Housework as an artifact of good mothering?

Housework - its something I struggle with. I rage against it, I sulk from it, I walk around in denial of it and then finally I give in to it.

I've never been a neat person, per se. I'm a horizontal filer and there has always been organisation in that chaos for me. At high school I had about 4 metres (possibly more) of desk and cradenza space in my bedroom. There was also a bed, a dressing table and a piano squashed in there. Any flat surface was covered in at least a three deep pile of something. In those days it was text books, papers - its amazing how much clutter one single teenage girl can accumulate.

My father would always joke that there was an entire football team hiding - possibly lost, in my room. That was very much a Sagittarian exaggeration, as a few years later we discovered that trying to hide two * male friends from the pub* in that untidied cluttered room was actually quite impossible. We had the wrath of my mother for days to prove the point. But I digress ...

My self worth has never been tied to my ability to keep things clean and tidy. I've always been a busy person, meaning housework has rated on the bottom of my list of priorities. There is a flash point that I reach, and there is a frenzy of tidying and cleaning. And things then slide again.

Then I became a mother. Somehow the ability for one to keep a house clean and tidy is intrinsically tied in others perceptions, of your mothering skills. If you've got a hoover immaculate house then obviously your a fantastic mother, and everyone smiles. If not, well you'd better watch out. Just think back to the terrible toilet cleaner add where the woman with a new baby, is mobbed at the door by her friends all come to visit. She has a terrible realisation about her toilet, when someone asks if she can use her loo .. but all is fine .. she's used the terrible blue goo to clean the toilet that morning.

I'm sorry, but with a tiny new baby - the last thing that should be on your mind is whether or not you've cleaned our toilet that morning - much less worried about what people will think if your toilet is not clean. In a proper version of this scenario, the new Mum would be snuggled in bed, breastfeeding her new babe, while one of her friends cleans the toilet (also puts on a load of washing, puts all the casseroles etc that the friends have bought over), while another makes a cup of tea for them all and puts away some clothes that someone washed for the new Mum the day before. You get my point.

The state of my home has always been a point of contention in my family. My sister house is always, and has always been immaculate. She puts special time aside each week to just do her housework. I gave her a yoga pass while she was pregnant the first time to enjoy, but it clashed with cleaning her house on a Saturday morning ... so she never used it.

While I said earlier that my self worth is not tied to my ability to be an uber Sadie, I have been made to feel less of a person because I can't keep my house like my sister can. I used to scream inside of myself - 'Who cares' but after a time, you get sick of the snide side comments about your never ending messy house. I realised though that at some point I'd taken up the mantle of being purposely different - having an untidy home just so I wouldnt' be anything like my sister. Realising this, it was time to grow up and do something about it.

I've been guilty of taking particular notice of others toilets, hand basins, pile of dishes on the sink, mountains of unfolded washing etc - but it hasn't been as a judgements, it because its poked my tender housekeeping spots and made me realise that this is probably what others see when they come to visit me. Then that horrible moment of wondering 'Do they judge me for it.'

Before I became a mother I NEVER apologised for the state of my home. But now every time I open the door I feel compelled to place a caveat on my friends entry 'Oh you'll have to excuse the house ..' To be honest, none of my friends give a toss what my house looks like, but something inside me feels like I have to make excuses for it - am I worried that they will think me a lesser woman, or worse, a lesser mother because I can't keep my own home tidy and clean. Where this association comes from, any of us can wonder? Did all those repressed pissed off 50's women keep their houses spotless because it was the only vent for their frustrations and somehow we incorporated that into our collective unconsciousness, instrinsically and fatally linking mothering and housework.

A lovely friend lent me a book called 'Mothers behaving badly' by Maggie Groff. In it she lists all the duties that are directly related to the care of her family, and all those other peripheral duties that are not mothering and should be shared by all. As she pointed out, it doesn't really make a difference to the health, happiness and wellbeing of her family if the floor hasn't been swept that day. However, if no one gets breakfast or dinner that day - that's an issue, or if no one has clothes to wear to work or school.

It was a good slap in the face for me to realise that keeping my floors swept, the dust off the shelf and a ridiculous standard of tidiness did not make me a good mother. The time and investment I made in my son, in being with him, playing, breastfeeding him etc were important statements to myself about my abilities and worth as a mother, than my housekeeping.

