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.

Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday March 14, 2015

The train doors hissed apart. My youngsters scampered inside the near empty carriage, debating the merits of north-facing window over south. They scooted towards the driver’s door and clambered onto the bench under the largest expanse of window, a foot apart, each claiming the winning view. Babbling to each another, they pressed their noses to the glass as the train glided out of the station.

Teenage son and I sat down beside them. I assessed the couple opposite – a well-preserved grandma in a floppy felt hat and her pint-sized companion, a boy about the same age as my four-year-old daughter. He was sitting quietly, his thonged feet dangling, head bowed, transfixed by the iPad in his lap. Every few moments, he’d jolt into action, little thumbs swiping frantically at the screen, a chorus of bubbles noises accompanying his efforts.

“Next stop: City West,” sang the lady-spruiker over the intercom. My youngsters parroted her in high-pitched voices. They leapt to their feet for a game of statues. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder like the Queen’s guard, they competed to see who’d falter as the train lurched to a halt beside the platform. As the driver squeezed the brakes, small daughter teetered, then stumbled forward, collapsing on the floor in a fit of giggles.

“I win!” gloated seven-year-old brother as she scrambled to her feet.

“Again!” she squealed, resuming her sentry post as she waited for the driver to accelerate.

That’s when I noticed a flicker of disapproval on the grandmother’s face. Her mouth set into a grim line. I checked myself before smiling at her: “They love that game,” I said, attempting to humour her.

“Pfff,” she harrumphed. “The train’s not a playground.”

“I know. But it’s empty,” I said. “I wouldn’t let them do it if it was full.”

She wasn’t buying my mitigation.

“You young ones,” she said. “You’re the parents who won’t parent!”

It took me a moment to register her back-hander. I scanned her stony face for signs of amusement but saw only contempt. I was saved by the tinny train-voice chiming “Next station: Fremantle.”

My children capered by my side as I gathered our bags. My brain scrambled for a riposte but the woman’s snipe had thrown me. I gave her a conciliatory nod as I stood up, wishing I’d joined the school debating team. For the rest of the morning, I felt rattled. I deconstructed our conversation and questioned my parenting.

Had my children made a nuisance of themselves? Should I have discouraged their playful exuberance? Was train-nanna the more considerate parent for occupying her grandson with an iPad?

The little boy had barely registered the journey, let alone the view. He’d missed the train clacking over Fremantle Bridge; the vertiginous drop to the swirling water below. He hadn’t spotted the two tugboats ploughing in from Gage Roads, nor marvelled at the bulk carrier unloading its cargo of white Hyundais like so many Matchbox cars. His curiosity about the world outside his window had been stifled by the attention-seeking gadget on his lap. The virtual world was his babysitter while real life passed him by.

I, too, have succumbed to the charms of electronic child-minding. Our two-hour trip to the family farm near Collie is now driven in rapt silence. Our three kids are allowed to power up their screens as soon as we hit the freeway. The bickering subsides as we coast over the Narrows Bridge. I swivel to see who in the back seat is silently crying. I’m greeted by my trio in matching pose, heads down, headphones clamped to their ears, thumbs hovering over shiny glass. I no longer bother to point out the Old Mill, the jet-skis foaming up the river, the parasailers tethered to their harlequin canopies.

I miss playing I Spy. I miss the alphabet games that taught my daughter her letters. I miss the collective groan from the back seat when I suggest a round of Who am I? (An hour later, no-one wants our charades to end.)

Lately, I even pine for middle child’s frequent piddle-stops. They gave us an excuse to explore the bush. But bladder breaks are a rarity now there’s computer time on offer. (My lad would delay a wee through an earthquake rather than cut short his weekly ration of a Minecraft game.)

Our drives to the farm, the five of us in forced company, are now sterile. I like my family boisterous, not tranquilized. It’s no fun without smallest child whining “How much longer?” as we pass Jandakot Airport.

The next time we go to the farm, I’m banning the iPads. I’m going to hold court from the front seat and parent the old-fashioned way. We’ll have spelling bees and play Spotto. They’ll hate me for it but I don’t care. That train grandma has done me a favour. I’ve seen the future of parenting and I want my family back.

