"Mummy, I don't want to lost you!"
Kids say such funny cute little things sometimes don't they? I love the way my daughter says "I mam" instead of "i am" and "It's mines!" to claim, well, everything in her immediate vicinity. She also calls Nonno and Grannie's house "Canada" because when we first came to Canada, that was the first place she slept, was welcomed, felt safe. So it remains Canada, despite all the conversations we've had with her about what Canada actually means. I don't mind though, soon she will grow out of all these things and I'll miss them.
Lately though, she has been having some pretty serious separation anxiety. When I pick her up from daycare, (see how Canadian I'm getting already? I don't call it nursery anymore!) she says that she had a good day but was sad because "Mummy I missed you". At night she cannot sleep unless one or both of us are sleeping next to her, and as she is drifting off, she often suddenly wakes up, points a finger at me and says fiercely "Don't go back to your own ROOM mummy!". If she wakes up and someone isn't there, which happens about three hundred times a night, she runs crying into my room and drags me back. When daddy goes out to the shop to get some more milk, she immediately worries about where he is and when he'll be back.
It is understandable. When we left England a few months ago to move to Canada, she lost her friends, her teachers, her neighbours, her home, the comfort of her cozy convenient surroundings, and everything that made her feel safe. We even lost some of her favourite Netflix programs thanks to bloody region locks. She, and we, have gained a lot here too though, I hasten to add.
We have moved in and out of a few different places here, thanks to the generosity of family and friends, before settling down in our own place two months ago. Just as she was getting settled, Daddy had to go back to the UK for three weeks. I've banged on enough about how hard it was to be a single parent for three whole entire weeks (Again, a shout out and massive respect to those single parents out there. Wowsers) so I will spare you the whinge fest, but Pickle really suffered. She could not understand how Daddy could be away from her for so long, how she could wake up every morning and he wouldn't be there again. It was a lot for her little brain to make sense of, and she valiantly battled through it, but the lasting effect on her is significant.
She even has separation anxiety with her poo. She will not and never has yet dropped the kids off at the pool. The poor kids, smelly and squishy as they are, remain firmly squashed against her bum in her nappy until it gets changed. She is not dropping them or their friends anywhere. Okay, settle down overprotective mum! Just let them go swimming already!
The most recent form of it is that when I drop her off at nursery (ah there you are, I'm back in England) she says "Mummy, I don't want to lost you!" and often says this during days in the week I spend with her. Of course I use the opportunity to drown her in love, kisses, cuddles and a stream of verbal reassurances. I wonder at times if she's not the only one with separation anxiety.
But it does draw me back to the thought process I used to ponder quite often when she was tiny, that having a child is a series of little losses. Having gone from being one body in all ways, to being two bodies, is a fantastic and not-a-moment-too-soon but also very strange feeling. As soon as you birth this beautiful little miracle, you start having to let go. The first, most obvious example of this is that you are literally letting go of the life you have spent the last 9 months growing inside you, along with all your hopes, dreams and fears for her. You are cut from each other both symbolically as well as physically. Then, one day, she doesn't need you to hold her head up for her. At some point she stops sleeping face down on your torso all night and prefers her Next to Me Cot. Next thing you know she goes to sleep without you having to rock her in a sling like you're practising for the Highland Games caber tossing competition. Then all of a sudden, without warning, one day you offer her your boob, and she just turns her head away with an air of indifference bordering on disdain. That was the one that undid me. I've mentioned before that breast feeding was not my favourite thing. But when she stopped doing it, I was surprised by the mix of relief and sorrow that coursed through me. This was her first voluntary and very significant act of separating from me.
I suppose that having a child means that these regular and inevitable separations never really stop happening. I guess at some point you become more familiar with them, but I can't imagine they ever really get any easier or any less painful.
I just don't want her to stop saying "I MAM putting my toys away Mummy!" as she is twirling around in her princess dress and silver magic wand, an impish grin on her angelic face, her golden curls spinning exquisitely around her in a hurricane of beauty, joy and innocence, while she clearly is doing anything BUT putting her toys away.
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