Family

There comes a point as a mother, when the days are too hard and too long and you wonder how you’re going to get through them. When you stand under the shower and dread having to get out and look at the mess that was caused while you washed your hair and scoured the dirt from your fingernails (you selfish bitch).

When you know that someone needs to take over, because if you yell anymore, you’re going to lose your voice and while the lack of yelling seems maybe preferable, then they go and do something else and TIME OUT screams out of your mouth before you can stop it and you’re left swearing at an empty room, while you clean up things, a-fucking-gain.

When you wake up to an entire tin (a new tin) of drinking chocolate tipped on the floor, and the washing has been tipped out of the baskets so that the baskets can be used for climbing on, and paint is open on your computer one hundred times and you think that maybe some emails have been deleted, but you can’t tell and you wonder – how did all this happen while I was only 10 metres away? how silently does she move, so as not to wake me?

You seriously consider putting locks on the kitchen taps, but how the fuck do you lock a tap and TURN THE GODDAMNED WATER OFF and you’re swearing and she runs away, not crying, but trying to avoid the yelling. Only she pulls all the insides out of the textas and draws on the walls with them and how many hours until bedtime?

When you’re 3 steps behind her all day, trying to maintain the chaos while your head wants to explode and you kind of wish you owned a jumping castle (with a lockable door) so you could throw her in there and leave her to bounce off the walls, somewhere that wasn’t quite so destructive.

And she sings the same 10 words over and over for 30 minutes until your head wants to explode and you snap and she screams at you BUT I AM TRYING TO SING and goes back to what she was doing and you wonder how the fuck you’re meant to get through this, why me? why us?

And you want to run away, outside, with your camera maybe, or a block of chocolate and some ear muffs, so that you can’t hear the strangled screaming from inside the house when the children notice that you’re gone and want to hang around your neck. But you can’t, because the mayhem and destruction aren’t worth it.

***

There is something I’m meant to be doing today, something nice, something that will save my sanity, by allowing me to sit with other mothers and drop the ball just a little while she fails to complete anything set in front of her. I don’t want to. I don’t want to take her out of the house because all I’ve done is yell and all she’s done is tip out drinking chocolate and upend bookshelves and hit her brother and destroy everything and send me insane.

But I will wrestle her into the shower and I will force her to get dressed and have her hair brushed and get in the car and I will ignore the screams until eventually, we will be somewhere else and yet again, I won’t be getting anything done that needs doing, but I won’t be killing my children and that’s always a bonus, right? And the other mothers will recognise that tiny piece of insanity in my eyes and smile at us, knowing that they’ve been here too.

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I didn’t want to go outside when my son stood wailing at the baby gate, crying for ‘ow-side!’ I wanted to stay inside and hibernate, curling up with my book and a hot drink. I didn’t want to have to do anything, just be alone inside my head.

Instead, I took him outside to join his sister in running around the paddocks.

And the look on his face was worth it as I opened the front door and he, newly clad in bright blue gumboots, clomped out to join his father.

It was worth it when we grabbed some wheat and fed the chooks and ducks, together.

It was worth it, to hear him calling duck-duck-duck-duck as he tried to chase them a little.

It was worth it.

He spent the first 10 minutes we were outside happily exclaiming ‘am ow-side! am ow-side!’

He chased a duck and paddled in the water. He stomped through a mud puddle and ran around the tyre arena. He helped to check for eggs and chased his sister.

And finally, he asked to be picked up and we came inside, to eat lunch and nap.

It was worth braving the cold and bitter wind. It was worth not getting to write what I was going to write. It was worth not curling up with a book.

It was worth all that, just to see his face light up as he called ‘Am ow-side!’ to me every few steps through the grass.

Seems I’m not the only one who hates the indoor isolation of winter.

And we’ll be going ow-side more often.

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