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.

Love in the Time of Lego

Love in the Time of Lego
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday July 6, 2013

Six is a splendid age for puppy love. At dinner, I asked my small son why 5-year-old Violet had taken his fancy over all the other girls in his class: “Because she’s the only one with a round head.” His older brother stifled a guffaw. But I knew what he meant, having a round head myself, unlike my children’s father, who has an annoyingly square head.

My 6-year-old was smitten. I watched him as he deliberated over whether to write her a love letter using red crayon or orange crayon. He settled on blue. Then he drew an elaborate aeroplane with two wings and two wheels and two little faces peering out from two windows in business class. “To Violet” he wrote carefully and drew a box with a love heart.

“Is she so pretty?” I asked him as we walked to school. He had his letter in hand, ready for hiding in Violet’s bag. “She’s as pretty as Pinocchio!” he declared proudly. I didn’t have the heart to tell him Pinocchio had a really big nose and came with strings attached.  

Violet asked to come to our house to play. My lad waited by the window to see what colour car she had: “White!” he yelled to me, “It’s bright white!”

I made a fuss and baked his favourite brownies. They sat nervously together at the kitchen bench, legs dangling, until he showed her how to swivel on her stool to make it squeak. In return, she demonstrated how she could lick the end of her nose with her tongue. He snorted and blew a cloud of icing sugar off his plate. Encouraged by her giggles, he took off his shoes and skidded across the loungeroom floor in his socks, crashing noisily into the French doors. She looked to me, alarmed. (Violet only has sisters). I gave her a wink and her little baby-face relaxed into a smile. The two of them raced upstairs to play Lego.

My own taste of puppy love was carnal by comparison. In Year 4, I sat side by side with a boy called John. Our teacher, Mrs Gray, barked at us like Cornelia Frances on The Weakest Link. While Mrs Gray’s back was turned, 8-year-old John turned to me and whispered: “Give us a look, then!” Never one to put risk before risqué, I gave him an eyeful of my regulation Bonds cottontails size 6 under the desk. I arrived at school next morning to discover he’d moved his things and was sitting at another desk with the new girl, a mystery brunette.

Puppy love can bite back. Last week, on the walk home from school through the park, my small son burst into tears. “Everyone says I have a girlfriend,” he choked. “The boys say I’m stupid.”

I hugged him and he wiped his runny nose down my sleeve. “Maybe those boys prefer footy,” I said, but his sobs came harder and faster.

At dinner that night I decided a family discussion was in order. I nudged my eldest son: “Your little brother has a problem – what do you think he should do?” “Get over it,” he mumbled. Dissatisfied with his disinterest, I pressed on, elbowing his father to bring to bear his lifetime of wisdom. “Pass the peas, champ,” was all he offered.

Undeterred, I described to my child what jealousy was, and how it turned people into green-eyed monsters and how everyone says mean things when they’re a green-eyed monster. “But you have green eyes all the time, Mum,” he said, looking confused. So I began explaining  about eye-colour and genetics, but then everyone started talking over the top of me about whether Josh Kennedy can kick 60 goals this season.

Later that night, after the children were in bed, my life-long crush took my hand and sat me down on the sofa. “Here comes dessert!” I thought, but all I got was a dressing down: “Back off blossom” he began, “He’s six, for goodness sake – big deal if he cops it for being friends with a girl? It’s a non-issue.”

I felt miffed, then patronised, then guilty. Had I become one of those parents I rail against: the ones who stage manage their offspring? Call them what you want: helicopter parents, hot-house parents, over-parenting parents. Had my solicitude made my son all the more anxious? And was I teaching him to be resilient, to stand up for himself?

Maybe all he needed that Friday afternoon was a pat on the back: “It’ll be all right kiddo – hey! Let’s go to the park.” That’s what his father would have said.

In the car yesterday, on the way to the dentist, I asked after Violet: “Would you like her to come over again honey?” “Sure, Mum” came the reply, “you can make cupcakes with her while I go to Jake’s house and play Spiderman.”

