Those I love

Frogs vs Chickens

April 21 2008

Tonight we allowed the 4 year old to stay up after the usual bed time in order to watch Sir David Attenborough’s documentary “Life in Cold Blood” in which he asks how amphibians first managed to invade the land, by examining frogs and salamanders from all over the world. Our boy was as fascinating to watch as the program itself.

There really is something exquisitely beautiful in viewing the natural world through the eyes of a child. The marvelling we experience as adults is infected by the years of accumulated knowledge, no matter how minute, which predisposes us to a level of acceptance of “how life just is” that a child is yet to possess.

The exclamations of wonder from our boy were simply magic. Towards the end of the program when his head was lying on my lap, I asked if he was still awake and watching the TV. He replied “yes…but I’ve only got one eye open”. He was soon after in bed and before drifting off to sleep with my lullaby, he declared that while he thought frogs were amazing, he would still prefer to have chickens (as pets) because we can eat their eggs and we cant eat frogs eggs.

Painting a wall defines home ownership

April 19 2008

Technically I am not a first home owner. The first home I owned was the land and self house build project I left behind in Scotland. Yes I did sleep one night in the house in Scotland, after a roof warming party, but never had the opportunity to call anything but the dodgy cold caravan on the building site as my home. So the Scottish house is now finished with my ex and his new wife all cosy and happy within.

Meantime my new husband and I bought a beautiful old house in the most amazing location over two years ago. We have furnished our home and made all necessary changes to make it safe and habitable (i.e. filled in the baby drowning pond and cut down the kid killing Oleander). Slowly our garden is developing and the back yard is a kids’ play heaven. Today however I feel I have made the biggest step signifying that I am a home owner. I painted a wall.

Okay so the wall has been painted with coloured blackboard paint (Jungle Frog Green) for the kids but I still feel very grownup and proud of myself. The sense of permanency is very satisfying. There is of course a blind faith that my husband and I can maintain the mortgage to keep our house. From now on, whenever I pay the mortgage before the due date each month, my sigh of relief will be exhaled as I turn to look at our new green wall….and whatever chalk creation our children have drawn on it at the time.

Does it take a village to raise a child ?

April 15 2008

I know it’s been used to the point of cliché, but they say it take’s a village to raise a child. There is controversy as to how this old African proverb is best made applicable to contemporary western society, but I must say it certainly prompts me to think a little and evaluate expectations.

One challenge with being a mother in the 21st century is that we have a window into the child raising experiences of the globe. Historically when woman bore children in small communities, they’re parenting skills were only compared to other woman in the “village” who were usually raising children within the same environment and circumstances.

Most woman raising children in Australia today, are exposed to scenarios that vary vastly from their own. The stay at home mum, the part time/full time working mother, the working/studying mother, the mother surrounded by family and friends, the mother isolated and alone……these women only have the name mummy in common. Even woman within the stay at home category have differing scenarios which affect the strategies and skills needed to raise their children.

How many of us are aware of the torture we are subjecting ourselves to by comparing our parenting competency with others? There are no super mums. I despise being referred to as a “super mum”. We are all just being mothers. Sometimes we cope and sometimes we don’t. No matter what our mothering demographic is.

Why are we forgetting that our children need us to cope as best we can within our individual circumstances? Why do we worry so much when our coping strategies differ from others? Why do we question our right to seek and or accept help? Why do we so often forget that as parents, we play a key role in the way our future society is shaped?

What is my message? Yes I do believe it takes a village to raise a child. Let’s say yes to family, friends, communities and services helping a mother with whatever it takes for her to feel on top of her role. Let’s also accept that our village in the 21st century is rather huge and a woman’s experiences and needs are individual. A child doesn’t care how Mrs Smith next door copes with her role as a mother. Our children only care about how we manage to cope raising them.

If we need help, perhaps it’s not a question as to whether we as women deserve it. Perhaps it’s a question as to whether our children deserve mothers who cope with and enjoy their crucial role in a child’s life….whatever it takes.

The independent child

April 10 2008

After swooshing away some baby vomit at a park yesterday, I asked my 4 year old son to return the bucket to the visitor’s centre. Except when inside the small building, he remained in view at all times and was less than 50 metres away from me. He seemed so proud to have stretched the imaginary elastic band between us.

It is however such a differnet world we live in now compared to my own childhood. I remember being sent across the road to the corner shop for bread and milk and getting into trouble for talking to a stranger. You see, I had taken longer than usual to return home and expressed much excitement to my mother at having made a new friend. We were both both 3.5 years old and are still friends today.

I must have been much older when I started catching the bus into town to run messages for my mum. Maybe 8 or 9 years old. I recall freaking out once when I spotted my Dad’s car driving through the main street earlier than arranged to collect me on his way home from work. I somehow confused myself and started crying.

