Ambition and Sick Kids

Aidan had to stay home LAST week.  He fell asleep with 'Big Ted' a friend from Prep.

So I got the kids in school for six hours a day.  Tennis lessons Monday mornings.  Sports Wednesdays and Thursdays (depending on which kid and which sport) until 4:30.  Music and clubs at school.  The pool just outside the door.  Easy shopping at the mall.

I really don't know what my American friends are complaining about.

This is EASY!  (Compare to having the kids at home at noon for a warm meal, no programs at school, really inconvenient shopping with NO selection AND NO pool, just ice and snow, outside your door.)

So much time!  And NOT to clean the windows and sweep the front steps either.

Besides volunteering at the school (really, they LET you do that here!), heading over to the library, and quite frankly, taking it easy at home, I've been looking at places to move (this place is nice, but small and temporary) and considering work. Really, they LET me DO that here.  (Once my VISA goes through and I'm not just hanging out on a really expensive tourist visa.)  We are right near Brisbane, and the University HAS a vet program.  So tempting.  The private practices are always looking.  And then there are the wildlife programs, the koala rescue, the bird rehab....oh look, citizens working FOR their community instead of expecting something from it.  The RSPCA would probably fit me perfectly.  Because finding a nice cushy government job - doing public health and quarantine - would really be asking for miracles.  20 to 30 hours a week.  So that I can be home at 3:30.  And do I get a company car with that too?!

And I'll be able to do it.  (I've got my eyes on a lovely young neighbor with a baby who is looking for a way to stay home...would minding my four children from 3:30 to 6:00 help out?!) 

So I make my plans.

And then a kid - or two - gets sick.

I'm sure there are ways around it.  (Once again, would my lovely young neighbor like to take my snotty kid to her baby play-group with her?!)

But it gets hard. 

I've heard employers are really good about that here.  (As opposed to the USA.  Try working for the US military while your kids are with a German Tagesmutter who won't take a kid with a runny nose because SHE doesn't want to catch a cold!  Try explaining that to an American boss.)
Grown-ups get sent home sick too.  (Which was appalling at first.   German men catch a sniffle and stay home for a week.)  But isn't it nice that your employer would send you home by taxi from Brisbane because you are too sick to drive?!  Again, in the US, if you aren't missing a limb, there are at least 300 to 400 people quite ready to take over for you.  Permanently.  Vomit in the bathroom.  Pop as many pills as you like.  But I don't remember ANYONE ever taking a day off sick.

Matthew was home the week before.  Don't know if the cold cloth helped his fever any, but it made ME feel better!

But no matter how many high-power ideas I get in my head: koala rescue, Brisbane U, public health and safety officer, when my kids get sick I just want to stay home with them.

I don't know if this is copping out or not.

If I could get my #($*% together and write my novel, I'd have the best of BOTH worlds!

21st Century Woolf

It just occurs to me that the best words of wisdom I have heard about writing come from two writers whose works I really haven't read.  Virginia (Woolf)'s essay entitled ''A Room of One's Own" has been my clarion call since before I read it.  And once I finally did read it, two years ago, well, the woman is simply brilliant.  (I just can't seem to get into her fiction.  Huh.)

I don't have her essay here with me.  But I feel that I am living it.  Virginia's contention is that men in her time were more successful authors than women for a number of very simple reasons:  they had the freedom to write, they had the income to write, and they weren't getting knocked up every eighteen months and raising a passle of snotty nosed children. 

Nowadays the passle of kids is a choice, and not nearly as time-consuming as we all like to moan about.  (Is passle a word?)  The exception is the first few years with multiple small children, but those do pass.  Sure, we have to keep the buggers fed and clothed but we now have ovens, stoves, microwaves and take-out menus.  We have washers and dryers so that the laundry doesn't take an ENTIRE DAY out of every week.    Oh  - and the clothes DO make themselves.  Or at least some underpaid and underfed child laborer in China does.  And we have supermarkets.  We aren't raising and slaughtering our own meat or growing and canning our vegetables or going out the chicken shed or milking the cows twice a day.  And we aren't chopping the wood for our heating.  Or spending another day a week on our hands and knees doing the floor.  (Honestly, I can't imagine caring enough about the appearance of my floor to spend an entire day on my hands and knees on it but..) 

