On Motherhood

 My mother always says that her greatest achievements are her three children.  This is not to say that she was a helicopter parent, or the type of person who tried to (re)live her life through us.  She did not get any vicarious “see what I am responsible for” pleasure from any of our achievements, nor did she ever push us towards any activity or group because she’d wished for the chance herself as a child.  Even when we wanted to do things she really, really didn’t want us to do (like that time I decided that spending a year on exchange in Brasil was a great idea), she always supported us.  Unconditionally.  She simply wanted us to have all the chances and the choices that were possible, and she did everything she could to manage family life to make these things possible.

When I was a kid, I felt like we had pretty much everything we wanted and needed.  As an adult, I now understand that there was a lot of budgeting and being careful and going without unnecessary items to make sure that all the financial things worked out correctly. 

My mother was a stay-at-home parent; my father was the one who earned the money.  They’d agreed on this principle prior to marriage and stuck to it for our childhoods.  Relatively recently, my mum and I were talking about my Nan (her mother), who’d been a full-time working (single) parent from the time my mother was 11 or so.  “I decided then,” my mother told me, “that if it was at all possible, I’d always be at home with my children when they were there.  Always.”

My Nan was a working parent by necessity – my mother’s father died when she was young, and there were pretty limited social services to help widows and families in 1960s Australia.  My Nan was also an exceptional mother, and an excellent example of a brilliant human being.  My mother and my aunt never wanted for anything essential, and they always knew that their mother would be home with them if she could . . . but at the time, my Nan had to have a job.

And so we cut to the mid-1970s when I was born.  My parents were living in a town in the Western Australian desert, where my father worked at the local airport.  He was an electrician, and his employment worked on two-year cycles – he was always employed by the same corporation, but it wasn’t always in the same location.  He’d been in Perth for a while, Darwin for two years after that, then it was off to a place called Meekatharra.  That’s where they were living when I arrived, but medical complications required a relocation via the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and I was born in Perth.  And that’s another thing that my mother, my eldest daughter and I have in common – birth marred by medical circumstance.  My mother was born by emergency caesarean at seven months, my birth was precluded by medical airlift to a specialist hospital, and my eldest was born with pneumonia and not breathing and spent four days in Special Care after birth.

I cannot remember a time in my life where my mother didn’t tell everyone how amazing I was.  And not just me – when my sister and then my brother came along, she talked them up with the same level of cheerful supportiveness as she did me.  When we each got married, she then added our spouses to her “let me tell you about my amazing children” repertoire.  And when the grandchildren came along . . . well, she continued just as before.  Actually, she’s probably more effervescent in her commentary about the grandchildren.  She will often regale me with stories of my nephews (the eldest belonging to my brother and his wife, the two younger belonging to my sister and her husband), telling me how fantastically well (insert nephew’s name here) has been doing at (insert sport, activity, job here) and how proud she is of him.  It doesn’t matter if I’ve heard this from said nephew’s mother or father, she has to give me her (always slightly more shiny and amazing) version of events.  Having compared notes with my sister and brother, I know she does the same thing with my three children to them. 

Pre-smart phones, my mother carried a “brag book” with her.  There were at least a couple of photos of each of us (children, children-in-law, grandchildren) and she would pull it out at every given opportunity to tell people (mostly people she knew; occasionally random friendly strangers) about one or many of us.  Now she has a phone with stored photographs, she uses that instead. 

I asked her once what she did if someone told her they didn’t want to look at her photos.  She looked at me, genuinely shocked.  “Who would say something like that?” she asked me. “You’re all so interesting – of course they want to hear about you!”

The Fiction and the Furious

 I occasionally do the Australian Writers'Centre Furious Fiction Challenge for a bit of fun.  This one was written for a challenge from late last year, but never submitted (because I forgot to submit it.  Not because I didn't finish it).

