Hardly the Model of Motherhood
Sometimes Bunty feels as if the whole world is trying to climb on her body. (17)
Bunty….is irritated….(does she actually possess any other emotion?)…., disguising her thoughts with a bright artificial smile….Bunty maintains a Madonna-like expression of serenity and silence for as long as she can before her impatience suddenly boils over and she yanks the bars of [Gillian's] tricycle to hurry it along….
Is this a good mother? (19-20), Behind the Scenes at the Museum
A good mother? Maybe not. But a flawed, normal human that I can empathize with? Yes, yes, yes.
Poor Bunty, the main character’s mother in Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum. She was abandoned by a fiance, married to a pet-shop owner who has a series of affairs, and gives birth to a gaggle of girls for whom she feels scant connection. This might seem unempathizable, until we learn about the dearth of affection Bunty received from her own mother.
Nearly every day I fight the urge to shake off one or the other of my sons, as they cling like barnacles to my legs and cry out for affection beyond what I’ve given already, and beyond what I feel I possess. Just yesterday, I took 3yo Drake out to the sidewalk to ride his tricycle. I was quickly frustrated because he didn’t want to ride it; he just pushed it back and forth. To complicate matters, 1yo Guppy also wanted to push it, so several screaming fights ensued. I’m happy to say my screams weren’t part of the chorus, though they did clamor rather loudly in my head to be let out.
I frequently berate myself that I SHOULD be playing with the children, and that I SHOULDN’T have expectations of how that play should go. One part of me, the Bunty-self, can’t believe that riding a tricycle is so fracking difficult, and wonders why Guppy can’t be distracted by bubbles, and why he insists on spilling bubble juice over my lap, and trying to drink it from the bottle. Another part, the person who is trying to be a good mother (and yet who feels the sting of consistent failure), says that my kids are doing what kids do, interested in what they’re interested in, and ready when they are, not when I want them to be. Yet another part reminds me that my kids are clothed, fed, safe, healthy, learning, and mostly happy. I can’t be failing if all these are true.
So me as mother is a messy amalgam of all these parts. Perhaps I can be as compassionate to myself as I am to the character of Bunty.