The Decolonial Parent

a continuous work in progress

shallow focus photography of hourglass

On being an older mother

There’s nothing glamorous about becoming a mother for the first time at 40 years old, but the flip side is also true.

  • Gravity had already started doing its work well before pregnancy and relaxin started theirs, and I was under no illusions that “bouncing back” would have me magically looking like Zoë Kravitz.
  • There’s nothing postpartum hormones can throw at my skin that it hasn’t already seen, and hair loss isn’t devastating when my hairstyle history contains bald fades and long-term greying.
  • Too old to care about social media cachet, I haven’t even shared a photo of my baby in a publicly-accessible medium.
  • I’ve been through enough uncomfortable situations and come out the other side, that I know life’s only constant is change. I can weather storms but also bask in the beauty of each moment, knowing all things must pass.

The biggest thing I’ve experienced coming into motherhood at the cusp of middle age is the sheer wonder I have for something that almost passed me by. I almost decided not to have any kids, but I just couldn’t fully commit to that decision, and I guess this is why.

I think about how almost every day of our lives presents us with choices that change our entire future, and most of them are so mundane or commonplace that we don’t notice them. But having a child is this really clear decision that irrevocably changes our entire future, and it’s something we can point to as a definitive moment. I think about the life I would be living had I not become pregnant, vs the life I’m living now, and how different every day feels. It’s actually incredible to witness this.

I can’t believe it took me so long.

Except, I know why it did. My parents may be reading this but what I’m about to write should come as no surprise to them.

My childhood was fun and playful, but it was also shadowed by my dad’s epilepsy and my sister’s special needs. As well as parentification, being expected to take unreasonable responsibility for the safety of an adult when I was a very small child, and being overly involved in my sister’s education as I got older (a normal but not altogether-healthy occurrence in immigrant families where the eldest child is the strongest communicator in the dominant language outside the home), I was also expected to “fulfill my potential”. In the vocabulary of a Chinese family, that often means “become a doctor or another similarly high-status occupation, because your job is your only value”.

We all bring our biases to the table, whether intentionally or not, and my parents were no exception. My absolute driving passion for sports was run roughshod over, with no insight into the myriad ways a sporting background can lead to exciting and fulfilling careers. Like many girls with ADHD, my struggles in the classroom were overlooked because my grades were high enough, until they weren’t (when it was treated as a surprise by everyone) – and my abundant emotions were treated as affectations of a Western upbringing at best, and aberrant inconveniences the rest of the time. Let’s not start on the constant ways my white parent manifested white supremacy.

With time, I have wound my way back to the very things that brought me joy as a child and teen. Movement, music, and people. It took a long time to release the frustrations that came out of the process, and it’s definitely still a work in progress!

During the decades in-between, I fermented my feelings about my own childhood in my fear for the future of our planet. I knew that any child of mine would have no option but to be born mixed, and I struggled to reconcile my own experiences as a mixed kid. I felt like I would be making a selfish choice to bring a child into the mess that surrounds and consumes us. And maybe it was.

But it’s done, and in so doing I feel like I’ve unlocked a whole new map of the world. There’s no going back to the life I had before him. This is my future now, and I cannot fathom a life lived without knowing him. In these short months, this tiny human has completely transformed me and my world. We could never ever be the same.

And so, with map in hand, I plot the path I want to take: I want to give him a better life than I had. One free from the burden of responsibility for a needy sibling, and from the crushing weight of other people’s expectations.

I want him to have options to explore his potential, limited only by his own imagination and creativity. I want him to move gloriously boldly and comfortably sit in stillness, honing his instincts for when each choice is the appropriate one for him.

To him I pledge an open mind. I will practice self-awareness and try to keep my biases in check. I’ll work hard not to dismiss his lack of experience or his youthful perspective, to encourage big dreams and bigger plans.

In this late afternoon of my life, I will slow down and move at a child’s pace, enriching my days with smells and sights and sounds of our changing world.

And to think I would have passed this by…

Each morning I wake up grateful for the opportunity to experience something so beautiful. I hope with all my heart that this feeling never fades.

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