Motherhood

On Thursday in between dropping the girls off at Chinese tuition (with Rosie's help to swap them in-between, since M has a 30 min session, followed by E having a 1hr session with the same Chinese teacher), I finally took the time to go for a manicure and pedicure nearby. It's something that is nice to do, that I maybe get done less than 5 times a year, and usually only when I am in Singapore. I like having nice nails with nail polish on them, but it is of course something unnecessary and an indulgence. Anyway after thinking about getting it done for a few weeks, I finally found a good gap of time to go get it done. 

The place I went to ended up charging quite a lot for gel nail polish, so I decided to get regular nail polish to save money. The danger of course with regular nail polish is that it takes quite some time to dry, and is prone to smudging and damage when it is wet. I entered the nail salon at 3pm, and I was keeping an eye on the clock the entire time because I had to pick E up at 4pm from her class. At 5 mins to 4pm, I asked the manicurists to stop the fans so I could go, and she even helped me slowly put my sandals on to avoid any smudging. 

E was already waiting for me outside the classroom when I got there, and she was happy to see me. Then she said she wanted a drink, and there was a vending machine outside. Because I was still afraid of damaging my nails, I got her to pick my wallet out of my bag, and taught her how to insert the coins and choose her drink. Then I even got her to get a drink for me. We were both really happy with what we had done, and then we crouched down to put my wallet back in my bag and boom, E landed her left knee right smack on my right big toe, completely destroying the polish that had just been applied. I felt slightly frustrated, but knew it was a genuine mistake. E was really apologetic too, and now there was a streak of dark red on her knee, almost like she had fallen down and bloodied her knee. I sighed inwardly, and chalked it up to yet another motherhood thing - the inevitable sacrifice of self that we make when we have children. 

We walked back home without incident, and when I got home we were immediately greeted by M, Rosie who was playing with her, and Mama who was downstairs too. After we went into the house, I told both Mama and Rosie about what had happened with the nail polish, and how it had been ruined within minutes because of E, and immediately M started to get really hyper and excited and jumped on my left foot, attempting to smear the polish on my left big toe. I got really frustrated because she was obviously doing it on purpose and thought it was funny, and of course she finally succeeded. I was pretty pissed and scolded her, but she unrepentantly said it was because she wanted to mess up another nail just like her sister did, and to get them to match. SIGH.

I'm really too tired now to expound further on how this whole experience has basically been an metaphor for my experience with motherhood. Of course being a parent requires sacrifice, but it has taken so much more from me than I have expected. I have already given so much of myself that I constantly feel that I have lost myself along the way, and it seems that any time I try to carve anything out for myself, things come to back me back in the ass. Life's cudgel, beating me back into a corner and saying, "How dare you try to be your own person? Now you must suffer these consequences." And amidst everything else that has happened, and though I love my girls more than anything else in the world, is yet another source of bitterness as I look back on the last 10 years.