“I started rehearsing Prince Hamlet when my daughter was 7 weeks old” has become something of a badge of honour for me. Pregnant artists ask me about it. New parents marvel at it. I look back at it from where I am now and it seems impossible. But that’s because now things are way harder.
Newborns sleep a lot. You can put them down somewhere and they stay in one place. People they’ve never met can hold them and they’re fine. And in the case of me rehearsing Prince Hamlet, I was incredibly fortunate that work schedules allowed my husband to be the A-parent most of the time.
But that didn’t last too long.
My now almost-5-year-old is my energetic opposite. She’s loud. She makes friends everywhere she goes. She likes climbing on things and jumping off of them. She starts playing one thing and within 10 minutes wants to play something else. And she says “Mummy” a thousand times a day.
I’m always tired. I get frustrated easily. I’m never patient enough.
Any sort of Supermom-ness I briefly felt after surviving Prince Hamlet wore off years ago. I find it really, really hard to juggle being a parent with being an artist. I always feel like I’m doing one or both things poorly: the parent thing, or the artist thing. And I haven’t even tried to do virtual Junior Kindergarten while collectively leading a theatre company yet.
I am steeling myself for these next few weeks, knowing full well that the juggle will be exhausting and stressful, and I will rarely be at my best. But I’m going to try.
To my fellow artist-parents: How are you doing?
xo Christine