Too Close To Call

Too Close To Call
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday November 28, 2015

As I passed the second-hand shop, a tableau of office bygones caught my eye. There beside a hulking green typewriter was an old teledex – a slim Bakelite box filled with cards stored in alphabetical order – exactly like the one Mum used as an address book when I was a child.

Hers was shiny and black and a font of all important phone numbers. At the press of a button, the lid would spring open to reveal the names and addresses of everyone I knew (and lots of mysterious people I didn’t). Mum was particular about printing surnames in easy-to-read capitals. As friends’ lives shifted, she crossed out old addresses and inserted new ones until some pages became a hash of geographical confusion.

I don’t know why I can still conjure Mum’s address book with such photographic precision. Perhaps it’s because our social lives depended on it. Or perhaps because Mum was always asking me to fetch it. For a long phone call, she’d carry her cup of tea to the armchair beside the phone table. That was my cue to make myself scarce.

Eavesdropping was a cinch when the home phone was tethered to the wall. I always knew who Mum was talking to because a verbal handshake began every call (“Hello, Pam? It’s Joan!”) Conversations played out while I half-listened, doodling on butcher’s paper at the dining room table, or doing my homework, waiting impatiently for her to finish. I didn’t dare interrupt, or try to distract her. Mum was either available, or off limits.

Today, my younger children are always pawing at me when I’m on the phone. The pair of them compete for my attention. They know I work from home, but I’m still expected to arbitrate every squabble and supervise every craft project. On deadline last week, trying to concentrate amid their myriad interruptions, I heard myself shout: “Just give me a minute!” Where did my children get the idea that their needs are more important than mine?

In the 80s, when I was a kid, parenting theory encouraged benign neglect. When sundowners at Mum’s tennis club turned into late night parties, I curled up under a picnic blanket on the back seat of the Corolla. By midnight, the carpark was full of kids asleep in their parents’ cars. Try that these days and you’d be arrested.

I marvel at my childhood freedoms. Graylands wasn’t the most genteel of suburbs, but I roamed the neighbourhood on foot, or looped my suburb by bike. On any slow Sunday, had you asked Mum where I was, she’d have paused, steam hissing from her iron, and shrugged: “Oh, she’s around here somewhere!”

As the summer holidays dragged on, I spent boiling January afternoons at the local pool, unsupervised. I’d time how long I could hold my breath underwater or bungle a swan dive with a belly flop off the top diving board. Friends were optional extras. Today’s parenting mantra – “safety in numbers” – hadn’t been invented.

“Keep your wits about you,” was all Mum ever said. Aged 11, flying solo on the swings at the park, I was approached by a strange man asking even stranger questions about where I lived. Heart pounding, I blurted “I have to go now,” and bolted for home. Mum suggested I steer clear of the park for a few days. Had that happened to one of my children now, I’d have put our street in lockdown and called the cops.

In one generation, the definition of parental success has undergone a telling transformation. ‘Good’ mums used to be those who encouraged their kids to be independent. Now, we measure our mothering by how well we keep them monitored, managed and tethered to us. We justify our ever-present involvement in their lives as essential to their survival.

A few weeks back, I listened to a teacher give a talk at my teenager’s school. He described a parent who’d rung in to complain about her son’s disappointing marks on an important project. “I don’t understand,” the Mum argued. “We worked so hard on that assignment.”

I, for one, am struggling to find the middle ground between being suffocatingly present or dismissively absent. I lurch from one parenting quandary to the next, filtering the parental do’s and don’ts proffered by others. Should I allow my 8-year-old son to walk the 200 metres to school alone? (Not yet, I’ve decided, despite his wails of protest.) Can he and his little sister play cricket out on our street? (Yes, but only if I’m there to monitor traffic.)

Half the time, I’m sure my worries and anxieties about what might happen are just scary thoughts – the continuous chatter and judgment of a too-busy mind. Best I stop thinking about whether I’m a good or bad mother, and start recognising that I’m both. And neither.

