The weight of responsibility

There are days when I lack lightness. Do you know that? You sneak into the bathroom in the morning and wonder where all the weight is coming from. Is it winter fatigue, I ask myself. The state of the world? Or just too much Netflix the night before?

But every now and then I also realise that I've been a mother for quite a while. And then I imagine all the thoughts I've had since then. Ongoing, often multi-lane, sometimes intertwined, just as if a parent's head were the Brüttiseller cross. Each individual one is usually not worth mentioning, and is certainly easy to carry. But sometimes everything seems to accumulate to a perceived heaviness.

Children are wonderful. They fill life with colour and joy. With felt-tip pen marks on the walls when they are small. And with penis scribbles on the butter when they get bigger. But they also fill it with the need to have an opinion, for example on parsnip porridge from a jar and orthodontics. Or with the inevitability of having to spend late evenings watching teacher Schmidt on YouTube showing how to potentise potencies. And occasionally with real worries.

Being in charge has become so internalised that I usually don't even notice it.

But you grow into it. Shortly after we had carried our bundle home in the Maxi-Cosi with the crooked little hat, we realised: The questions and things we needed to think about or do from now on were lurking everywhere - from interpreting crying and studying the immunisation schedule to attaching the corner protector to the coffee table. Sometimes they even get in the way. Like when weighing up emergency drops and the emergency centre after falling off the swing. And I had already realised as a pregnant woman after googling «raw milk cheese» that some things really can be done wrong.

What parenthood means above all

One by one, you find your way through, autodidactically so to speak. Thinking, considering, doing, accompanying. This is how they accumulate, the thoughts and things you have done. Accumulate, as I said, or was it potentiate? Until deep down you feel more than you know that parenthood means one thing above all: being responsible. Now. Always. Today. And tomorrow too.

Because whether vape consumption is rising or the grades are falling: the juggling continues. It now often becomes a balancing act between ranting and preaching, understanding and comforting and YouTube again, depending on the situation. Especially as being responsible has long since taken on a life of its own, becoming a parental self-image. Back then, pregnant, I mindlessly bit into this cheese. Today, I still automatically push the 17-year-old to the inside edge of the pavement when a bus thunders past.

It's so internalised that I don't even notice it most of the time. Only sometimes, I seem to feel a weight. Maybe it's a bit like those chilly afternoons in the playground. Not so cold, you think for a long time. And then suddenly you feel chilled to the bone. Those are the days that feel heavy in the morning. Fortunately, here and there, a warm shower usually helps.