Chandra Clarke

Award-winning entrepreneur. Author. Professional Optimist.

Married (And Travelling) With Children

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Erma Bombeck once said that when you look like your passport photo, it’s time to come home. It’s good advice, but if I’d followed it, I think I’d have done a u-turn about an hour into our first major trip.

You see, we made the trek from our home in Canada to the south coast of England. And I did it with a toddler in tow.

Don’t get me wrong: my son behaved wonderfully. It’s just that he’s was a one-year-old.

It started out with a train ride to the airport. First, we had to reassure him that the huge metal thing that just came thundering into the station was not as scary as it seemed. Then came the baggage and baby ballet – a complicated dance which involved A) whisking our child out of the stroller B) folding the stroller C) swearing and hopping up and down because the stroller had mashed a hand D) grabbing the 10 kg bag of our clothes and toiletries, the 20 kg bag of laptops, my purse, the stroller, and the 450 kg bag which contained my son’s toys, diapers, food, clothes and books and then E) heaving them all onto the train while holding our toddler and F) whimpering our way to our seats, having destroyed most of our back muscles.

Next came the train ride, which was to take about three hours. This went something like:

ME: Okay, let’s get out the shape sorter.
HIM: Ga! [Sort, sort, sort, FLING!]
ME: Okay, how about the stacking ring?
HIM: Ya! [Stack, stack, stack, FLING!]
ME: Right. Okay, how about I read you this book?
HIM: Again!
HIM: Again!
HIM: Again!
HIM: Again!
HIM: [FLING!]
ME: Okay, right then what about this?
HIM: [FLING!]
ME: And this?
HIM: [FLING!]
ME: Dear, how much further?
HUBBY: Oh, I’d say we’ve got about another two hours and fifty minutes.

This is not to say my husband didn’t do his fair share. He took our son for frequent walks up and down the carriage, a task from which he has yet to recover. This is because our son currently walks on his own with help, and that means my husband had to bend at awkward angle to hold wee little hands, trying to maintain his balance as the train swayed over track that hasn’t been repaired in twenty years. I’m still amazed they didn’t end up in the laps of the passengers in row four.

From the train we had to get to the subway. Unfortunately, we arrived in Toronto in late afternoon; thousands of cubicle workers were making their daily dash to the commuter trains. To say it was difficult to get three people, four bags and a stroller through these crowds would be an understatement. I now sympathize with those salmon that have to swim upstream.

From the subway (heave, push, shove) to the bus (struggle, grunt, wheeze) and at last, the airport. Here, having arrived the prescribed two hours before boarding, it took … five minutes to get through security. Please note there are exactly zero things for a one-year-old to do in an airport lounge. We resorted to walking him around the lounge to try to wear him out (“please sleep on the plane, please sleep on the plane…”). Thirty circuits later, we were exhausted; he was just getting warmed up.

And finally, the flight. Apart from the bad food, poor air quality, tiny seats and zero leg room, things were great. The best part was when the pilots misjudged the timing of turbulence. Just as we were in desperate need of a diaper change, they told everyone to buckle up. So we waited… and waited… and nothing happened. Off came the lights, and we dashed to the restroom. And *that’s* when the turbulence hit. For those of you eating lunch just now, I won’t describe what happened.

Only one thing spoiled our joy when we finally arrived at our destination: The thought that we’d have to it all again to get home. So I have just one thing to say to the scientific community:

Will you *please* hurry up and invent those transporter beams?

 

The Parent Trap

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I read an article recently that suggests that a good way to start baby-proofing your house is to get down on your hands and knees and look at it from your baby’s perspective.

It’s good advice, and fortunately, there’s lots more out there on how to keep your child safe. However, none of it mentions the hazards of being a parent. Oh sure, there are plenty of warnings about the sleep deprivation, the worry, the bills. But it all neglects to mention the stuff that makes your daily life… a challenge.

For instance, when we lived in a modest sidesplit suburban house, it had a total of 10 stairs. Yet, if I needed to go from my office downstairs to the bathroom upstairs, I had to pass through not one, not two, but three baby gates. This meant I absolutely could not wait until the last minute to make a trip, or else the trip would have become … moot by the time I get through gate two.

The gates all bite as well — gate one catches my finger with a spring-loaded lock, gate two grabs my heel as I go up the stairs, and gate three snags my shirt. A simple trip to the loo and already I’m a broken and bleeding wreck.

Meanwhile, making supper takes about eight times as long as it used to. First, there is the matter of positioning my daughter. There are four factors involved: 1) she must be out of range of the hot stuff on the stove; 2) she needs to be in my line of sight; 3) the path between us must be clear for the inevitable dash I have to make to stop her from doing whatever it is she shouldn’t be doing and 4) she has to have enough toys to keep her busy for the length of time it takes me to cook.