In January this year though, I caved in. My house was a run away disaster, which in all honesty, was reflecting the chaos in my own head. Every time I tripped on something, stood on a broken piece of biscuit, couldn't find a bill or a piece of clothing, looked at the piles of crap, that were growing on earlier piles of crap I could feel the aggrevation rising in me. I had a huge emotional collapse and somewhere in the midst of crawling out I found Fly Lady.

I started with shining my sink and perhaps high on the metho fumes, I started tidying and cleaning like a devil woman. Over the course of two weeks I cleared away all the clutter from my kitchen, the lounge room, the dining room, the kitchen and our bedrooms. And a strange thing happened, my home became lighter - I mean there was more light in my home. I realised that all clutter is a light vampire - its sux the light from the room and puts a pall over it. My partner came home from work each day unsure just what the house would look like and kept up his daily inspection of the back of my neck to see where the aliens had put their probe in.

My home became something special to me. FLY is an acronym - Finally Loving Yourself. Well I dont love myself just because my home is kind of tidy now, but I dont have an undercurrent of passive aggression towards it or myself. I learnt that what is important is what YOU believe is important for you and your family - not what others think. It's important to remember that it is you and your family who have to live their day in and day out, everyone else is just passing through.

In this space, I understand that it is important to my sister to have her home sparkling and that its OK for me to come part of the way towards sparkling - as long as we're all happy, that's all that matters. While a swish and swipe in the morning makes me good, everyone doesn't have to do it - our priorities are all different, our happiness thresholds are all unique. And that's the crux of it. We're not a homogenised group of people. When we judge we are simply resisting the surrender needed to accept everyone as beautiful and unique. In judging we deny ourselves the opporunity to nurture and grow as individuals. Difference is what makes us great; and creates an amazing, complex and challenging world in which to journey through.

This post is dedicated to my very dear old mate Julie xxxx

Closer to a princess ...

When I was a kid I did dancing and as a flow on from that, I got to perform in a couple of pantomimes. One of the girls that was in my dance class, and also my class at school had a Mum who was really pushy about the advancement of her daughter's talents. If you thought Soccer Mums were bad - you've never come across a Dancing Mum. They are a breed unto their own.

I remember going over to play at her house one afternoon and she told me, very matter of factly, that she was going to be an actress, but that wasn't her first choice. She'd wanted to be a princess. Her mother however had told her that was probably impossible, because she would have to find a prince to marry first. So my friend then decided that she would grow up to be an actress instead. At this age I hadn't thought to my future much beyond what I wanted to do the next weekend, or whether I'd have tonsillitis again the following week.

There was a hell of a lot of investment in my friends future career even at that stage - even though we were only in Grade 3 or 4 and must have been all of 7 or 8 at this time. Dancing, singing and acting classes that took up just about every afternoon of the school week. I remember this because I'd gone with her and her Mum, in their little blue Herbie bug on a Saturday afternoon to play at her place.

This sticks in my head, because for all the investment that went in, my friend was pretty much talentless. As a kid of 7 or 8 and really without the evils of ego, I could look at her and know she sucked badly. She was an average dancer at best - there in the front row with us because that's where her Mum wanted her to be, but always looking sideways to check she was doing the right moves, more often than not she was out of time with the rest of us. Her singing was even worse than her dancing and then there was her acting.

At the last end of year dancing concert I did, before we moved to the country, she had danced and sung a solo. This was a very rare thing on our concert night and was usually reserved for the older girls at the dance school, who were truly talented and gifted dancers. And you guessed it, she was terrible, sang off key and fluffled her dance moves (alone out there on stage, there is no one to copy!) and it was humilitating. She 'starred' in Little Red Riding Hood the holidays after we'd done Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. We went along to see it and I was embarrassed at how bad she was. I wasn't jealous of her 'big breaks', as I said there really wasn't any ego, I was just seeing the world as it was. But what I simply didn't get was why no one told her she sucked badly and perhaps should pursue a dream off the stage.

Years later, at uni we were sitting around early on a Saturday night watching the revived 'New Faces'. A young woman, with dark hair was massacring a song. It was so bad, that we agreed to change the channel for three minutes and then slip back for the scathing comments that were bound to emerge. To my delight and horror, the name came up on the bottom of the screen and it was my dancing friend from all those years ago. At age 18 she was still out there, banging away believing that she was great.

