Mum vs. Dad

The view from our hotel balcony

Earlier this year, our family spent some time with a man (let’s call him Joe) and his toddler. Joe’s wife hadn’t been with us, and so, at the end of our time together, I sent her a text telling her what a great dad Joe clearly was. Time went by. Last weekend I spent three nights in Cairns with a dear friend and no children/husband (mini review: It was the absolute best; 27 degrees, wonderful company, beautiful food [prepared by someone else!!], lots of wandering, reading, and sun-basking, and the gloriously liberating feeling of being able to plan the day without taking anyone else into consideration – I LOVED it). While there, I received two picture messages showing Moses and Hazel having fun, both of which were sent by other mums (Alan was very kindly leaving me alone). Then, upon my return home, one of these women sent a text message telling me that Alan is “a terrific dad” with “such a great way” with the kids, and “so doting” (all of which is true).

It did make me wonder, though, whether dads ever receive messages from friendly folk reassuring them how well their children are being mothered. As far as I know (I’ll go check now), Alan’s never had someone contact him especially to point out the fact that my children are not only still alive but enjoying themselves in my care! Incredibly! This can, at least in part, be explained by the fact that Alan spends most of his time at work, so it can come as a surprise to others that on top of his engineering skillz, he’s also a competent child-wrangler (this was certainly the case when I sent the message about Joe). It makes sense; I can imagine that if I filled in for Alan at his office for a few days while he flew off for a break somewhere, his colleagues would be similarly shocked if I was to do the job well. No doubt he’d receive photos of me banging busily at his keyboard and looking very serious in meetings, and then, later, have to sit through bewildered accounts of how I didn’t fail as spectacularly as they’d expected me to.

I’m sure another side to it, though, is the fact that women are still often seen as the ones naturally gifted with the ability to look after children, whereas men are supposed to do adorably foolish things like dress their babies in the wrong season’s outfits and forget to take nappies and lose at least one child at some point and feed them only donuts for the whole time the mother’s away. As Annabel Crabb says in The Wife Drought, “In a world of assumed responsibility, you get credit for doing things that are viewed as additional to your usual beat, but no credit at all for things that are supposed to be in your bag anyway… This is her job; to fulfil it adequately is more or less unsurprising. But for him to do it at all carries an element of surprise; that it should be done well is barely imaginable.”

I don’t know where I’m going with this; I don’t even know if it was wrong to have sent the message about Joe or for my neighbours to have sent similar messages to me. It does seem rather unfair that the regular things I do every day are suddenly wondrous and praise-worthy when done by my husband instead. Maybe that’s all I’m trying to say.

Cairns was awesome, though.

Mix

Not my palettes.

So I’m over halfway through my holidays now, and I’ve had a productive break so far. I’ve crossed the most important tasks off my to-do list (‘Sign up for a month’s free trial of Netflix’, ‘Watch season two of Orange is the New Black’, ‘Read Faith Shift’, and ‘Do some colouring in’), so now I’m up to ‘Blog’. A couple of days ago I actually sat down to write a ranty piece about nagging but it was based on a blog post I’d read a loooooong time ago, and when I went back to the website to revive my anger I discovered that the author had edited it so that the quote I’d taken wasn’t there anymore, and I couldn’t build an argument based on what he’d left behind. 

The synopsis of what I would have written: if someone’s nagging you, it’s because you’re doing a bad job of communicating with them, either by lying (“I’ll do it this weekend!”) or by failing to explain that The Thing is obviously less important to you than it is to them. So: Tell the truth and have a flipping conversation. If you did say you were going to do something and you didn’t do it, apologise, and then either do it or work with the nagger to figure out a solution to the problem (that may not involve you). And stop being so judgey about the way the naggy person’s communicating with you and instead listen to what exactly that person’s trying to communicate. It’s not that difficult. ALSO, from my understanding of the way the world works, your wife can act respectfully, but she can’t respect you if she doesn’t respect you. I hope that makes sense, Mr Walsh. (The definition of “respect” also suggests that it is something that has to be earned, but I’ve argued with youth group leaders about this before, so it seems there are mixed understandings of what the word means.) PHEW! It feels good to get that off my chest. That’s been bothering me for over a year now.

Anyway, after giving up on that post I realised I only have updatey things to write about, and I don’t know if updatey posts are incredibly boring for you, dear reader. I have no idea who most of you are. I have no idea if you want to know that I’ve been feeling pretty crap lately, and it’s frustrating feeling pretty crap when you’re taking antidepressants (I took the name more seriously than I should have, obviously). (I’ve only been on the new medication for a month, and these ones take a while to kick in, apparently, so I should be more patient.) (I suck at patience.) (The psychiatrist was neither old nor gruff, which was a pleasant surprise; he said things like “fragile sense of self” and “attachment trauma,” and called my children “triggers,” all of which I’ve translated to “Things may continue to be yukky for approximately 16 more years, if not forever.” He told me I should go back to the psychologist, and I said, “I don’t know that I have anything left to talk about, though” and he said, sarcastically, while flicking through his pages of notes, “Really? You have nothing to talk about?!” So I’m going back to the psychologist. For the next 16 or so years. Or maybe forever.)

I’ve no idea if you want to hear about how different it’s been wading through the thick of depression with kids around compared to before kids, when I could work with earphones on and go home when I felt like it and ignore Alan and mostly be left alone. I could put things where they belonged so that our house was tidy and together, unlike my head. These days, our floors regularly look as though they’ve been vomited on by a drunken rainbow who for some reason ate a stack of toys and textas and toast. These days I spend a lot of time with Moses and Hazel, neither of whom understand the concepts of “alone time” or “quiet” or “calm” or “crying in the dark because I really can’t cope with people (especially small people) at the moment.” Poor kids. Poor me. In times like those we are the worst possible match, and so I cry about the fact that my children didn’t get someone better as a mother, someone who’d be mostly joyful and playful and generally –ful rather than empty and in regular fight-or-flight mode. So, yeah. Here’s some colouring in to lighten the mood:

SO! I’ll tick blogging off my list now, too. I was also going to write a post on podcasts, but I don’t know if it’d be that great. The synopsis: Chat 10 Looks 3 is my favourite podcast ever – I smile through every episode and love that Annabel Crabb and Leigh Sales have silly sides. Here’s the Thing (with Alec Baldwin) is also really enjoyable – he asks the questions and makes the comments that I’m thinking of as I listen to the conversations, which is incredibly satisfying; I’ve been surprised at the episodes I really like, and the ones I really don’t (I turned off Jerry Seinfeld after about 10 minutes). I particularly liked his interviews with Ira Glass and Julie Andrews, but my favourite was the one with Bryan Stevenson (the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative), which made me laugh and cry. I also like Bullseye, partly because of who Jesse Thorn talks with (Nicole Holofcener, John Cleese, other people whose names I can’t remember right now…), and partly because his insight into the work of those he interviews seems to impress even them. Let’s just pretend that sentence made sense. He seems to get things.

And, finally, our podcast is now on iTunes, which means I don’t have to keep trying to work out how to embed the player here! And you can subscribe and therefore have new episodes magically appear while you’re sleeping or something! Hurrah! Search for “Ms Sundays” in the podcasts section. We’re up to eight episodes now, although the last two are Sarah-free, and Sonia and I accidentally talk about penises and TV too much when she’s not around.

I was hoping that all of my bloggy to-dos could be crossed off in this one post, but having just failed at coming up with a one-paragraph synopsis for my thoughts on church, I’ll be back again soon.