‘I feel so carefree I could levitate,’ I cried, handing my visitor a cup of coffee. ‘But I thought mothers were supposed to feel sad on these occasions,’ she said, peering at me closely for any lurking traces of sentiment.
I had just delivered Daniel for his first full day at primary school. He had done his year of ‘prep’ at nursery school, followed by a couple of months of mornings only at what he calls ‘proper school’. At last, his fifth birthday had arrived, and he was all set to become a sniffy-nosed, shoe-scuffing, hair on end, fully fledged schoolboy.
With both my children now away all day, I was now set to become one of the leisured classes. I had everything planned. Mondays would still have to be mucking-out day. If there was one word you wouldn’t apply to our family, that word is ‘neat’. After two whole days of home life for all, our house looks about as lived in as it is possible to get. But by spending one complete day zooming upstairs with armfuls of strewn socks, books, sweaters and toys, and zooming down again with assorted coffee cups, apple cores and newspapers, I could restore order. Just about.
In my blurred, optimistic mind’s eye I also saw Monday as wash day, vacuuming-under-beds day, cobweb-swiping day, buffing up the bathroom day, loo-bleaching day and kitchen floor wash and wax day. Other jobs, like ironing, grocery shopping and weeding the garden would have to be fitted in at my convenience, later in the week.
Roughly once a month, I thought to myself airily, I would have to spare another day for really cleaning the oven, washing paintwork, oiling door hinges and generally patching things up. But this should still leave me two or three whole weekdays to myself.
‘I shall have a regular day in town,’ I gloated, ‘to sort of top myself up.’ I had always been secretly impressed by a wife I know who keeps herself and her home beautifully well balanced and up to date by paying weekly visits to art galleries and exhibitions. She finds that this little self-imposed ‘refresher course’ keeps her from getting too bogged down in domesticity.
I would find time too to increase my culinary repertoire. I really enjoy creative cookery, but it is the harassed daily plod that saps initiative – that last-minute dash to get the potatoes on, that bleak moment in the pantry when one realises that the shops are shut, one’s husband is due home, and the only ingredients available for supper are two wizened carrots, a tin of evaporated milk, a packet of dried lentils and some dessicated coconut.
The new relaxed me would be more like the Elizabeth Davids of this world. I would mull and marinade and simmer and sieve to my heart’s content. I would do clever things with mussels and basil. Here a drizzle of melted butter, there a dash of white wine. I might even buy myself a double saucepan, at last, and a pestle and mortar, too.
Then we’d invite round all sorts of witty, worldly, colourful people I don’t even know as yet, and they’d invite us back; I’d overhear them saying incredibly flattering things about me, things like ‘To think that we had a woman like that living in our community and we didn’t even know it. Just look at her Picasso lithograph/hand crocheted hot pants/filet de boeuf en croute/flawless complexion!’
I’d have been spending some of my spare days pampering my appearance, of course. The leathery look would be out – for the face and hands, anyway. No more gnarled knuckles and sooty streaks. My usual hectic ‘floor polisher’s flush’ would be replaced by the creamy bloom of leisure. (Well, more or less.) I might even have an art nouveau hairdo and stroll around clasping a lily. Which just goes to show how carried away you can be – and how wrong.
Daniel has now been a fulltime schoolboy for more than a term. Those art-enriched days in town will have to wait until all the fetching and carrying to and from school is no longer necessary. There is still a desperate rush to put the potatoes on.
One of these days I shall catch up with the washing and ironing and mending and sweeping, but not today. Today I am looking through magazines for pictures of camels, knights in armour and/or the sky at night, for school projects. I am mending almost new school pullovers for the second time this week. I am helping my son collect ‘interesting stones and sticks and flowers and things for the nature table, teacher says’.
No, definitely not today. Today my daughter has just rushed in and said ‘Quick, Mummy, I’ve been invited to Gillian’s party and it’s the day after tomorrow and I must have a new dress and can it be cream silk and maxi with lots of smocking across the front and embroidery on the cuffs?’
‘Lots of smocking and embroidery?’ I sigh, as I reach for my tape measure.