I was spotted in my state of distress and bundled off into a car with a kind man who drove me home. Yes he was a stranger but I just wanted to get home. At the time I didnt understand my mum’s fury but appreciated her comment that perhaps I wasnt quite old enough to venture so far. In a time of no mobile phones, I cant imagine how scared my dad would have been when I didnt show up at the pick up point.

Some time later when I was obviously thought to be old enough, I remember having a shopping list of items to pick up for my mum in town. It was just before Xmas and I had to buy Madera Wine from the bottle shop. I felt so embrassed that the booze dude wouldnt sell me alcohol and I cried saying I would get into trouble if I didnt take it home for mum to make the Xmas cake. The dude phoned my mum and once my story was confirmed, I was sold the wine. I must have been 10 or 11 years old.

Well I cant imagine sending my own little children off to the shops in the next street to run my messages and I know what would happen if I sent them up to the local bottle shop for me. What will become of my children though without the opportunity for pure independance at a young age?

My mum says I was born independant which apparently explains leaving home at 17, moving to the BIG SMOKE at 18 and then heading off overseas at 22 not returning till I was 31. Surely some of it had to do with opportunities at a young age to stretch that elastic band between mother and child. I am at a loss as to how to replicate it with my own children.

A blended family ballet

March 22 2008

I have a dance routine I’ve been working on for the past 5 years. The small important audience appear dependant on the success of my performances. My dance steps are usually gracefully precise ensuring that there are smiles on their faces and warm secure hearts beating in their chests.

At times I get so lost within my character, my imagination tricks me into believing I am a part of the audience, and I change my dance steps accordingly until I trip and fall flat on my face. I feel humiliated as I lay sprawled in my tutu while being reminded of my role.

While I have no doubt that the audience appreciates and adores my dance routine, their applause is so much fainter than the gasps exhaled when I fall during any improvised steps. After burying my shame, I stand once again on the stage and continue the performance they seek and I weave my magic around them to provide their longed for sense of belonging and kinship.

Only when alone, do I sometimes allow myself to take a peek at my true self beneath the rouge. To slip out of character, away from the stage, is always a lonely and conflicting experience. After indulging in a little private self pity, I powder my cheeks and then prance off ready to perform on cue.

It is time to blog

March 19 2008

I regularly read a friends blog. She has a new baby therefore it’s impossible to know when it is a “good time” to phone and catch up. Instead, I read her blogs and feel quite intimately familiar with both her and her baby boy. The current world’s technology allows me to feel closer to those I love yet have little time with. What a bizarre world we live in but hey….it works for me.
Perhaps it’s time to subject the world to my own drivel.

I affectionately recall the first blog I ever read by step son no.2. It was a simple statement “I hate blogs” so perhaps he won’t be reading my recollections of life however there may be others who do BUT it doesn’t really matter. It’s kind of like a Shirley Valentine type of experience but instead of saying “hello wall” and conversing about whatever ails me at the time, I could perhaps use my blog to reflect/moan/rejoice etc about the very exciting and fulfilling life I find myself leading.

Is it just a woman’s thing to love to talk? I’m a woman, who works from home and sees the world predominately through the eyes of a 4 year old son and a 17 month old daughter between glimpses of the “outside world” via the internet and a largely dysfunctional sector of society I am paid to write about. My gorgeous husband is like a scout for information on the “outside world”. He comes home from taking the kids out on yet another fabulous adventure and then goes off to work and returns to share “grown up” conversation with me which usually starts off with the kids and then expands to many glorious non parenting related subjects.

This type of conversation is of course so fundamentally crucial to my sanity considering my frequent seclusion within our beautiful home where I play the role of working from home mummy. There are some days that I really have to think carefully to calculate when I last ventured beyond the veranda to farewell the children and husband and of course out to the laundry and clothes line, hence the handle moretolifethanlaundry.

So, from the confines of my office and house today, I have actually enjoyed a rather pleasant and productive day. I spent the morning writing new court report drafts thus adding to my bewildering list of “work to finish off and email”. More work after morning tea which ended up being lunch and then I made an Easter card with my son to send to my in laws, fed and bathed the kiddywinks (which involved a frightful episode of baby diarrhoea in the tub….bye bye squeaky bath toys) and then some crafty time cutting out bunny concertinas in preparation for my sons 4th birthday on Saturday which coincides with the Easter Bunny calling in on Saturday morning (he has to time it when the youngest step kids are visiting).

The two highlights of my day are 1) sitting at the kitchen table tonight talking with my spunky husband and 2) watching my son fall asleep insisting that he hold his baby sister’s hand……shame she woke up screaming about 45 min later….it was a lovely goodnight vision.

To finished off my first ever blog, I’d like to quote and old friend from an email I read from him this morning:-

“It is easy to take what we have for granted, but the way we live does come at a cost- when we forget that we become spiritually impoverished and alienated from the planet that sustains us- acknowledging this cost is a first step to reducing it, while offering a path to a richness of connections unavailable to blinkered aliens. Engage your senses and immerse yourselves, occasionally, in gratitude for what we have”.