Old Goth New Tricks: Appearance

So what happens when an old Goth/rockabilly/punk becomes a Mum?  Does it all fall away?  Does the look prevail?  Does the make up, or the corsets, or the boots, wind their way into a Mother’s Group?  I don’t really know how it is for others but I can speak as to how it has been for me. 

So the clobber, what happened there and the make up?  The practical way of life stepped in.  Days would pass where I wouldn’t see or speak to a single person aside from my husband when he would return in the evening to our little nest.  I slowly began to give away discomfort for the practical.  Eventually my son began to insist that I wear colours and I realized that my old Gothic tendencies were impacting upon my happy little son.

Motherhood and being so far from family and friends has also meant that my husband and I stopped going out as a couple.  There was no need for my elaborate makeup of the past given that we were staying in.  On rare occasions one of the old bands would tour that all the old bods would dust off the cobwebs for and I would have once moved Heaven and Earth to see but the new me contentedly stayed with my son and my Husband attended these with his friends and without me.  I suppose if I had family close by, I would likely still go to these things on the rare occasions that they fall but living so far from city life has meant a new mindset of self sufficiency and submerging entirely into the here and now.  There is no one that I can ask to come and sit with my son so that I can go out with my Husband.  So far, it has not been a dramatic sacrifice for either of us.  I would not trade our happy little ever after life for anything and neither would my Husband.  Any difficulties are really not that difficult when outweighed with the ultimate pleasure of having a happy little toddler/monkey jumping on the bed. 

What has surprised me about motherhood is how all consuming it actually is.  Of course it doesn’t have to be that way but I chose to attend to my son’s every need and drop everything and devote my full attention to him with the view to this making him independent and self sufficient when he gets bigger (which he now is both).  I had signed on for study that never seems to get anywhere, with the expectation of having enough free time to power through it.  What I have found is that my brain has changed and it isn’t as receptive or hungry as it used to be for information and learning has become a bit of a struggle.  Sometimes I think my son has absorbed my brain.  I exaggerate of course; I meant he has absorbed my academic brain. 

Back to the clobber though; on occasions I would pull out the old clothes and wear what I could still fit into (the body changes are another story) on the rare occasions that we had friends come to visit.  I felt like my old self but by the way Pixel would gaze at my Gothic make up. I knew to him, that this wasn’t the person he knew.  He was accepting and in fact he accepted his Father turn up one day heavily made up as a zombie (that’s another story) but Pixel seems to be thinking that he knows us both from the inside out.