The problem with ‘working from home’ – i.e. having a ‘home office’ … which, let’s face it is only there to ground me into believing I can actually work from home – is that my work is not really respected as much as if I was at a ‘real’ office being watched over by a beady-eyed boss. If I phone my husband at work and he is busy with something, I get a curt response to my questions or need to converse … basically, I have to respect his space in the work forum and not bother him when he is meant to be spinning his hamster wheel. For me, however, it is impossible to set up any kind of routine at the ‘home office’ since when there is anything to do, besides the regular keeping the house stocked so no one starves, like getting workmen in, making calls, fetching stuff, buying hardware etc., I am expected to drop the relatively unimportant things that I am working on (relatively unimportant because it is, more often that not, unpaid work) and do what is required in my role as … as what?
Archive for 2009
Flexibility of my job
Thursday, December 10th, 2009Role reversal
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009It was interesting staying with friends who have reversed roles temporarily – the woman goes to work and the man stays home to look after the children. The interesting part was not, however, the fact that the roles were reversed – this happens often and seems perfectly normal especially when circumstances dictate. What is interesting is the fact that because the man looks after the kids every afternoon during the week, he gets time out from the kids on the weekend. In my world, because I haven’t been to work all week (well, not conventional work anyway – I work for free), I have to give my husband time out and continue looking after my child.
Logically, because I have looked after him all week, it would be a relief to do something different and, because my husband has been sitting at a desk all week, surely he too would need a break from Norm – it seems like a perfect ‘opposites attract’ kind of situation where everyone would win … most of all our child who is often dad deprived.
I think it’s too much to ask, so I have to settle with adamantly insisting on tea in bed every morning of the working week – which in my case is seven days  … but I’ll settle for the five because tea in bed five mornings a week is just fine.
Here but lost
Monday, December 7th, 2009I realised, during a training session for the KARABO grief-counseling program, that I have always suffered grief for the loss of my mother. This isn’t because my mother died but because I never had a mother – well, not in the sense of my belief of what a mother should be. Too much stuff to actually go into any kind of detail here but the over-riding taint is someone who critisised most and praised little. Add to this the corporal punishment that was so trusted by that generation and the result is inevitably a person with not much faith in her ability. I turned slightly psychotic when I had my own child – I became tearful at the very suggestion that I should discipline with smacking, I went into self-loathing every time I shouted at my child and I screamed at my husband if he didn’t treat our child with total respect.
I had to go back to the basics: praise the good, ignore the bad and dig deep for the love … basic guidance from puppy socializing classes. Fine, I don’t always ignore the bad – I’m flawed! – but, besides putting up boundaries, I reward with stars and tell him every night, as he is going to sleep, all the things I love about him. There has to be a way to confine the wild horses without breaking their spirits.
Whacko words
Friday, November 27th, 2009I call my child noo-noo, shnoek-poep, Mr Moozle … basically whatever comes out of my mouth. And it puzzles me as it not only makes me sounds slightly ‘challenged’ but it brings out maternal feelings that I never knew existed.
I asked around and I am happy to declare that it is all perfectly normal – these weird terms of endearment are simply a testament to the love we feel for these little distractions that throw our hearts into turmoil.
My dad used to call me cockroach or cockalock – not exactly heart-warming but, said with great tenderness, surely just a bit of the same.  Sadly, I can’t think of any words my mother ever used …
4 minus 1
Thursday, November 26th, 2009Our pool of friends has suffered its first casualty. It’s because of the children. I am sad and relieved all at the same time. Sad because I knew them at the beginning, I was at their awesome wedding and I love them. Relieved because they are the first!
What do people do when their children get in the way? Because they DO get in the way!
I work with children whose parents throw them away when they get in the way … they are dispensable. But what if you’re not a prostitute or a drug addict or you don’t live in dire poverty? An educated and affluent person throws away their partner instead. We feel the burdens of life too strongly to suck it up and live through the pain. We are weak. We haven’t suffered enough to realise that ‘this too will pass’. Or maybe we are just a bunch of cynics and life is too short to get bogged down by small miseries.
I can’t say the thought doesn’t cross my mind – I can’t throw my child away, so why not just get rid of my husband? I suppose the few years you get to grow your children into adults pass so quickly and then they leave you eventually … they never took that vow to stay with you forever – so maybe it’s the relationship with the person who just might stick around once the children have left that should be preserved.
I’ve lived through unbearable but perhaps this is even beyond that; I just cannot say. I don’t support the argument of staying together for the sake of the children but splitting up because of them is just plain tragic.
Some one once said that the choices you make follow you through life …
Friday, November 13th, 2009This made me think about a friend of mine who, on discovering she was pregnant, went to every clinic in town to hunt down one that would give her the abortion pill. But on finding one, decided there must be a reason it had been so difficult to find it in the first place that she couldn’t go through with it after all. She now has this bright and bubbly child who comes with her fair share of trials and troubles but who fills the house with light and joy. It’s hard to imagine there would ever be regret … and I don’t even ask because it is so unimportant now.
