Having achieved the status of Motherhood – and in my family it has a capital M – I have resisted even the slightest temptation to do so again. Dearest Pickle, please do not take this amiss in later years for I love you dearly. My point is that nothing, I repeat NOTHING, can prepare one for the reality of living en famille/ with sprog/ in parentland!
Now, far be it from me to sully the rosy view of potential mother or father of the year candidates, but a reality check is surely due. To place this statement in true perspective, I have to admit that not so long ago I was one of their number; positively frothing at the mouth for want of what used to be called a mewling babe, but in my eyes was a bundle of soft heaven. So believe me when I say I understand, particularly as Himself was not in any doubt that such a bundle would be completely impractical, expensive and life-as-we-knew-it-stopping! How could he be so lacking in parental spirit I cried – and, conveniently forgetting that Himself has two much younger sisters, concluded that a lack of knowledge was responsible.
Long has been the cry ‘it’s the only thing they don’t teach at school’, but hang on to your extra large Pampers because the long arm of government and National Curriculum has reached even this neglected skill. Parenting, as in good practice and approved manoeuvres, is likely to be on the agenda for our unsuspecting offspring. In my now sadly warped opinion, this is more likely to put them off for eternity rather than enthuse them. Nothing quite like adding ‘Giving Life’ to Physics and French to make it seem like a crap idea dreamt up by those who had nothing better to do.
However, I procrastinate ( a lifelong problem if my old school reports are to be believed!) Please note, students, that all members of the human race have the absolute right to put mind-numbingly personal questions to any mother. I have noticed after three years that the question put to me by both friends and total strangers has subtly changed from “Do you think you’ll have another?” to “Aren’t you having any more?” In truth, this may have more to do with me being described as an elderly primevirate on birth notes than anything else. “More?” I repeat weakly when faced with this vexing question – “ Maybe when we’ve moved / Pickle has settled into her new nursery / my job is less demanding / I’ve sorted out the airing cupboard.”
However, deep in my quasi-maternal being I resent the implication that unless one resigns one’s ever-diminishing self to years of constant nappies, wee sodden thighs, goopy shoulder syndrome and ever-increasing girth, one cannot truly consider oneself a parent. I have absolutely not a clue how those extraordinary women with three rugrats under the age of five remain serene, capable and groomed. While I reflect on my own pathetic attempts to achieve normality, I search desperately for some chink in their domestic armour.
It is, after all, a racing certainty that having cajoled, bullied or bribed said Pickle through the morning tasks, I generally arrive at nursery looking like a badly-advised haystack. This morning ritual has to be seen to be believed, consisting as it does of full-fat milk with vitamins (‘I want to pour them in mummy”) followed rapidly by several stories (“tell it slowly mummy”), removal of pyjamas under protest and dressing in the day’s chosen clothes – two entirely separate operations. As a general rule, what follows is three versions of breakfast (abandoned after discovery of secreted packet of chocolate buttons), removal of chocolate daubed top and a wild search in the ironing box for second clean top of the day.
The three false starts to achieving child firmly attached to car seat with seat belt on are peppered with cries of “ mummy I forgot Eoyore – he’s under the bed” “ why do you only have one boot on?” and “ Oh good grief, where are the bloody car keys?” A brief glimpse of Wild Woman of Kent in the rear view mirror is enough to dissuade me from any further contact with reflective surfaces until urgent repairs have been undertaken. These, unfortunately, have to be delayed until after the gimlet stares of immaculate nursery nurses, puzzled glances from the aforementioned paragons with armies of children, but no apparent goop and last, but definitely not least in the heaping humiliation stakes, the twitching mouth of my postman as he views me parked back at the house and still prone behind the steering wheel in a state rivalling a stunned fish. Oh and then I start my working day!!
Perhaps the best cure for the pinkish tinted goggles wearing brigade would be a kind of ‘ Day in the Life of a working mother’ experienced at an impressionable age. Natch, if I knew that my faltering footsteps were under the scrutiny of Mr world-weary, work experience student, I would do my utmost to be that pristine paragon, juggling children and manicures, that I currently view so suspiciously through my finger-paint daubed lenses. To end on a paradox (if that is possible), Himself is of the opinion that my current obsession with all things horrible about motherhood is a precurser to wanting sprog two.
Well, stranger things…
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