It's hard for me, as a mummy to an almost 3 year old and a 6 month old, to ever imagine a scenario where this could happen with my own children. We can barely be separated for a few seconds. It's easy to assume that these parents no longer in contact with their offspring must have been terrible people in some way; child abusers, neglectful, criminals, etc. Although I know this is sadly sometimes the case, I also know that, a lot of the time, these estranged parents are simply people who set off with the best intentions in raising their children and through a sequence of events or poor decisions have ended up where they are. This is the thought that scares me.
See, you await the arrival of your first child with excitement and slight trepidation. You're waiting for your world to shift, your friends and family are waiting and watching too. We all think we're waiting to see a baby, which obviously we are, but we're also waiting to see that once in a lifetime moment; when you become a parent. (Why do you think no one is ever quite as interested in your subsequent children?)
Now, I don't know about you, but I was waiting for a divine bolt of lighting to hit me and I'd be transformed into a 'mother'. I'd have the answers to my child's every question, a faultless moral compass and the saintly patience my mother has always had with me.
Instead, I was faced with a cold, stark realisation; a parent is just a person who has had a child. This filled me with panic, because it explained how some people manage to mess it up so badly. The baby is not going to change you, it's something you have to do yourself. The phrase "Mother is god in the eyes of a child" has never seemed more weighted, how to you begin to live up to that, especially if you're making it up as you go along?
My partner is no longer in contact with his mother, and hasn't been since he was a young adolescent. There were many factors that lead to this, but essentially, one messy divorce and some hurtful words later and they haven't really seen or spoken to each other since. No doubt this event has shaped him as a person in immeasurable ways, but what about his mother? Putting the circumstances to one side, how does anyone cope day by day knowing their first born is carrying on without them?
The answer came to me recently, while looking at my older child. Unexpectedly he'd fallen asleep on the sofa next to me while I was busy dealing with his baby sister. Suddenly I could see the face of the infant I'd once held, for the briefest moment I could connect the baby I remember to the toddler I spend every day with. Logically, I know he's the same child, but I find myself so dazzled by the increasingly intricate facets of the person he is becoming that I'd forgotten that those memories were of the same boy. I felt as if I'd opened a door and found that sleeping newborn, preserved in time.
I imagine this is how estranged parents cope, although in reality they know their children have grown without them, the anguish is put to rest by keeping the child as they remember them, preserved behind a mental door.
