Babymoon

I'm enjoying a babymoon, dreamily in love with a little one. I'm drinking in the smell of the back of her neck, the sound of her trilling, the softness of her thighs. It's not my own, alas. But this fortnight, a friend is recovering from radioactive iodine treatment, which means she cannot spend time with her little one; and while her partner is at work I am caring for their girl. What a gift!

Every morning she is dropped off and has a cuddle in my arms. We go for a walk, and she sleeps in the pram; she wakes and chugs down her bottle, smiling all the while. Tummy full, she lies on her back and grabs her feet; she examines her toes, or chews something interesting. Later, I strap her into the sling and we hang out the washing, dust the house, or pick beans and figs from the garden.

This little one chuckles at every tickle and blurt. Lying in a pram under a shady tree, she stretches her arms to the dancing leaves and sings with happiness. In the sling, her body nestles into mine and my heart skips a beat in sheer delight.

I watch her and remember how much I have learned.

I struggled to love and make time for my first. I was the first of my friends to have children; I hadn't held a baby until I my own. I didn't understand that she needed to be near all day; she couldn't be left for hours while I did Important Things. Worse, I had no emotional capacity to offer what she needed; I was so drained that the very idea of holding her often made me cry.

But she taught me well. Slowly, I learned to hold her; slowly I learned to stay in eyesight and wait until she slept before hanging out the washing. With my second and third, I learned these lessons more perfectly; and my capacity for love grew vastly.

Paradoxically, it is only now I have three kids of my own that I have the time and energy to add a fourth. When I heard that friends were struggling to find a carer for their child, I offered at once. There is plenty of room in our lives for a little one – and the rewards are so abundant, as I knew they would be, that I feel almost selfish in offering.

So I want to say thank you, my sweet sparrows, for teaching me so well, and for showering me with gifts:-

The gift of baby time: I have learned that there is always time enough. We can watch a baby kick her legs, we can sit for hours and croon and sing. We are surrounded by great oceans of time, and all that needs to be done will be done; there is no need to rush. My children taught me to slow down and fall into the infinite universe of a baby's eyes; they taught me to savour it.

The gift of generosity: I have learned that love breeds love. Not one of my girls has uttered a word against this baby who has borrowed their mother's attention; instead, they have adored her and speak of her as their sister. Again and again they show me that love is expansive, generous, infectious; love generates love.

The gift of cuddles: I have learned to love with my body as well as my words; now I'll hold a baby close against me for hours at a time. For the most part, this is love enough for a little one; and their loving body close against mine feeds me no end.

The other morning, a friend and I took a walk with the baby. He held her up to little trees and ran her fingers through soft leaves; he paused under dappled light and talked about shadows. We stopped for coffee, and other patrons dropped by to admire and make eyes at the little one; she is neither of ours, but we took full credit and glowed with pride.

These two weeks have become a joyful holiday, a delightful break from the norm. And once again I find myself taking lessons from a baby, who reminds me that we have time in abundance; that love abounds; that everything is fascinating; and that babies need nothing but the world.

PS Years ago I read Annie Dillard's stunning autobiography, An American Childhood, in which she wrote that her mother referred to her children as 'my sweet sparrows'. The phrase must have stuck somewhere deep, because lately, perhaps a decade later, I find myself blurting it out at groups of children; it so perfectly describes a group of little people hopping around my ankles, cheeping frantically, and stealing the crumbs from my plate.

Mrs Perfect, Slight Reprise

Mrs Perfect: As usual, someone said it better than you.

Me: At least I'm willing to admit it, and share the link!

Mrs Perfect, go to hell

Many people use the time of Lent to give things up, things upon which they are unhealthily dependent, as a way of investigating the hold those things have over them. This year, some friends gave up drinking to investigate how reliant they are on beer as a social lubricant; others gave up not drinking, to investigate the ways they might be holding back from social situations. People give up social media, or even all electronic devices altogether, and kids often give up chocolate, or a particular game or toy.

Me, I'm not giving up any of those things. I might need these props to help me challenge the one thing I am trying to tackle head-on, with, it must be said, no expectation of success. But perhaps there is dignity in the attempt!

This Lent, I'm trying to give up Mrs Perfect. She's not easy to give up; in fact, I've been trying to silence her for years. But in these next few weeks I am putting some serious energy into naming and shaming her.

