rosiecheer

When my kids were brand new, I used to get an ache somewhere in the vicinity of my womb any time someone wanted to hold them for too long. Then as they got a bit older, I got smarter and loved being in a group of family and friends (especially old ladies and little girls) because they’d always want to hold and entertain the baby for me, while I had a hands-free moment.

Now that they’re older, I still feel like I’m playing ‘pass the baby’ but in a far more practical ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ way.

This week has been a real roller coaster test in the whole work-life balance equation.

On Thursday, I had to be at the airport at 6.30am for a day-long business trip and my partner in parenting crime was away at the Tech4Africa conference. That meant, there was no-one in the house to do the mayhem school run routine in the morning.

I farmed the kids out to sleepovers at their BFFs mere moments after collecting them (late again Bob) from aftercare.

We came home and did our sums: homework + bath + pyjamas + packing bags + feeding pets + making school lunches + quick drop off at relevant BFFs before bedtime = a fresh new tick on the Mommy To-Do list. How’s that for a story sum?

I dulled the sudden recurrence of a womb-ache with multiple drams of port and headed for bed knowing that I’d be back home the following night at 9pm.To manage that mishap in Mommy Time Management, Granny relieved the au pair at 4pm and cooked dinner for the kidlets.

I arrived home from my business trip just in time to kiss my 'pass-the-parcel' babies good night. I sighed ‘phew’ and wiped my sweaty brow then sang myself to sleep, so I could be fresh and at ‘em the next morning at the office.

Friday dawned, I trudged the 9-5 treadmill and packed the kids' bags again for a sleepover at our friends/neighbours so hubby and I could go out for dinner with his brother and his brother’s wife. We haven’t seen his brother for ages and who would say ‘No’ to a slap-up dinner at one of Cape Town’s finest restaurants?

So the kids are once again not at home. I’ll collect them at 7am tomorrow morning because my eldest has a rugby match at 8am.

I know it takes a village to raise a child, but sometimes I feel like we require a whole country.

Thank you Jo, Sue, Cherie, Lindo, Bonnie,  Andreas and Sam for helping us out.

When I get my babies back, I just want to bake biscuits with them and plant a few flowers.

As a freelance writer, I often get e-mail requests from other writers or SAFREA (the South African Freelancers Association) for people to interview. Subject lines will say things like: “Wanted: A teenage mutant who donated a kidney to her dying brother” and other such bizarre or banal stuff. (And if it sounds like I’m criticising, let me say clearly that I’m not. I do this too and just the other day I was looking for a breast cancer survivor in her 20s.)

Finding people to fit your desired content bill or proposed editorial strategy is not easy. Sometimes it’s downright impossible. But a note that landed in my mailbox this very morning was truly, utterly, jaw droppingly shocking. A women’s consumer magazine is looking for (among a host of other things) an attractive, slim woman (no larger than a size 12) for a feature.

Excuse me?

I had to read the mail twice to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Frankly, I’m horrified. I get that us chicks apparently want airbrushed celebrities on our covers and impossible giraffe-meets-waif supermodels on our fashion spreads, but real people stories should be about real people, surely? Fat, thin, or otherwise!

Is there any difference between saying ‘No one over size 12’ and saying ‘Whites only’? I don’t think so. That’s discrimination at its absolute worst.

My daughter is about to start Big School at an all-girls institution. No doubt she’ll be exposed to nasty little cliques that consist of blondes only, pretty girls only and girls that have a particular brand of cell phone only. But adults should know better, shouldn’t they?

Maybe I’m just incensed because I’m a plump plum myself, but I’m a real woman who reads real women’s magazines and I’m tired of feeling inadequate because I don’t fit the model for "What every woman ought to be."

I know that at least one person is going to tell me I’m naïve. I assure you I’m not. I know how magazine advertising etc. works, but I don’t have to like it.

Sam Wilson's Women24 newsletter shook me yesterday because it touched on a concern I've been grappling with for years now: the fact that society requires you to make decisions that it believes are right for your children first, and yourself second.

Any 'good' mother would put the needs of her children before her own, of course, and so in my early years of parenting I carefully set about sculpting my life around this mantra - all the while failing to notice that I was chipping away at my own soul. It took crippling depression and an overwhelming desire to blame (and almost divorce) my wonderful husband before I realised that I had it all wrong.

To be a 'good' mother you have to take care of yourself, your needs and your happiness FIRST. If you don't, all you give your children is a miserable Mommy at worst or a fake, feeble shadow of a real Mommy at best.

My children are only now getting to know me for who I really am: a mother who detests sitting on the side of rugby fields and chit chatting with other mommies in the car park. Their real mommy drinks too much wine, uses fowl language and is piss poor at housework. But she's a great cook, fun to be with, tells awesome stories and showers her family with heartfelt hugs, tickles and silly jokes.

The other mother I was (the one I made up) pretended to be content with a life of picking fabrics for window blinds and drinking tea with the neighbours. But she's been laid to rest now and the real Rosie doesn't like her neighbours, doesn't care much for house pride and loves her children with reckless abandon.

I don't think my family life has ever been messier or happier. Chin up Sam, keep it real.

I love my kids' birthdays: The excitement, the colour, the sugar and shiny/noisy toys. But my own birthday reminds me of only one thing: Aging, disgracefully.

So I get a little grumpy around my date of birth. Last night, on the eve of birthday, my sweet family preempted this.

I was feeling all teary so we made popcorn and they declared an early gift-opening session. I got the best birthday card EVER. It's so funny and touching and apt and perfect for me, that I have to share it.

This is what it said:

'You are 365 days lovelier than before...

Be nice

Think happy thoughts

Champion silver linings

Love all things (not just cute things like babies and kittens)

And when you do love - love like they do in power ballads

(you know, like on a cliff with the wind in your hair and your eyes shut,
knowing you'll never know another love like this)

Watch out for dog poo

Smile at people, even grumpy ones

Be nice (oh we already said that)

Remember that anything is possible and whatever you do:

Always try to look on the bright side.'

Ain't it sweet? I've read it so many times I know it  by heart.

My beautiful big sister turns 40 today and I stand in total awe of her. At 40 she's more fabulous than she ever was at 20, having exchanged her shrinking violet coat for a cloak of considerable confidence. She's taught me not to fear aging. In fact, she's taught me not to fear anything at all, except for maybe her. (Big Sister is watching you!)

She also told me that there's no Father Christmas. Some 25 odd years ago on a hot breezy Christmas Eve, she leant down from her top bunk bed and snapped  'I’m warning you Rose, don't wake me up again. There is NO Father Christmas, ok? It's Mom and Dad!' After which I cried like the baby sister I was and got her into big trouble.

By breakfast time she forgave me, and I her. It’s what sisters do. And she more than made up for it with subsequent life lessons, like how to put on make-up with subtlety, and how to shave your legs without cutting your ankles, and how to be an ok Mom without cracking and how to suck it up when life gets really tough.

‘Hope for the best, expect the worst’ is what she often says. Which is not surprising given that she’s spent the last decade mending her broken heart, parenting alone and fearlessly climbing the corporate ladder.  If the shoe were on my foot, I would’ve tripped and fallen on that rocky path.

So today of all days my sister, I want you to know just how much I love you and how much you’ve influenced my life.

Happy Birthday to you and thank you for lending me that cool necklace to wear to your party. It looks better on you, but I've always loved borrowing your stuff.

xx

Rosie