Room 254.  Basic room.  Two single beds, zipped together as a double, small bathroom without a bath.  The fridge was tucked under a shelf, the electric kettle sitting on the bathroom bench.  The window was open, the plastic blind tapping a rhythm on the window frame as the breeze pushed it back and forth.  The guests had checked in and headed straight for the beach, their shared suitcase left open on the bed.  They’d clearly ignored the sign requesting “bath towels not be taken to the beach”, because there were none left in the bathroom.

Room 986.  Family suite.  Two bedrooms, with a queen-sized bed in one, two singles in the other and a pull-out couch in the sitting area.  Small kitchenette in one corner, bathroom with a shower over a relatively small bath.  They had stored their luggage in the wardrobes.  The fridge held three bananas, a tub of yogurt and some cider.

Room 1209.  Premier suite.  One bedroom with a King bed, a bathroom with a two-person bath in the corner and double jets in the shower.   The furnishings were rich and soft, mostly creams, with accents of sapphire blue.  Judging from the clothing in the closet, the female guest was a decade younger than her male companion.  The bouquets in the suite each contained two dozen roses.

P-100.  The Penthouse.  The hotel’s largest suite; three bedrooms, two bathrooms and two sitting areas.  The kitchen had a butler’s pantry and a tiny, gloomy elevator for staff.  The art on the walls was original – several abstract paintings and a photograph of the hotel from the 1920s.  The Penthouse had been occupied by the same guest for two months, an American working at one of the local fashion houses.  She was rarely seen, and she insisted that her room was serviced in a two-hour window while she was at work.  Cleaning her room took the entire two hours each day – she was a heavy smoker, an even heavier drinker and she regularly had several guests in her room overnight.

The lobby.  Reception staffed twenty-four hours a day by staff who spoke a minimum of six languages, a bar and a restaurant to the left.  Security at the front door were discretely armed and uniformed similarly to the police, with the hotel crest on the collar.

He nodded to security as he left the hotel, wishing them a good day.  No one stopped him.  No one checked his backpack.  He was in uniform.  He worked here.  He was safe.

The uniform had been stolen from the hotel’s laundry, the security pass snatched off a maid’s trolley, the photograph replaced with his own.  His backpack contained a watch from room 254, a necklace and three sets of earrings from 986, a camera from the suite and gold bracelet from the Penthouse.  He’d pass them to an associate before changing uniform and name and doing the same job elsewhere.  He had several uniforms.  It was an interesting way to make a living. 

On Fatherhood

 On our way home from Canada over a decade ago, we flew via Europe for a site visit to a refinery (as you do).  We decided to take advantage of being in London and took a week’s holiday to catch up with people we knew – a friend of mine in London, my sister and her husband in Bristol and an old university friend of ours who lived in Limerick. 

Our friend in Limerick was a new father – his son was four months old.  I remember sitting around one evening chatting, and he was talking about something he’d noticed about parenting.

“Men,” he said, “can be a dad or a good dad.  Women get to be a mum or a bad mum.”

The further into parenting that I get, the more I realise the truth in that statement.  When I am volunteering in my son’s classroom, I’m just being a mum.  A dad who volunteers will be congratulated on being a “good dad” for being there.  He doesn’t even need to do anything to be the good dad – he just has to show up.  My husband is often told what a good dad he is by random strangers when he’s at the park with a kid or two.  I can be doing errands with all three of my children (and occasionally an extra or two, just for fun), and I’m rarely told I’m a good mum. I’m far more likely to hear muttered comments about an even mildly misbehaving child than I am to get a compliment about my children or my parenting.

From what I’ve seen in my eleven years as a parent, people in general still have much higher expectations for mothers than they do for fathers.  Mothers are expected to have their (neat and tidy, well-behaved) children to school and activities and appointments on time, all the while keeping the house clean and organised, the shopping done (with children in tow, if necessary) and a home-cooked dinner on the table at the appropriate time.  If she’s got a (paying) job of any description, that’s expected to fit in there too, along with the unspoken notion that she should be the one staying home with a sick child if needs be.  For a father, the threshold is far lower – the children need to be fed and cared for (take-away fine, home-cooked meals optional), and if they miss a few appointments or come to school late (in the wrong uniform from an untidy house), well, “he’s trying so hard to get it all done.” People are also far more likely to congratulate a father for anything parenting-related than they are a mother. 

