Category: being a mother (good, bad, indifferent)

Without a dishwasher, the memory of Christmas lingers a little longer than it otherwise would

Ice cream can’t go wrong.

Anyone want some ham? A game of badminton? Cricket? Connect four? A chapter of Captain Underpants?

First ball* in half an hour.

*Cricket reference

Have you got your bucket out?

There is a little boy at the side of the bed. Can we put the reindeers water out? Tomorrow is Christmas Day.

I am not cross that I have been woken a little earlier than I would have liked. There are things to do. Not too many, but enough to fill the day.

The mister has already – yesterday – scrubbed the bathroom and mown the lawn. I have vacuumed the study and the hall. The children’s bedroom is a mess and I think but it will only get worse. We need to sweep the verandah and get the grevillea in. It will die if it stays in that pot.

At lunchtime, we will open the ham. The ham is vacuum-packed and has a calico bag. It is kept in the fridge at the back (plugged in on Friday afternoon). The ham comes every year. A building industry gift. People laugh – vegetarians with ham – but they gobble it up and say that’s good. The mister and I sneak pieces on Christmas night, then again on Boxing Day. FirstCat wants a piece of ham (I’m organic, not vegetarian). We said we’ll open it on Christmas Eve and you can have a slice for lunch.

Is it lunchtime yet?

I am on salads and dessert, so there is not much more cooking I can do. I will make the pesto (almond) and the dressing (sesame oil). Everything else is best done fresh. There will be a lot of Chinese cabbage left. I only need five leaves, but they weren’t selling them in halves. The bombe looks less glorious than it should and I’m worried about the meringue. How wrong can ice cream go?

The bubbles of red are chilling and there’s white for just in case. My brother will bring the beer. We will get the ice in the morning. Is it ten the bottle shops close?

The phone has rung once this morning and now twice. I had better ring my grandfather to let him know he’s with us for lunch and around the corner for tea, but the phone call must be timed. His memory is not what it was, and phone calls worry him. He rings back moments later to confirm and then again because he has written it down, but can’t remember that we spoke. He leaves messages if we aren’t here. It is a hard to line to tread. The one between patronising and what’s best. I will ring him soon.

Can you watch me on the trampoline, can we see the reindeers yet? Not yet, my love, not yet.

There’s the tent to check. First aid kit is still on the list, but mosquito nets is not. The batteries all need to be recharged. Remember what happened last trip? We have roofracks fitted to the car.

First text of the day to the granny who lives far away. Dear Nana Do you have your bucet ful of water and are you wating for your presents. We will ring her tomorrow and probably this afternoon and perhaps tonight. I told her the other day I’m making the bombe, the one you taught me. And she said really and I said yes. She said I was just looking at the crystal tree, the one you gave me last year. It was the best present I gave anyone.

I went to the advent carols service and am planning for Christmas Eve. I go – when I do – to the Pilgrim church in town and if you asked me, I couldn’t tell you why. I will catch the tram, and the tree in Victoria Square – lit in white – will make me think of Christmases that haven’t been. They’re cheesy, but I like Christmas lights.

I’m making cupcakes with my boys. The secret ingredient: almond meal. Tomorrow morning, in the quiet hours after the presents and before my nephew arrives and before we pick my grandfather up, we will ice the cakes in a shade of green which I hope is delicate. Depends who puts the colouring in. There are jaffas to balance on top.

There are presents to finish off and a mountain to wrap. We have painted canvases, put fabric paint on undies. There are glittery cards all round. The mister’s present is fabulous and I am hiding it in the boot. I don’t know where mine is. SecondCat has done his best, but secrets are hard when you’re four. We have made you a wheelbarrow he says in the way he has been taught. We’ve got you a washing machine. Oh, I say, then he says no, it’s a beautiful vase. FirstCat tells him off, the mister laughs.

At some point today – perhaps around four – when the list of things to do stretches longer than the time, the mister and I will argue about priorities and how things should be done and how they should have been. It will not last long. Tomorrow is Christmas Day.

Happy Christmas all.

teh christmas bombe part one

Some years ago, when FirstCat was about to turn one, and SecondCat was perhaps a few weeks away from being conceived, I said to my mother-in-law can I help with anything? It is the kind of question to which you expect the answer to be: hmmm, not really, oh, well, since you asked, could you peel the carrots and grate the potatoes then pop down to the shops because I forgot to get the cream.

Instead, she said: make this.

She handed me one of those magazines which sits in the drawers of such women, never quite forgotten, but barely remembered. It was a Christmas Bombe. Charged with this responsibility – which weighed heavily on the shoulders of one for whom fruit salad is not simple – I should perhaps have drunk one less bottle of sparkling red on Christmas Day.