Growing Pains

Growing Pains
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday August 22, 2015

I have an acute case of cabin fever. For the past week I have presided over the house of gastro. The virus that took down 5-year-old daughter has now claimed its next victims: her father and brother. It’s Saturday morning and I am shackled to my mop and bucket after another sleepless night.

Teenage son and I are the only members of the family still in rude health. But wog and weather conspire to keep us in solitary confinement. Leaden skies dump a succession of showers. My 15-year-old is stultified. He languishes on the lounge as time slows to a dawdle on his normally adventuresome Saturday.

I glance at my sturdy lad. His six-foot frame engulfs the lounge. He flaps his two clown feet to eject his size 11 shoes. When did he slyly colonize this man-sized body? What happened to the rose-lipped baby who rode around on my hip? The toddler who loved lift-buttons and train rides and eating frozen peas one at a time from a cup? Where did he go – the small boy in a Batman suit who squealed with excitement when a bobcat arrived next door.

How much time did I waste fretting about bottles and dummies and why he didn’t like fruit? Why he still preferred crawling to walking at 15-months? Was there something wrong with his chubby little legs? Last weekend I watched him skateboarding at the park. He walks just fine. He outruns me.

I try to recall him at six; how he looked as he slept, the wobbly teeth and skinned knees, the night he choked on a squid ring. I revisit the everyday anxieties and triumphs of raising a child. If it weren’t for photos, I might not remember the smallness of him at all.

I squandered so much time second-guessing myself. How did I measure up to other mothers? On school mornings, I admired the stylish mums who swept serenely into class, depositing docile children in ironed shirts at their desks.

I tried to be efficient, but mornings were shambolic. Work calls interrupted breakfast. Library books went incognito. I could hear the distant siren of the school bell as we bolted out the door. There was bad language – mine, not his. Will he remember my tantrums over missing sneakers and scrappy homework?

I hope he blanks out the time I dropped him at a party an hour after the guests had gone home. I’d rather he remembers his night-time pyjama walks that cured his fear of the dark. Or the day we painstakingly sieved the sandpit for his missing first tooth. (When he swallowed the second one, we fooled the tooth fairy with a Tic Tac.)

Firstborns are an experiment. They’re good for shattering sleep, egos and expectations of perfection. They cop the best and worst of their mothers. I should’ve worried less and enjoyed more. I should have opened more cans of baked beans and done less vacuuming and spent more time inventing obstacle courses at the park. I didn’t live enough in the moment. I was always rushing to get onto the next job: his dinner, his bath, book, bed.

And here he sprawls on the sofa with his headphones clamped to his ears, tapping those giant feet to some rap song I can faintly hear but fortunately don’t understand.

He is finished with Star Wars and sandpits. The sound of a bobcat no longer turns his head. He knows how to tie his own shoelaces and make custard and ride the motorbike at the farm. He no longer needs my homilies about manners and why bullies are cowards. Instead, he wants bus money and long hair and privacy. He keeps his door shut more than I’d like. My baby has gone. I say this not with sadness but with disbelief.

I want to go back. Rewind the years and build more Lego. Play longer at bath time. Dig more holes at the beach. Fuss less about bedtime.

The washing machine interrupts my thoughts. It shudders to a stop, then beeps for my attention. I wander into the laundry and survey the output from dawn’s washing frenzy. I drag wet sheets to the clothes horse and begin another load.

As I pass the stairs, I see my teenager has flung his sweaty soccer socks over the balustrading. His wet towel is dumped on the carpet. I feel a surge of annoyance and trot round the sofa to chip him about laziness. He catches my eye, puts a finger to his lips and I see that his small sister has fallen asleep in the crook of his arm. And in that moment, I make peace with my mothering self. This weekend, in the house of sickness, there’ll be no attempts at perfection. I’ll be playing Monopoly instead.

Flushed with Romance

Flushed with Romance
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday October 25, 2014

My husband fancies himself as a romantic. He likes to remind me that before we met, he was lauded as a ladykiller. He says this with a straight face while reclined on the sofa with his knee rug and the cat. I want to query whether he’s being facetious or ironic, but I hold my tongue, because he’s on a roll. “Empathy,” he announces. “That’s what women want. George Clooney and I know this. A man who listens to a woman is a rare and miraculous thing.”

