Response: The Tortoise and the Hare

The Tortoise and the Hare, first published in 1956, charts the slow deterioration of a marriage through the eyes of the wife, Imogen. Imogen is young, beautiful, and submissive to her much older husband, Evelyn. In the early days of their marriage, Evelyn found her somewhat helpless charm endearing. But fifteen years on, as his career reaches its peak, his needs have changed: he wants to be looked after. The more she tries to please him by effacing herself, the less regard he has for her. And the less regard he has for her, the more her confidence collapses. Gradually, his affections transfer to their neighbour, the frumpish, dowdy, overbearing Blanche Silcox, whose ‘figure with its bloated waist’ was held up by the ‘slender forelegs that unexpectedly support a bull’. Miss Silcox is effective, opinionated, good at huntin’ and fishin’, and at organising his life and everyone else’s.

For all that things have changed in sixty years, many elements of the story continue to ring true. My own husband is eight years older than me and has a well-established career which, like Evelyn’s, is in the law. I am a late bloomer, slow to understand myself, the sort of woman who has grown up enormously because of my loving husband’s care. In the early years of our relationship, I was overwhelmed by grief and struggled with everyday life. Normal activities like driving, meeting strangers, shopping, and working full time felt beyond me and, like Imogen, I was happy to spend many hours of the week doing very little. Because my husband has been patient, gentle and kind, there are many ways that he has husbanded me into being who I am today. But when I think what life could have been like had my husband been as politely, overbearingly selfish as Evelyn, then, like Imogen, I may very well have faded into invisibility.

There are also elements of Blanche in me. Like her, I can be very effective. These days I run a pretty tight ship, and the house is a reasonably neat, welcoming place. My husband comes home to clean socks in the dresser and hot dinner on the table. Bar the normal irritations of children, he has a comfortable home life. But The Tortoise and the Hare made me think, again, about how much many women, including me, still work so hard to meet the needs of their menfolk. Imogen tries and fails; Blanche tries and succeeds; I try and sometimes fail and sometimes succeed. My husband does not demand this of me; he never makes judgements if the house is grubby or I’m too wrecked to cook; and he does a fair bit of the workload. But I certainly do more than I need to make the house a home, whether cooking from scratch or folding his hankies before putting them away. Unlike Evelyn, my husband is respectful and committed to finding ways to share our lives; even so, the book helped me see some of the power dynamics that we unwittingly live out.

The book also recalled the marriage, and divorce, of several of my friends. Imogen is always polite and careful never to make a scene, even when her husband’s relationship with Blanche Silcox slides into a humiliatingly public, domestic, daily affair. And in one dreadful scene, Evelyn kindly remonstrates with Imogen because she has not tried hard enough to like Blanche.

It may seem incredible that a man could rebuke his wife for not making a better attempt to appreciate his mistress, but again and again I have heard similar stories. The man who left one friend and their newborn child because, since the birth of the baby, my friend had ‘selfishly’ failed to attend to his needs and he felt pushed into the arms of his (previously undeclared) lover. The man whose wife’s ‘preoccupation’ with their young children and her own ill-health ‘drove’ him to nightly consumption of internet porn, and to demanding the more brutalised sexual expression that had become his new norm. The man who left a marriage because his wife’s breast cancer was making his life too difficult. And so on.

These did not start out as abusive relationships. It was only after a long and gradual shift in the terms of each relationship that conversations in which the mostly victim was blamed for the actions of and abandonment by the mostly selfish were possible. Again, this is seen in the book. Imogen takes a long time to recognise what is happening. When she does begin to wonder, and tentatively frames a question, her usually polite husband explodes at her impertinence and lack of consideration for his privacy, and shuts down the conversation. Understanding that he will be considerate, polite, and gentle as long as she never broaches the subject, she leaves it until what was previously unthinkable has become so normal, so reasonable, so much a part of everyday life, that it cannot be challenged. And this, too, I hear from friends. By the time they realise what is happening, it is too late for questions; tentative forays are met with aggression, counteraccusations or blank denial.

The Tortoise and the Hare is an acute look at the power relations between many men and women, or income earners versus homemakers, and it raises interesting questions. Who is the hare, and who is the tortoise? Who wins, and what is the prize? Is the winner the woman who fully shapes herself to the man’s needs; and the rich, powerful, handsome man the trophy? Or is the winner the one who is cast aside and left with nothing but, perhaps, the chance to rebuild a life on new terms?