So that I think the biology of breeding has been taken out of the mix as an excuse.

Having an independent income would be nice.  No worry about mortgage or college tuitions or those braces Ryan and Andrew are going to need.  But we have the freedom to earn an income.

So that I'm actually forgetting what I was going to complain about in the first place!

Oh.  Yeah.  THE ROOM.  OF ONE'S OWN.  Time, breathing space, a moment to oneself. 

The second brilliant writer I worship but don't read is Stephen King.  Not my style.  Although I will be taking out all of the books under the King section in the Brisbane public library because I want to see what I've been missing.  I'm not into sci-fi or horror or creepy and weird.  I have enough trouble dealing with the horrors of reality and don't need anything more to lay awake nights trembling about.

But he knows how to write.  And he says a writer has to...guess what...write.  (And read too.  Yay.  I have access to English language libraries again and free license to do what I love best.  And call it work.)  A writer, according to Stephen, has to write.  A lot.  And to do that you need a place of your own.  His own words, a century after Virginia said the same thing.

Stephen doesn't say you need a ROOM per say.  He wrote his first two published novels, Carrie and 'Salem's Lot,  ''in the laundry room of  a doublewide trailer, pounding away on my wife's portable Olivetti typewriter and balancing a child's desk on my thighs."  You can either hate people like this or you can try to emulate them.  But the room, according to Stephen, ''really needs only one thing:: a door which you are willing to shut."  And that is when I realize that Stephen's wife, also an author, was taking care of the kids a large percentage of the time he was writing.  I believe he'd be the first to admit it too.  (And the guy was writing four hours a day, at night, while holding down a full-time teaching job, so that I am not saying he had it easy either.  Virginia again.  Independent income.  Which Stephen has NOW but did not have when he started.)

I'm reliving all this in Iglersreuth this month because I don't have internet access.  Poor baby.  Virginia would not be impressed.  But Damon is home, on our only table, working.  He dominates the scene and the access to cyberspace.  And I am drained by the demands of teaching in the mornings, entertaining the children all afternoon (although we have a good time) and then home, hearth and husband to boot.  Always there.  Sapping my space.  I have managed to condense that ''room of my own'', that space with a door, into a laptop and a blind eye to the mischief around me.  And still I am fighting for that.

But Damon is supportive of my writing.  And the kids start all-day school in January.  So that maybe, and maybe soon, my day will come.  I envision myself in puffy blue houseslippers and a flowered house dress, my hair done up in rollers and a coffee in my hand, cheerfully handing everyone their lunchbags on the way out the door.  Never mind the rollers.  Too much work.  Hair in a bandana wearing an old Tshirt of Damon's, sitting in front of the sliding glass doors, sunlight already streaming in at 8 AM, and sitting down to work on my writing.

Virginia's dream realized. 

Because women like her worked hard to make it possible for women like me to have the freedoms and luxuries (and yes, doing the laundry in a washing machine IS a luxury!) we have.  Because technological advancements have given me time I wouldn't have had  a century ago.

And because I've been working long enough, hard enough, with four little monkeys clinging to my back to appreciate the gift of time and space I am being given.

A whole lot of nothing.  That's what I'm getting for Christmas this year.

Job Offer

I took the kids to Burger King last Friday for lunch. BK Germany is running a special: buy one adult menu, get a kids meal free. (No, no the German economy isn't hurting. I was also heading to the mall to take advantage of the 50% sales that were nonexistent here until recently.)

I discussed strategy with my staff on the way over.

"Ryan. Andrew. Listen closely. We can get FREE FOOD if we buy adult meals. Do you two really need a kiddy menu and a cheap plastic toy?"

Ryan and Andrew evaluated the importance of a cheap plastic toy to their well-being.
Ryan opted for an adult menu in order to help me out. Andrew was torn, but decided to check out the toys first, before making his decision.

By the time we reached the counter, I knew that Ryan and Matthew wanted chicken nuggets and that Andrew and Aidan were going to split a burger and some nuggets evenly between them. Andrew decided he really did need a cheap, stuffed wrestling figure that made music when you pressed his belly. (It is now sitting in the kitchen, on its way to the trash, with Aidan and Matthew's cheap, stuffed wrestling figures.)