Nonetheless, the bombe went down a treat, and there’s nothing like a bit of adulation to make you try something again. So, here we go, this time without a recipe and with children old enough to want to help.

To make a Christmas bombe parte one
You must start early, because the ice cream needs to be really, really hard by Christmas Day. Go to the shops and buy the ice cream. Go to the post office first to buy the Christmas stamps, because yesterday when you went they had run out of Christmas stamps. At the supermarket, stand in front of the freezer thinking to self, now I’m sure I had two flavours last time, vanilla and chocolate, but how did that work, did I just mix them together, that seems a bit strange. Buy two litres of the best vanilla available at local supermarket. Remember to get the almond slivers, the chocolate chips came home on Saturday.

It is good to do this on a hot day, and to have only one bike between two children, so that the children can bicker about whose turn it is to ride it all the way home even if they did promise before you left home that of course they wouldn’t argue, of course they could share, please please please. Just keep walking and occasionally calling back I’ve got ice cream don’t forget. Hope that all the people who normally hear you are home, so that they know that at least this time you are not just being a grumpy mother with unrealistic expectations of her children. This time, you have purpose.

By the time you get home the ice cream will be pretty much melted softened. Tip ice cream into mixing bowl. Finish softening.

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Have flash of memory about why you had two flavours of ice cream last time. Congratulate self on superior memory. Divert children’s attention from ice cream now can we have a try, now can we lick our fingers with ice blocks. Green ice blocks. Congratulate self on cunning.

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Tip in almonds. Mix. Tip in chocolate chips. Turn back for one second.

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Console self with child’s quick-witted response. There were too many, the recipe said only thirteen.

Mix in chocolate chips. Prepare the least unsuitable bowl chosen from your range of unsuitable bowls. Curse self for only remaining commitment to sustainable lifestyle – no rolls of glad wrap – as you try to get bread bags to sit in bowls. Squish smaller bowl on top to make room for chocolate ice cream, to be added another day. Think to self: there’s a chance this won’t work so well, these bowls really aren’t at all suitable.

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Impress self by only having to move one thing to make room in freezer. Think to self: at worst, we’ve got good quality ice cream with almond slivers and chocolate chips mixed through.

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Now you can lick the bowls. But NO! not the floor.

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To be continued…

…and the bathroom’s a disgrace

I do not like sitting on the side, watching the class, biting my lip. I do not like being the only mother who leaves her seat to talk to her children – both of them – in undertones. But being careful not to hiss.

I do not like being the one the other mothers smile at carefully with gentleness in their eyes. I do not like that I have smiled the same smile to them. The father does not look my way at all tonight.

I do not like that when we are in the car, windows up and air conditioner on, I hear myself say ‘that’s one present gone, and that only leaves two’. It is something I have promised myself I will never – ever – say. Although now that I have said it once, I know that I will not say it again. I like that when we drive past the golf course I stop myself saying I should stop the car and leave you to live in the trees.

I do not like that nobody told me that there would be moments when my children would define me, but leave me no control.

And then I remember my mother did, but I did not have my listening ears on.

puffed out

I make pasta sauce with three vegetables, each of them a different colour.

I buy expensive sulphur-free dried fruit instead of roll-ups and muesli bars.

In the mornings, I peel the carrots for the lunchboxes in zebra stripes, because the children won’t eat them if they’re not peeled, but I know that most of a carrot’s nutrition is in the skin.

But tonight, I really couldn’t give a shit whether they even ate and the only thing that will motivate me to find the number to call the pizza man will be my own hunger pangs.

It’s not the vegan lunchbox…


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Originally uploaded by adelaide writer.

This is SecondCat’s lunch.

It is mozarella cheese. ‘The gratings part’.
A carefully segmented soy sausage. ‘Wet’ and ‘not cooked’.
Frozen peas. Again: ‘not cooked’.
Three slices of cucumber. Not four.

Did it fill my heart with mother-love warmth to serve it up to him? No.
Did he eat it? Yes. All that and more.

Before lunch

On the subject of removing splinters from children, my dr has this to say:

If your splinter does not fit any of the descriptions above, it should be safe to try to remove it yourself using the following method.

  1. Wash the skin around the splinter with warm, soapy water.
  2. Using sterile tweezers, grip the splinter as close to the skin surface as you can.
  3. Pull the splinter out directly. Don’t pull too hard or fast or the splinter may break.

With no mention of a child who has just shouted so loudly and for so long at the merest mention of you just having a look at his hand, that the neighbour from over the fence and down one has just called out is everything all right in a tone which suggests that she believes you should call an ambulance.