I stifle a snort but he’s not finished.

“We’re quite alike, you know, George and I.”

“You mean apart from the tummy?”

But he’s not listening. His homily over, he’s re-engrossed in the sports pages.

I can’t decide whether to be annoyed or amused. Instead, I sidle over to the sofa. “No-one ignores me the way you do,” I say, and wait for his reaction. He noisily turns the page. I sigh and retreat to the kitchen.

I remember a divorce lawyer once telling me at a party: “Men need to be admired. Women need to be appreciated.”

“It can’t be that simple,” I replied.

“Well, that’s what I’ve learnt after 20 years of dealing with other peoples’ misery.”

I felt a bit miserable myself after that exchange, but I’ve been admiring my man ever since.

On Tuesday night, my praise was appreciated with flowers. My Don Juan walked in the door with three droopy yellow tulips and a sprig of baby’s breath strangled by a tourniquet of red cellophane. ”Servo flowers are underrated,” he said, and plonked my bouquet on the kitchen bench. One tulip surrendered its petals on impact.

I gave him a squeeze of thanks, untangled the plastic and trimmed the slimy stems.

On Thursday night, when he arrived home and suggested a date night, I was delighted. And suspicious. I scrambled for the shower anyway. I shaved my legs. Put on a face and a silky dress. High-heels. I emerged in record time, excited.

There in the doorway, stood my date wearing a pair of fawn desert boots; at the other end was a lime-green beanie masking his forehead. Over his office shirt, he’d thrown a black fleecy vest and zipped it up to his chin. I was speechless. “What?” he said, goading me. “We’re walking. My head gets cold.”

I bravely said nothing and kissed the children goodnight. Teenage son smirked as I shut the front door.

We strolled through the darkening park, holding hands. I remembered how it felt to say nothing together. The lamplight pooled on the path. A soft breeze rustled the Norfolk Pines.

We should do this more often, I decided. It’s marriage that interferes with romance. There’s always another load of washing, a son to be ferried to soccer, another stirfry to create.

I caress his hand and he smiles at me. “Let’s stop off at Bunnings on the way. The dunny seat’s busted again. I want to see what they’ve got.”

“Are you kidding?”

“It’ll just take a minute.”

We cross the road and I follow him into Bunnings, my stilettos clip-clopping loudly on the concrete. He salutes the old fella at the paint counter: “Toilet seats, mate?” and we’re waved towards Aisle 4.

A dozen shiny ovals parade along the rear wall. “How d’ya like your seat, Blossom? Honey oak, deep jarrah, red cedar?” he calls.

He points to a see-through lid masquerading as an aquarium, three rubber dolphins frozen mid-frolic above a plastic coral reef. “How much would the kids love that?” I try to look uninterested.

“Righto, the Caroma Uniseat with Germguard looks like us,” he pronounces, unhooking a moulded ensemble in cling wrap.

“We’re not getting it now, surely?” I plead, tripping behind as he heads for the counter. He hands two fifties to the checkout boy and tucks our new seat under his arm.

Around the corner, the restaurant is crowded with raucous diners. I spot an empty table next to a woman with a pearl at her throat the size of a Malteser.

The maitre d’ sweeps towards us with clipboard and winning smile. “Table for two?” says my husband. “And can you find a home for this?” He proffers the toilet seat, plastic flapping from one hinge. The maitre d’ casts me a sideways glance. I roll my eyes, hoping we can be allies. “I’m so sorry,” says the waiter, appearing crestfallen. “We’re booked out tonight.” My husband shrugs and ushers me into the street.

“There’s another restaurant I’d like to take you to, but I found out they deliver so let’s go home.”

He pulls me close. “Don’t be disappointed, Blossom,” he says, seeing the look on my face. “After I’ve fixed the toilet you can treat me like a sex object.”

Good Enough

Good Enough
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday October 18, 2014

Everyone I know tells lies about motherhood. On bad days, we lie about how rewarding it is. On good days, we lie about how burdensome it is. We lie to ourselves that we know what we’re doing. We lie to each other because we don’t want to be judged as second-rate. And we constantly compare ourselves with other mothers, praying we measure up.

