You are an object of someone else's devotion

I look at your arms and chest intently.
In their direction, that is.
I am admiring your jerseys.

A different one each time I see you.
Hand knitted, patterned, coloured.
Hours and hours of devotion.

You say,
your wife has no interest in your writing.
I think,
she is a talented woman.

alternative therapists

If your life is a rut, then you should go see an alternative therapist. They will make the rut more interesting. Maybe even give you some jumping juice to get out of the aforementioned rut.

This, as a service, has to be far more interesting than trying the GP. If you tell Dr Patel that you are fed up with your life, while a queue snakes around past the small box of broken toys and the stop smoking posters and the pharmaceutical company advertisements, he might not even bother answering you. Which would suggest he wasn't listening. Which is probably why your life is in a rut anyway, because no one listens to you.

It doesn't especially matter which alternative therapist you choose, most of them having something new to tell you and a good deal of them are good listeners. Yes, you have to pay for someone to listen to you at some points in your life.

I have preferences though. I like osteopaths, homeopaths, reiki, shiatsu, reflexologists, naturopaths and herbal therapists. I've never tried all of them at once or even more than one in a month, but if I was rich I would. For fun. How could I be in a rut with that many therapists?

I don't go in for counsellors. What's the point of them if my neck hurts and I haven't slept much lately? I'm well aware that I argued a pile with my mother - I'm visiting remarkably similar issues on my own offspring thank you.

My latest alternative therapist has psychic skills. I heard that along the grapevine, specifically when someone told me I should take my son to her to find out why he had eczema. Took me years and a bad bad headache on a deep rut day to get past that little piece of information.

So I've been twice now. Two dead people visited the room during the first session and that turned out not to be so freaky after all. Particularly as only the therapist could see them. Last week was session two. I warbled and wafted on and you know, someone was paid to listen to me being indulgent! I have to eat 75% fruit and vegetables and give up bread though. No such thing as a free moan. Even if you pay for the session.

Which is why there is a pomegranate on my kitchen bench. Even the children haven't tried to eat it yet.

When I am finished

When I am finished being a solo parent, I shall go to the toilet alone. No child shall dangle a nectarine precariously above my knickers while they pull reams of toilet paper off and gesture towards wiping my bottom. While smiling. Don't tell me toddlers can't multi-task. No older child shall loiter in the door frame telling me how many hot wheels cars he wants, jabbering on while the nectarine which shouldn't be near the toilet anyway tortures me. Threats and shouts and bribery are all useless - I used them up before we even got to the toilet. We indeed, as it seems I am not allowed to defecate on my own. They know my limits. They know, both of them without discussion, that I will not waddle through the house with half delivered poo carrying either of them. They know that I really want to go swimming as well, so that is a non-threat that the mother should have given up two hours ago.

So I sit on the toilet, with my smiling assassins keeping guard, guarding against any independent move on my behalf.

It's a fun filled lark, being a solo parent. yes I know some people do it all the time. They get lambasted on the news regularly as though they should have the strength to bring their children up perfectly on five dollars per day and be there for them whenever they need it and when they don't as well and find paying work so they are not a burden to the state. In case you think like me that prostitution is probably the only thing with flexible hours, it turns out that that is bad for your children as well. Haven't those know it all types ever had sex with someone who turned out to be unsuitable? Oh let's not even answer that one.

That is all irrelevant, because I am only solo parenting for four nights and five days. So far I have done three nights and three and a half days. Through some incrdible quirk of wonderfulness, one is asleep and the other is entranced by Postman Pat on the CD. And I'm here writing because I can't face the kitchen.

I'm not that keen on the bedroom, because it has a lot less wallpaper than this morning. I fancied reading and Brighid fancied interior decoration. I'm not that keen on the dining room because it has the greater part of four pottles of yoghurt all over it. I made a cursory attempt to clean it earlier which prompted Brighid to tip three cups of water like a waterfall down herself, the high chair, the table and the carpet. Worse, she found the cleaning spray and came up to the bedroom where I had run and hid, wielding it like an axe. Those education types who talk about how good it is for your children to see their parents read - they never describe how it is for parents to try and read with an audience.

I'm not that keen on the lounge, because if I poke my head up there, Fionn might notice me and remember that I exist solely for torturing purposes. And for producing food.

But, the good news. I have done some nice mummy things this week. I took the children swimming. I drove forty kilometres to do so. I smile with ease at the teenagers swaggering in the streets of my small town. I say hello by name to the ones who have had the personal challenge of knowing me in the classroom. It is summer, and they can imagine with some relief that they might get a different teacher next year. But togs is a whole nother matter. I am not baring such expanses of flesh in front of people whom I last saw when I was making them remove bright pink jerseys in the name of being a school uniform nazi.

