5.27 p.m.
Tadpole and I go to the greengrocer’s. The man behind the counter is a new employee and I haven’t a clue what he’s saying to me because I can’t understand his thick accent. I ask him to repeat his statement three separate times, but then I don’t want him to feel bad so I apologise for my lack of comprehension and tell him that I’m deaf.
5.47 p.m.
We get back in the car and Tadpole announces that the inside of our car is dirty and it’s making her feel sick. As a treat we stop to get it cleaned at the local car wash. The man offers us a special job for only half price. Tadpole and I think this may be because we’re so charmingly charismatic, but when the man has finished we realise that he did the job for half the price because he only half cleaned the car.
6.01 p.m.
We park in our street. It begins to rain. We run to the house and I call out to Tadpole to hurry up. When she joins me at the front door I say, ‘Jesus, Tadpole, you’re good at going slow.’ And Tadpole replies, ‘Thank you, Mummy.’
6.03 p.m.
I contemplate what to get the kids for dinner and wonder why a ham and salad roll is considered to be a healthy meal for lunch but completely inappropriate for dinner.
6.07 p.m.
I feel a brief but powerful wave of motherguilt. Like all mothers I’ve of course felt ever-present surges of this since my children were conceived. While I seem to have been coping with it a little better over the past fifteen years, and by and large no longer feel the need to breathe into a paper bag as a result of the associated panic, I do confess to relapsing every time my mother speaks of my children and reminds me that she appears to have officially changed my children’s names from Frog and Tadpole to ‘Poor Frog’ and ‘Poor Tadpole’.
6.09 p.m.
I comfort myself by reassuring myself that I’ve done the best I could as a mum. Particularly when you consider that prior to having my own babies I had never ever held a baby in my arms. Once, when Frog was six months old and I was still breastfeeding him, I had to go away for work for six days. So I extracted 57 feeds and stowed them all in my mother’s freezer so that he could still reap the benefits of breastmilk while I was away. (N.B. In those days pregnancy and motherhood weren’t so readily embraced by the work environment. We didn’t have subsidised childcare or maternity leave, you just did a thing called ‘juggling and getting poor’. I remember I was supposed to be interviewed for a TV show one time but when the male producer found out I was pregnant he refused to film me because ‘seeing a preggers woman on telly at dinnertime is absolutely disgusting’.)
6.09 ½ p.m.
I wonder whether I’ve disadvantaged my children by being a single mother, by being single, by being their mother. My children haven’t shown many signs of being gifted, although, even if I do say so myself, they are exceptional at fighting with each other.
I wonder whether I should have tried harder. I think I did everything you’re supposed to do when you’re raising kids. You know, take them on picnics, hug them, love them, help them with homework, create adventures, inspire their imaginations, be their slave, but it seems to me that my kids would have been equally as happy if they’d spent their entire childhoods simply flicking caked snot across the bedroom at each other. And should they have ever run out of fun with this, they would have contentedly spent several years just seeing how far they could spit.
I’ve tried to teach my kids good values in life. I’ve taken them to sport training. I’ve gone to their school tuckshop. I’ve helped with their homework. I’ve attended a thousand school concerts, including the ones where they were supposed to whistle ‘Just Whistle While You Work’, but none of the performers had any front teeth so no noise came out.
I’ve spent weeks of sleepless thankless nights making costumes for heaven only knows what occasion, and I’ve also whooped and yelled support for my children for simply putting the costume on. It’s true I did try to teach them to appreciate me once by telling them to look me in the eye and say, ‘My God, but you’re lovely,’ but instead they insisted on staring me straight in the face and giggling, ‘My God, but you’re ugly.’
So all in all I’ve really been quite responsible (if you forget the time that I hired a babysitter who sent Frog to kindy in his pyjamas with his fruit juice in a resealable beer bottle).
6.16 p.m.