When my first son was a baby, I couldn’t reconcile my zen-mother fantasies with the shambolic woman I faced in the mirror at 5am. That first year, I existed in a Neverland of wakefulness. I would slump on the floor beside his cot, my right arm wedged between the slats, trying to lull him to sleep. I patted my baby’s rear through a mound of nappy until my shoulder ached and my shins were numb from kneeling on the floorboards.

At last, my baby’s eyelids would droop closed. My euphoria would quickly invert to dread as I prepared to exit. Nervously, I slackened my patting rhythm, ears pricked for any change in his breathy sighs. My eyes, tuned to the darkness, were fixed on his face, alert for any flicker of wakefulness.

One last pat and I’d rest the full weight of my hand on his little bottom and count to ten. Lifting my fingers one at a time, I’d retract my arm from his cot in slow motion. My weary limb would be reunited with rightful owner. Many a time I crawled out of that room on my hands and knees, desperate for my freedom. That first baby upended my world. But how quickly the maternal brain forgets.

Baby number 3 slept even less than Baby number 1. My confidence evaporated. Four-month-old daughter was a constant and demanding appendage. I stayed in my nightie and socks until lunchtime. But at school, when the competitive mums at school sidled over to see how I was coping, I tried to look composed, cheery even. “Oh! I’m fine. Really! She hardly ever cries!” When my friends rang to check on me, I’d burst into tears and plead to be rescued from this sleepless insanity. (The last great taboo for women is admitting that motherhood might not be the ultimate fulfilment).

The tracksuit years, as a girlfriend dubbed them, are well behind me now. I’m less tired but just as uncertain. I lurch from one parenting quandary to the next. Should I allow my 7-year-old son walk the 100 metres to school alone? (Not yet, I’ve decided, despite his wails of protest). Does four-year-old daughter need speech therapy for her lisp? (Not unless her pre-primary teacher next year is Mith Thimpthon).

I’m constantly filtering the parental do’s and don’ts proffered by others. One afternoon last week at the swings, another mum looked on as I cut up a sticky bun I’d bought at Bakers Delight: “How’ll they go when the sugar kicks in?!”

“Oh fine!” I said. “We’re here for a while. They’ll run it off.”

“Good luck!” she said with a smirk, lifting the lid on her artfully arranged platter of fruit. Outgunned, I considered launching a defence. But it was pointless. She wanted to feel superior. So I let her.

Why do we perpetuate the myth of the perfect mother? She doesn’t exist. In public she brags about how her three-year-old counts to 100 but fails to mention the same child won’t sleep without a dummy in each hand. Perhaps we need the lies of motherhood for our sanity – to excuse our failings.

I’m writing now from a coffee shop where a toddler is shrieking for his mother’s attention. His wails are jolting customers from their conversations. I can’t concentrate. The youngster’s mother is oblivious. She’s fixated on her phone, thumbs darting over the keypad. Pinned by his stroller straps, small boy kicks wildly and upends the sugar bowl, raining a shower of crystals onto to the floor. The manager emerges with a strained smile and a dustpan.

If my mother was here, a doyenne of society politesse, she’d make her annoyance felt with a huff or a meaningful stare. (Grandmothers are the self-appointed vigilantes of cafe etiquette). But I can only imagine how many times a child of mine has squawked in a cafe, and I’ve been too withered by tiredness to notice my detractors.

The best ally a mother can have is another mum who’ll make her a cup of tea at a kitchen bench scattered with crumbs. A mum whose floor is shiny with spilled glitter and sticky with glue, whose family room is festooned with washing still too damp to put away. I want to hug mothers who confess to ranting about missing sneakers and forgotten homework, who screech about festering sandwiches discovered in sweaty schoolbags. Because they’re the mothers who’ve stopped worrying about being bad or good, who’ve recognized that they’re both, and neither.