I never really thought much about the impact of her on myself as an artist over the years. I realise now that I have come to be ever so suspicious of the feedback and comments that I get. While no onw likes to get criticism, constructive or otherwise ... I've always been loathe to accept compliments. Something misaligned early on in my life, by my experiences watching my friend, that have lead me to not revel in the compliments or acknowledgements that I received. I was always too afraid that they were not really encouraging or supporting my artistic endeavours - they were just sounds bites or snippets of words that veiled the truth.

It's taken working through the Artists Way (I'm now in Week 10) uncovering this small but powerful revelation and then working through it, that has lead me to a place where I'm OK at accepting compliments (and who knows - perhaps I may even begin to accept them in my every day life also - stranger things have happened!)

I was always afraid that I had no real talent, and that I would be deluded by others that I did actually have talent. In this delusion and collusion I would confidently stride forth with my artistic endeavours, when like my friend, all I was doing was humiliating myself. Now the self doubts are quite to vocal and its almost impossible not to look them in the eye and see them for what they really are - vapid shimmering blocks of creativity, nothing concrete or real.

I believe there is *something* there in my box of talents and its something that not only I enjoy creating, but others genuinely enjoying partaking in also. Besides I just can't imagine now ever not writing ... and I'm wondering how I ever got through all those years not writing.

Now when I look back - well perhaps it would have been closer to my friend's truth to have been encouraged and supported by her Mum and others around her to groom herself as a would-be- Princess. Little girls grow out of that dream don't they?

Tuesday Tic

.... to explain. My darling friend Annie and I have had a long standing joke for many years now. Whenever something really gets our goat, and when we're sharing whatever is p*ssing us off, we always joke (because comic relief never goes astray when your about to blow a gasket!), with a little play acting and go 'tic tic tic' - with the obvious subtle head jerks to accompany. It's only when something is really bad do we welcome the 'tic tic tic'. It's that moment where your body is giving you the 'whoa she's going blow' warning - you all know what I mean.

So I have created 'The Tuesday Tic' as a place to come a purge whatever has been getting on your goat in the last week (and does anyone know where the colloquialism 'getting on your goat' comes from? So welcome ... and may your purge bring you peace and harmony ... or if all else fails, a snarky middle finger to whomever or whatever has been giving you grief.

Monday Memories

Last week I remembered something long forgotten. I remembered that when I was a teenager I used to play my music loud, really loud, while I was in the shower.

I'm taken back to Cairns, to our Kewarra Beach home and I'm 15 years old ... just a few weeks shy of my sweet 16th birthday (but that's another story in itself!) Each morning, I would get up about 7am and stumble the short distance from my bedroom to the bathroom.

The bathroom was decked out in black slate, with wooden and white enamel fixtures, and gold (not the real deal though) fittings. The shower was black slate, as was the bath beneath it. Unfortunately for my mother, the grout was white (which is a real pain in the bum when you live in the tropics and mould grows in the blink of an eye!).

As the water warmed up, I'd make sure my tape was rewound, cranked up and in I would get. I would listen to Jenny Morris's "She Got to Be Loved." Normally I'd get to listen to it twice - with a wet interlude where I would have to get out and rewind the tape. It was my 15 almost 16 anthem. I'd hammer it out, in my slightly flat voice, thankful that both the water and the volume of my tape recorder drowned (literally) out the racket.

"She got to be loved
She got to be loved, got to be loved .."

I'd often have my sister walk in grumpy and turn down the music - she was yet to hit the teenage years (and it was ACDC from memory that came blasting out of the different bathroom then.)

So last week, armed with our little CD player, I put my new favourite album in (because I'm old enough to remember that music used to come on vinyl and be called an 'album'). With the groovy beats and tunes of The Cat Empire pumping I enjoyed my 4 minute shower (because we're on level 5 water restrictions here in Brisbane - 140l of water per person per day!), rocking out under the water. It was a huge thrill and I felt 15 all over again (just with new baggage now!) It's also been great for getting into the feel of what is coming up in my NaNoWriMo novel.