Having confirmed that I’m not the worst mother in the world, I decide that I really want the house tidied so that it can deceitfully reflect purpose and order in our lives … and I really want both the children to help tidy because I don’t want them to grow up taking things for granted and ending up in jail.
Tadpole is more than happy to do tasks all day long, so long as she can dress in rags, we call her Cinderella, and she can sing ‘It’s a Hard-Knock Life’ from the musical Annie. Frog, on the other hand, firmly believes that if I’m the one who wants the chores done, then I’m the one who should do them.
6.18 p.m.
I talk to Frog and Tadpole about their contributions to the household and they both tell me that I don’t notice the things they have done and only notice the things that they haven’t.
6.18 ½ p.m.
Frog then recites a list of all the good things he’s done lately. This includes emptying the dishwasher and putting its contents away (which he did before the dishwasher had been turned on and therefore before the contents had actually been washed).
6.20 p.m.
Tadpole, still jealous that Frog has been home ill all day, now makes an effort to crawl her way into preferred favour by saying that she’s tidied her room.
6.24 p.m.
I go to check her tidying because I think this is a good parent thing to do, and as soon as I walk into her bedroom I realise that Tadpole hasn’t cleaned her room at all, even though I’ve asked her so many times. And so I snap … and a voice rises from deep inside me and all I’m really wanting to say is, ‘Please help me! It is too hard for one person to carry all of these responsibilities by themselves. Please just help me. Please.’ But the growling words that emerge from my mouth are, ‘Go and tidy your room immediately or you will be grounded for the rest of your life!’
6.26 p.m.
I’m then told that the only thing, ‘THE ONLY THING’, I talk to my children about is cleaning the house. Yes, that may well be so, but if they cleaned it in the first place, I wouldn’t have to keep asking them to do it.
6.28 p.m.
When I’ve finished cleaning the bathroom I go back into the living room and find the kids lying on the couch. They’re smiling happily while having a discussion about whether or not they would ever clean the house again if I was in a car crash and died.
6.29 p.m.
On the way to the kitchen I see that the mail’s arrived and has been slipped under the front door. Amidst the pile of bills I also find Frog’s school report. In the paragraph titled ‘Teacher’s Comments’ there is no mention that my son is a genius but there is a reference to the fact that he’s ‘excellent at assisting with the distribution of tuckshop lunches’.
6.29 ½ p.m.
I still haven’t worked out what to prepare for dinner.
6.30 p.m.
I defrost some chops using the hair dryer. As I do this I remember that I’ve heard you can cook meals on the engine of your car. I remember also that a friend of mine once poached fish for a dinner party in the top rack of his dishwasher.
6.37 p.m.
I begin to cook chops to the strains of Tadpole strumming Frog’s guitar and singing a self-composed ballad titled, ‘My Brother Smells’.
6.43 p.m.
Due to years of applied dedication, I burn the dinner perfectly. The smoke alarm goes off and without a word the family leaps into action. I hand Frog two tea towels as he hops up onto the kitchen bench and waves the tea towels frantically in front of the smoke alarm. Then, when the smoke alarm stops screeching, Tadpole quietly takes some bowls from the cupboard and pours us each some muesli breakfast cereal
and water to enjoy for dinner.
6.47 p.m.
I cook stir-fry vegetables as well.
7.00 p.m.
We eat the dinner and while we chew, the kids talk about how they’d rather be eating chicken. They then spend the rest of the meal telling stories about battery hens that are bred without any heads.
7.20 p.m.
They both finish the entire meal and then say it tasted ‘disgusting’.
7.22 p.m.
At least they didn’t give their usual comment: ‘This tastes disgusting. You try it.’
7.24 p.m.
As soon as we’ve finished eating the dinner the kids ask what we’ll be having for breakfast.
7.25 p.m.
I remove the cooking detritus from the wok using a hammer and chisel.
7.26pm
As I clean it I’m reminded of our family motto: ‘Never eat anything that’s hard to clean off the saucepan, ’cause it will also be hard to clean off your stomach.’