Questions are also raised about love, power, and work. What boundaries should be kept sacrosanct in a relationship, and how can one keep them or ask another to keep them? How much should one shape oneself or the household to meet the other’s needs? Evelyn works, while Imogen’s role is to be decorative and provide a sanctuary for him. How, then, does ‘working’ versus ‘homemaking’ affect the power relationship? Some things have changed since the book was written; now, both partners often work in demanding jobs. In thinking about Evelyn’s need to be cared for, I found myself wondering how we can find restoration and comfort at home when both partners are exhausted and the kids are ratty and we don’t have housekeepers or cooks.

These are all good questions, with no neat or universal answers. Instead, they need to be negotiated time and again. And while The Tortoise and the Hare does not offer solutions, it certainly describes aspects of many modern domestic relationships, raises questions, and holds clues to possible answers – and provides some beautiful, intelligent, incisive, and sometimes hilariously bitchy, reading along the way.

No suitable help makes it hard to be a minister's wife or even, for that matter, a minister

After all these years of struggling with work and not-work, I’m still struggling. I have days where I take the kids to school, drink a slow coffee, have a slow chat, then wander home and hang out the washing. I work for a few hours before it’s time to pick up the kids and leap on the after school treadmill. On such days I feel a bit guilty for not working as hard as my husband. But, said a friend, perhaps you’re not seeming to work as hard as your husband – and that’s a different thing.

There’s no question that my husband works hard, jolly hard. His hours are packed. Mine aren’t. At least, they’re not packed with ‘work’ things. I’m certainly doing the requisite hours and more of working and studying, but I also do a whole lot of other things, invisible things, that I somehow think don’t take any time. But when I reflect on them, they are actually significant parts of the day.

Take the other day. I razzed three kids up and took them to school, despite their usual shenanigans which required me to leave the room several times and breathe slowly and carefully so as to avoid losing my temper. Then I had a long pastoral conversation. I went home and worked on my thesis for a couple of hours. I ate lunch standing up, then ran out of the house to meet someone and do a couple more hours pastoral work and study. From there, I went straight to school and picked up the kids. One of them did a runner, so I chased her through the schoolyard and go to be That Mother who yelled. We squeaked home in time for piano lessons. I shunted all three through their lessons; brought in, sorted and folded three loads of washing; filled in school forms; washed the vegetable crisper; unpacked the weekly veggie box; prepared a healthy balanced meal; ate with my kids; bathed and de-loused them; supervised readers and homework; played a few rounds of racing demon; did the dishes with my six-year-old; got the kids to put their clean clothes away and their dirty clothes in the wash (which takes much more effort than seems reasonable); ushered them into bed; then sat down, at half past eight, with a cup of tea.

But my husband got home from work after nine. So I felt like I hadn’t worked as hard as him.

There are so many tasks that feel like not-work and like they should take no time. They appear on no balance sheet, and I expect them to fit into the cracks of the day. Filling in school forms. Paying bills. Planning and cooking meals. Buying groceries. Washing dishes. Sweeping floors. Mending. Any form of housework. Buying birthday presents. Most of the emotional work. And yet when you have three primary school aged children, washing, cleaning, admin, mediation, and food preparation take an hour or two every day.

The frustrating thing is that my consciousness is well and truly raised. I’ve read Marilyn Waring’s books. I’ve thought and written about the importance of homemaking, and despite my previous conclusions, I really do think that it’s work – in my head. But my gut still doesn’t really recognise it as work, or that it takes real time.

Last week my father, the historian, told me about a woman who came out from England in the nineteenth century. She complained loudly that there was no suitable help in the colonies, which made it impossible for her to perform her duties as a minister’s wife. It made me laugh, and then rock back on my heels. Because I am not the minister’s wife. I am, in fact, the minister. I am also doing postgraduate study. And I am the cook, the laundress, the mostly cleaner, and the gardener for a family of five.

I know all about feminist consciousness raising and The Wife Drought, and they’re all well and good. But it took a word from the nineteenth century for me to hear, quite clearly, that these other things are work, too. That, and talking with friends, and blogging about it time and time again. I am writing about it now as part of my remedial learning process. But I am such a slow learner. By the time I really recognise it as work, my kids will have all grown up.

