Childcare is Exile

My sister asked me a question about sandwiches and I felt my mind split open. It was so basic, but I could not answer it. I can’t even remember the question. It was something like, did I want a ham and cheese sandwich? 

I couldn’t answer it because I was in the middle of a risk assessment with an unpredictable toddler. Along with both of these events, there was a third assessment question about a theoretical fantasy weapon from my other nephew and I am sure my mind overheated and began smoking. 

I am better than this, I thought to myself.

The sandwich question was repeated while the one about a fantasy weapon hung in the air. All I could get out was a, “uhhh…” because my whole internal world was laser focused on the risk taker: Was he going to scream or jump? 

“This is so validating” my sister told me as she laughed at me at being incapable of answering a basic question about a sandwich.

It was week two or three of full time childcare, and I was struggling to get my bearings. It was midday, time for lunch which seemed simple enough. However, I no longer had any interior world to help me with the basic decision making tasks like assessing what I wanted for lunch.

It just didn’t matter. It was low priority in the triage of the moment. If the toddler chose to scream that was fine, it was just boundary management, but if it was a jump I would not be able to get there in time to catch him if he misjudged his balance or capacity. 

The minecraft question was slowly being repeated with different phrasing. The toddler seemed like he was stable for a moment. I looked up, confused and said, “I don’t know? I can’t answer that right now?” 

I was answering the minecraft axe question, but it suited the more basic question of lunch. I just didn’t know. I didn’t know anything anymore. It was like reaching for my interior world which has ideas and words, and wants, but there was nothing in it. 

It was only in the final week of childcare where the word “exile” came to mind for me—alone, as I cycled back from my boat.

Caregiving to a three year old was the experience of needing to surrender my total presence to someone who at any given moment may do something that is at risk of harming themselves, or required my empathetic listening, or a firm but gentle boundary holding while they screamed at me with all the rage of their tiny being.

I had to let go of my internal world with all its subjectivity. I exiled myself from my interior world to become a caregiver. It just wasn’t possible to think about what kind of sandwich I wanted, let alone post-capitalist economic ideas while staying alert and present.  At the end of the day, when I handed over caregiving, there was so little left of my inner resources remaining. It was not even possible to start the engine of thought. I went to my boat and scrubbed it down instead. Or drank a beer. 

I want to complicate this a little further and rewind to a time when I was wanting children but couldn’t seem to stay pregnant. At the time being handed the label, “subfertile” was shattering. And while my infertility remains a scar, in retrospect, I feel like I dodged a bullet. 

I love kids. I love being around them and playing with them, and entering their worlds. However, what I have learned is that I am not cut out for the kind of surrender that we have made caregiving. Where we once had a village we now have a nuclear family at times, but more like “primary” caregivers, a role we engender all too often. 

Maybe we can begin to imagine a sci-fi future where there is both a village and subjectivity. Maybe there is a future where you don’t have to surrender your whole interior until the next shift change. Maybe there are horizons in the domestic sphere that have yet to be imagined.  Maybe we can slowly move that direction, but I cannot see it happening in my lifespan.

That doesn’t mean it can’t exist. It’s just slow to emerge.  In the meantime I will imagine and reflect–when I am not caregiving. 

When I am caregiving I now know I will be in exile. I will not have my interior life, and next time, I will arrange accordingly.