Anyway, we get to Hokitika pool and we all swim and for an hour it seems that I might be doing okay at this parenting lark. Not only are the alive and doing legally appropriate things but we are all having fun and I'm not skiving off into the garden. Some of the other mothers and grandmothers are a bit fat as well which is nice. It's never nice to be the only fat person at a pool. Back in the changing rooms, a skinny mum's child is having a tantrum. Not all roses that skinny thing. I try and ignore my children's interest in the tantrum. If my child composes a lovely story, or song or picture, it is wonderful. If they watch another child tantrum and then share their own personal version or duet versions have been known, with me, it is not wonderful.

Viscous courage

Viscous liquids are thick but nevertheless run down hill don't they?

I've been thinking about all the things I have quit. I thought about calling it an anti-CV. A backwards cv is a VC though and in New Zealand that is linked to being very good and earning the Victoria Cross for extreme bravery in war. When I was eleven, the deputy principal read us a book about Charles Upham who received the Victoria Cross for escaping from prisoner of war camps - twice I think. Twice for the escapes and probably for the reading of the book by the deputy principal. The same man who once advised me to count to ten before opening my mouth. Ten!

Anway I settled on the idea of viscuous courage, a VC which is a sort of slow downhill descent of good intentions into a run, an escape.

I was brought up properly. Clean teeth, lots of church, mashed spud, cabbage and sausages every week with carrots cooked for 45 minutes as well some times. Quitting was not discussed. Occasionally I attempted to quit my responsibilities by losing things. A beige jersey once and then on another occasion I managed to lose all twenty-something punishment sheets meted out for me to copy as a punishment for talking too much. Losing things was not an effective way of quitting though. Not with vigilance and a proper upbringing. I could try and mete out the same stuff to my children, but my son has observed more than once that I am hopeless at remembering things. Maybe they will escape propriety.

When I was at intermediate, an odd term for being 11 or 12 and at school in New Zealand, my piano teacher forgot to enter me into the theory examination. Hmmph. We all knew he only took lessons for the money. What carelessness. Anyway he rang and apologised to my mother, a feat of some strength in itself, and offered to pay himself for me to sit the examination at the next opportunity.

Ladies and gentlemen, I was given the opportunity to further myself, to advance the credentials on this vital document known as my CV and talked about even when I was eleven, and I declined. The rot had set in, fermented by wild yeasts from outside of my proper home.

From then on and for ages, memories of quitting are a bit blurry. Frankly I should have quit a few more things, like unsuitable boyfriends.

But since we moved to smallwettown, I have taken up quitting with renewed enthusiasm. First, some things to quit. Playcentre was first up. I fancied myself as a bit of an earth mother and all that consensus sharing and loving for the benefit of our little darlings might be right up my alley. Might. Might indeed. In just a few months, I managed to quit not one but two playcentres. Consensus my foot. A wavering wandering waddle of women who vaguely want to do something good for their children lead by women who should have been in the army. I hear Jenny Shipley started out her entry into public life and organisation through playcentre. I can well believe it.

So I got out of playcentre. But there was more to get out of. Gymnastics was easy. I sneezed through the entire first session and cried for the lovely one in London where us mums sat and yakked while we watched the children. This kiwi version involved walking round with your child constantly and there was no music. No second time for us.

Next up Parents Centre. Who needs church when earnestness is available elsewhere? I guess the truly good like a bit of earnestness and then a bit more. After the meeting where someone groomed and ever so nice from Wellington carefully explained how to set up a charter of rules for the meeting before we even had the meeting, I knew I was dead in the water. How could I possibly find the drive to leave the house and go to another parents centre meeting ever again?

I went back to work again after a while but that was easy to quit because I was about to have a baby. Babies are permission to quit a few things.

I stuck it out at kindy, mostly because I found that if I played around being librarian, then I could avoid wielding a broom at the end of sessions and not lose points on viurtuosity. There is a lot I'll do to avoid a broom.

I know these things are supposedly all about the child, not the mother. Well for the good mother, they are all about the child. That is not what you are reading about. Go find a plunket book if you want goodness.

I have another thing to quit. Book group. A very rude man I know told me that book group was a bourgouis activity last year. Naturally I told him he was wrong. Unnaturally, it turned out that he was possibly right. We used to have it at the pub. Wine, gin, chippies, peanuts, beer. A bit of talk about the book and rather a lot of talk about everything else. This year, we are to have it at our homes and provide nibbles. Sweet and savoury. The etiquette of providing drink has been discussed, decided upon.

Do you know what this means?

It means cleaning. Behind doors and including the chair in the lounge where everything goes during the other big cleanups we have. Cleaning the entire house as there are ten women in the book group and the odds of none of them needing the toilet is rather high. The toilet is at the other end of the house to the lounge. This is beyond my realm of ability. Book group ladies, it was lovely and now I must depart.



My first little opportunity

Session Four

Tonight was the fourth meeting of our local writers' group. I wrote about the most exciting aspects of my life, with special accord given to the toilet door, in preparation for the meeting. Was it fitting that I then forgot about it completely until I was sitting on the toilet hoping I could get the washing in before the children's bedtime? What a tragic remembering that was. A cheerful swish of toilet paper and I could announce with genuine urgency that I had to be somewhere else - fifteen minutes ago.

