hothouse of dermatitis building and building with every second my poor hands remained encased. All I wanted, sitting there with over 20 other new mothers listening to this ECC woman complain and complain about parking, was to go for a swim. I wanted nothing more in those airless, harried minutes than to rip my ill-fitting dress to pieces (the post-partum body is so odd – no longer pregnant but still not recognisably one’s own), hurl the hateful wrist braces across the room, kick off my shoes, abandon the still foreign screaming baby and run into the blessed surf for a moment’s cool relief.

The other women must have thought I was mad. And I felt mad. By certain definitions, I probably was mad.

As I sit here reflecting on the year that was, small moments return to me, little vignettes of those rare days and nights when a newborn is just that: new born. During last summer’s heatwave, a cricket came to stay. He was the first one I’d ever seen here, and little Jiminy took to leaping around the room in the dark while I sat up in the middle of the night feeding Master J, making me with jump with nervous fright when inevitably the playful cricket decided to leapt right onto us. One night the air was so hot and close we all moved into the lounge-room for the night. Master J moved about in his bassinet, nude but for his nappy. Still we worried about him overheating, and it was a night of whispered temperature checks and hands pressed to his tiny smooth forehead. The bi-fold doors to the courtyard remained wide open all night, but still there was no relief. And yet we were so happy, even sleepless and on constant high alert, because we were all of us together. Here we are a year later, so happy still.

We bought his gift when he was three weeks old, and it spent the year wrapped in purple paper and tied with wide orange ribbon, living at the back of Master J’s cupboard. The rather regal appearance of the package certainly suited its contents: a lion. And he’s not just any lion.  His name is Leo and he is very fine, looking every inch the king of the jungle – or at least the king of Master J’s toy tower, Granddad’s paint-spattered old ladder. We fell in love with Leo’s wise, kind face, his big mane and his swishy tail – he really looks to have been made with craftsmanship and care – so imagine our delight when he and Master J came face to face and the birthday boy fell instantly in love with him too. Up until now he’s shown limited interest in his vast array of stuffed toys, but he took an immediate shine to Leo. Now Master J stands at the end of his cot roaring at the lion, which sits on the prize rung of the ladder like a golden guardian, watching over our boy. Master J’s face breaks into the widest smile every time his gaze alights on Leo; I love the way he reaches for him, and lying in bed listening to his determined little roar first thing in the morning is one of the great pleasures of my life. “Rah,” he says. “Rah, rah, rah.”

After kicking around several ideas for the first birthday, in the end we just wanted something simple at home. We settled on ‘afternoon tea,’ though we were planning on opening a few bottles of champagne, no cups and saucers required. I found the question of who to invite really quite vexing. Should we invite our friends, or his…? After all, Master J spent the year primarily in the company of the other infants in my mothers’ group; I couldn’t imagine not inviting his little companions and their parents. And it was alarming to see the invite list balloon – I can well understand how these things spin right out of control. I really struggled with it: invite 5 kids from the group – not excessive, I wouldn’t have thought – and there’s the potential for 10 adults before we’ve even invited immediate family. And of course we had to invite a couple of our closest friends – it would have been an extremely peculiar sort of celebration without them. So before we knew it we were expecting around 30 people in our apartment… hmmm, interesting.

But early parenthood is full of last minute cancellations, and so it was with Master J’s first birthday, when the guests started dropping like flies as the day wore on. A suspected outbreak of Hand, Foot and Mouth meant several people decided not to risk the outing, so unfortunately two of Master J’s closest little chums weren’t able to make it. It was so sad, thinking none of them might be able to come – but these things are utterly beyond one’s control, plus we had a little six-month Miss in our midst whom I wouldn’t have exposed to H, F and M for quids, so that was that. Plus the viral scare neatly took care of our overcrowding fears.

As to the catering, well, as you can imagine we still have a freezer full of leftover food. Llew’s mum made her delicious chicken sandwiches – enough to feed a village – and I think they’re what sustained most people throughout the afternoon (and us in the days following…). My MIL makes the best chicken sandwiches, hands down. And they are perfect afternoon tea fare, in plump fingers with the crusts cut off. YUMMY. We also had a big cheese board and a ham station with sourdough bread, mustards and pickles…and of course I made Master J’s first birthday cake.