Becoming a mother was the biggest shock of my life and learning to love the child I claimed had ruined my life was a tough journey indeed with many a tortuous mountain peak. I now find that the love I have developed for him over the years has grown like a tumour around my heart and to get rid of that love would mean ripping my entire heart out of my chest.
So, although I feel guilty and wonder if he’ll ever forgive me for not wanting him to start with, there is no cell in my body that would want it any other way. Sure there are times when I hate my role and wish I could be untethered again … but, this child: he is meant to be here for reasons I am, as yet, incapable of explaining.
The best thing about Gina Ford
Thursday, November 12th, 2009Gina Ford is not exactly the Child Whisperer but there is a part of her book that has been invaluable (besides the obvious routine that everyone learns – some too late – that can transform your life if implemented from the start).
Whispering. Such a simple thing. She pushed this in every schedule for baby: never speak in tones above a whisper when it is after bed time or a nighttime feed or when baby has woken too early. My child is now four and when he gets up in the night on those rare (thanks to Gina) occasions or when he wakes up before six, he will walk softly and always whisper. It doesn’t seem like much but, like many little things, makes a big difference.
Different realities in my parallel life
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009My journey of self-discovery was also a kind of voyeuristic experience where I lived alongside the life of what my own family’s environment may have been like had I stayed in the UK (notwithstanding the fact that had I stayed, my child would not have found his way in). There are so many differences, from boundaries and control to exposure and experience, and I couldn’t help but compare. The actual comparisons have no bearing here since they have nothing to do with what is better or worse but rather people’s drive to make things the same as everyone else and the pointlessness of this since that is a journey with no real destination.
It brings me back, as most things do at the moment, to the choice I have made to have only the one child. I know what I’m giving up and I am fully aware of what I am depriving my child of … regardless of my views that the pros outweigh the cons. But, the world over, children are growing up with different realities. These different realities identify them in their uniqueness as individuals and no matter how much we conform to social norms, we will never create a normal child. There is just no benchmark.
It’s about being part of something rather than being in it to win
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009Every time I am doing well at something, I tend to sabotage my success … but that’s not really a bhalababy post, it’s a therapy session.
I run. I am a runner. And I don’t win. I don’t win because I don’t need to win. And I run because I can be happy with my result, regardless. As it is in life, sometimes it’s just about participating. And, besides, every race can be a personal ‘win’ because I do a great time, I get the t-shirt and the medal … and then there are those endorphins which are as good as those during childbirth but without the intense pain. Sometimes.
I ran the Cape Grape Run … a tough 21.1km off-road race with Klein Constantia wine tasting at the top of the 8km climb … last Sunday. I was fit, I was strong, I had sorted out all my issues with shin splints, I had had a bowl of complex carbs, a cup of regular tea (after eight months without caffeine), my vitamins … I’d done my prep and I was so ready to thrash my PB (personal best). I destroyed the uphill, joked with fellow runners, left Steve and Gav in the dust and belted downhill while chatting to a veteran of long distance. It was kilometer 12 and I hadn’t even broken a sweat. I was set to tear past at least another hundred runners before the finish … Chariots of Fire was being whistled by the trees.
The crack sounded like a gun shot as my foot bent at an unnatural angle on making contact with a pile of lose rocks … and I watched as runners I had passed kilometers back started streaming past me. I already knew I wasn’t going to win this thing and now I knew I wasn’t even going to do a PB … but I ran on (with what I know now to be somewhere between a grade 2 and grade 3 sprain – the worst I could have done) so I could just finish the race. I knocked a few minutes off last year’s time and, best of all, I crossed the line seconds before Steve and Gav … after which I couldn’t even stand on the injured foot.
All the while, my husband and child were running the 5km fun run, a race my husband was planning to push our son in the jogging pram in order to complete the circuit. Turns out, my husband pushed and our son ran … all 5km in 42 minutes!
I didn’t get much sympathy for my alleged self-sabotage but I proved I could finish anything I start as long as my heart is in it … that goes a long way in proving the stamina required to be a parent.
Your children will hate you no matter what
Monday, November 9th, 2009We fret so much about doing the right thing all the time … at the right time and in the right way. We’re terrified we’ll do something wrong and damage our children so much that they’ll end up hating us. But, you know what, when our children get to 13 or 14 (often even sooner), they are going to hate us anyway. It’s inevitable … like hormones.
Which makes me wonder if perhaps the best thing to do is bring them up in a way that will preserve our own sanity rather than theirs … and that way we will be better equipped to deal with the inevitable.
You may get lucky and have a child that doesn’t ever hate you. And what a bonus for that sanity of yours.
Obsession with schools
Thursday, November 5th, 2009I find myself breaking out in a sweat whenever the school topic comes up at dinner parties. I might actually be forced into home schooling as the very thought of trawling through school grounds and interviewing teachers who really couldn’t care one way or the other whether the child who is my prince attends his school or not makes me want to break the parenting deal that requires me to educate to the best of my ability.
