FROM THE NORM TO THE MARGIN

Have kids!

I remember our nanny always telling me that until you have a child you can't understand what it's like. What wisdom!

Tonight I'm all alone. Finally my daughter has learned that the first party she has to go to is further away than she thought. So she can't do everything. So she decided on her own and without my advice to go to the second one. I feel very useful at times like this. You know it's like when we go shopping for clothes. My daughters come out of the cabin to see what I think of the clothes they've tried on, but if it's not just the two of us, I can talk in a vacuum. I understand it completely, I'm the first to think that you can't have the same tastes and dress the same when you're twenty or fifty. I'm glad we're evolving a bit. But I think it's pointless to ask for my opinion if it's useless from the start.

It's like when my fourth daughter calls me at bedtime to tell me she's pregnant, single and doesn't know what to do. A bit stunned, I ask her what she wants. She replies that she doesn't know. I tell her that when she wants my opinion I will give it to her but that whatever she decides I will be by her side. When she asks I tell her that given her age and the situation I think it is wiser to have an abortion. Knowing her, I already know that she will keep it even if she has to raise it alone. This is what she tells me several weeks later. It was a good time for me, during which I didn't sleep a wink. Now I adore this little wonder.

At the same time, my son on the other side of the world is having problems at work. I feel he is not telling me everything. His calls are more spaced out, the exchanges more superficial. And a little more stress for the peaceful nights. My last one spent a school year in the second year of high school in a state of deep depression with a weekly psychologist's follow-up and a very regular absence from class. I don't know how she managed to finish with such a high average. All the more reason to take things easy and not to think at night, isn't it? My second daughter's boyfriend is also having big problems at work and this is obviously affecting their relationship. I'm worried for them and sad too. As for my older daughter, communication is still very complicated and it's hard to know when she's really doing well because she tends to see the glass as half empty. I can see that she finds it increasingly difficult to leave the house and that my visits weigh on her, even though she feels abandoned when I don't come. I spend sleepless nights and working days managing very "dynamic" classes, but I'm holding on and things are getting smoother with time. I have to learn not to resist situations that I can't change. It's too much of a waste of time and energy.

To comfort myself, I phone my sister. Sharing our anxieties as mothers of a large family allows us to laugh about it because we do not judge our children and we each manage to put the other's problems into perspective. Unlike her, I never regret having so many children. My last daughter often tells me that she would like to have a normal family. We feel that we are surrounded by this kind of family. But if we dig a bit I'm not sure we'll find any. We all put on a brave face and hide our problems that honestly don't interest anyone but ourselves. Our bodies are vehicles that we have to take care of in order to go as far as possible. They also allow us to keep our lives, who we really are, a secret.

Our wrinkles and scars are only traces of our lives. It takes more to decode us. We are the only masters of what we want to show to others. 

That at least we can decide.