Identity crisis

I’m typing this with 4-yo sitting on my lap. She has just stapled round the perimeter of a piece of paper, very prettily, and is now copying out words that I am writing for her. She turns 5 tomorrow, and we’ve just had a conversation about the fact that this is her fifth birthday. It needed clarifying, because we’d had a conversation earlier about how she is kind of having 2 birthdays, what with taking cookies into preschool on the ACTUAL day, but having her party on the NEXT day, because it’s a Saturday, and I could see that her mind was heading down a path that involved having 5 birthdays all in a row, so that her fifth birthday would be next Tuesday, with continuous celebration till then.

So why am I telling you this? I’ll confess. I’m feeling the need to reassert my mummy blogger credentials. For those of you outside the Members’ Enclosure that is the mummy blogging world, let me tell you that there’s a quiet but busy revolution going on among British mummy bloggers. Look at the pretty new button on my sidebar (or, until I've managed to upload it, click here). There have been mummies blogging in Britain for ages, of course, but the creative Modern Mother has set up a ning (which is a new one on me, and may be what the Monty Python Knights who say 'ni' were trying to say), which has got everyone more organised. It's a happening kind of a place. I say “Members’ Enclosure”, but that’s not a fair comparison, because the British Mummy Bloggers isn’t an exclusive site. Anyone can join. Even Dads. Ah. Dads. I wish I hadn’t started on that “Members’ Enclosure” analogy.

What about me, though? Am I a mummy blogger? The original purpose and identity of this blog was to write about my experiences of adjusting to life in America, so no. I’m an expat blogger. But inevitably much, most, of my experience has been related to being a mum. So with that, I’m a mummy blogger. I love reading other mummy blogs. I love hearing about the antics of your kids, sharing your joys and woes, puzzling over your requests for advice, laughing at your humiliations, saying a big “Ay-men” to your insights. If you all lived in my town, I tell you, we’d have a ball.
But there’s this. I am very soon going to be a mummy blogger without a preschooler. Of course that doesn’t make me any less of a mummy. Of course not. But it’s a fact that the great mass of mummy blogging is to do with that intense phase of life, when we try to make sense of the awesome responsibility of bringing this small person into the world, a phase full of highlights, struggles, and unbelievable amounts of wee, poo and vomit.

What am I trying to say? Being the perceptive bloggers you are, you’ve probably worked out that this isn’t really about my identity as a mummy blogger. It’s about my identity as a mummy. It’s about having made the transition from mummy to mum (and long ago). It’s about not being in touch enough to have an opinion on the best stroller to buy. It’s about not remembering what routines my babies were in at what ages (or not, as the case may have been). It’s about smiling at a woman with a baby in the checkout queue, and saying “what a gorgeous baby”, and realizing, when she politely responds “how old is your little girl?”, that we don’t have an immediate conversational common ground. She knows that (what a mysterious and closed world is the world of a 4 year old, when you have just embarked on a small baby!), but I’ve properly realized it only recently. I’ve noticed in passing plenty of times along the way, of course I have. Part of the mother’s job description is to be painfully aware of time whizzing by faster than you can say “bugaboo” (and incidentally, they weren’t around when I bought my pram, and yes, it was a pram in those days, which converted into a pushchair, a pram/pushchair, not a buggy, stroller, or complete travel system). I tell you, though, it feels very different when you’re staring into the jaws of the school application form of your youngest child.

At this point my expat blogger side wants to butt in. “I’ve got something to say here. My turn. You should tell them how different that is, over here. In Britain, they’ve had their kids in preschool funded by the government since their third birthdays, and the kids start school at 4 or 5. Here, lots of kids don’t go to preschool at all, and school starts at 5 or 6. The whole 0 – 6 realm has a different feel to it. Starting school is a bigger deal, a bigger milestone for the mothers. You can explain how you don’t have a green card, so can’t go out to work. You can justify yourself here, Mummy-side, if you let me get a word in edgeways.”

Actually, Expat-side is feeling quite aggrieved. You see, this whole post started off as hers. It was going to be a short little piece, about the fact that 4-yo had asked me to write out ‘Mom’ for her to copy, and how I’d had to decide whether to write ‘Mom’ or ‘Mum’ (I wrote ‘Mom’). Then Mummy-side completely took over. She started out by establishing her multi-tasking credentials (look at that very first sentence) – an old mummy blogger favourite. Then she followed up with a cute story about her child (that first paragraph) – another mummy blogger staple. Then she was away, as if to say “Identity crisis? What identity crisis? She may be 5 tomorrow, but I’m not finished. Oh no. I’m not leaving the Enclosure yet.”