You never know what might happen on a train

My youngest child does not like trains. The other two love them, so much so that on one occasion I was driving with an adult – no kids in the car – and helpfully pointed out a train going by. ‘Thanks, Ali,’ said my childfree friend, ‘I like trains too. But I’m getting quite good at spotting them by myself.’

My third daughter isn’t so keen. Trains are too big and too fast, the other passengers are too unpredictable, and she’s anxious that she’ll be left on a station platform. Given a choice, she’ll avoid the train, skipping outings and staying home if necessary. But sometimes, it's unavoidable; and last week, she needed to catch a train. She complained for a good twenty minutes, then suddenly yelled, ‘We’re going right now’ and marched out the door. I realised she had been steeling her nerve; once steeled, we left.

As we walked to the station, we chatted. ‘Remember,’ I said, ‘trains aren’t like cars. When you drive, you’re in your own little bubble. When you’re on a train, anything can happen.’

I tried not to think of the time on a train last year, when a man beat up his partner in front of their kids and mine; or the screaming woman we had encountered once; or all the other sad and scary things we have witnessed on public transport. Instead, I reminded her that twice recently, we’ve been on a train when friends have come aboard at subsequent stations; and how much fun it had been coming home from the city one night after a school concert, when the carriage had been full of school families. ‘You never know,’ I said, ‘something surprising might happen on this trip, too.’

We travelled into the city. Her hand stayed clasped in mine as we wove our way through the crowds and did our errands. Then we sniffed tea at the tea shop and tried a free sample, examined all the pens at the stationary store so trendy with the primary school set, discussed how she’d like to spend her pocket money, and shared sushi for afternoon tea. Finally, it was time to go. She sighed as we headed back to the station, back to the dreaded trains. I ushered her through the turnstile, and we rode the escalator down.

At the platform, her eyes widened. Three young women were standing there, chatting. They had suitcases at their feet, and one of them was holding a huge helium balloon emblazoned with the characters from the latest Disney movie. My daughter tugged my arm, and pointed at the balloon. The young woman noticed, and smiled at her.

The train arrived. We piled on board, and as it pulled out of the station, the young woman came over. ‘I’m going to the airport,’ she said, ‘and I don’t think they’ll let me take this on the plane. Would you like it?’

My daughter was almost speechless. She whispered her thanks, then took the balloon and held on tight. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ she said to me quietly. She carefully turned the balloon this way and that, showing me the characters and telling me all about them.

When we got home, she let it float above her bed. The next morning I found her lying there, a shaft of sunlight slanting across the blankets, her eyes gazing lovingly at the balloon. ‘So beautiful,’ she murmured again as we had a cuddle.

I’d like to think my prayer for a good journey was answered, even before I recognised that I had been praying. But there is too much violence in this world, and too many unanswered prayers, for me to rest comfortably in that. Instead I’ll say only that I am grateful for a small act of kindness that obliterated one little girl’s fear –

And you never know what might happen on a train.

Just wasting time

I once saw an engraved name badge in shop which read, ‘Hello, I’m VERY BUSY VERY IMPORTANT’. I laughed myself sick, and then rather stupidly didn’t buy it.

Because at my stage of life there is an awful lot of rushing about. Compared to many others in our circle, we’re not super-busy; even so, every week we hustle our kids to school, church, piano lessons, swimming, soccer and dance. While they’re at school we work and study. On weekends we work and study some more, and shop and clean the house; then, if we’re organised, we catch up with friends. Then the week starts and we’re off and running again.

It’s easy to feel the urge to fill every minute. Eating breakfast? Read the paper. Sitting on the loo? Plan the day. Dropping a kid at a dance class on a Saturday morning? Well, that’s an hour and fifteen minutes I can sit in a nearby café and study, and often I do just that.

I can be swept up in the culture of busy-ness, trying to form an identity by how Very Busy Very Important I am; but it’s very ego-driven. And if it’s all about ego, then no matter how much I do, I will never feel satisfied.

