Mumspringa

5 minute read

A few weeks ago I woke in the middle of the night and for a second I wasn’t sure where I was. I grabbed my phone to check the time and it opened on the last page I had been reading before I fell asleep. I smiled. I had been dreaming of dancing by a pool surrounded by my friends with glass of something bubbly in my hand and when I woke, I felt so happy.

On my phone was a picture of a Tuscan villa. Sleeps eight, surrounded by an olive grove, pre-book a local chef the description said. I had been talking to a friend about having a weekend away with the girls when ‘all this is over’ earlier that day and I had immediately jumped thirteen steps ahead, as I am wont to do, to a luxurious Italian retreat – a bit beyond the 48 hours in Galway she had meant.

Truth be told 48 hours anywhere with my friends sounds perfect to me now. I want to be holed up in a rented house, with a supply of wine, a 90s playlist and no one to look after for two days. I want to laugh and sing and dance until my feet are swollen and not have to get anyone a snack. I want to break free.

Ever since I saw the 2002 documentary Devil’s Playground, I have been fascinated by the Amish tradition of Rumspringa. It’s basically a rite of passage in the Amish community where a teen or young adult gets to experience western life for up to two years while they make up their mind about their future. They do things like smoke, drink, wear the clothes that most American teens would consider normal and go to the beach – a big deal if you’ve been brought up in rural Ohio with only a horse and cart to ferry you about. At the end of their sabbatical, almost 90% of Amish teens return home to rejoin their strict, clean living communities and are baptised into the church.

What I need now is a Mumspringa. I’ve had 14 months of a closed-off, simple life, where I travelled no further than was allowed, heard no loud music and danced only to The Wiggles with my children. How wholesome. I desperately need to get out of my leggings and my head. It’s been a year of anxiety, fear, worry and banana mushed into soft furnishings and I am afraid I have forgotten who I am.

I live in Kildare and so am landlocked. I haven’t seen the sea since last July, I haven’t seen most of my friends since then too. I have a wardrobe of beautiful clothes that I’m not sure how to wear because my body has only been draped in things suitable for going for a walk in for about a year.

When Megan Thee Stallion wrote “it’s a hot girl summer, so you know she got it lit” I wonder was she thinking about the millions of mums who are at the end of their tether and ready to go absolutely wild as soon as they’re released?

I find myself feverishly checking the vaccination figures, waiting for them to announce the portal open for 40–50-year-olds so I can make plans to hug my friends and drag them onto whatever makeshift dancefloor I can find.

Mums have been the backbone of the pandemic. Feeding, wiping, minding, teaching and whatever else needed to be done while also working, holding everything together and trying to remain sane. There needs to be a plan for us.

Hotel marketeers should be rubbing their hands with glee as they create packages for recently escaped mothers. Spa breaks where the stress is massaged out of you; self-catering breaks with prosecco on arrival and dinner cooked by someone else; disco breaks where hotel function rooms are repurposed into women only nightclubs where you can dance to Sophie Ellis Bextor in sequins and shake the shackles of motherhood from your bones in a shamanic-like ritual cleansing. Free me from my family. Release me from responsibility. Save me from the snacks.

And before you ‘what about the dads’ me, stop, it’s not the same. They have probably already been for garden beers or a game of golf. It shouldn’t be easier for them, but it is and we know it is. It takes time to gather the women, to make sure that everyone can make it, to organise a day never mind a weekend when everyone can be there.

It’s not about hating our families either. We love them so much. This is why we’ve given all of ourselves to them this last year. Now we deserve the chance to break away and find ourselves again. Be somebody other than someone’s mum.

Late last year when I mentioned on Insta stories that I was fantasising about a night away solo in a hotel room to eat room service pasta and drink wine in the bath I was overwhelmed by women revealing their hotel room fantasies. Solo dinner while reading a kindle and asleep by 9pm one woman said. A bottle of prosecco in the bath while watching a rom-com wrote another. Breakfast in bed, followed by a walk, followed by a pre checkout nap another pleaded.

Now I’d like both that solo night and a girl’s trip but if I can’t have both (and excuse me, why the f*&k can’t I have both?) I think I’m going for the full-on Thelma and Louise breakout weekend – though mine will have less murder/crime/driving off cliffs. Probably.

And like the 90% of Amish teens who go home to be baptised, I will return to my community of four, ready to embrace family life once again. But I will come back a better, happier, more invigorated version of myself, which can only be good for everyone.

In the iconic words of the Spice Girls swing it, shake it, move it make, who do you think you are? I have no idea anymore, but I bet a weekend in Tuscany or Wexford or Galway would help me remember.

Jennifer Stevens, May 2021