She's the sanctimonious voice that whispers, 'A real mother wouldn't have done that', or 'If you were a better person, then....'. She's the one who tells me a hundred times a day, in a hundred different ways, that I'm not good enough, never have been, never will be. And it's more than time that she went to hell.

These are some of the things she says, and which I struggle to deny:

You're not a naturally maternal type. It's true that I'm no earth mother goddess. I don't breastfeed my kids past six months, I don't make my own yoghurt, I don't bother with a highly charged tantric sexual practice with my husband, I don't home birth, I don't knit, and I use the public education system. Worse, I'm shy around strange kids, I'm scared of kids in groups, and it takes me time to get to know them.

But what exactly is a 'naturally maternal type'? I have given birth to three children, with very little intervention. I have raised them as best I can in a relatively clean and loving home. I have cared for five other little kids while their mothers went back to work; and I am about to be trusted with a sixth. I spend hours every week with kids – kids in the classroom, kids in the schoolyard, kids in the playground – and the ones I know smile when they see me and tell me their stories. Their friends come over and introduce themselves and have a conversation too.

Mrs Perfect, I don't know what you're talking about. You're a silly old bitch.

If you're not going to be an earth mother goddess, you could at least work. By that, she means I should be back in paid employment and building a career. Her comment stings, because at one level I think I want a career, and yet my actions show me I don't. If I pause for a moment and reflect, it's clear why not. On the one hand, I can't stand to leave my pre-school kids in childcare, or even for very many hours at a time, with anyone except my husband; and on the other, I had perhaps fifteen jobs before having kids, and I pretty much hated every single one of them. Sitting at a desk and doing repetitive tasks in an air conditioned office turns me toxic. I hate phones, I hate politics, I hate work clothes, I hate commuting... enough said.

On a bad day at home with kids, a grindingly repetitive task can make me cry. But at home at least I can weep with frustration and let those healing tears do their job; at work, the emotion turns inward and sour. So no, Mrs Perfect, I won't go back to crappy paid employment unless I absolutely have to. In any case, what, exactly, is work? I run a household, garden, cook and clean, I read with kids and I write. Couldn't that be enough?

But if you were really serious about writing, you'd have written a book by now. Perhaps, I say, but I haven't. I've slowly written the equivalent of a book, but instead of having generated a great burden of hope, a mass of paper which bounces from rejection to rejection, I've put things up on the blog and had some fun with it.

That writing is pointless, says Mrs P about a thousand times a day.

I certainly have times when I can only see the flaws, hate what I write, and despise myself for having written it. Habits of self-loathing runs deep. But I write in faith, which is not a feeling but an attitude. With that attitude, I write the best I can about what is most pressing at that moment, then set the words free. It doesn't matter how I feel about myself that day. Someone somewhere may find my words useful; and I write in faith that they will.

That's all very well, but you're terribly lazy. Well yes, that may be true. For example, my father is picking up the older girls from school and staying for dinner. I'm not planning much, just half a quiche leftover from last night and a couple of salads. I will fret about this decision all day, and feel guilty that I'm not cooking up a storm; but the food is there, and it is very good, and in any case I'll probably bake something for afternoon tea.

Apart from failing to cook a three course dinner, the floor needs a mop, the toilet a scrub, and here I am writing. Perhaps I am lazy, but the writing exhausts me – and yet, for all its exhausting pointlessness, it feels too necessary to ignore it and scrub the toilet instead. When I'm finished writing, I'll sit in a chair for ten minutes before the after school onslaught begins. Better a dirty floor than to make myself so tired that I scream the kids to bed.

Speaking of that laziness, you're still carrying the baby weight. Well, it bugs me too, but it's time to get over it. I've had three kids; I'm hardly going to look like I'm eighteen. Anyway, when I was eighteen I was miserable and fat. I don't have a nanny or a personal trainer and, like so many adults who spend their lives hanging around little kids, I keep getting sick. Every time I get into an exercise routine, I catch another cold or bout of gastro, and that's it for a couple of weeks. You may remember, Mrs P, that I was up until one last night hacking away with my latest chesty cough?

