So the kids’ contemporary dance camp ends today and they have a performance. My aim in breaking down to send them to a camp is the awesomeness of this group, the level of control they get over their bodies, 3 hours of pretty strenuous, out of ordinary physical activity every day for 10 days (today they’ve left at 11 to rehearse several times before a few minutes’ of a performance at 5:30 pm!), the fact that son needs to slowly integrate into bigger groups and keep his cool with the issues he faces…plus we could car pool with neighbour so that it would be a one way only commute every day for both of us.
The little stressors are the ones that beat it out of you though. For example, they needed a white t-shirt, hand painted with their name and something nice they chose and black tights. One thing people need to know about some households – white t-shirts and children don’t go together. Some of us are also not the ‘washing powder Nirma’ types….our whites can be very easily confused with other colours to the naked and barely seeing eye.
So yesterday was an expedition – ended up buying undershirts, borrowing fabric paints, getting daughter’s help to figure out what was required – they’d been shown a sample t-shirt and both came up with very different descriptions….typical, son would of course want something complicated, printed a cocker picture in silhouette (anything else would have been beyond stretch!), getting it cut, stenciling it for him – his skills are improving but a set back with peers laughing at him could be avoided given all else we’re dealing with, getting our attention away from an exciting Gayle-storm to paint at 10 pm, holding up sleepy hands armed with black fabric paint laden brushes around a just-sold-yet-to-be-picked-up sofa set, trying hard to be patient in the middle of all this….and ending up finishing it off for him. For the first time, their work had direct inputs from me on son’s t-shirt. Angelic and artistic daughter clearly had her task in hand and ended up helping the mother-son combination to get to a pass grade on the other t-shirt.
Got me thinking about the ‘stay-at-home’ wording of my current role in life – mostly mom. My day starts at 5.45 am most days of the year. These days, I get a reprieve on days that there’s no badminton for son, another hour. Chores start – fixing up the car’s servicing, dental appointments, health check ups, gas deliveries, veggie ordering online (for pick up in store these days – labour problems….darn!), niggling home stuff from plumbing and electrical to home improvement, spring cleaning, getting things in piles for appropriate audiences and then having these piles languish for days until they get given away, getting clothes to tailor with measurements in the times that the kids are also available, scheduling for return of clothes that have been with tailor for months now because we’ve not been able to coordinate it, getting our wonderful public sector bank to set up online banking (an endeavor worth its own post), I could go on…this is just the few hours we spend at home.
Cooking is luckily not as much of a task on my plate these days – husband happily provides a warm, cooked breakfast to us all, sending us off on our day before he takes off. The commute then starts. As does the challenge to the stay-at-home label. Thus far, I only did what others do whether they work at home or outside.
We put in around 25 – 30 kms every day in a commute that is principally focused on the kids’ needs. Some are classes – regular ones in non-holiday times, holiday camps such as these picked for more than normal requirements (not really a choice), some allergy treatments that require us to be there every day and then do some calisthenics with food for 25 hours afterwards (not exaggerating – really 25 hours, not 24, not one day, 25 hours!)…we come home for a quick bite, puppy send out and leave again. By the time we get home, hit by dust, heat and/or rain, we’re mostly good for nothing, needing quiet time and no contact with each other for some time.
Then it is time for the brats to bother about going out to play and the rest of the time kind of dissolves. People are mad at me for not picking up the phone – one friend called worried, ready to make a trip across town to check up on me…yeah, forgot the transferring-crappy-phone-to-inexpensive-vehemently-non-touch phone part.
The loose ends are forever blowing in the wind. Right now, I have just another 15 tasks that are on the to-do list, that will have to wait until they are critical to get into my attention span. Tell me then, where is this mythical stay-at-home time I am supposed to have?
People stay home out of choice to take charge of a big enough responsibility but don’t always end up physically staying home. One day of TV watching in pajamas with bon-bons….show me the whens and hows of that, can you please? I propose to change this SAHM title, given this age we’re all living in. Let’s call it ‘world-is-her-office’ mom or ‘wandering-parent-in-official-capacity dad? That way, I will not be expected to be home in order to mother….something that people working in offices for money will also agree with.
What do you think is a better title, assuming one even needs to distinguish between a office worker and worker everywhere except office when talking about a parent? What would I be when (notice signal to universe for yet-to-be-admitted-as-student status to turn into admitted status!) I study, work in a school half day and then take the kid around for what is required after hours? Am I ‘working’ in the technical sense then? Only then? Curious. I would like to know what to say to people who ask me, ‘So what are you doing now?’, more really to help them manage their disappointment on my behalf, to help them figure out what to say next.
Go ahead, you can breathe now – I didn’t mention the other parts, the waiting for carpenter, waiting for gas man who leaves after coming whenever he wants and gives you gaalis for not being home, waiting for pickups and deliveries, waiting and then waiting some more wherever we happen to be at that time. I didn’t even mention the social parts, calling someone to invite them home to attempt some stress-busters and the related cleaning, cooking, pretending to be well-run household parts.
Happy weekend! 