Playing it cool

Playing it cool
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday June 15, 2013

You have to be cool to know cool. I have no such expertise. By the time I’ve noticed the trendy young mothers at school are wearing Birkenstock orthopaedic sandals, that foot fetish is over. My decision to shell out $130 for a pair of cork clogs is the tipping point that declares them passé.

Proudly wearing my new Birkies outside class, I spot several willowy mums having their tetes-a-tetes in their new season zebra-print ballet flats. I flinch, but this is nothing new. I have spent a lifetime trotting at the heels of trend-setters.

Of course by next summer, cork thongs will be ‘in’ again, but I’m a laggard. Cool people know when to deviate from the manual. I don’t.

Over the years, I have tried to be cool. But the very act of trying is a guarantee of failure. Only once did I succeed – age 26 – by accident. After moving to Sydney in the midst of a steamy summer, I began taking long walks around my new city wearing ankle-grazing floral sundresses and Blundstone boots. I rode the crest of Bohemian cool for an entire weekend.

 I have often fantasised about parting a sea of admirers with my ‘indefinable something,’ and hearing people whisper in my wake: “Look at that! She’s got it!” Instead, I clumsily part crowds with a stroller festooned with lumpish bags of groceries. My darting toddler has only two speeds: accelerating and flat out. My scooterised 6-year-old gives chase, as pedestrians scatter for safety. Twelve-year-old son walks three paces behind hoping no-one will guess he belongs to this vagabond family.

My eldest son and I used to be inseparable. He idolised me, and I was captivated by his boyish charms. Now he’s like a boyfriend I’ve grown tired of, but feel obligated to keep. We have rare moments of the old magic, but mostly I can’t remember what I saw in him. He now maintains a veneer of cheesed-off indifference, and I scrabble to keep him connected to the family flock.

 I have tried pointing out to him that every generation thinks it’s cooler than the one before. “Yeah right!” he grunts. I’ve even suggested that he become a trailblazer at school by resurrecting the 80’s exclamation Mint! with his mates. I tell him: “It’s such a great word honey! It even feels cool saying it…. Mint! And you know what? When everyone’s saying Mint! you can start saying Mintox! That’s for things beyond Mint!” He sighs and shakes his head: “Yep Mum, that’s a fully sick idea, one of your best.” Then he adds: “Please don’t come to Assembly this week. I can’t stand the embarrassment.”

If I had street cred, everyone would want to talk like me and that would be Mint!  Lacking street cred, I pretend to be hip on Facebook instead.

Social media has done cool people a disservice – it levels the playing field by allowing everyone to appear at their best. Facebook is an illusion – it encourages users to showcase only their prettiest, wittiest side. On Facebook, we can all be sophisticates posting our snappiest thoughts and most flattering photos. My cool friends say Facebook has had its day.

And so has Twitter, says my 14-year-old God-daughter: “Who does Twitter anymore?” she scowls, “It’s so, like, dumb.” Then she rolls her eyes at me: “Don’t you get it? When the Mums start doing it, it’s so, like – over.” 

My bookclub, however, is still avant-garde after thirteen years. Twelve of us meet every six weeks to escape the twenty-seven offspring we have outputted since our club started. (We gave up reading the designated book years ago – Bridget Jones’ Diary had became an annoying distraction to the more fascinating minutiae of each others’ lives).

In 2007, when I was pregnant, I discovered that one book club girlfriend was on Twitter before I even knew what Twitter was. It sounded like a cult but I could tell it was cool. She could tell me fascinating insider stories about how Apple almost called the iPhone the TelePod. The only fascinating thing I could think to tell her was that I had a crush on my obstetrician. “No way!” she said. “Yes way!” I continued, “And I think he’s secretly in love with me too. When I’m on the examination table, he always catches my eye and smiles down at me through the gaps in the stirrups.””You dope,” she said, “He bats for the other side,” and sashayed off to fill her glass. I felt decidedly uncool.

I’ve decided the essence of cool, is indifference. And I am never indifferent. Instead, I made sure I married a man so laid back that at least my offspring have a 50-percent chance of being cool. And if the gene pool fails them, I’ll tell them to be proud of a mother who was uncool before uncool was cool.