The other thing that drives me mad in the mother/father comparison, is when someone refers to a man as “babysitting” his children.  He’s not babysitting – he’s caring for his children. Maybe this is linked to the reasons why people are more likely to compliment a father who is with his children – they’re considering it as babysitting – another job that he has taken on as well as all the other things he has to do.  They’re not necessarily considering his role as a parent, and in some cases are almost diminishing it – “Oh, isn’t that sweet?  He’s babysitting!”.

I have absolutely zero issues with any parent or carer being complimented on their parenting, their children or anything related to either.  In fact, I think it’s essential that we do it – parenting (particularly when you’re the primary parent) can be hard, lonely and sometimes monotonous work.  Having someone tell you you’re doing a good job is such a lovely thing. 

One good thing that COVID has done has left so many more parents and carers working from home, and nowadays there are almost as many men as women at school pick up.  It’s been interesting to hear comments from the fathers who’ve found themselves working from home – so many of the dads that I know have negotiated working from home at least part-time post-COVID because they realized how much it helps everyday family life, and how much they enjoy having a more active role in it. 

My husband is one of these – 18 months ago, he worked full-time in the city, leaving home by 6.30am to catch the train, getting home around 5pm.  He’d always have breakfast with our son (he’s an early riser), but it wasn’t uncommon for him to leave for work before our daughters were awake.  He didn’t get home until after the majority of after-school activities were done, and usually his evening time with the kids involved having dinner and reading a story or two.  There wasn’t a lot of time for much else.

During COVID, he worked from home full-time; once his office re-opened, he could choose up to 50% work from home, with relatively flexible choice about how that was structured.  My husband now works from home half the time, three days one week, two days the next.  It means that he can start work early, yet still see the girls before school (he’ll have a coffee with them while they’re eating breakfast).  If one of the kids is sick and I have to work, he can generally reorganize his days to stay at home with them.  He’ll still work, mind you, but his office door is always open to whoever’s home sick.  On the days that he’s working from home, I can leave a kid or two with him while I take another one (or two) to activities.  A couple of weeks ago, I had to take one of the kids to an enrolment interview, and there was no way I could be home in time to get the other two to school, but he was home, so he could do school drop off.  And every fortnight, when he’s home on Friday and the kids are at school, he and I go out for lunch.  Together.  Where we can talk (or sit and enjoy the silence) and just hang out. 

Who knows – maybe a post-COVID world will have more fathers being more visible in their children’s day-to-day lives; at school drop off, taking them to the dentist, doing the grocery shopping with a toddler.  Maybe that’ll make the notion of a father with his kids no more or less remarkable than a mother with hers.  Either way, when the chance presents itself, always be sure to pass on a compliment to whichever parent you see.  No matter which parent it is, they’ll appreciate it.

The Extracurriculars

When my eldest daughter was born, I declared that I was not going to be one of Those Parents who was constantly running from activity to activity with my child.  She would not be doing All The Things.  We would be careful and choose an activity wisely.

When she was little, we had a regular Mothers’ Group catch-up, but that was as much for me as it was for her.  We also did baby swimming lessons (with my Mothers’ Group friends).  And that was it.  

When Kid 2 came along, the Mothers’ Group catch-ups were far less frequent (most of us were back at work at least part-time, we each had a second child within a few years of the first, and two of us wound up with three), but we stuck with the swimming lessons.  The entire time she was in the baby class (requiring me to be in the water with her), I managed to get the two girls into a lesson at the same time – Kid 1 with her own teacher, Kid 2 with me.  Both girls eventually did a weekly class (soccer for one, dance for the other) at daycare, but that was all.