It has been a long, long time since I baked a cake. Oh, I’ve made plenty of loaves of banana bread in recent years, and in fact was rather randomly baking one the night my waters broke, but an old school iced round cake? I don’t know if I’ve baked one of those since high school. I decided to do a trial run the day before, and just as well I did, because on the day we went through both cakes. The cake recipe came from Llew’s mum: it was the cake she baked for my sister-in-law’s second birthday. I love that detail. I love the fact that 38 years later, I was baking a cake to the same recipe. It adds a few extra dollops of love, I think. Such a small symbolic thing, but it connects the family across generations, and I think that’s enormously special.

It’s a simple butter cake, but it’s a style of cake that holds a great deal of nostalgia for me as well, being virtually identical to the one I remember Grandma making throughout my childhood. Grandma and Granddad’s house was the sanctuary during our mad and troubled childhoods with our mad and troubled mother – amidst of the general chaos and dysfunctionality of our lives, Grandma’s butter cake with the orange rind icing was a beacon of reliable warmth, affection and safety. She made it in a square tin, and I think now that even those neat little rectangular portions offered me the comfort of precision. Smoothly iced, orderly slices of cake, all so uniformly arranged… oh, how I wanted life to better resemble Grandma’s table.

Master J licked his first wooden spoon the day before his party, and while he instantly recognised that something BIG had come his way, I don’t think it in any way prepared him for the utter revelation of CAKE. How I wish we had a video of those first moments of comprehension, of that dawning understanding that slowly went across his face in distinct and deeply comical stages. There was sheer wonder as he realised he was allowed to touch the magical thing, then there was the curiosity as a fistful of icing and cake made its way almost gingerly to his mouth. Next there was a moment’s hesitation as he tested this new sensation on the tip of his tongue, and then there was the shock of it, the shock of this luxurious treat and the entirely alien permission to devour it… suddenly it all dawned on him in a rush (specifically, a sugar rush): I caught the precise moment he understood the rareness of this gleaming 100s-and-1000s-dusted jewel in his hands and the fleeting nature of his chance to make the most of it. Struggling for greater access as Llew failed to hold him back, Master J reached down toward the cake and planted his mitts deep in the icing, just as though he were leaving his mark on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  How appetising for the assembled guests! Cake, anyone?! Of course, the downside was a frantic two-day sugar jag that saw the birthday boy still coming down from the high well after the wilting of the last balloon. I think we’ll be hiding that recipe until next year.

As for the first year in review, that’ll be my next post. Right now I have a bunch of thank you cards to write…

I caught up with a friend for dinner at her place last night. She lives virtually straight across the harbour from Man Town, but the ferry service to each of our suburbs only goes via Circular Quay, which is much further around, lodged deep in the inner harbour, so visiting each other instead necessitates a long drive around the sprawling land mass. It’s all a bit mad – not to mention maddening – but it’s the only way to avoid hours on public transport or a prohibitive cab fare. It would be lovely if an after-dinner service ran between the two jetties, but alas. Anyway, an absurdly privileged problem to have, I know – poor me, having to go from one beautiful harbourside suburb to another under my own steam, boo hoo – but I think my eyes are tired because it really took all my concentration to stay on the ball driving home last night. En route I had negotiated hardcore peak-hour traffic downtown in order to find Llew’s new office (he’s still working for the same people, on contract until March, and they’ve just undergone a massive relocation) so we could do the Master J handover before I carried on to Rose Bay. Stressful driving in any language, so I think I was shattered well before I had to confront the drive home.

Upon my arrival at her lovely new pad, my friend observed in her usual no-nonsense way that I seem ‘very thin’ and ‘agitated’ every time she sees me, and since another friend characterised my current look as ‘gaunt’ and ‘stressed’ a week ago, I must say it gave me pause. I stopped and thought about it for a minute, and then it came to me. A core part of me actually IS starving to death – I am not feeding the reader/writer that I fundamentally am, and I guess it’s really starting to show.

I am eating enormous amounts of food, even more than usual, but still I feel constantly hungry, and I suspect now that the omnipresent gnawing at my guts isn’t conventional hunger at all. I think the anxiety produced by not reading and writing sufficient amounts is slowly eating me alive. Perhaps this sounds completely unhinged and melodramatic to most people, but I can tell you it makes PERFECT sense to me.