The Parent Gap

The Parent Gap
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday March 15, 2014

It was the day before council rubbish collection. Clapped out washing machines and ruptured armchairs squatted on the edge of the road, homeless. Broken cots and grubby playpens joined the exodus, outgrown. I felt obliged to take part in the neighbourhood cleanse. I dragged the rusty skeletons of two tricycles from the verandah and dumped them on the verge.

Those trikes were once the pride of our fleet. As a toddler, my six-year-old son would choose between his mounts and we’d trek to the shops, his little feet pedalling frantically to keep up with my strides. When his legs gave out, I’d hitch his wagon to my waist with a rope. I’d wrap the free end several times around my wrist, take up the slack and tow him home. We went everywhere tethered together, he and I, with his trio of plastic wheels grinding noisily along the footpath.

And then my rose-coloured reminiscing came to a crashing halt. My memory served up a sudden and embarrassing reminder of parental neglectfulness… Somewhere between giving birth to his baby sister and showing him how to tie his shoelaces, I’d forgotten to teach my middle child how to ride a bike.

He didn’t even have a proper bike. He’d leapt straight onto his big brother’s cast-off scooter. We’d missed the two-wheeled stage altogether. I felt a jolt of mother-guilt.

That afternoon at the park, I got chatting to another mum as our tribes tore up and down the path on their scooters. “This’d be just the spot to learn to ride a bike!” I said. “Your little girl?” she asked. “’Fraid not!” I laughed, “my six-year-old.”

“Oh dear!” she said. “You’re a bit late! We just got our four-year-old a BMX.  We took off his trainer wheels when he was two. People would stop to ask us how old he was!”

I felt belittled, but clucked admiringly so this stranger could puff up with pride over her two-wheeled wunderkind.

On the walk home, I wondered if she realised how smug she sounded. Was her gloating a leg-up for her or a put-down for me? Parental one-upmanship, I decided. But that raised another uncertainty: Why aren’t all mothers on the same side?

I’ve spent many an hour agonising over my child-rearing. Am I too strict, or not strict enough? Should I stop trying to be my teenager’s friend and concentrate on being his parent? Will my children remember me as the  affectionate mum who served up crepes for breakfast and drove them to school when it rained? Or will they be scarred by my shrieks about unmade beds, misplaced shoes and wet towels staining the carpet?

It’s humiliating enough when their father pulls me aside to deliver a biting reproof: “Settle down, Blossom, shouting at them won’t get you out the door any faster.” But I’d like to think I could rely on the sisterhood for reassurance and a measure of compassion.

Perhaps being a kind and devoted mother is not enough any more. Parenting has become a competitive sport. Successful mothers must demand perfection of themselves and their children. I see mums who are exhausted from dragging children from piano lessons to acrobatics, from jazz ballet and swimming training to soccer practice and chess club. Forget trying to keep up with the Joneses – try keeping up with the Joneses’ kids!  

Motherhood is now a profession: over-scheduled, manic, stressful – much like the television job I put on hold to have some longed-for time-out with my children.

Twice now I’ve been asked why my pony-tailed three-year-old isn’t doing ballet or gymnastics. I try to look nonchalant: “Oh, you know, we’re just happy mucking about at home.” But right there, I’ve pegged myself as a non-competitive mum. Or worse – as a uninterested mum indifferent to her daughter’s potential stage career.

Here’s my quandary: What happens when our baby Einsteins and Shirley Temples grow too big to be coddled and coached? What if we’ve invested so much of ourselves in our children that their failures become our failures? How will our kids learn from their mistakes if we’ve engineered their childhoods so there aren’t any?  

As far as I can tell, my children are not gifted. Not one of the blighters has rewarded me by becoming a child prodigy. But they display all the genius required to dodge their mother’s requests to clean up their rooms, finish their homework and unpack the dishwasher. Who knows when they’ll discover their worthwhile talents?

In the meantime, I’ve committed myself to the park for the entire afternoon. I’m now determined to teach our six-year-old to ride a bike – because it’s fun. I don’t need a Cadel Evans in the family but I hope my youngster takes to cycling with gusto. I could do with something to brag about.

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.