Do I have value apart from all my doing? Our society and my ego say no, but my faith says yes. So as a spiritual discipline, I practice doing not much at all. I waste time. Most mornings, I sit in the weak winter sun at the school canteen, nursing a coffee and chatting with whoever’s around. We talk about gardens and books and families and religion and politics and work and death. Then I tootle home on my bicycle, a different way just for fun. I hang out the washing, then hit the books.

I collect my daughters from school. We cycle home via the local park, and stop for a play. They shoot across the monkey bars while I pull out the newspaper and tackle the crossword. I catch the train when driving would be quicker; I stroll to the shops. On my way I see interesting gardens or a puddle mirror-bright, or just my own breath steaming in the air.

There’s not much to this spiritual discipline. It’s just about being present: with people and with gardens, with the sun warming the top of your head, with your cold hands and the way your back moves when you’re pumping the pedals uphill. It’s being present with your step and present with your breath and not worrying about what you’re doing at all.

And gradually you realise you’re not very busy, not very important – and how liberating that can be!

How to cut down a school tree

Before you cut it down, get two opinions. Ensure you can’t save it before arranging to have it felled.

While it’s still standing, visit each class. Explain what is going to happen, and why. Let the children ask questions. Answer them. Send a letter home to each family and let them know. Offer to answer their questions, too.

Hold a short ceremony at the base of the tree. Let the children tell stories. Honour the tree. Name the gifts of shade and clean air, and the place for birds and bugs and butterflies to rest. Acknowledge the countless times children have played among the roots, leaned against the trunk, and gazed into the branches. Say good-bye.

Have it felled. Have the branches sawn into six foot lengths, and scatter them around the grounds. The children will build them into cubbies. Have the trunk sawn into logs, and leave them in the schoolyard, too. Children will walk, climb, balance and sit on the logs, and watch the shadows dance.

Keep a special disc. Sand and polish it, and hang it in the front office for all to see.

Use a good arborist. He will leave a five foot trunk, and carve it into a throne.

***

A large old tree had to be removed from my daughters’ school recently. This is how it happened. Given the deep connections that many children form with special trees, it seemed just about right. Thanks Trevor and Chris and everyone else involved in the process.

We wasted money on a family holiday...

Hats off to all those parents who love the school holidays! Me, I enjoyed the first week. My daughters’ friends came and went; we spent a lot of time outside; and I was pretty calm. But the second week was something else. Because there is nothing my husband likes more than to go away As A Family, we went away As A Family to the goldfields. It was freezing, it was raining, and we were mostly trapped inside with no other kids to distract ours. My kids bickered and I sniped and it really wasn’t pleasant at all.

On the seventh day, I threw a tantrum. We were walking down the main street in Kyneton when I suddenly stamped my foot on the pavement and told the kids to go away. They shuffled off, then looked on anxiously from half a block away while I asked my husband why, exactly, we had had children. ‘I hate kids,’ I moaned into his chest, ‘I should never have had them. I was born old. I’m an adult’s adult and I like adult things. I like to look at pretty things in shops. I like to sit round in cafés and eat nice things that I didn’t cook and not have to tell anyone to sit down. I hate being kicked by careless feet under the table. I want to wear good shoes and have nobody step on them and I’ve had my toes stepped on eight times today already and I haven’t even had lunch yet and anyway we’re going to that stupid café because the kids keep jostling each other and I can’t trust them in the smaller one and why can’t they just leave each other alone…’ and blah blah blah blah blah.

He held me close while I pulled myself together, and then we went to that stupid café which is really quite okay. I ordered a double shot latte and hot chips with lime aioli and Spanish eggs. I had my toes stepped on two more times and was kicked repeatedly under the table and my kids clattered their cutlery onto the floor once or twice but thanks to the coffee, chips and eggs (such a classy gal) I almost felt okay.

It’s not that I don’t love them. My kids are terrific people, funny and gentle, creative and kind. And it’s not that I don’t love children; I enjoy chatting and playing with other people’s kids. But when it’s just me and my family, we squabble. The kids are at each other’s throats and I ignore it for a while. When I can’t stand it anymore, I give them options. Then I separate them. Then I explode. Then they get even grumpier and the cycle begins again.

