Category Archives: Parenting

Don’t Come Knockin’.

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It is an invariable truth of life that when someone arrives at your house unannounced you will not be at your best.

Parenthood adds variables. Someone will always be in the middle of a poo. Someone will have always just woken up and be furious about it. Someone will be in a state of undress. It will probably be you.

Depending on whether you actually permit them past the threshold (‘Oh, so nice to see you! I’m terribly sorry; we were just on our way out the door!’) there will then be the various degrees of apologising and trying to best avoid the veritable explosion you live in. You will lie to people you love; ‘Oh, excuse the mess! It’s not usually like this! You just caught us on a busy day!’. There will be no where to sit that is not covered in unfolded washing. You will try to remember how to be hospitable. Tea? Coffee? When are you leaving? I mean, welcome! Welcome! So nice to see you.

 

 

Another day at the office.

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Sometimes, all will grow very Quiet.

So quiet you notice it. This Quiet does not feel like the quiet you notice when you have the house to yourself for an hour. This Quiet makes you suspicious. The very thing you have spent your parenthood wishing for, you will grow to fear. For so rarely does this Quiet lead you to discover anything you do not have to steel yourself against. It will not lead you to find your children playing sweetly, like English storybook characters with unfortunately anatomical names; sharing and laughing and clean.

It will lead you to the back deck where you will find the roasting dish full with this mornings mop water; your children nude and taking turns washing each other with a filthy dishcloth while eating the eggs you had hard-bolied for their lunches. There will be eggshell in places you could not imagine, but will not surprise you. Because you are a parent, and you have seen it all.

Or atleast you will.

De nada, Failures.

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Before you have children you will believe all sorts of things about the kind of parent you will be.

Like, how you will never, ever let your kid watch television. Their days will be so filled with, like, wooden toys and The Guardian Weekly Junior and wholesome moments of togetherness; but then they’ll start to say ‘Gracias’ and Toucan with a Spanish inflection and you’ll be like, I love you, Dora. Thanks for babysitting my kids while I was on the internet.