Give it a try - play your favourite music LOUD in the shower for a morning ... if not, remember something really simple that you enjoyed doing as a teenager and just do it. Don't think of any reasons, let alone all the reasons, why you couldn't possibly do it. Then come back and share ...

The 33 Year old Virgin

In the last few months I've had some moments where I've got to be a virgin ... you know, got to do something for the very first time.

Back in about June, I think it was, I bought my first every take out coffee. One wonders how I got to 33 without every having done take out coffee. I guess its always something, when I did drink it (now its only special occassions or when in dire need of staying awake!) it was always like a luxury gourmet item, best had in with friends. The other things was, I worked for a long time in hospitality and was able to make my own short black as I arrived for work in the morning - about the only perk of the job. When I had my two take out coffees, my short black and my friends latte, there seemed to be a spring in my step. Was it that I thought I looked supercool with my holder and two coffees (I hope not!) or was it the thrill of doing something for the very first time (I hope so!)

• What have you done recently for the very first time?
• As we got older do the opportunities expand or contract to do things for the first time?
• What is something you desperately want to do before you turn 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 - or whatever your next big milestone birthday is.

Creative Carnival - Cut and paste

Hauling her suitcase out of the car, Vi was still engaged in an animated phone call with The Enemy, as she was calling them. Abby liked to joke of them being the Spawn of the Devil, just because it appealed to her warped sense of humour, to call the pre-eminent religious political party the antithesis of what they believed themselves to be. So much, she thought for religion and politics be separated in this day and age.

On the second trip to the car, for the pile of newspapers they had been collecting along the way, Vi finally ended the phone call.
“So, what’s the verdict from the God Squad.”
“Really Abby,” chastised Vi. “You shouldn’t say that. Especially in ear shot of anyone who could use it against you.”
“It a carpark in the middle of the country. I think we’re pretty safe. So, is it on?”
“Yep. They agreed and they’ve booked the Town Hall.”

Abby did a little victory dance, with the newspapers in her arms, shuffling around in the gravel.
“Two weekends time, which will give us another two weeks afterwards to repair any of the damage done.”
“Well that’s so much for the vote of confidence,” quipped Abby. “I like my Christians best served up raw with a side serve of humble pie.”
“Abby!”

Abby shrugged in her best nonchalant manner and rolled her eyes.
“I made bookings for dinner at the French Restaurant for tonight. A late booking of 8:00pm if that’s OK. I have some scrap booking to do before bed tonight. So I thought I’d do it now.”
“Sure, I think I might go for a walk. I don’t get to the mountains much.”
“Better go quick, it’ll be dark soon.”
“Unlike you Abby, I’m not scared of the dark.”

“And who told you that!”
“Who do you think.”
“Wil I guess … he’s always my knight in shining armour if we have to go downstairs in the dark. He can’t understand why I’d be scared of the dark.”
“I thought that it was something you grew out of.”
“Apparently not in my case.”
“I hear they halls of the Great House are always lit – they must have known that you’d be making it there someday.”

Abby smiled warmly.

Back in her room, with Mia Dyson playing on the small stereo that she had bought with her, she had a quick shower. As much as she yearned for a long hot, aromatic salt bath, her conscious wouldn’t allow it when there were level five water restrictions. With her hair wrapped in the white Sheridan towel, her favourite grey tracksuit pants and red singlet on, she sat cross legged on the bed. Plugging her mobile in to use it as a modem, she dialled into her savings account and transferred the money over to Harrington; her first payment for his silence. So far he had been true to his word. For a moment, she thought about how she always maintained that she got whatever it was she wanted – yet this time she had paid handsomely for it, both in money lost and time stolen. There was nothing from Hux. No email, no text or phone messages since the weekend.

The strong, single-minded, and selfish part of her was glad that he had obviously finally got the message and disappeared. She had told him at the outset of the campaign that their time together had to stop, though she wasn’t sure if it was a temporary pause or whether it was a proper end. She wasn’t sure though what a proper end meant for their relationship. There had been the naked hiccup the afternoon after her meeting with Harrington, but it had been a moment of weakness on her behalf. She’d been upset and thrown off centre – terrified that her carefully constructed plan would be felled with one foul paragraph from Harrington in any newspaper.