As a family, we rarely bring out the best in each other. We need other people for that. Neighbours and relatives, work, family, church and school friends: when we’re with other people, we all thrive. We spend a couple of weeks each year holidaying with a family of six. With the five of us that makes eleven people in a house with one bathroom, with children aged from a young baby to a teenager – it should never work. But the last time we spent a week together I realised on day six that I was yet to rebuke a single child. Somehow, in the crowd, everyone just got on with things. Sometimes I did stuff with kids; sometimes I did the shopping and cooking; sometimes I went for a walk by myself. At the end of the week, I felt like we’d all had a break. My kids were lovely people, and all was right with the world.

Maybe the nuclear family works for some people. My husband certainly seems to enjoy it more than I do. Me, it’s something I’m stuck with, so I try to find ways to live differently. We eat with neighbours and relatives; we spend time with other families; we holiday with friends. But a couple of weeks ago we travelled As A Family, my kids bickered endlessly, and I blew up.

I reckon you could say I went nuclear.

PS – And yet again, The Idle Parent is shown to be right. From the Manifesto: ‘We don’t waste money on days out and family holidays.’ One day I will learn. Sigh. For my response to that most excellent book, click here.

Response: The Free

We hear a lot about American extremes, whether it’s gossip about the extremely wealthy, or reports of violence among the extremely disaffected. But what of those who will never be successful, but are neither on the rampage nor quite on the skids? For that, we once relied on Joe Bageant; but since his untimely death a couple of years ago we have needed to look elsewhere.

One serious contender is Willy Vlautin. Vlautin, who has worked in warehouses and at painting houses, is also a gifted and elegant writer. He writes essays and novels and, as songwriter and vocalist for Richmond Fontaine, songs; and he has just released a novel about ordinary people in the mess that is America.

The Free opens when Leroy, an Iraqi veteran suffering brain injury and posttraumatic stress disorder, wakes in the night. To his astonishment, he is having a rare moment of clarity. It has been so long since he has experienced this, and he is so profoundly grateful for the gift and the beauty he perceives, that he cannot bear to descend again into darkness and confusion. He decides to liberate himself, and attempts suicide. This is a framing device for the character-driven novel which goes on to describe small, good things (as Raymond Carver once put it) done by small, good people who are themselves on the brink of collapse.

Leroy lives in a home for servicemen with acquired brain injuries, and Freddie, the nightwatchman, finds him. Freddie tends his wounds, calls the ambulance and Leroy’s mother, and gently helps the other servicemen back to bed. As the story progresses we learn that Freddie is crippled by medical bills. He works in a paint store by day and in the group home by night; even so, his house is twice mortgaged and his power is about to be cut off. Despite these pressures, he finds kind words for the counterwoman at the donut shop each morning, and drops by the hospital between workplaces each evening to sit with Leroy and leave small gifts on his nightstand.

Coming in and out of Leroy’s room is Pauline, a nurse. Pauline becomes particularly attached to one patient, a young teenage runaway; and she also cares for her mentally ill father who spends his days on the couch watching TV. We also meet Leroy’s mother and ex-girlfriend, and numerous other minor characters.

Their interwoven stories are studded by Leroy’s PTSD-driven nightmares. In his mind, Leroy and his ex-girlfriend are on the run from the super race. Having been marked as cowards, they are being hunted down for slaughter. Images of war – hangings, shootings, bloodbaths – pepper his visions, which gradually reveal his self-understanding as someone who is unable to integrate his experience of war and is permanently damaged as a result.

It is difficult to write about decent people without mawkishness or naïveté, but Vlautin manages it with rare grace. These are no saints, just people getting by – but choosing to get by as well as they can, given their crushing circumstances. His spare style recalls Carver’s lean prose, spliced with Leroy’s Orwellian dystopic dreams.

Although it is a story about individuals, The Free also illuminates the toxic effects of untrammelled capitalism. Leroy joins the National Guard to impress his boss and keep his job, not knowing it could lead to overseas service. Freddie is bankrupted by private healthcare and criminally low wages. Although he flirts with potentially lucrative illegal work, the timing of other events means he is still shunted into sub-standard housing. Pauline’s father lives in cold filth for fear of heating and water bills. Others live on the streets or in squats, or get involved in endeavours that lead to prison. The Free touches on these and many other issues as it describes life in the corporatocracy and ponders where people on the margins find freedom. And while Vlautin has no paradigm-shattering answers, he does offer small and precious glimpses of grace.