They made my day

They made my day
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday March 23, 2013

The kindness of strangers is never wasted on me. Especially when I’m naive enough to believe small children can be good in a sofa shop after a lemonade icy-pole. It wasn’t the sticky hands or clothes that was the problem – I’d mopped up and they were spotless and un-sticky. Perhaps I underestimated the sugar-rush, but they were already euphoric from a swim at the local pool.

This was a day when two strangers showed me their capacity for tolerance and good humour. My children, who had been giggling hysterically in the car, wanted to go to the park. Instead, I took them to an expensive leather furniture playground.

It started out well. They were rolling around in a shag pile rug as though it was long grass. (Price: $1799, on sale.) They chose a replica Eames armchair each, counted to ten and madly swapped seats. (Price: $1950. Each)

Then while I was flipping through the fabric samples (inwardly cursing the prices) with the immaculately groomed sales lady, my 2-year-old decided to strip off her nappy and dress and leap all over a white leather sofa in the buff. (Sale price: $4050.) Her brother, impressed, threw off his shirt and shoes and ran half a lap of the cavernous showroom shrieking for his sister to chase him.

I made a mental note of the exits and then met the sales lady’s eye: “I’m so sorry, they’ve gone completely mad. Give me one second to round them up and we’ll be out of here.” Without a hint of annoyance, she said: “Oh they’re fine, this is floor stock you know  – you’re allowed to try out the furniture.” I could have kissed her.

With quote in hand, and daughter reacquainted with nappy, I decided to tempt fate by calling in at a gourmet supermarket on the way home. Already, toddler daughter was tired, and small boy was coming undone. This time, they really cut loose.

At the deli counter they went to town on the free olives on toothpicks until I lifted the whole tray out of reach and stood there like an idiot waiting for some staff member to relieve me of it.

Next my daughter decided to stack the sausages in the open fridge into towers while 5-year-old attempted chin-ups on the butcher’s rail. In the middle of this circus, I was trying to order mince for meatballs. And all the while, I was grabbing for one rascal’s arm as he whisked past me on the way to the free crackers, while I tried to convince his sister to ride in the trolley so I could manacle her to it.

A couple of bystanders awaited the results as I warned my children: “This is your last chance, I’m counting to three!” I got to three (and even tried “Four!”) but the rampage continued. I moved up a gear and threatened to withdraw all future ice creams after swimming lessons: “No , Mum no!” That seemed to work quite nicely. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an older woman approaching me and mentally prepared for a dressing down. She stopped and leaned in so no- one else could hear: “You’re doing a sterling job of disciplining those little monkeys. I’m a teacher of 30 years and I know a good mum when I see one. You’re going to get lovely adults out of them one day.”

I was astonished. I didn’t know what to say so I told her the truth: “I thought you were going to give me a lecture about my terrible parenting  – the kids are completely nuts today and the third one’s not even here!” She patted me on the shoulder: “Enjoy, you’re doing fine.” Then she was gone.

All day I thought about those two women. Two strangers who had given my desperate mothering their stamp of approval. In one hour, those two ladies did more for my self esteem than all the parenting books I’ve slaved over.

Most days I question my child-rearing abilities and they come up short. Am I spoiling the little one by bribing her with a jellybean for every wee in the toilet? How hard I should come down on the big one? His 12-year-old insolence would have earned me the whack of the wooden spoon when I was his age. Am I strict enough for society’s liking? Do I care too much what other people think?

With stares and frowns, society likes to judge women on their mothering, but rarely have I seen a dad chastised in public for his fathering. I notice people act indulgently towards dads and unruly kids. They’re off limits, earning credits for effort. Mothers are fair game. Why? When I see a tantrum in the lolly aisle at the supermarket I give the mum a wink and grin: “Having fun yet?” just so she knows I’m on her side.

Perhaps that’s why a stranger’s acceptance and encouragement is such an unexpected gift. Even more reason to say to two women who clearly remembered the trials of motherhood: Thank you. 

Making scents of life

Making scents of life
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday March 16, 2013

We were trapped. Sealed in a lift that was ripe with the stench of unwashed human. That malodorous cloud was a parting gift from the previous occupant. We spluttered out at the 9th floor. ‘What was that stink?’ asked my 12-year-old. ‘That,’ I said, ‘was some serious B-O.’