Our son came along at the end of my eldest daughter's first year at primary school.  We’d purposely taken a break from swimming for her first year of school and hadn’t taken on anything else.  Every week or so, we’d get another flyer come home from school, advertising yet another organised sport or club.  There was soccer, swimming, tennis, netball, drama, singing, instrument lessons . . . there was a huge variety of options.  And eventually the girls wanted to try new things.

At first, my rule was swimming and one other activity.  Soon that became two activities, plus swimming.  Then it was “Well, you can do swimming at school, and anything else has to be at school or within walking distance”.  

And this is how it has come to pass that now Kid 1 does four extracurricular activities, Kid 2 does five and Kid 3 does two.  There is one overlap (the girls are both in the same singing class), a Saturday class that my husband has responsibility for and a couple where I take another child to an activity in return for another parent bringing my kid home.  This still means two days with both a before- and an after-school activity, and one day with four separate after-school extracurriculars.  I’ve only got three children – Kid 2 has two activities on the same afternoon.  Happily, the drop off/pick up times on all four activities line up perfectly, so it’s not too bad . . . although I do walk five kilometres that day and leave the house on five separate occasions because of my children.  

The kids do a reasonable spread of activities – all three of them sing and the girls both do drama and play an instrument (violin for the eldest, flute for Kid 2), plus my eldest does an art class, the middle one takes tennis and Kung Fu and the little guy does a movement and balance class. 

I started with good intentions of not doing too much . . . but here we are.  At least they’re all having fun!

 

When you hear That Song

 In very, very late 1999, my now-husband flew to meet me in Brasil.  I’d been there for five weeks prior; the two of us spent three weeks there together.  It was an awesome holiday.  One of my favourites.  Really.

But this isn’t about the holiday.  It’s about the trip home.  We’d flown there separately, but we came home together.  São Paulo to Johannesburg, Johannesburg to Perth.  Mid-January, 2000.

When we got on the plane in São Paulo, it was immediately clear to me that there were exchange students (approximately a dozen of them) on our flight, heading home to South Africa after 12 months in Brasil.  They were all with the same exchange program (it was definitely not Rotary, possibly AFS, maybe some other group I was unfamiliar with), seated in a big group a few rows behind us.  I was six years past the experience of flying home from exchange, but I recognized them the moment that I saw them.  They all spoke to each other in English, but their accent wasn’t (only) South African anymore – they’d all had their English changed after a year in Brasil.  The change was different for each of them, but it was a clear and genuine change of accent.  For some, it was only on a few words. For others, it was on everything; an edge that changed every single pronunciation.  Every one of them dropped Portuguese words into their conversations – not an affectation of any sort; a genuine “this is the right word” feeling that didn’t even allow them to understand that they weren’t speaking English when they said it.  Absolutely no one called them on any Portuguese word in an English sentence – my guess would be that they were all still thinking in both Portuguese and English and didn’t even notice that any of the words weren’t English.  And every single one of them (even the late-teen boys) were visibly sad (and many were openly crying) as the plane took off.

I knew who they all were because I’d been them a few years earlier.  And everyone else on the flight knew them a little later, in between movies when there was only background music playing.  Specifically “Time of My Life” by Green Day.  They all sang.  All cried.  All hugged each other and remembered the many, many times they’d heard that song when they’d been in Brasil.  Even the ones who’d not seen each other between their flights to Brasil in January 1999 and their flights home in January 2000.  It was That Song.  The one they’ll always, absolutely always, remember.

For me, That Song is “What’s Up?” by The Four Non-Blondes.  I’m 46 now; 28 years past my return from Brasil.  And even now, 28 years on, that song reminds me of Brasil, and very, very specifically of my best friend (another exchange student), my host brother (who’d previously been on exchange to New Zealand) and of one of the guys I went to school with (who was my only Brasilian friend who knew all the words to the song in English).  Every time I hear that song, I remember my favourite dancing shoes (black, strappy platform Mary Janes with a curved heel and double buckles), my favourite shirt (midriff, twisted up in the middle with bell-bottom sleeves) and the red-and-white striped dress that I bought especially for New Year’s Eve.  I see the river (called Green, actually brown) that I walked over on my way home in the last four months of my exchange.  I see the church that was across the road from my second house.  I remember the walk up the hill to my first family’s home.  I see the praça (square) in town and remember dancing in the Club with the balcony that overlooked it.  There are so many memories associated with that one song, and they’ve all persisted, nearly three decades later, whenever I hear that song.

