I began this column as a newly-wed, and now, four-and-a-half years later, it’s time to wrap it up. Writing this last column, after more than 150,000 words that have attempted to describe what it feels like to adjust to a relationship – first with a husband, and then with a child – is achingly difficult. I mean, I love my husband, Mr T, and my precocious little girl, Baby A, only slightly more than I love embarrassing them in these pages. Saying goodbye is bittersweet.
To have had this outlet, where I can examine what it means to be a family, has helped me work at being a better wife and mother. I wish we could all give ourselves this chance to step back every week and take a look at our lives – everything from the noteworthy to the mundane – and try to understand what we might change, what we appreciate, what we would have done differently. Because that’s what it felt like to write this column and share my thoughts with you: a gift.
Here are a few last things I’d like to leave you with:
• It's called parenting, not babysitting. When I'm out researching stories or manicuring my nails or maxing out my credit card, I'm leaving my daughter with her father, not her babysitter. So when Mr T tells me he'd be happy to "babysit" our Baby A, he'd better duck.
• Technically, these are Uma Thurman's words of wisdom, but since I'm the one who took note, don't mind if I claim them. "I think a sense of humour is essential to life, it keeps us compassionate, it keeps us taking the hard days the right way." Thurman said it years ago, right here in the UAE when she attended the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. Those words of hers are getting me through parenting.
• If you can shower late at night without waking up with crazy morning hair, do it. Otherwise, as a parent of a toddler, you are never going to find the time.
• There are so many dichotomies to being a parent. There's the overwhelming joy of being a mother, but at the same time, there's also the mourning for the life you've left behind. But don't allow "mummy guilt" to take over. It's OK to sometimes miss that life.
• This too shall pass. Repeat ad infinitum.
• Do you remember what it felt like to have to feign interest in the children of your friends and co-workers because that's all they would talk about? Don't be that person. (Easier said than done.)
• The character Nick in Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl says: "I didn't just want a child. I needed a child. I had to know that I could love a person unconditionally, that I could make a little creature feel constantly welcome and wanted no matter what." Getting to do that, with a spouse who happens to be your best friend? Best. Thing. Ever.
• It has been an absolute privilege sharing the ups and downs of marriage, parenting and life. Do stop by my blog, the [Mis]Adventures of an Arab Mama at www.halakhalaf.com, if you ever grow curious about Baby A and her sleep-deprived parents.
The writer is a freelance journalist and blogger living in Abu Dhabi