7.26 ½ p.m.
I continue to chisel and wonder whether a chainsaw might help me clean the wok. I wonder whether we should have gone to a cheap restaurant for dinner. They serve a similar meal to the one I’ve just cooked but food always tastes better when you don’t have to do the washing-up.
7.36 p.m.
Tadpole goes to her room and rings me on her mobile again to ask whether I would like to see her perform her interpretation of The Dying Swan. Frog comes with me and as he watches her Frog insists on renaming Tadpole’s performance The Ugly Death of a Pig.
7.42 p.m.
Frog leaves the room and then sends me a text from the living room. The text says, ‘Hope you had a great day. Love you so much! You’re the best mum in the world. So strong, so brave, my idol … and I have not had a drink.’
7.42 ½ p.m.
I call him straight back but Frog accidentally hangs up when he answers. He sends a text back and apologises for accidentally ‘dejecting’ my call.
7.44 p.m.
I run straight into his bedroom to see if his fever has come back. He says no and then rings me again as soon as I leave his room. He says that he’s just ringing to say that he loves me but I suspect it’s the buttering-up period before he asks for cash tomorrow.
7.45 p.m.
I remember the first text Tadpole ever sent to me was, ‘I love you like a monton covered whit snow.’ Frog’s first text message to me was, ‘Do you know where my footy socks are?’
7.45 ½ p.m.
I also remember the time that Frog made me a cup of tea by putting the tea bag in the kettle; the time Frog told Tadpole that she couldn’t wear her Easter bonnet near windows at school because if the sun was shining through the glass, then her hat would catch on fire; the time I asked Frog whether he’d drawn on my pillow and he replied ‘No, it was the Texta’; the time Frog accused Tadpole of having ‘a real lack of selfishness’; the stage he went through, which lasted a year, of sitting in the front passenger seat of the car, leaning out the window and yelling at passing pedestrians the simple word ‘scrotum’; and the time Tadpole announced she didn’t want to eat meat any more and Frog told her that she was being racist.
8.15 p.m.
Much of the time now before going to bed is spent with Frog and Tadpole fighting. Were it an Olympic sport, my children would be national representatives. I remember taking my children snorkelling in the Coral Sea and even when they were submerged in the water, wearing diving gear, I could hear their arguments coming up and out the top of their snorkels.
8.18 p.m.
Frog and Tadpole end up in a physical rumble, which is a situation filled with laughter until of course it goes too far, Tadpole bursts into tears and Frog announces that his leg hurts and he thinks it’s been corked. I laugh hysterically at his witticism because I thought that only happened to bottles of wine.
8.19 p.m.
In response to my laughter both children now unite again as my enemy because I am obviously a moron. In unison they roll their eyes and add an extra syllable when they groan my name, ‘Mu-u-um.’
8.19 ½ p.m.
Clearly coping well with their rejection, I lie on the floor in the formation of a starfish. Tadpole comes up and pats my head and asks if I’m all right. And when I say, ‘Yes, darling, everything’s fine,’ she asks if she can get a new bike.
8.24 p.m.
When I say no Tadpole storms off and says she is ‘completely overblown by it all’.
8.24 ½ p.m.
Frog decides to storm off too but in the process knocks a glass vase of putrid flower water onto the floor and the vase smashes.
‘I’m really sorry, Mama,’ he says.
‘Sorry isn’t good enough,’ I say. ‘You know perfectly well this has been a long, long day. You nearly died, then you came back to life, then you vomited, then I went deaf, then you accidentally tried to kill Tadpole and now, God knows why, you’ve topped it all off by smashing a vase all over the floor and there’s no way we can ever retrieve every splinter of the glass and that inevitably means that one day one of us is going to tread on one of the splinters, and maybe we won’t even know it’s there, and it will get infected and the foot will have to be amputated, and then we’ll get typhoid from the fetid vase water, and then we’ll obviously die.’
