As a child I spent weekends lost in a world where Christmases were always white, miracles happened on 34th street, people met is St Louis , they talked on pillows, walked in parks barefoot, rooms were L shaped, and Society was High, and Breakfast was always at Tiffany's. The only mobs I had ever heard of lived on Lavender Hill. People lived in houses with immaculate lawns, white picket fences, and sang on a whim. The fab four in our house were, Deanna,Doris, Grace and Audrey.
As a singleton, I spent many a late afternoon after work in Cinemas. There was a kind of safety there, nobody knew you were alone, it was assumed you awaited a tardy friend. Often the exit was blurred by tears or excitement (film depending) and the audience was too wrapped up in the aftermath to notice a single woman .
Movies are escapism. Living vicariously, we take on many other more daring, more exciting,or more noble personas. Sometimes we acknowledge our darker selves.
Having had a baby, creating life, should mean the end of Existential Angst*, having a baby , creating a life, is surely "The Meaning of Life"? but often it is a ballistic boot up the Egoistic Bum, hurtling new Mothers into a black hole of doubt.
"Who am I?" is replaced by "I am Mother, but What happened to who I was before?"and "Where did I go?" It is as if our personal identity, our "selves" or the old "us" died as the child was born. It takes a while to dovetail the old you to the new you. The ratio of who you were to who you are now, in the beginning, is 95-5! It takes time. And it can be a bleak and lonely journey for some new Mums.
But there is a place where you can go. Where , unlike "Cheers", Nobody knows your name. At least at first. That place is The Bawl. So many Mums in other towns have turned green with envy, one even broke down in tears, "If only I had had something like that, it would have been a life line!"- when I describe the Corn Exchange's Mother & Baby movie time.
A life line indeed, to lost souls that the world calls New Mums, it is a safe dark place, where you can cry,and everyone will pretend it is at the emotion or romance of the movie. (I hormonally sobbed from the opening credits to the closing credits of "MamaMia"!!) you can laugh - without feeling frivolous , lose your self in another world, safe with your baby beside you, safe in the knowledge that you are with only other Mummies, safe that if your baby yells, you will not be judged, because theirs will yell too , pretty soon.
Here, once a week, in the dark, you can escape the dirty nappies, the mountains of laundry, the ghosts of self doubt and the nagging voice of inadequacy, and just BE your old self. Or at least retrieve some of her, for an hour and whatever minutes the movie takes you out of your day to day life.
*People suffering from Existential Angst are either not convinced that they exist, unsure why they exist or not at all convinced that anything really exists at all. The Cartesian summary of this hypothesis (or really a lack of any clear hypothesism) is "I (if there is an I) might think, therefore I (ditto) might (if anyone actually cares) be". Some take is as far as "There's no point in even thinking as I might not be anyway". from wikkipedia
