Mrs Darling’s Lament

[This is a post for The Time-Traveler’s Wife Summer Read-Along – please add your link to your Summer Read-Along post in the box below, leave comments and join in the conversation!]

‘Goodness, Clare, why in the world would you want to marry such a person? Think of the children you would have! Popping into next week and back before breakfast!’
I laugh. ‘But it will be exciting! Like Mary Poppins, or Peter Pan.’
She squeezes my hands just a little. ‘Think for a minute, darling: in fairy tales it’s always the children who have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window.’ The Time Traveler’s Wife, p.

Now maybe it’s because my own children are off having their adventure at the moment, but this segment of The Time-Traveler’s Wife really struck me. Holding my children close and then waving them through security at Glasgow airport’s departure lounge was, quite honestly, one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do as a mother. It’s hard to say good bye to your children – even when you know that they are going off to have fantastic adventures.

And as Clare’s grandmother quite rightly states, it’s the mothers in fairy tales that are left behind to await their children’s return. Mrs Darling’s plight in Peter Pan, in particular, has always haunted me. I can put myself in her position oh so easily…

You have spent the evening getting ready, putting on your pretty new dress, fixing your hair the way you like it, applying rouge and lipstick. You go through to the kids’ bedroom to give them kisses and they ooh and ah over the transformation of their mother into some glamourous stranger. Nights out with your husband are a bit of a luxury, so to see you dressed up to the nines is a novelty.

You spend the evening being romanced by your husband, remembering how it used to be when you first began courting – the dancing, the meals out, the kisses. And then all too soon, the evening comes to an end and you float home on a cushion of one glass of wine too many and romantic nostalgia.

However, as you enter your home, you are placed back into your role as mother – almost like a switch has been flicked in your mind – and you climb the stairs to check on the children, while your husband goes and pops the kettle on. You very softly push the door open and feel your whole world fall apart as you stare open-mouthed at the 3 empty beds and the curtains floating in the breeze that gusts in through the open window.

You then spend night after night after night awaiting their return. And even although you often imagine them lying there fast asleep, curled cat-like beneath duvet covers, you know that they’re not really there.

Until one day they are.

That scene always makes me cry. When John and Michael and Wendy all climb into their beds and pretend to be asleep, and Mrs Darling walks in and sees them all but doesn’t believe her own eyes. ‘You see, she saw them in their beds so often in her dreams that she thought this was just the dream hanging around her still.’

And then I read about Clare’s story, the time traveler’s wife, and she is left waiting so often. Clare’s solution is to throw herself into her creative work, and in this way, it’s almost as if she creates her own adventures through her art.

Given the choice, I’d prefer to identify with Clare over Mrs Darling. While my children are off on their adventures, it’s time for me to create some adventures of my own rather than sitting waiting for their return.

There’s still a very large part of me that longs to sit and wait and dream of the feel of their arms encircling me, their heads resting against my shoulder, their soft kisses on my cheek. But I recognize, like Clare does, that the total investment of one’s self into the act of waiting is not healthy for anyone, least of all the mother.

And this is why I plan to have my own adventures before the happily-ever-after ending arrives and I can hold them in my arms once again. Because I know that the time will come, probably sooner than I expect it, when I will pop my head around their bedroom doors and see their slumbering forms – a dream made reality.

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