In sickness and in guilt

In sickness and in guilt
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday April 27, 2013

Being house-bound makes me queasy. So when our family of five was sidelined with gastro for thirty-six hours straight, I was positively bilious. No sooner did one of us emerge from the fug of sickness, than another would vanish into a darkened bedroom with bucket and towels.  

That virus was so potent it took down grown man and small child with equal ease. But its curse was also a blessing, because that bug set me free from all domestic chores for an entire weekend. I did no cooking because no-one could stand the sight of food. I did no tidying up, no washing or folding because everyone else was too ill to care. But by Monday, I was post-viral and suffering a motherload of guilt.

Here I was, ignoring the mounting pile of sweaty sheets and dry cracker crumbs, sitting cross-legged on the floor doing jigsaw puzzles with my youngest. She was the first to recover, and I was the only adult still functioning. We spent two hours threading buttons onto string necklaces and making cut-out paper daisies with her pinking shears. I loved our craft afternoon even more than she did.

And then I ruined my maternal pride by feeling guilty: guilty that I don’t do this with her all the time. Why can’t I ignore the dishes, the bills and the dirty floor and play Snakes and Ladders with my daughter? After all, I closed the door on my career to stay home with baby number three. I was the one who opted for a few precious years minding the nest. And yet I resent the endless loop of housework that now keeps me from my 3-year-old.

The six hours between school drop off and pick up are the equivalent of a domestic nanosecond. That’s why a dozen tea-chests are still waiting to be unpacked three months after we moved house. Meaningless chores like cleaning up the breakfast dishes and making beds take twice as long with a small helper and her funny little distractions.

Most mornings we traipse to the supermarket like explorers tracking the source of the Nile. We admire the bob-cat machine three doors down as it loads house rubble into the tip-truck. Then, as we cross the park, we begin our search for cockatoo feathers to add to our collection. Feather-hunting is thirsty work, so we stop for a drink at the tap and talk to the black pup who’s licking up the splashes. The supermarket is still a sub-continent away. Some days I just want to nip to Coles and get bread and milk.

 Am I being a carefree, accommodating mother, or a feckless, frazzled wife? Mums can’t win: we over-indulge our children, or we’re too pushy. Or not pushy enough. We are suffocatingly present or dismissively absent.

Here’s my stand on mother-guilt: I am not tirelessly dedicated to my children. In the midst of a screaming tantrum (theirs not mine), I view child-rearing as hard work and would escape to the office in an instant, if I had one.

Am I supposed to think of mothering as a gloriously female biological function? I did once, but that was before I had children. Now I lurch from one parenting no-no to the next. Ranting is my latest imperfection. It turns relations between sleep-deprived mother and mouthy 12-year-old into a powder keg. Sometimes, the unflappable father intervenes to restore peace and I get sent to the naughty corner: ‘Blossom, settle down, go and take some deep breaths somewhere.”

I see classier mums and wish I could be more like them. Do they smile indulgently when their 5 year old eggs his little sister into breaking open a packet of biscuits at the shops? I do my lolly in public and feel mortified. For that reason, I can enjoy watching other peoples’ children behaving appallingly, because for once, they’re not mine.

Do men feel father-guilt? The guilt of absence or indolence? In our house, the perfect dad weekend involves him sleeping, reading the papers and watching the footy. All done from the left arm of the sofa, with the kids using him as a trampoline to the next armchair. I don’t think my husband feels any pressure to be anything other than what he is: a kind, fun and loving dad.

My mothering report card won’t arrive until my children have craftily turned into adults. I hope they blank out those ugly school mornings. The ones when my fury curdled the milk on my eldest’s Weetbix: “What do you mean, that project is due today? What do you mean, you FORGOT?!”

Please let them remember how many Women’s Weekly train cakes I laboured over, not the time I dumped their dinners in the bin when they whinged once too often about tuna pie.

I’d like to be remembered as the fun-mum, the one who took them on pyjama walks in the dark, who rode the train just for kicks and didn’t nag about unmade beds. I might be deluded, but I’ll think back fondly to that awful gastro weekend, when in sickness, I did my best work.