I can bring to mind a handful of occasions, (mostly in aeroplanes) when I have flinched at the smell of another human being. Yet the faint milky sweetness of a baby’s head is intoxicating. I want to drink it in, inhale the newness and neediness of life. The musky scent of my husband is the smell of belonging – me to him – comforting and arousing at the same time.

At my supermarket, it’s frustrating trying to sniff out a new season’s peach when peachiness has been turned frigid by cold storage. I see why people are embracing farmers markets as an open-air feast for the senses. A home grown tomato smells of the sun. It’s a revelation after shop-bought tomatoes whose scent has been all but snuffed out.

Sometimes it takes a conscious effort to be reacquainted with the persuasive power of scent. Coming home minus kids from school this morning I stopped in the park, underneath the Norfolk Island pines. What does the wind smell like? I’d never considered it before. My nose could detect something familiar and then, with a rush, I realised what it was: I was smelling the heat rising off grass sprinkled with needles. Warm currents of air on their way to 39 degrees that had sucked up the scent of pine and grass clippings. I could distil the essence of that February morning far more by the smell of the wind than by the sight of the big pines or the familiar screeches of the white cockatoos. I tried all morning to recall the scent of that warm breeze, but the memory faded as the day wore on.

Smells are the easiest and hardest things to remember. My grandmother’s white Morris 1100 retained its new car bouquet for 20 years. Try as I might, I cannot bring to mind that favourite scent. My brain offers me visual reminders instead – the cherry-red of the vinyl  bench seats and my nanna at the wheel with her pink powdered cheeks and a harlequin-print polyester dress. Perhaps smell doesn’t like to work alone. Perhaps memories of smells erode with time or are muddied by subsequent layers of living.

The 20th century French writer Marcel Proust believed some memories are imprinted more firmly than others by their smell. He wrote of a man overwhelmed by his sudden ability to recall, in vivid detail, the madeleine cakes he once dipped in his tea as a child. My grandmother’s Morris is my Proustian biscuit. Except I’ve never quite managed to capture the essence of that delicious scent.

The internet and smart phones have eroded my senses.The Net has changed the way I shop for a birthday cake and how I order the frangipani for the back  garden. Where once I was driving to the patisserie and swooning over the thick buttery fumes of so much cake, or gliding around a nursery exhilarated by the perfume of so many blossoms, now I am pressing keys on a computer with my sense of smell in hibernation. No need for it: at my desk I am scentless. (‘Senseless more like it’, suggests the cynic from the sofa.) I tell you, technology smells of nothing. It is sterile.

Unlike junk e-mail, odours cannot be fended off with a delete button. They don’t wait to be invited and they like to hang about. (Bad smells have no manners.) Prawn heads in the sun, too much fresh paint, big Jersey cows trampling their manure at the Royal Show. As a child, I wished the reek of so much animal wouldn’t overpower the delicate waft of spun sugar from the fairy floss stand.

I’m fussy about smells so it’s just as well I’m woman, not dog. If the sniffing power of a beagle is one hundred thousand times greater than mine, no wonder he loves to jam his snout against the rear of every dog he meets. That must be the same kind of rush I’d get riding the Magic Mountain at Disneyland. (Only a canine lover can stand the smell of wet dog.)

For me, the most perplexing smell comes as I open my front door after holidays away from home. In those first few seconds of walking inside I suddenly register what my home-life must smell like. It’s as though my nose needs reminding which house it belongs to. For a split second, I am a stranger to my own scent. And then it vanishes, replaced by the familiar sound of my footsteps down the hall.

There are scents I could drown in, float away on, never tire of: the smell of a child’s warm breath as you carry him asleep from the car to his bed, the nape of my daughter’s neck after her bath. Gingerbread baking before Christmas. Peeling oranges, the fragrance of my mum’s Oil of Olay as she braided my hair before school. These are the smells precious to a life. Perhaps memory has designed these smells to be recalled piecemeal, never whole. I can think of no finer way to protect their potency.