Watching buff young Springbok water polo
players splashing in the water, can you think of a nicer way to spend a
Saturday morning? All those wet, ripped six pack abs neatly packaged in lycra. Could
this be heaven?
Now, how can we ruin this blissful image?
Oh yeah. Make me put on my bikini and force me
to swim.
I don’t care if my son will drown without
me to prop him up.
I don’t care of the school needs me to cough up the cash to
pay for the water polo pool.
Nothing, nothing will make me endure the
humiliation of stripping down and flailing around in sub-zero water in front of
the Springbok water polo team. Nothing.
I may work in advertising, but I do
have some pride.
While we’re on the subject, would it kill
the school, would it scar my son’s educational development if just one weekend,
one lousy weekend, we didn’t have to go to a sports match, a craft market, a
workshop or a pom-pom cheerleader event?
The school wants him to play hockey. He is crap at hockey. There’s a
reason both he and I played the same position – left back. It’s because that’s
where they stick the people who can’t play hockey. We’re better suited to
playing hookey. He can’t do both because, low and behold, Saturday is a school
day. The same goes for the horse riding and the rock climbing and all the
non-team sports my kids are good at.
From a purely selfish stand point, I’d like
a Saturday where I can get up late, go for brunch, do some shopping, have my
hair done and sip sundowners. It’s not asking much. My mom worked Saturday
mornings when I was little. My dad and I would sneak past my nanny (she’d force
us to eat 3 hour old fossilised scrambled egg) and go to Stephanie’s for
breakfast. Then we’d pop over to AD Spitz for shoes and a quick browse through
the bookshop. It was heaven. No doing that now. No, we’ve got to be in two
places at once at 07:30am for sports. None of this namby-pamby family bonding
stuff.
As for the day of rest – the day of what?
Homework. That’s what we do on Sundays. Everyone keeps going about how much TV
kids watch and too many computer games. I don't where these children find the time. I don’t why I bothered to buy the
Nintendo Wii or the Playstation. No-one has more than 10 minutes to spend on them.
So, I’m cool with Small boy aged 9 eking out an hour on Sunday to kill evil
aliens.
We tried church on Sunday for a bit.
It was
a disaster. There we were kneeling on those lumpy cassocks at the
communion
rail. The priest stood before me, my son knelt beside me. It was a
deeply
spiritual moment.
“The blood of Christ,” the priest intoned.
“Oh gross!” exclaimed my son, “You’re not
going to drink some dead guy’s blood are you?”
The silence was overwhelming, broken only
by father’s guffaws of laughter.
I was not going to be defeated in my quest
for spiritual sustenance for my offspring. So, I tried again.
“Today,” droned the priest, “The reading is
from the Gospel of Luke.”
“Not a chance!” exclaimed my son standing
up.
“No,” he said, “You are not. You read from
Luke last week and the week before. This week you read from James!”
“Yes!” shouted several other small Jameses
in the audience.
The poor priest was floored. He read from
James though. After that debacle my mother gently suggested that perhaps I
should educate them on pagan tradition instead.
Of course, they get it from me.
As a child
I hated asparagus. I still do. I equated it with all things evil. Therefore
when the teacher asked who betrayed Jesus I raised my hand.
She was surprised.
I never raised my hand.
Teacher: “Yes?”
Me: “Judas Asparagus!”
It takes a lifetime to live that sort of
thing down.
As a working mother, I am locked in
the
battle with the spectre of the ideal stay-at-home mom. I know she isn’t
real,
but it doesn’t seem to help. A stay-at-home mom laughingly introduced to
me to
another working mother last week. The SAH mom thought it hysterical that
we
working mums kill ourselves baking for birthday rings and overcompensate
for
everything. She couldn’t believe that we traipse out at the crack of
dawn to
watch interminable cricket matches. She just drops her lot off and picks
them
up later.
The other working mum had fallen into the trap when
her son was 3. He chose hedgehog cupcakes. These were a nightmare to make
involving a lot of Cadbury Flake. Three ruined batches later, his mother
finally had something resembling the picture.
“Thank God,” she sighed, “I’ll
never have to do this again.”
Her son is now 13 and every year he requests the
hedgehogs.
If there is anything in her life she regrets it was agreeing to them
the first time.
The SAH mom buys hers from Woolies.
There’s a lesson in there
somewhere if I can just find the time to learn it.
No comments:
Post a Comment