Anyway, I suspect my kids think my soft breasts and tummy make for nicer cuddles. So there, Mrs P, you scrawny old prune.

Observation: Every morning and afternoon, my two year old runs into the schoolyard and throws her arms around first one mother, then another, then perhaps a child she is particularly fond of. A wildly confident passionately loving child like this does not come out of a terrible home.

Conclusion: My parenting is good enough. There is always room for improvement, but that doesn't mean I have to listen to that sly voice which tells me every hour of every day that everything I do is flawed.

Conclusion: Mrs Perfect can go to hell.

Confronting the violence within

Today is the first day of Lent, a period of particular introspection and reflection on the good, the bad and the ugly within ourselves. I thought I'd kick it off with a reflection on violence.

***

I always thought I was the sort of person who would never hit a child. And then I had kids.

I have discovered great wells of violence within me. There are moments when my kids, those fantastic people I longed for and love to be around, drive me absolutely crazy, and I realise I want to hit them – and as awful as those moments are, those are the good ones. When I realise that's how I'm feeling, I walk out of the room, or take a deep breath, or sit on my hand and pray.

Worse are other moments, when everything's just fine or at least only a little bit wobbly, and then something happens and before I realise it I've smacked. It's only afterwards that I register what I've done, and then I'm appalled, absolutely revolted, by my action.

On Monday it happened again. After a long day with a stubborn two year old, I picked up my other kids from school. They were foully grumpy, squabbling and slapping and snarling at each other and me. I understood that they were hungry and tired, so I sidestepped numerous confrontations, and instead whisked them home and put together an enormous snack full of protein and carbohydrates. When they had eaten and drunk, and cheered up a bit, I suggested a calming bath.

Two chose the bath, and here I must admit that I may be the only parent I know who loathes sitting in the bathroom while kids slosh around and drink the bathwater, but there you are; it bores me silly. Some days I take in stories to read aloud; other days, I sit with the cryptic crossword.

On this day, everyone was sloshing around happily until my four year old threw a toy in her sister's face. I told her to get out. She wouldn't, so I ordered her. She stood up and screamed 'I hate you!'; and I snapped. I smacked her so hard I left fingermarks, then sent her to her room.

Her behaviour was so minor, and my reaction was so out of proportion, that I feel sick. She was tired; I know she is playing the 'I hate you' card these days; I know I'm the adult around here. But it got to me so fast and so hard that my hand reacted before my mind realised it was going to.

My daughter cried for a minute, then dressed herself and began to sing. Meanwhile, I shook and wept on the phone to my husband; and I still feel nauseated by myself and the violence within. I feel like she really should hate me now, this awful monster who hit her; and yet it doesn't seem to have affected her at all. She's been cheerfully affectionate ever since, with no discernible difference in her behaviour.

It reminds me of being smacked by my own mother. She always yelled a lot, but she rarely hit us. The yelling was awful. I became a secretive and scared child. I'd hide what I was doing and withhold information because I never knew what would send her off; when she yelled, she ripped shreds off me. Even now, as an adult, I withhold information just in case my gentle and generous husband, who has enormous reserves of patience, suddenly flips. It's completely irrational, but the learned behaviour runs deep.

Maybe half a dozen times, my mother smacked; and the smacking was great. It was a discrete event, usually deserved; it was quick and clean; and, unlike the yelling, it didn't make me feel like a worm.

On one occasion, my sister and I deliberately drove her wild. We pushed and pushed and pushed until she finally snapped, smacked, and burst into tears, and we were so filled with remorse that we hugged her, and stroked her, and told her, truthfully, that we deserved it; we told her that she'd done the right thing. Of course, that made her cry even more.

And here I am today, sobbing over having smacked my own daughter, who despite it has continued to cuddle me and stroke my hair and show me infinitely more affection than I deserve. Yet again a child shows more maturity and generosity than this woman in her thirties.

This is not to say that I think smacking is okay; I am big and strong and it is abusive for me to use this power against the little ones. In any case, my children mimic the behaviours they see, so if I smack, then they will hit and it will all spiral down. But it is complicated – smacking is obviously violent, but in my experience words can be just as damaging – which is why I'm trying to unravel what happened that night.