I’d be willing to bet the people who’ve only known me since Master J was born – say, the other mothers in my group – think I am perpetually uptight, and I do feel tightly coiled, squeezed into frequent breathlessness. Litlove is dead right – I need to sort out some childcare. I am ‘baby free’ Wednesday nights and Saturday afternoons, but that time keeps being coopted, in the nicest possible way, by friends keen to catch up without children interrupting our every mouthful of food and/or attempt at an actual adult conversation. And of course when we do get together, we inevitably talk about the dominant forces in our lives, being children and husbands. One friend was desperate to see a movie on Wednesday, and what was it? I Don’t Know How She Does It, a movie about a working mother struggling to ‘have it all.’ No wonder I’m on edge – I’m surrounded! Motherhood: it’s everywhere. Even here.

Now, my darling friends hear about my time out and leap with such generosity of spirit to share it with me, some of them little believing that what I most want is to spend that time alone, that I have mainly ended up with plans on Wednesday nights, which wasn’t really the idea. I do think it’s hard for people to grasp what my life was like before, very much by choice: my days were solitary and silent. In fact, my favourite Wednesday since the arrangement was struck was spent dining alone while writing a letter to a friend; when I told some friends about it later, they were horrified, crying, “Oh no! Why didn’t you call? We would’ve joined you!” Again, so lovely, and so appreciated, but so missing my point, which was that the evening was my idea of perfect bliss.

One friend said she went home and announced to her husband, “Di gets Wednesday nights and Saturday afternoons off!” and I was so struck by that language – my own, bounced back to me – as though Llew is generously dispensing this free time to an eternally grateful servant. It’s a mess, the way we discuss these things, and the language we use isn’t helping. The other tricky element is that the window of time is so neatly corralled that it seems I am now expected to fit everything I might ever want to do inside of it. See a friend? Well, you have that time on Saturday. Need a haircut? Well, you have that time on Saturday. Go for a run? Well, you have that time on Saturday. Write a blog? Well, here I am, picking this up days after I began it because here it is, my time on Saturday.

Llew, on the other hand, took a day off work yesterday to play golf and go for a long lunch. Given he couldn’t find his way clear to taking the day off for my birthday – when all I wanted was not to have to sole parent that Monday, especially since he’d spent the previous three days partying in New Zealand as a friend’s guest at the Rugby World Cup – it smarts. And don’t think I am not communicating all this to him – I am. It’s just that he is receiving it all with genuine incomprehension. And when I tell him what my friends are saying to me, about my ravaged appearance and demeanour, he is bewildered and indignant. It’s lovely having him reject these observations so hotly, telling me I look great and am doing a fantastic job, but it doesn’t admit the possibility that my friends are right, and that perhaps they’ve picked up on something he is unwilling and/or unable to see. His reassurances have a silencing effect, because he’s already told me what he thinks, and it feels like the case is closed, because it’s churlish to keep rejecting compliments.

No wonder I just want to read my beloved books – books that have nothing whatsoever to do with parenting, I might add. It’s only writing that now that I realise why I haven’t yet taken up Samantha’s recommendation of Susan Maushart’s The Mask of Motherhood, which I really do want to read – it’s because I’m in the market for some pure escapism. Enough already. I’m a mother. I get it. Message received loud and clear. But that’s not all I am, and despite my own writing and conversation now being so thoroughly soaked through with this all-consuming role, all I really want is to read and talk about something else.

Last week was my biggest working week since becoming a mum. I got a great freelance job in, really interesting work interviewing the Sydney Festival director and directors/choreographers of a couple of acts – the perfect commission, in other words, because I genuinely love arts writing – but I was flat out getting it done. I really haven’t got my childcare sorted. Although its flexibility is hard to beat, freelancing is difficult because I have no idea when work will come in. It would be much easier if I could say, “I work Tuesdays and Thursdays” or similar. As it is it’s always a hodgepodge of frantic relief efforts, this time made up of Llew, my mother-in-law, two friends, a friend’s niece and finally my good friend, the moon, the nightly arrival of which allowed me to sit up late working after Master J’s bedtime. Yep, after a 12-hour day with Mr. Boundless Energy, I got to start my professional workaday. In some ways, contemporary motherhood for the emancipated modern woman is a complete and utter shaft.