On Reading

 I like to read.  So, that’s not really true.  I love to read.  It is my favourite past-time, the thing I’ve always done.  I will read anything, anytime, anywhere.  I usually have a pile of books beside my bed, some I’ve already read, some new, just in case I want to read something right now.

Before I had children, I probably read (or re-read) five or six books a week.  I read fast, and I re-read books that I love frequently.  When I was younger, I read so much that I rarely bought books that I hadn’t read.  I would borrow books from friends or from the library and if I really, really loved them, THEN I would buy the book.  That all went out the window when I lived in Quebec – the local library only had books in French, but the local bookstore had a very good selection of English language books.  Now, I do enjoy reading in other languages, but my primary reason for reading is relaxation, and reading in your non-native language is less relaxing that reading in your own language, so I have always preferred reading in English.  My only caveat to that is if the book was originally written in either Portuguese or French.  I will read them in their native language because that makes sense.  I actually own Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist” in both Portuguese and in French, and I’ve read it in English.  The Portuguese version is glorious.  The French version is almost as good.  The English version . . . well, something in the language is lacking.  It is nowhere near as beautiful as it is in Portuguese.  I’ve read several of Paulo Coelho’s other books in Portuguese, and I’ve read one or two in English (only because I couldn’t find them in Portuguese).  And there is always a sense of something missing in the English versions, something that just isn’t quite right.  It may, of course, be all in my head, but that’s how it feels to me.

Now that I have children, I don’t read as much.  I probably average one book a week, but I don’t read every week.  A couple of weeks ago, I read three books in the space of two days.  I started a book last week that I haven’t even got a third of the way through yet. I still love to read, but I hate to be interrupted when I’m reading, and children always interrupt.  Or want to know what you’re reading.  Or what the story is about.  Or why is there a picture of a sad lady on the cover, Mummy? Or is that a murder book, Mum?  Why would you read that?

My two girls started reading the Harry Potter books a couple of years ago.  I read the first book to them both, at which stage my eldest, then nine years old, determined that she was going to read on by herself.  I was perfectly happy with that – my only requirement was that she and I read the more grown-up chapters (the endings of books 3, 4 and 5) together, so that I could answer any questions that she had.  She read all the way up to book six, but never got past the first chapter in that one.  Ironically, that chapter is “The Other Minister”, probably my favourite chapter in the entire series.  When I told her that (we were reading it together for precisely that reason), she said to me, “But why?  Nothing interesting happens.” She declared book 6 (The Half-Blood Prince) “boring” after that.  I think she’s probably still a little young for it (Harry and friends are 16 in the book; she’s now 10).  My younger daughter is now just shy of nine, and she stopped at the start of book 3 for a few months, then returned to the series (mostly, I think, because I told her that after she finished each book, she could watch the corresponding movie).  She’s since completed the entire series, re-read it a second time and is currently about halfway through her third reading. 

The books that she’s reading?  They’re mine, not hers.  I borrowed the first three Harry Potters from a friend and adored them.  Books 4 through 7, I pre-ordered and set aside the entire day of issue to read the book.  I even booked dinner at a restaurant those four evenings so that I didn’t have to stop reading to make dinner.  I picked up each book at 9am when the bookshop opened; I had read each completely by early afternoon.  My husband likes to tell the story of walking through a shopping centre back to our car with me walking directly behind him, one hand on his shoulder, while I read the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

My kids have all inherited a love of reading from me.  There are books all over our house, because they all read (or in the case of the five-year-old, looking at) books anywhere the mood strikes them.  In bed.  On the couch. In the car.  On my bed.  Sometimes in very random spots, like on the stairs or while sitting on the swing or the monkey bars.  Anywhere, really.

