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.

Better than nothing

Better than nothing
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday November 9, 2013

I am currently experiencing the unrest of family life. My husband is working overseas. The unrest begins at 5am. I hear three-year-old daughter padding down the hallway. No matter the hour, she wants to celebrate her dry nappy with a trampoline party in our bed. Eventually, she drifts back to sleep but by then, I’ve grudgingly accepted that my day has begun.

I plod into the kitchen and squint around for a teabag, then seize the chance to write in the stillness. Six-year-old son wakes at first light because I forgot to close his blinds: “Can we play Snap?” I silently curse the ABC for not showing Sesame Street at 5.30am. I then feel ashamed for wishing this child had stayed asleep so I could work. Does ‘having it all’ mean always feeling guilty about something?

I start being a columnist when I stop being a mother – at 8pm when I’ve scraped the last plate. That’s when my six-year-old finishes his homework and I give up nagging my 13-year-old son to start. It’s when small daughter nods off just as Beatrix Potter’s bunnies flee Mr McGregor’s garden with their pockets full of radishes.

I lug her to bed. I call into the laundry, that showcase of my domestic shortcomings. I shield my eyes from the grotesquerie of baskets overflowing with sheets to be folded and shove a load of towels into the machine. I’m desperate to flop on the couch. Instead, I fire up my laptop and coax my brain into paid employment.

Maybe ‘having it all’ means striving for perfection and arriving at mediocrity. Maybe it’s just some platitude designed to make me feel incompetent. (It’s working). Men aren’t trying to ‘have it all’ are they? They’re being told to find their ‘work-life balance’, which is the same thing – the pursuit of an impossibly perfect life.  

I thought I ‘had it all’ for a few manic years in my early 30’s. I’d had my first baby and scored my dream job in television. When Kerry Packer wanted a story, I didn’t dare disappoint. One Saturday afternoon, my boss shouted down the phone from Sydney: “You’ve got half an hour to get to the airport! Some clown’s missing in the desert!“

My husband was jogging. I couldn’t get hold of mum. No time to ring anyone else. I packed a bag for my toddler and we hared off to the airport.

A charter plane sat on the tarmac with my impatient camera crew. Two-year-old boy squealed his approval. Half way to Wiluna, I turned to see black smoke pluming from one engine. Feigning calm, I sang ditties to my son as the pilot dipped towards a makeshift runway amid an olive sea of scrub. He flared the Piper and we thumped onto a tractor-levelled strip in a deserted paddock.

We waited three hours for the rescue plane. I entertained my toddler making gravel piles by torchlight. We ate the shortbread from the ration kit and traced the arc of a passing satellite with our fingers.

After that aborted trip, I began having panic attacks. I thought I was thriving on adrenalin but I was unravelling from exhaustion and stress. How could I excel at my job and still be an A-class mother? What if I was exposed as less competent than my childless colleagues? ‘Having it all’ turned out to be no fun at all.

I’d like to meet the woman who’s actually having it all. (I’d like to meet her husband, her nanny, and her housekeeper). ‘Having it all’ now sounds like some decadent fantasy. The mothers I know who work full-time are too tired to care.    

I still yearn for the profile of a journalistic career. But anytime I now bemoan my lot, my husband cries: “Hands up if you have a martyr complex!”  

I care much less about perfection. I cut corners. I’ve set my body clock to Play School. At 9.30 and 4.30, I jam in an hour’s work while my small ones watch Big Ted goggle-eyed from the sofa. We eat boiled eggs and soldiers for tea while I picture their father ordering Peking Duck at the Manila Hilton. What if I’m now content to ‘have it all’ just sometimes? Sort of. Here and there.

I like to reflect on those rare occasions when I’ve generated a flash of mothering brilliance. That morning when I ignored my deadline, the gritty floor and my tax chaos and made gingerbread with my children.

Six-year-old was fighting his sister for the snowflake cookie cutter, but I calmly headed off two tantrums by finding the six-pointed Star of David one. “Look!” I whispered to my daughter. “It’s two triangles made into a hexagram – that’s better than a snowflake!” She chose the monkey stamp instead.   

That night, I sat pecking at my keyboard until 1am making up for the lost morning of literary excellence. The most satisfying morning I’d had in weeks. To hell with having it all. I’m aiming for half way.