When my editor got one of the interview slots wrong, miscalculating the time difference in New York, he could have had no idea the chaos and stress it caused my already tenuous childcare arrangements. I ended up driving Master J to a friend’s place and conducting the interview in her daughter’s bedroom, sitting perched on a little girl’s sofa, a carousel mobile slowly turning above my head and the nearby change table an ironic reminder of what had brewed so spectacularly in my own child’s nappy minutes before I was due to put in the call to New York. I must say: Master J’s timing is nothing if not impeccable. Much more impeccable than his nappy, at any rate, the contents of which caused my friend to reel back, hand clamped to mouth, and gasp through her fingers, “What’s he been eating?!” (Answer: blueberries.) And so, with Master J’s food smears smudging my hastily composed questions, I sat rigid in an infant child’s pretty bedroom discussing a boxing play, of all things: the playwright; the boxing ring set; the thematics of violence and redemption; and the actors, with one ear pressed hard against my mobile, struggling to translate the director’s Scottish brogue, and the other trained in the direction of the kitchen, where my friend was doing battle with not one recalcitrant infant but two. At the end of the interview, when the subject made a point of saying he appreciated the quality of my questions, I could’ve wept with surprise, relief and gratitude. Instead I allowed my gaze to sweep slowly around the ad hoc interview suite, marvelling that a full-scale disaster had been averted. I might have cracked a wry smile but for the wobbly bottom lip, because here’s something I didn’t expect of motherhood but which is nonetheless true for me: I’m even more insecure as a writer now than I was before. Awesome.

Actually, make that more insecure as a writer and a woman, if you want to get technical. I have found depths I never knew I had, that’s true, but equally I have tripped face-first into the scummy shallows of self-doubt and struggled to get up again. Frankly it’s happened with greater speed and frequency than seems, well, fair after all the effort I’ve put in, which has been and continues to be considerable. It would be lovely to feel empowered by motherhood – and perhaps one day I will… I hope so – but currently it’s having the opposite effect. What does all this add up to? Not much, Deidre, except example number 7,772 of the ways in which life is not fair.

Imagine I am a puzzle made up of odd-shaped pieces. What’s happened is a total reconfiguration of the puzzle, such that upon completion it’s clear that all the pieces have ever so slightly changed shape. So the puzzle can’t be put back together again, not really. It’s not possible because nothing fits together exactly as it used to or should. Nothing about me is quite what it was – not physically, sure, but not mentally or emotionally either. I’m literally and figuratively a very different animal now I am a mother. In fact, let me claim that right here and now as a possible future book title on the subject. A Very Different Animal… it’s perfect because it’s true. That’s exactly what I am. I woke up one morning (one very early morning, several times, after a broken night’s patchy sleep…) and discovered I’d abruptly changed species.

The differences range in severity and visibility. It’s not simply that my chest – always extremely modest – has deflated to official oblivion since I weaned Master J after 10.5 months of breastfeeding. Everything sort of collapsed inward in that department in a matter of days – and a month later, I don’t feel slim. Nope. I feel and look sunken. Shrunken. Wizened. Caved. Concave.

Having always imagined myself as a six-months-tops kind of girl, I surprised myself by taking to breastfeeding easily and well. It was something my body could do without drama, and I was quietly proud of its ability to function at this most basic level. I was happy to do it, and watching Master J thrive for six months on my milk alone was undoubtedly a source of great wonder and pride. I was and remain astonished by what my body could do. Since it came about without incident, I began thinking I’d breastfeed Master J until his first birthday, before going straight to cow’s milk from a cup. Obviously I didn’t quite make it, and here’s why: I was completely fucking exhausted. It began seeming abnormal to me, that degree of constant fatigue, and as I looked at my bonny boy, now so big and bold, it dawned on me that breastfeeding an infant his size was probably exacting quite a toll. And so one day I found myself giving him a bottle, weeping all the while. Meanwhile he drank with complete indifference to the change, and as with breastfeeding, weaning went on to occur without a hitch (unless of course you count my floods of tears, which forcefully returned for his final breastfeed).

I expected to feel improved, but the extent of it has been a shock. I feel more like myself, or some composite of myself, in the month and a bit since I gave it away than I have in a very, very long time. It’s like a very heavy curtain has been taken down – light’s come flooding back into my mind. I am thinking more clearly, seeing more clearly, feeling more energetic and generally feeling the benefits of having my body back. But there’s undoubtedly emptiness, too – what’s left of my breasts is a hollowness I recoil from. It makes me feel decommissioned. And that’s probably the root of these new and ugly insecurities right there: I have fulfilled my reproductive duty as a female of the species. That evolutionary imperative has been met, and with it comes the reasoning animal’s awful clarity: strictly speaking, I am no longer required.