But that was behind them now and she was sticking to the resolution that she’d made in the beginning. Hux was a no go zone during this election campaign. The softer, sentimental, needy part of her missed him with a cavernous ache that threatened to engulf her, if not kept well checked and pigeon holed.

With the secret financial housekeeping done, she turned her attention to the newspapers, to keep herself from dwelling on Hux. For years now she’d been collecting newspaper cuttings from the birth activism that she had been involved in. She found the search, then cut and paste meditative in a way she couldn’t explain - even to Cal who tried hard to understand all of her idiosyncracies. Wil had chosen a new book for the Election. It had a checkered formula one race car on it. She’d suggested the one with fairies but he was insistent on racing car, and the Blu Glue, which was the latest thing he was enthralled with. He asked over and over again how it could be blue when it went on and disappeared when it dried. The wonders of modern science, she’d said and tried to get him to leave it at.

With Mia playing away she switched off to her world and began the slow and methodical process of finding, removing, collecting and then recreating the political landscape again in her book. But it was a landscape of her choosing. She worked from the back to the front of the newspaper, a habit formed from years of following Hux’s career. It had begun back in the days of cutting out the round up from the weekend’s games, when he scored enough goals to rate a mention. She’d followed it as best she could when she was overseas, but the need to cut and paste the growing momentum of his career had gone. Now the focus was on her. For the first time in her adult life she was doing what she wanted to do, and she had her scrap book to prove it.

On the blank pages of the scrap book she pasted the good, having separated it from the bad and the ugly. There were a few references to What Women Want, and her name was mentioned once but nothing more than that. Hux had told her to be careful for what she wished for, and the Harrington incident had told her that. When sending out her affirmations and wishes to the universe, they were framed far more carefully than they used to be.

There was a knock on the door as she pasted the final article in.
“Abby I found the Sunday Mail in the back – thought you might want it. I’ll see you in ten for dinner.”
She tossed the newspaper down on the bed and walked out.

Dressing quickly for dinner, she sat down to flick through the Sunday Mail. She loathed the publication and it had been banned from their home, along with all the commercial TV stations and FM radio. Anything that set the barometer to the lowest common denominator and passed off newstainment for serious journalism deserved boycotting in her books. Vi had told her to get over herself and her high moral ground, because it was publications such as the Sunday Mail that they would exploit to position themselves well in the mainstream population. It felt like selling out to her. Again, Vi had told her to get over herself.

Expecting there to be nothing of any interest, she flicked quickly from the back, stopping briefly at the horoscopes and continued through to the front page. Then it hit her. The headline and the photo … and it was a long time after, through lenses of tears that she forced herself to read the article.

Fiction Friday: Sadie the Cleaning Lady

[Fiction] Friday Challenge for November, 16 2007

Pick an existing character. Give them a nickname, but don't wimp-out and make it a common one.

Now tell the story of how the nickname came about.

Ah , Sadie , the cleaning lady
Her female mind would find a way of trapping
Though as gentle as a lamb , Sam the elevator man
So she could spend the night by TV napping

Vi hummed unconsciously the tune to Sadie the Cleaning Lady, as she walked back to her room. With her stomach growling and the promise of French cuisine gone, Vi thought back to the name her high school girlfriends had given her. ‘Sadie’ they had called her.

It began after they watched Pulp Fiction for the first time. Vi had commented that her favourite character in the movie had been the efficient and unflappable Victor the Cleaner. When the situation got out of control, they called in the Cleaner. Someone commented that it wasn’t surprising that Vi had an affinity with the Harvey Keitel character. Vi was forever stepping into the fray in the hormone charged high school years to clean up the mess that others made, whether it be in their relationships, their homes, their school work – you name it and Sadie was able to fix it.

She kept her head and her distance as many buckets were offered, relationships were broken up or started, unobtainable extensions were granted, spare rooms were offered when a parental meltdowns loomed and appointments were needed at the family planning clinic. There had definitely been no skull fragments pulled from the back seat or roof of the family car though.

And now Sadie was back at work again, but in a much bigger fish pond and they were playing for keeps. She hoped that there would be no brain or bone fragments this time either, as she worked to remove Abby’s high profile, but secret lover from the country, before he became a huge and unfixable campaign liability.

“Efficient and unflappable,” she reminded herself, “ just like Victor the Cleaner, and it will be all OK.”