CLEO
Potty training was kicking Cleo’s behind.
Honestly, why couldn’t they let kids be kids? Was it really so wrong if your almost four-year-old still preferred doing his business in his diaper rather than perched on a cold, hard toilet seat?
With Axel, Cleo had dived into potty training because she hadn’t been expecting it to be so hard. She knew mums who’d done it and it had gone well – in three days, their three-year-old was potty-trained.
Perhaps her expectations had been unrealistic. Didn’t they say all the time that children were different? So why had she expected Axel to be like two-year-old Priscillia, who, legend had it, grasped the concept overnight? Or like three-year-old Benjamin, who wasn’t peeing himself at night anymore?
The thought that those mums were lying had crossed her mind because surely, surely, potty-training was more herculean than they said.
Axel’s daycare had begun to insinuate that it was time to have him completely out of diapers. Insinuate, because no one in this country ever told you uncomfortable things directly. So they danced and dallied around the subject, saying things like we’re trying to focus on diapering the younger kids or Axel did so good without diapers until naptime today. Or so sorry, he had an accident, and we didn’t have any extra clothes that fit him.
She got it. She got it. Axel was getting too big to be diapered, but she hadn’t been consistent with it either.
She’d bought books (Potty Training in 3 Days), listened to podcasts (Potty Train without losing your mind), and joined two Facebook groups (Potty Training Support & Oh Crap, Get My Potty).
Everyone had something different to say: follow your child’s cue, reward system, no reward system.
Well, Cleo had had enough of listening to the so-called gurus.
This afternoon, she sat Axel down after she picked him up from daycare in yet another too-small pants because he’d had an accident.
“Axe, baby, what did we say about listening to your body?” she asked.
“Um…to pee when I need to pee?”
“Yes, yes, and?”
Axel’s brows came together as he thought about it; “I don’t know. I was playing with Simran and the trucks, and it just…I forgot.”
Cleo suppressed a sigh. It was the same story. Playtime trumped potty time.
“It’s okay, Axie, we’ll try again.” He stepped into her hug, warm and small and sticky with the smell of daycare and applesauce.
Cleo was glad that she was dumping the kids with her mother-in-law tomorrow and sailing off to the sunset (well, to a hotel forty minutes away) with Jacob.
She’d started packing for their trip already, the essentials first (handcuffs, blindfold, massage candle, ball gag). She knew she was being ambitious, that it was just two days away, but she had a lot of faith that she could get Jacob back to what they used to be before the kids softened him up.
“Can I go play with my Lego?” Axel asked, stepping out of Cleo’s embrace.
“Yes, baby, but not with your sister, please.”
Axel was into LEGO at the moment; he spent hours creating and recreating objects with names she couldn’t quite figure out.
Cleo watched him, a tug of emotion tugging at her throat. How could she be so attuned to this boy’s needs, his likes, his food moods, even the way he needed three cuddles before bed, and yet have no idea what dress to wear for Mother’s Day?
She’d always thought she wouldn’t be a traditional mother, always thought she didn’t have the instincts for motherhood. When she was pregnant with Axel, she’d been strangely detached, like she was watching it all on-screen: someone who looked like her, taking prenatal vitamins, doing yoga, not drinking wine! Sleeping on her side.
She hadn’t had a baby shower because her friends didn’t do things like that. Cleo’s friends were single and wild, and they spent their summers renting boats and partying on the lake (to be fair, Cleo was like that too, until she became a mum.)
It wasn’t until she felt the first contractions that she felt the blur dissolve into mist. This was real. He was real.
When Axel eventually came out after eighteen hours of labour, Cleo had sobbed uncontrollably while holding him. He was hers (hers!) and yet he was a stranger. He was red and wrinkled and cried like he hated her.
By the time they were ready to leave the hospital, she handed him to a nurse, ready to wave goodbye.
The nurse, a blonde with dimples and soft eyes, smiled kindly and said, “He’s yours to keep.”
“But…I don’t…I don’t know him. I don’t want him!” Cleo said, panicked, looking up at Jacob’s concerned face.
The nurse didn’t flinch. “Believe it or not, you’re not the first mum to respond this way,” she said gently. “You’ll be fine, Mama.”
She’d struggled for the first three weeks, breastfeeding was a struggle; she wasn’t producing enough for Axel and so he was perpetually hungry, until she decided to take the nurse’s advice and add formula to her breastmilk, also her hormones were all over the place, somedays she felt an overwhelming urge to protect Axel and other days she couldn’t bear to look at him.
There were several times she’d thought she wasn’t going to survive. At 2 am in the morning, she googled Can postpartum kill someone? Postpartum deaths in Canada. Why am I crying so much postpartum? Can someone die from no sleep?
She thought about death a lot those first few months – an irony, really, when she was supposed to be celebrating life. She thought about what would happen if she pressed pause on her life, if she went out one morning without Axel and just…didn’t come back.
And then one day, Axel smiled at her like he knew her, and the fog lifted. He wasn’t red and wrinkled anymore. He had a smile that curled at one end, just like hers. She looked in his face and loved him fully and distinctly.
She still felt that love whenever she looked at him, her firstborn; motherhood had taught her to love someone more than herself, and for that she was grateful.
“I love you, Axie,” Cleo said now to Axel, who was already humming to himself as he set out his Lego in a row.
He didn’t even look up, just said, “Love you too,” as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
One more sleep till I get my mojo back, she thought, just as she heard Mandy’s cry ring from upstairs.
She took the stairs two at a time to Mandy’s nursery, where she napped during the day. Her bare feet padded softly on the rugged stairs, the rhythm quickening her breath just enough to remind her she hadn’t resumed the gym yet. Still, it was a decent workout — her thighs always burned a little by the time she arrived upstairs. Surprisingly, losing the weight from Mandy had been easier than Axel’s, probably because it was true what they said: it was easier to lose weight when you had to chase an active toddler around the house (or anywhere, really).
Her thoughts strayed to Tara in that moment – sweet, lovely Tara, who Cleo suspected was struggling more than she let on. There was something about the way she smiled too quickly, like she was holding something back.
What if she took a step forward in this new friendship and invited them over for dinner, Tara, Esther, and their spouses?
Maybe it was time to let herself open up again, see if there was something solid in this budding connection. Something real.
She was wary of making friends, though, especially now that she was in her thirties. Making friends in your thirties wasn’t like making friends in your twenties. Back then, all it took was two shots of tequila and a shared hatred for your boss. Now, there was more at stake, more to lose if she let anyone too close.
Her old group of friends had slowly but surely withdrawn from her after she became a mum, and Cleo had been deep in the trenches of motherhood that she had failed to notice until they were long gone.
They didn’t bother inviting her to things anymore, they hardly called or texted, and when they did, Cleo found the conversation stilted and unproductive. They talked about rooftop bars and last-minute trips and viral fashion trends; things that felt like echoes from a former life. It startled her sometimes, how shallow she used to be; how she could easily spend hours analysing someone’s outfit.
Since she lost that circle of friends, she hadn’t been keen on making new ones. The mum groups were great; she waved, smiled, made small talk, and offered wipes. The daycare mums she became acquainted with because of Axel were quite nice, but she knew that their relationships were forged on the cornerstone of their children. It had no substance. She wouldn’t miss them if they moved, sad as it was to admit.
But Tara and Esther? There was potential there. They were Nigerian women like her, and there was shared history, a familiarity in their banter, their sighs, their side-eyes. It was too soon to call it a sisterhood, but something was there. She didn’t want this to end like the others: a friendship fairytale in the cloud.
She’d talk to Jacob about inviting them over when they got back from their trip –it’ll be an opportunity to know them better.