Time for Mother's Day

If someone asks me what’s the one thing in the whole world that I want for Mother's Day I wouldn’t hesitate: 

I want 24 hours to myself.

I can’t imagine the luxury of it, what a dream come true – all I would need is a hotel room with a kingsize bed, a bath, an internet connection and my own company.

Rewind three years and I wanted a whole raft of things, I wanted to earn big money and climb the corporate ladder, I wanted to have the latest designer clothes, I wanted a big house in the right suburb, I wanted to have a great body, I wanted to be popular and invited to exclusive events. I wanted to win awards and be famous within my industry. I wanted so much.

Now I’d be happy if I could shower every day. 

This basic desire got me thinking about time, ‘If only I had a few more hours a day, I could definitely fit in that evasive shower and god forbid a long hot bath’. Of course wishing for time is like wishing I could fly – it’s only going to happen in my dreams or so I thought? It turns out time can be slowed in a few ways:  

1. Hang out on a neutron star where the gravitational force is significantly stronger than on Earth,
2. Accelerate towards the speed of light OR 
3. Lay down richer memories

I'm no physicist so option 3. caught my attention. Scientists investigating whether people in danger actually experience time in slow motion, discovered that volunteers did perceive time as slower by about 30% during the experiment. ('Imagine what you could do with 30% more time?!' I marveled) 

Such time warping seemed to be an illusion caused by human memory. Researcher, David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine said the illusion "is related to the phenomenon that time seems to speed up as you grow older. When you're a child, you lay down rich memories for all your experiences; when you're older, you've seen it all before and lay down fewer memories. Therefore, when a child looks back at the end of a summer, it seems to have lasted forever; adults think it zoomed by."[i]

The irony of parenthood is that it is an incredibly rich source of memories and yet everyone talks of it flying by. Does that mean we are not recording the moments? Or do we need to throw ourselves out of a plane to scare ourselves slowly? I’m not about to risk my life to test this theory but I am definitely guilty of wishing time away, all the while desperate for it to slow down so I can get off for a minute.

Shot on location at Brown Brothers Winery, Victoria, 2005
I thought I was busy then...I wasn't.

So for Mother’s Day give me time:

Time to sleep

Time to play

Time to notice

Time to enjoy

Time to write

Time to read

Time to record the beautiful memories unfolding in front of me everyday

Time to slow down.

What do you want for Mother's Day?

[i] Why Time Seems to Slow Down in Emergencies
Charles Q. Choi, 11 December 2007, www.livescience.com
Copyright © 2011 My IdeaLife. All rights reserved.

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More sleep=less madness

It's amazing what a difference some sleep makes! So many mothers who have been there and done the two kids hellishly close together have kept telling me 'there is light at the end of the tunnel'. Well I think I am catching a glimpse of said light - hurrah! 

My sleep deprivation deprived me of so much more than sleep. Namely the ability to see anything clearly or logically, especially the new little human being growing up so quickly in front of me. In any case I felt obliged to write again so that all those poor women expecting their second won't curl up in a ball and start rocking after reading my first post. 

To you I say it has it's ups and downs and you may get a bub that happily sleeps from 11pm to 6am from 5wks like some in my mum's group have. Basically it is not as bad as I've made it sound - for some it is better, for some worse. Whatever your situation it is always more manageable on 5-6hrs sleep.

So lately my resentment has just faded and is being replaced by as strong a love as I have for my eldest. I can now see the positive side of all those negatives, even my husband made me laugh yesterday (!!!)  So all is well with the world again...until the next sleep-deprived night and subsequent brain snap hits. (Suddenly that scene in 'Parenthood' about the roller coaster makes sense).

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