Being a mother is making me existential.

A few weeks ago, I ran into a friend at a coffee shop, someone I don’t see often enough. And while we were chatting, I had an epiphany.

Having children hollows you  It scoops out all the dross and guts and congealed ideas until you’re left with yourself at your most basic. Luxuries–showers, full bottles of tabasco sauce, unattached, unassigned time–give way to necessities. Necessities like emptying the diaper pail, rushing out for diapers in the middle of the night¹, or always having an applesauce pouch tucked about my person.

Somehow, over a blurred series of sleepless nights, I’ve grown from a tabasco-loving neurotic into a relatively calm mum, the kind who laughs and uses words like kiddo and is almost always covered in goop, or paint, or stickers.

Yesterday, I found a yellow crane sticker on my shoulder. I’m not sure how long it was there, but since I’m in a cast (broken hand) and couldn’t reach (despite thirty minutes of trying), it had to wait until I saw Joe six hours later. Even then, I’d've probably forgotten if the dratted thing hadn’t itched.

I do not know how this happened, where the calm, or the patience, or the normalcy has come from.

For the most part, I don’t mind the hollowness–the extra space can always be filled with chocolate. And I like being described as patient, and easy-going, like having people give me credit for my child’s awesomeness, even though I’m pretty sure his even temperament and propensity toward sharing are less Peta and more dumb luck. And I still have neurotic days, though, in some ways, having a broken hand is a blessing. After all, it’s hard to be overworked and neurotic when:

a. I can’t wash dishes;

b. I can’t open jars;

c. I can’t carry large, heavy grocery bags;

d. The kidlet is drawing butterflies on my cast.

¹Also, an upside down kimono shirt and a crapload of cotton wool work well in a pinch. Or a snowstorm. Or any night the walk to the all-night Shaw’s seems interminably long…