The other thing that they’ve inherited from me?  Their disgust when the movie doesn’t quite follow what the book said.  I watched the first Harry Potter movie with the girls and all I heard the entire way through the movie was, “That’s not right!”, “This didn’t happen in the book!”, “Why did they miss <insert particular scene here>?  That’s one of my favourites!”  My husband just laughed and said, “It’s just like watching a movie with you!”.

Once Upon A Time . . . I was made redundant

 I was made redundant.  Doesn’t that sound awesome?  Redundant; business speak for, “You and your skills are no longer necessary.”

The specifics of it were nothing exciting – the mining company that employed me decided to relocate the lab I worked in from a capital city to a regional area, closer to a refinery.  I was “offered an opportunity to relocate”, as were my colleagues.  Given that I worked part time while my husband had a full-time job in the city we lived in, everyone was aware that I was unlikely to take that “opportunity”.  On the day that this announcement was made, the five affected employees were handed two sets of documents.  The first included all the information on a relocation, the second had details of the redundancy policy and a calculation for your own personal payout.

I was in a very lucky position, because I was not the major salary earner in our family (three of my four affected colleagues were the major earner), and because I had been working with the same company for sixteen years.  Company policy stated that you were paid out according to your years of service, so my payout was rather good, thanks very much.

The move to a regional site and the subsequent redundancies weren’t a surprise to any of us, but they came a year or two earlier than we’d anticipated.  The logistics of shifting everything out of the lab we’d been in for about 13 years took a lot of effort and six months to complete.  I managed that part of the process, and on my third last day of employment, I handed the keys to the laboratory building back to the company that owned it. 

Until that point, I’d been in some form of paid employment my entire adult life.  I’d worked full time, part time, shift work, nights, weekends.  I’ve worked in hospitality, in education, in laboratories, in offices.  And then, suddenly, through no fault of my own, I was unemployed.

At the time, I was in my early forties.  I have significant experience in a relatively specific field.  I worked part time, by choice, because my children were young.  I took three months off, didn’t even look at job vacancies.  Once I did start looking, it because apparent that there was a real lack of roles that were actually suitable for me. For starters, there are not a lot of part time jobs in my field.  There are a reasonable number of full-time, higher stress, travel and weekend/evening work type of jobs available, but I don’t want any of those things.  I was considered overqualified for the jobs that I did apply for.  In three months of applying, I wasn’t even called for an interview once.

Personally, I found it frustrating that I wasn’t even considered for some of the roles I applied for.  Yes, I will agree, I had far more qualifications than the job required.  Let’s be frank – I spent ten years at university, so I have more qualifications than many jobs require.  I had applied for jobs that I knew I’d be good at and that I was confident I’d enjoy.  Being thrown out of consideration because my education and work experience was more than the role required was frustrating.  I understand that employers may have assumed I’d be bored in the roles, but I had gone to the trouble of applying, which should have indicated a fair level of interest on my part . . . but apparently it did not. 

I kept looking for part-time roles and started volunteering – on the P&C at my children’s school and also at the local Kindy.  I also started editing and reviewing technical papers for some former colleagues. 

Nowadays I work at a Kindergarten as a teaching assistant.  The hours I work fit within my children’s school hours, which means I can still do pick up and drop off, and get the kids to their (many, many, oh-so-many) activities.  In addition to my own kids, I’ll often have an extra child or two to take to said activities (my friends and I remain committed to the notion of sharing the load when it comes to getting our kids to and from activities).  I’m finding too that the older my children get, the more just-being-around time there needs to be.  When they were toddlers, they’d tell me their entire life story in the twenty minutes it took me to cook dinner.  Now that they’re older, I find they might need to hang about and not talk for a while (and then be asked the right questions) before they’re ready to tell me about something from their day.

In all honesty, I always enjoyed the work that I did.  I would never have chosen to quit my job, because I did find it interesting and challenging.  Redundancy gave me the chance to spend more time with my kids as they got older, and that has been a lot of fun.