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.

Doctor’s Orders

Doctor’s Orders
Ros Thomas
The West Weekend Magazine
Published January 19, 2013

What is it about growing up in Perth that sticks to me like beach sand whipped up by the Freo doctor? Remembering mums and dads struggling to wrap wet kids in flapping towels. Brothers and sisters duck-diving under waves trying to stall their departure until someone shouts over the howling wind: “Icecreams for kids who help carry!” Everyone searching for their thongs.

Try explaining to someone who’s not a native: “Hey! I think the doctor’s in” – that bastard-saint of bluster and balm so familiar to Perth beach-goers. The sea breeze that’s welcome relief from yet another stinking hot day, but the killjoy that makes the beach so unpleasant everyone packs up and heads back to the baking car. As a kid, the bitumen was always so hot you had to stand on your towel until there was a break in the traffic. Back then, as we drove away from the sinking sun with all the windows open, I would take one last look back at the ocean, sun-dappled but choppy now. One last laugh at the seagulls being buffeted sideways as they swooped down to the fish and chip wrappers on the grass.

Thirty years later, these are the memories that hallmark an Australian childhood. We must tell our children how we tortured the Hills Hoist in the backyard, how it made terrible creaks and groans that brought Mum outside to tell us off. We, too, now have the buffalo lawn, and another generation of kids knows the sting of grass cuts from rolling around on it. Someone still gets sent inside to fetch the calamine lotion. And little ones still go to bed in shortie pyjamas with the fan on full bore, legs covered in pink calamine dots.

I want my children to know by instinct all these ways of being Australian. I want to hear them squealing  as they jump on the trampoline while Papa squirts them with the hose. I want them to know that the best thirst quencher is a slab of cold watermelon; that the hot plate needs a slosh of beer before you cook a dozen snags. I think back to all those backyard barbies where Uncle Hughie would send me inside for the tomato sauce (“Get the dead horse for me will ya Rosi-gal!”) I would sit by his elbow and marvel as he drowned his steak in it.

Killing flies was small-game hunting when Mum handed us the red plastic swatters she kept on top of the fridge. (Fly spray was expensive and only for special occasions.) Anyone who didn’t shut the flyscreen door got a peeved: “Were you born in a tent?!”

I’d spend Sunday afternoons on the swings at the park with a girlfriend from six houses up. Sometimes we’d vanish to the corner deli to play Pinball while we waited for Countdown to start. We’d blow our pocket money in an hour, but a dollar lasted for ages and Smarties were three for a cent.

I try to give my 12 year old son the same long leash –  let him skateboard round the streets and vanish ‘up the shops’ with a mate. I hope he’s sensible enough not to take for granted the freedoms  I give him, because I feel uneasy every time I let him out the door. At the same age, I was horsing around at the local pool for hours, only coming home when I was hungry.

I spent most Saturday afternoons unsupervised at the tennis club, racing my blue bike up and down the driveway, or hitting balls up against the clubhouse wall. The members’ last sets always seemed the longest – waiting around for the grown-ups to finish play because then we were allowed a packet of chips and a bottle of red creaming soda. With a paper straw. We didn’t get in the way of the adults socialising: we were part of a family, not the centre of attention.

All those sunburns, and heat rashes, and chafing from too much sand in our bathers – the small but vivid discomforts of an Australian summer.  How many times did I slather myself in baby oil and lie out in the backyard to summons the New Year’s tan? That night, I’d be soaking in a bath loaded with bicarb soda to take the sting out of red shoulders. My childrens’ peachy skins will be saved by sunscreen and long sleeved rashies. And the comfort of air-conditioning.

I have promised my children we will go to the beach every single day of these holidays. Their father thinks that’s way too much effort. But I have chosen to ignore the sand-pit in the car and the endless wet towels. Rather, the kids and I are now craving our daily dose of sea and salt. With each swim, a new generation of Aussies is laying down a patina of beachside memories. I hope these memories will be easily retrieved when in years to come, someone asks them: “So what was it like growing up in Perth?” Or better still: “Who’s this Freo Doctor?”