Oh yes, don’t get me wrong, of course I know all the ways in which I am required – no one need enunciate them to me, though I greatly appreciate the urge if you have it – but I also know there’s something really primal about this sense of insecurity that lingers in the air about me and other new mothers I know. And it is a sense, too, an extra sense of something we can’t name – something we can almost sniff but will never see.

And I feel lucky, so lucky, to have not only my beautiful boy, whom I love so much it punches the air from my lungs to think of him, but my vocation, which remains distinct; importantly apart from him. I remain a writer, and what a blessing it is not to feel my entire identity attach itself to motherhood. Personally I would struggle and struggle hard with that, as so many women must have struggled before me, back in the days (and in many households and societies still) when that was precisely what one did with one’s own self: bury it, then carry on caring for the kids. But kids grow, kids leave, kids have their own lives to lead… and I can see clearly, I can well imagine the utter void where the kids used to be for the women who give motherhood their absolute all. I admire them, because they sacrifice more than I ever could, but I mourn for them too, because I can imagine the painful ways in which that emptiness in my breasts might otherwise spread – were it not for writing, were it not for the times in which I live, were it not for Llew and his recognition of my individual self, dreams and needs. Were it not for many things, not least my insistence – still not as steady as I’d like, but thankfully less strident for being heard – that I am still here.

So. Opportunity paralysis sets in. I’ll just stare at the screen a while, shall I?

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I really don’t want to complain every single bloody time I get the chance to blog. There is so much that’s so great about motherhood, and Master J is so much fun, so incredibly cute and funny and – I feel sure – so smart, that I am well aware I’ve only presented a very skewed impression of how I am finding it all so far. I don’t really know how to account for that, other than that I don’t have an alternative vehicle for getting all the negative feelings off my chest. Diaries are tricky at present; I can’t pick up a pen without Master J launching himself across the room to try to swipe it from my hands – pen lids are particularly prized – and any attempt to write in his presence, on paper or screen, has been met with a dizzying blur of grubby fingers smearing their way across every surface, shortly followed by the insistent banging and tearing of core materials. But I should get my whingeing done elsewhere, because I would dearly love to revive this blog and restore its spirit.

My time here would probably be better spent telling you of the chaos of changing nappies now Master J has discovered his penis. The existence of his dick is a matter of great interest and amusement, and apparently requires ongoing confirmation each and every time they meet. ‘It’s still here!’ his delighted face seems to say. The instant his nappy is off, both hands plunge downward as though he thinks he has to catch it in time – and judging by the, er, ball skills he shows in more conventional terms, it’s a bloody good thing he doesn’t.

Now, I am all for this lifelong game of discovery – after all, it’ll be the longest relationship he ever has – but it is a little awkward when the nappy’s off due to a number two.

“Hold on, buddy,” I plead. “Just give me a second. Just… no, no… hang on, mate… just… one… little… second…I’ll just wipe the… buddy, that’s poo… Stop! Poo! That’s poo! Please don’t… oh, okay – too late, Mummy! Too slow!”

In what may prove to be his greatest display of multitasking, he also requires a secondary diversion while he’s pulling his penis – maybe this is the beginning of the magazine stash. Right now he favours an incredibly phallic thermometer – hmmm – and a ruled notebook with spiral binding. He also likes to punch one little fist deep into the pot of barrier cream that sits beside the change mat for treating nappy rash. Once he’s done that, he either attempts to place his entire cream-coated fist into his mouth, or he starts reaching for nappies and flinging them about like environmentally hazardous rose petals. The grand finale is the flip ‘n’ dive, whereupon he abruptly abandons dick, diapers and dermatological aids in favour of a desperate bid for freedom. You’ve all seen the barrel go over the waterfall? It’s something similar here whenever Master J attempts to flee the change table under his own steam. And he is strong. Strong and fast. In all honesty, I am frequently sweating (not to mention swearing) by the time he’s wearing a clean nappy and has been delivered back to the relative safety of the floor. I can’t help feeling a surge of triumph each time I do this, quite as though I have unexpectedly defeated a far worthier opponent against all odds. In my mind, a crowd roars approval. I beat my chainmail and shake my sword, a dusty, bloodied but still victorious figure, standing in the centre of the ancient colosseum.