I realise I only smack or scream when I'm tired, alone with the kids and have no one to deflect them to. It happens when I can no longer curb my first – and worst – impulse. When I'm feeling fine, I'll engage in preventative action, that is, make choices so that we never get to the inflammatory stage. However, last night, I was wrecked. I ran the bath, then sat there doing the crossword and feeling irritated that they were drinking the bathwater.

Instead, I could have taken a story book into the bathroom and read to them; I could have sung or made a few jokes while they were splashing around; I could have engaged in role play while they filled the plastic cups and had their tea party. Or, if I was cranky already, I could have avoided the bath altogether. Quite simply, if I'd paid enough attention to myself or to them, the situation may never have arisen. Even if it had, I might have been more able to recognise 'I hate you' as a tired four year old's request for a cuddle; this is how I usually interpret it, and a cuddle soothes that temper every time.

The frustrating thing is that I know all this. I know that smacking and shouting get us nowhere; I know alternative ways to parent and usually use them, but, like every other area of life, it's easier to do the right thing when I'm not tired. As to how to have three children and be talked at incessantly and engage in constant discipline and murmur positive encouragement and prepare five meals a day and do all the housework and engage in some restorative adult activities and not be perpetually tired, well, that's a puzzle I am yet to solve.

My only hope is that by confronting the violence within myself – by naming it and trying to understand the triggers – then next time I might see it coming and choose a different path.

(There are some great lists of alternatives to smacking – or screeching – on the internet. Try here for 21 alternatives, or just google 'alternatives to smacking'. You will find some creative ideas for different behaviours and different ages.)

Even my failures can produce something beautiful

The kids were exhausted, so I fed them early. I couldn't face either the food or the hour, so while they were eating I prepared something else, then turned off the stove. A stack of stories later, I caught a whiff of burning; extricating myself from a pile of daughters I found I had left a burner on. My adulterated beans were now a charred mess. I whisked the saucepan outside and dumped it on a table in the rain, next to a curl of chicken poo, and went back inside.

The next day, I flicked the burned beans to the hens and brought in the pot, filled it with water, and put it in the sink to soak.

Hours later, I was reading to my four year old and listening to our kitchen tap. It drips intermittently, and has for years. This is one overdesigned tap: there's no washer to replace; instead, the whole tap has to go. A new tap has been sitting in the study for months, and every time I go in there I look at the box on the desk and sigh. It reminds me that we need to get a plumber in, again; and also that we have a leak in the roof, a leak that has been around for five years three plumbers and a friend and which somehow symbolises all the things I have not done. The roof leaks; the paint is peeling; the doors stick; we have no fly screens; the trees are buggy; the backyard is covered with rotting pears; and there's chicken poo on the outside table. As the tap drips, I hear the sound of failure over and over again.

But this day, reading to my daughter and listening to the drip, I happened to glance up and see a kaleidoscope of light. With every drip, the light contracted then exploded, sending bright shards across the ceiling. The surface was alive with pure white light refracted from the filthy cooking pot.

Wedged into a chair with a daughter in my lap, the sun slanting in, I saw that even my failures have a beauty of their own. The burnt pot, the dripping tap, the leaky roof, the peeling paint, the fight with a daughter, the grief for my mum, the toes I step on, the nights when I shout: everything I do badly shrunk down to size, and for a moment I was transfixed not by my failures, but by a ceiling charged with shooting stars.

Sunday, 10pm

Above me,
the rustle of a bat
the soft thump of a falling pear.
Behind me,
chickens stir then settle,
crooning themselves to sleep.
Around me,
cool night air
the muffled voices of neighbours
the clink of a glass.
Below me,
my mother's wicker basket
a tangle of wet towels.
Before me,
a clothesline, some pegs,
my mother's hands at work
and peeking over the fence:
the moon.

Housewife / Writer

Last Monday, I went to see a new GP. As it was my first visit, I had to fill out an intake form. Like every form, there was a space for 'profession'; and, like every form, I left it blank. I hate to write 'housewife', and 'writer' seems too try-hard. Anyway, it doesn't earn an income.

The doctor checked my details, then asked me what I did. I explained that I was home with kids, but added that I sometimes write. 'Oh,' she said, 'you're a writer', and filled in the box, just like that. 'But I don't have time to write much,' I protested. She grinned. 'Anyone with three kids doesn't have time for much,' she said, and stood up; and I, filled with pride that according to this calm and lovely woman I Am A Writer, dropped my pants and had the most relaxed pap smear of my life.