My child is four. He is perfect in every way … like everyone’s child, of course. I wanted to give him away for the first two years of his life and am only really getting to know him now that he has wormed him way into my blood like a parasite I am now loathe to get rid of because I would die without it.
Now, when I watch him sleeping, I realise the significance of what has been entrusted to me and it is enough to make me feel suffocated with the pressure of being the perfect mother to this perfect human child.
He changes every day and it the most incredible human being I have ever met so the thought of leaving him in the care of an institution each day, terrifies me. I don’t have great memories of school – and the ones I do have are tainted by too much booze and Tippex thinners – so I need to know my child so much better before I can feel qualified to pick an appropriate schooling system. Of course, I am fully aware of the fact that he won’t get in anywhere now because most people pick the school for their child while they are in the act of procreation.
So, now what? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know how to chose something so fundamentally important – something that will have such a huge impact on this person who is relying on me so heavily to do good by him.
Which brings me to the next post …
Giving it all up vs. hanging onto an illusion
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009I think I know why it is so difficult for woman to give up their careers to look after their children. I wasn’t aware of it until I visited where I used to have the same issues. Before I had a child, and even in the first years of having him, I was extremely critical of anyone who could just give up their life to stay at home with their child/ren. I thought it was a cop-out, the easy option and a weak choice. And now that I’m on the other side, I see more intensely the friction between working and non-working mums as I feel the contempt that comes with my perceived lifestyle of non-contribution and laziness. Sure, it’s not necessarily directed at me … but at people who have made the same choices as I have … Regardless, it’s a tough pill to swallow since I am now on the other side and I have the great perspective of having tried both options. Perspective counts for naught though when you can’t categorically state which is better.
It’s just got to be better for you and not just a better view for others.
Back to math
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009Having just had that experience of crossing over into the life of my parallel dweller, visiting friends in London and Paris, I have also experienced staying with two friends who have chosen to have two children. Although my trip was primarily to run the Paris 20km, a distance I am fast becoming a veteran in, I have recently been making tourette-like declarations of intent to run a full 42km marathon before I am 40.
I’m running out of time.
Watching my friends with their children and gauging the extra workload of adding that extra person to the household, I got to wondering if the decision to go from one child to two children is perhaps something like going from a half marathon to a full marathon: it doesn’t necessarily require you to up the pace … often you can plod along a little slower … but the stamina required is oh so much more.
In Limbo
Friday, October 30th, 2009I crossed over into the life of my parallel dweller. It was temporary – 10 days – and it was fabulous. I booked to travel to Paris and London to run a race, visit friends and stroll the High Streets of my heyday. I counted down the weeks, days, hours and minutes to my departure, planning everything in minute detail so as to not miss out on anything I had been hankering for.
I have a friend who won’t leave her child for a night and I have friends who will leave happily for three weeks and I have friends who have varying levels of tolerance for staying away from their kids … somewhere between those two extremes. I don’t yet know where I fit.
Leaving my husband and child was filled with mixed feelings of ‘get me out of here’ and ‘I’m a terrible mother for wanting to leave so badly’. It was made worse by the call I got while going through passport control – my child was in a state because he was under the impression that I was leaving forever (perhaps he just knows me well enough to realise what a fine line I was traversing trying to connect with ‘the other side’).
I had pangs of wanting to take my child with me on my mini-adventure and a small amount of separation anxiety – a direct result of his having formed so much a part of my identity for so long now. But, once on that plane, I had shunned my mothering comfort zone and assumed my old identity – I was a free agent, meeting people as a confident, independent woman; a person I thought I had lost. The next ten days, as you can well imagine, were a whirlwind of plugging back into the grid of soul connections and lifestyle adjustments. I rode the rollercoaster of hating every minute and never wanting it to end. I was high on adrenalin and I almost valued my fix enough to call home and say I was staying. Instead … well, I’m back after tearful farewells and aching hellos … and it’s as though I haven’t quite left the fairground, but everyone’s packed up and gone home.
I feel now like I have an overloaded system of unprocessed information and things undone. I have launched myself into a state of limbo between lives; between choices; and I find myself pining again for what might have been. I have one foot in my parallel dweller’s life and it feels like she wants to keep it there – perhaps out of spite for what she sees I have … so much of what she will never have.
My parallel dweller
Thursday, October 29th, 2009In my latest therapy session we discussed all the many ways my life has changed. Could I say I regret having had a child or would it be more accurate to say that he has got me to where I am today and contributed to the person I am right now?
I have always been aware of that sassy chick in my parallel universe who has a great job earning a great salary that allows her to buy the things she wants and enables her to travel to Japan and Brazil on a whim. She is confident because her clothes aren’t always in a state, she can still wear heels and her stomach muscles are still as taut as when she was thirteen.
There’s no doubt I am still aware of her but I now look at her with admiration, not envy. She possesses a lifestyle of different choices and though some may seem so much better from where I’m standing, I am certain my choices show a lifestyle just as enviable to someone on her side.