I was pretty impressed with myself. The man in the business suit behind me was less so.

"Are you guys still running that buy one, get a children's menu free deal?"

She looked at me - and then the four kids - warily.

"Yeah. But uh...you only get ONE per meal."

"No problem." I smiled. I had this under control.

I ordered the two adult meals, got my two free kids meals and ordered a third for Andrew. We had the sauce and ketcup worked out in a matter of seconds. Ryan then marched the three boys off behind the counter to pick out their dolls. (Let's call them what they really are, c'mon guys, ACTION FIGURES? Really.)

Next I asked her to lead the twins upstairs and find a table. The three of them went. I asked Andrew to help me carry the second tray with fries. He was a gentleman. (I am LOVING these older children; I hardly get a chance to carry my own bags anymore!)

I smiled at the businessman behind me. He still wasn't impressed.

Later, he sat upstairs with his three friends, also all in business suits. They studiously ignored me as I organized the table, complimented the kids for eating everything on their plates, er napkins, except the fries and who can ever finish those?! Andrew and Aidan then went off to play in the kiddy cage, Matthew did a back-dive onto his head off of his seat, and I carried him screaming with me while I talked to the six-year old girl in the kiddy cage who was beating the stuffing out of my eight-year old and four-year old boys.

I imagined I was the perfect image of a living hell for most German men.

But I heard them as I was herding my staff down the stairs, meals entirely eaten and table wiped clean.

"Maybe we should ask that American lady with all the kids to work for us."

Sorry boys. You couldn't afford me. I really like the job I have.

But thanks for the compliment. It's nice to know people are noticing.

I've Already GOT A Job!

I'm getting a little tired of well-intentioned people telling me that I should find something to do for myself, something besides household, husband and children.

Generally it's mothers with one child, already 9 or 10 years old, who feel it is vitally important to my well-being that I find a job outside the home. Or a man. Let's face it, they have NO idea what it takes to manage a large family. It's work enough without a paying job thrown into the mix.

"It'll be good for you," they say, "something just for you that doesn't involve constantly being there for someone else." "You need something just for you alone."

Yeah right. Problem being that I HAVE a job, keeping the house within standards expected by the health department, feeding a family of six and being there for the kids in the afternoon. And has anyone seen how much laundry four children generate? In a day?

Add to that the fact that I LIKE my job. Who do they think I had the kids for anyway?!

The kids are in school and kindergarten in the mornings. That gives me 15 hours a week to myself. I can clean the house, buy groceries, organize the clutter that accumulates with six people living together, do laundry.....or I can go to the gym and workout. I choose that latter and I feel fantastic for it.

I come home at noon to pick up the twins from kindergarten, meet Ryan and Andrew at the door, prepare a warm meal for a family lunch - Damon is able to join us. Then we have homework and music and soccer and English Club or playdates to coordinate. Sometimes we get a free afternoon to do nothing or to spend at the pool. It is a full, demanding and exhausting schedule.

But it's the job I chose - albeit without fully knowing what I was getting myself into - and it's a job I enjoy and want to devote myself to. It is also a time-sensitive assignment: it won't be there anymore in a few years.

If I use my precious 15 hours to find a paying position somewhere - most of the suggestions naturally suggest returning to veterinary medicine - that gives me no time to devote to myself. Yes, I enjoy medicine and I do feel drawn to returning to it in some form in the future, but spending my mornings in a high-stress, high-paced environment right now is not going to give me the break I need.

I've got enough guilt of my own - about not bringing in an income, about not using the education I have - without also hearing it from others that I am now also required - in addition to home and family - to find a job in order to fulfill myself.

By the end of the day I am plenty filled as it is, thank you.

Why do I have to be a supermom? Why are all the mommy success stories written about mothers who have done MORE than manage hearth and home? Why isn't being a mother enough anymore?

I'm an emancipated woman. Unlike my Iraqi neighbor, I chose my marriage, chose to have children and chose to stay home with them. I am not hidden in the kitchen, I do not have to wear a burkha and I am allowed to drive a car and go out unescorted by a male relative.

The women's movement was about choice.

When did we decide that a woman was less of a woman - or worth somehow less as a person -for choosing to stay at home with the kids?