So I swished into town like a girl released from childcare and we shared our writing and we even made some plans to do public reading early next year. Then we went to the pub. hahahaha it's all about the pub. Have a nice Christmas.

That may be the last nice thing I say relating to Christmas. You have been warned.

Toilet doors

When I was at university, I did a course on post modern theory. It was about everything that being a mother is not. Signifiers and signifieds for a start. We were all young and fancied ourselves a tad clever. I think it was Roland Barthes who wrote about how the word 'ladies' on the page meant one thing and yet the word 'ladies' stuck on a door meant quite another. We discussed the ideas like they were really relevant to our lives, getting slightly less convinced when we had to do the one on dream sequences and our lecturer dreamt about mini cars and then explained how that really meant he was dreaming about having breakfast with his lover in France. Naturally, I was full of conviction at that stage that I would be living in Greymouth washing lots of dishes 16 years later.

Also at university but not actually at university, I discovered that toilet doors mostly don't work in pubs. I'm not sure if I've missed something really transformative, but I still have yet to experience the kind of state that makes me want to rip locks off toilet doors at the pub. Up adnd down the country there is evidence that I am, if not a minority, then at least not the sole blueprint for how to enjoy a night on the piss.

The rest of the time, pre children, toilet doors were quite unproblematic. Sometimes people had naff sayings on theirs and others had calendars, either from the local hardware shop or from their relative in Canada.

We have a picture of native ferns on ours. It's on the inside, so you can look at this serene image, cut from last years' calendar from my grandparents of course, and feel at peace with the world.

There are however, some things which may make serenity and peacefulness difficult. One is if you saw a mouse in the wash house which the toilet is inside, just the night before. Another is if you are sick and thus looking the other way and remembering at quite the wrong and far too late time that good persons clean their toilet frequently for a useful purpose.

The main reasons for lack of zen behind or even in front of the toilet door relate to small children. They object to being shut out, they object to not being able to tear toilet paper off for you, they object far too noisily to my refusal to let them wipe my bottom.

I don't know how skinny people manage to sluice dirty nappies without helpful hands getting far too close. When I have my frame blocking entrance to the toilet while I dispose of poo, it has to be one of the times I feel that fat to be really rather useful.

Other options include children arguing with each other outside the shut door to establish that indeed a few moments of basic bodily expulsion is more than a mother can expect to experience alone.

Possibly the prizewinner is the older child who needs a poo always and only when I am on the toilet. The moral order of the universe seems to be that as a child, he cannot wait and I must have superior bodily control to him. No I don't fit on the potty! Such is the beauty with which we start our days.

Yesterday

Yesterday the telephone rang. In the middle of The Tale of Ginger and Pickles, as I sat in the middle of my chidlren, the phone began to ring and I knew an adventure could beckon. My big boy ran for the telephone and as I attempted to sound like a lucid adult, the children clambered and giggled and whispered and sent messages to me in ever more urgent ways.

We want to be in on the fun! their bodies and hands and the rocking adges of Peter Rabbit's Giant Storybook said. I tried not to hiss and I tried to listen carefully and I stopped and I started and gave up on guessing. Eventually with much excuse mes and more excuse mes and the nicest kind of chiding of children I could muster, we established that Alice and her crew of immediate relatives would be visiting in just seven hours.

So the cleaning circus began. We vacuumed and swept and wiped and folded and tidied. We folded perhaps one thousand and seven items of clothing and marvelled that tonight, for the first time since the last entertaining adventure, people would sit on the couch. Directly on the cushions of the couch.

I could tell you the story of our church fair couch and the memory of our favourite friend Brian, but that would detract from the real story of the kitchen. Eggshells were being unearthed from beneath pots of Friday night's food project. Banana skins were resurrected from dangerous places where children think they should go and no one else agrees. Pots and pans and bowls were cleaned. Stickers representing where every banana, apple and orange came from and the capitalist giant who made all the profit were rehomed to the rubbish bin.

Throughout the house, shoes were collected from every corner and in the middle of many places as well. I would like to have had a Pied Piper to collect them by playing his flute. Alas he was not available and each shoe was moved by a grade one process of torture. Many many many many many many many sentences began "If you want Alice to come..."

One of us did not like this cleaning game. Not one little bit. She saw all the fun things retreat, get re-ordered and reviled. She witnessed the removal of the banana skins as the sign of parents gone overboard. But silently, stealthily, she worked out a plan. In the room of the toothbrush, the madness had yet to begin.

Brighid had ideas and saw in the soap, a final opportunity to play and to poke. She thought about hair knots and knew what to do. Hairbrushes would work so much better with the addition of soap.

Imagine the rage when Mum did not agree. The soap was evicted and so was the girl.

Bouyed by achievements throughout the house, I opted for cleaning my body as well. Just as I thought the project was complete, I heard the crunch of gravel on the driveway. Sppedier than a moving banana skin, I donned tops and bottoms in the right places and smiled at the door.

Alice is here and the carpet is bare and the fun and the games can begin.