That last point is hard to judge. The toy that kept her absorbed for a whole hour yesterday will be the toy she absolutely hates today. The pot I need will be the only one she wants to bang with a spoon. All my cupboards have been rearranged too; what hasn’t been moved has been locked up. Indeed, flinging open a cupboard door these days is like playing Russian Roulette: If I’ve picked a locked door, the lock will catch the door and bring it smashing back into my fingers. An unlocked door will come open with unexpected ease and whap me on the nose. These experiences have taught me why most mums come to the table looking grim, but triumphant, and saying: “You’ll eat it and like it!”

Talking of clear paths, I haven’t seen one of those since my first born was about eight weeks old. I cannot count the number of times I’ve stepped on a wheeled toy and gone sailing through the dining room. And only one thing beats the pain of stepping on a Lego® brick in bare feet, and that’s childbirth.

I can’t sit on the couch without squishing a stuffed bear. I can’t put on my shoes without discovering — the hard way — where that missing ball went. More than once I’ve taken a swig of coffee only to find that a certain munchkin has decided to caffeinate her soother.

The biggest hazard I face though, comes when I’m teaching her. She’s just learning her alphabet, and yesterday, she pulled a ‘w’ fridge magnet down and said “emmmmmm.” When I gently said no, and turned it the other way up, and showed her the real ‘m’ for comparison, I got a look that clearly said: “Right, so who was the dumb bunny who designed THIS alphabet?”

Today, we were playing with a wooden alphabet puzzle. Again, she pulled up a ‘w’ and called it ‘m.’ I showed her both letters, showed her the pointy bits of the ‘w’ and I put it in the right slot on the puzzle board.

I got the world’s most indignant glare. She yanked out the puzzle piece, turned the board upside down, put it back in, pointed at it and said: “M!” Then I got the worst hazard: The Stern Finger Shake… from my toddler.

Who knew the alphabet would be so dangerous?

Photo credit: Self-published work by G.dallorto. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 it via Wikimedia Commons

The Mother Load

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I’ve seen it happen to other women. Now I’m starting to do it too.

We make a big deal out of multi-tasking computers, but the truth is, mothers have been doing it for centuries. Indeed, the average mother handles 406 things per day. A typical day might start like this:

Get up. Get the kids up. Grab a shower. Clean the bathroom. Get dressed. Make the bed. Tidy up the baby’s room. Put on makeup. Clean up the toddler’s room. Make breakfast. Pick the coat up off the floor. Gulp down cereal. Load the dishwasher. Deal with temper tantrum. Sweep the floor. Answer emails. Break up a fight. Answer more emails. Snack time for kids. Pick the coat up off the floor. Answer more emails. Fight with the printer. Field four phone calls. Pick the coat up off the floor. Receive the FedEx package. Make lunch…

This kind of schedule can go on all day every day of the week — or more. A mother will do it all, calmly, with a smile, fuelled by maybe four hours’ sleep a night and several half-cups of cold coffee. And then…

…Clean up lunch. Put kids down for naps. Write proposal. Get kids up from naps. Put out dinner.

See the coat.

On the floor.

Again.

Click.

Kaboom!

As kids, we used to warn each other that Mom Was On The Warpath. I’m pretty sure that mine will grow up to say Look Out, Mum Has Had It. I’m sure you have your own name for it. Whatever it’s called, at this point, all hell breaks loose. You become a whirling dervish. Toys that have been out for days are flung into toy boxes. Kids are frogmarched around to do their chores. Any pet that has the bad fortune to shed just then is brushed within an inch of its life.

This continues until A) Every door and drawer in the house has been slammed, twice or B) The kids, the husband, and the dog have escaped out of range or C) You run out of steam and retreat to a hot bath.

For many women, this kind of explosion happens because they work full-time, raise the kids, tend to the house, organize their social schedules, and their husbands … well, their husbands work full-time. And drop their coats on the floor.

I am lucky to have a supportive husband. He not only knows how to change a diaper, he’s probably done more than me. He sorts laundry and does dishes, he can fix just about anything, and he keeps the yard in top shape. Best of all, I don’t have to ask him to do any of it; it’s truly a 50/50 arrangement. No, you may not borrow him.

The problem with this is that it means that I take on even more — community work, big projects with the kids, ambitious business plans — and then get just as worn out as any other mom.

So, why do we do this? According to all the email forwards I get, it’s because women — especially moms — are exceptional people who work hard because they have impeccable characters. Hmm. I dunno about you, but I can’t claim to be that wonderful. Some scientific researchers might say that it’s all just extended nesting behaviour. Chirp schmirp.

Frankly, I wonder if women do this sort of thing because we like it. Men like to measure each other by the size of their… bank accounts. Women seem to engage in competitive martyrdom. Get any group of women in a room and they will start exchanging stories—ostensibly to commiserate, but possibly really to see to see if they can outdo each other in stories about what they put up with.

On the other hand, perhaps we do take on so much because if we didn’t, the world would have been covered in a thick layer of coats by now.

In any case, my husband is getting adept at reading the signs of impending Kaboom and defusing me. Indeed, without his rock-solid support, I would not be half the mother I am today.

And I say that not just because I mean it, but because this way, if the kids don’t turn out right, I’m already on record as having blamed him.