On Tuesday, I took a daughter to a new friend's house for a play. As I was chatting with the mother, she asked me what I did. I explained that I was home mostly, but, remembering the doctor's office, added that I wrote a little. 'Does that earn a living?' she asked, one eyebrow raised. I found myself apologising that my husband earns enough for all of us, and so it didn't really matter – though in fact I did earn a little. 'Enough to pay for a few hours of childcare,' I added in a little voice, then felt so pathetic that I crept out the door.

Later I was filled with rage – first at her, then at the lovely doctor, and finally at me. Yet all three of us were operating out of the same model, society's dominant model: that a profession is the measure of someone. How each of us understood this differed, but the model was at the root of my rage, because in this model, I have no worth.

Although I initially felt affirmed by the doctor, on reflection I realise she dismissed four fifths of my life. I spend most of my time cooking, cleaning and fooling around with kids. These activities aren't always interesting or satisfying; but they are my reality, and they feed the writing no end. Without them, I'm not sure I could write at all. I can't dismiss them; and nor should she.

On the other hand, the friend's mother hinted that being a writer was suspect because it's not salaried. I regularly encounter the attitude that a good wife contributes financially to the household. If she has children, she contributes less than her partner because she spends more hours doing childcare and housework; however, her financial contribution is the fundamental indicator of her worth. I know many women who have put their kids into childcare and gone back to work not because they want to, but at the insistence of their partners that they 'contribute'; and I wonder who, exactly, does all the housework now?

I have no problem with willing women going back to work, and I understand that in many cases it's a financial necessity, but I reject the premise that a woman's contribution – or anyone's contribution – is measureable only in terms of economics. Other things, such as caring for kids, cleaning the house, offering hospitality and engaging in volunteer work make an enormous difference to a family, and to a society. They are indispensable, even if they're not economically valuable.

Would the world be a better place if I parked my kids in childcare, became a dental hygienist and added a second income to the household? Clearly not, although my kids' teeth might get a little cleaner. And yet the housework I do is so often dismissed, by others and, so much worse, by me, because it's not a profession; and the writing, because it's not an earner.

I found myself wondering when will the world – including women – value women's work: answering questions, wiping bottoms, folding clothes, peeling carrots and telling stories? No one asks whether I earn a living working from seven in the morning to eight at night, rinsing out wet undies and preparing meals and weeding the vegetable patch and swooping the vacuum cleaner over the floors. No one asks about income when I'm years short of sleep and woken at five in the morning by a kick in the kidneys from a four year old's foot. That work's a given; of course I do it, and of course it's unpaid.

And it is work. Sometimes it's so boring I could shriek; sometimes it's so frustrating and lonely and enraging and tedious that I could run screaming out the door. Other times it's fun, satisfying, enriching, enjoyable, or just a doddle. It's like any job, really: good and bad, except it's fundamentally relational, and it's grounded in love. I am lucky, too, that I can also write about it, and tell the familiar story. Whether or not the sweeping and the story-telling earn an income is really beside the point.

So I can't remain angry at the doctor or the mum for wanting to put me in a work box one way or another; they're just reflecting a societal attitude. In any case, the person I'm really angry at is, of course, me. I am the one who doesn't want to put 'housewife' on any form; I'm embarrassed to be such a fifties cliché. I am the one who feels apologetic that when I'm not caring for kids I'm not really earning money either. I've fallen into exactly the same trap as the doctor and the mother; I struggle to feel valued and, more importantly, to value myself in the work I do. Whether it's mopping the floors or stringing sentences together, picking up blocks or jotting down ideas, I still don't feel like it's Work.

Perhaps it isn't in the eyes of man, but to this woman, it undeniably is. And it's unavoidable. For all my ambivalence about what I do and how I describe it, I still have meals to cook, children to care for, and the burning urge to write. But can I stop being dismissive about it, to myself and to others? Can I claim it, name it, shout it from the rooftops? Can I turn questions about money into questions about worth? Can I write proudly on a form 'Housewife / Writer'?

The evidence suggests not yet. But someday, perhaps, someday.