‘I said I’m sorry,’ Frog says again.
‘But don’t you understand?’ I almost yell. ‘Saying sorry doesn’t change what’s happened!’
And Frog looks at me with his storming sky-blue eyes and says, ‘Well, why was the word invented, then?’
8.35 p.m.
Tadpole returns to the living room because she loves to see Frog and me argue as it makes her feel superior. This makes Frog angry and makes me feel humiliated, so then we both turn on Tadpole and she turns on both of us and then none of us can remember what we’re actually fighting about, so we stop and decide to measure ourselves against the measuring wall. Frog and Tadpole have both grown but I appear to have shrunk.
8.40 p.m.
Frog and Tadpole decide to console me and help me to grow by giving me a cup of water. It’s actually meant to be a cup of tea but we still don’t have any tea bags.
8.42 p.m.
Tadpole then adds cold milk to the hot water and serves it to me with a biscuit.
8.43 p.m.
Frog and Tadpole then fight over my biscuit. And then they both announce that they would like to get a pet. In response I announce that they can get a moth (because you don’t have to worm, de-sex, de-flea it or take it for a walk. Furthermore, I know that moths only live for a couple of days and I figure this is about how long their passion for a pet will last).
8.44 p.m.
I tell Frog and Tadpole they have to finish their homework and go to sleep (and hope to high heaven that Frog doesn’t ask me to help him with his maths homework because he passed my level of mathematical competence when he turned about six).
8.45 p.m.
It appears that they ‘don’t have any homework’ but they would like me to tell them both a story. I’m in a hurry because I still have a lot of work to do. I begin the story with, ‘One day there was an amazing man,’ and then I immediately finish the story by saying, ‘But then he died.’
9.30 p.m.
I assume the kids are asleep. I go in to check on them and find Tadpole sitting with a thousand versions of my signature that she is clearly trying to learn how to forge. Tadpole then tells me about a friend of hers who says she had an ‘organism’ when she was five while running for the bus. I assume Tadpole means ‘orgasm’ and make a mental note to stop driving everywhere and start catching the bus.
9.34 p.m.
I check on Frog and make sure that he’s asleep by waking him up and asking whether he’s asleep.
9.40 p.m.
I then check on the washing machine. I stare at it and suddenly it begins to work. Maybe it just needed some personalised attention. I can relate to that. I’m really glad that the washing machine is wo
rking again. It makes me feel like we miraculously somehow have control back in our lives. I realise that it doesn’t seem to matter what I achieve in life – TV hosting, novel writing, hula-hooping on a sacrificial pyre in the Amazon rainforest – nothing in comparison seems to feel as good as reaching the bottom of the washing pile.
9.50 p.m.
With my children now asleep I go to work on my computer. The printer doesn’t seem to work. I’m not surprised. It’s been my experience that technical equipment can detect your stress and in response it just stops working.
10.00 p.m.
I decide to try and fix the printer problem by drinking a cup of chamomile tea. While I drink it I wonder whether I should utilise the gift my son gave me for my most recent birthday. It’s a gadget called an Ab Zapper and is designed to get rid of stomach fat. You attach it to your belly while you sit and it basically electrocutes you.
10.02 p.m.
I remember the card that accompanied the gift was also rather special as it said, ‘When a fly lands, he throws up seven times. I hope one doesn’t land on your birthday cake.’
10.07 p.m.
I do some work and check my emails. There’s an abundance of emails regarding weight loss, penis enlargement and a new category, ‘time management’. I very effectively manage my time by not reading the emails.
11.35 p.m.
I write an article. I want to print it but the printer of course is still not working. I ring a twenty-four-hour hotline and after what feels like twenty-four hours I end up talking to a man in Mumbai. We discuss every possible cause of the problem and finally both confirm that I haven’t turned the printer on.
The Night my Bum Dropped Page 9
