Chapter 7
SEVEN
Grandma Joy’s Words of Wisdom:
‘Housework is only as important as you wish to make it.’
Ahh ... bliss. Total and absolute bliss. After ninety minutes of bedtime stories, cuddles, and explaining to Jacob how stars were ‘stuck’ to the sky, Cara finally surrendered to her bed. She’d been up since four and barely sat down all day. Exhaling slowly, she savoured the delicious feeling that came before sleep; the sense of not yet asleep, but not quite awake. It would have been even more delicious to cuddle up to Pete and doze off with her face resting on his chest, but he was on night shift. A wave of peace washed over her, and she drifted into beautiful, sacred sleep...
‘Maaama!’
Cara bolted upright, having developed the ability to switch rapidly from ‘completely relaxed’ to ‘alert and ready for duty’ in a moment’s notice. Motherhood had given her good reflexes.
‘Bugger!’ Cara swung her petite legs over the side of the bed and went into Toby’s room, which she’d crawled out of only minutes before. Tommy Teddy lay helpless on the floor, while Toby stood in his cot, arms outstretched trying to reach him.
‘Shh ... it’s okay, Tobes. Mummy’s got him,’ Cara soothed, placing the teddy bear into Toby’s arms and tucking him back in. She leaned over and kissed his forehead, smoothing his blonde hair with a gentle hand. This was close to the thirty-seventh time Tommy Teddy had fallen out of the cot in the last month. Cara considered tying the bear to the cot with his very own bungy rope, but it wouldn’t be safe. She also considered buying a larger teddy bear that wouldn’t fit through the bars of the cot, but Toby was so attached to Tommy; he wouldn’t go to sleep without him.
Resigned to on-call-rescue-duty for the unforeseen future, Cara crawled back into bed with a yawn and shuffled around to get comfortable. What if he wakes again? Maybe I should wait a little before closing my eyes. There was nothing worse than getting comfy and drifting off to sleep only to be woken again. She crooked her neck to one side, preparing to pick up the slightest whimper indicating an imminent awakening from her son. Satisfied that it was safe to fall asleep, Cara rolled over to her side, waiting for that delicious, sleepy sensation.
Waiting...
Still waiting...
Nope, nothing. Now she was wide awake.
‘Bugger, bugger, bugger!’ She rolled over to the other side. The notepad on her bedside table caught her eye in the moonlight, and she went over in her mind what she’d written on it:
To Do List :
1. Put on a load of washing before taking kids to school.
2. Make sure Jacob brings his show-and-tell item to pre-school.
3. Buy more eczema cream for Toby on the way back from school drop-off.
4. Hang out the washed clothes.
5. Sort out the overflowing kitchen drawers.
6. Open Facebook and let my friends know I still exist.
7. Try not to get distracted by memes, mindless quizzes, and predictive text games on Facebook.
8. Figure out how to clean Jacob’s drawing of ‘Mummy Flying in Space’ off the bedroom wall. Or, find a convenient piece of furniture to hide it.
9. Write the shopping list.
10. Go to the supermarket before getting the kids from school, and don’t forget the toilet paper this time.
11. Remember to –
At that point, Cara’s list writing had been interrupted by one of the children. She’d returned to her list a few minutes later and forgot what she was supposed to remember. Just thinking about the list exhausted her.
But there was another list that excited her.
She reached over and withdrew her makeshift bookmark from a novel she’d been trying to read for the last eight months, and replaced it with a Band-Aid that was for some reason on the bedside table. With the light from the moon and the street lamp outside filtering through the venetian blinds, she could just make out the words she’d written on her passion card .
Cara’s Top Five Passions:
When my life is ideal, I am...
1. Enjoying a loving, fun relationship with my husband and children.
2. Expressing my talents and receiving positive recognition for my artwork.
3. Experiencing fantastic health and great sleep throughout my life.
4. Living in a beautiful, well organised home with a purpose-built art studio.
5. Having regular weekends away with friends.
Cara held the card to her heart as she rolled onto her back, and a tiny tear slid down the outside of her cheek. She didn’t know if that tear held happiness and hope for a future that could be hers, or sadness for the fact that she wasn’t quite there yet. She wiped the tear away before it reached her ear, and re-read the card.
Yes. This was the life she wanted. Nothing extravagant, just a happy family life, nice home, good health, time with friends, and to make use of her artistic talents. Wanting to spend child-free weekends away with friends had seemed extravagant at first, but when she’d agreed to Liz taking her through The Passion Test as a volunteer in the Hot Seat, she’d realised that having time away without her family didn’t make her a bad mother. In fact, she knew she’d be a better mother for it. Liz had encouraged her not to rationalise the prioritisation of her passions, but to go with what felt best.
Right now though, as Cara yawned for probably the forty-seventh time that day, she felt like moving her passion for good sleep up to number one, bumping Pete and the kids further down the list. Surely they’d understand ?
An hour or so passed and she finally drifted off to sleep, waking another three times for rescue duty throughout the night. At a quarter to six, a warm body plonked next to her and a light kiss tickled her cheek.
‘Hi, honey,’ Cara mumbled.
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.’
‘I’m used to it.’
‘Bad night?’ Pete enquired.
‘The usual.’ Cara yawned, arching her back and stretching her arms. ‘You?’
‘The usual. Mostly elderly patients, an asthma attack, baby with a fever, and a teenage boy who went too far with the alcohol. At least no one died. Well, not on my watch anyway. You never know what’s going to happen later.’ Pete had seen a lot in his time with the ambulance service. At first he’d had trouble sleeping, constantly going over the events of the day and making sure he’d done everything possible for each patient. After a while, it became more familiar. It never got easier for him, but he’d grown more confident in his skills.
‘My husband; out there saving the world!’ Cara flung her arm over Pete’s shoulders. ‘Toby woke four times. That damn teddy bear! I don’t know what to do about it. He refuses to sleep without it, but it always manages to end up on the floor. What do we do?’ Cara propped up onto her elbow. ‘Pete?’
His eyes were closed and his breathing slow. Sighing, Cara got out of bed and stretched again, desperate for a strong cup of coffee. ‘Let the day begin.’
‘I know you want jam on your toast, Jacob, but we’ve run out. Mummy will buy more this afternoon.’ Cara quickly added ‘jam’ to the shopping list before spreading peanut butter on Jacob’s toast, Vegemite on Toby’s, and pouring milk into Lily’s cereal. ‘One day you kids will be old enough to get your own breakfast, won’t that be good?’ No one answered.
After wolfing down some muesli and Jacob’s discarded banana, Cara put the lunches into their school bags, signed an excursion permission note for Lily, put on the first load of washing, and carefully rolled the portrait of Jacob into a cylinder for show-and-tell day. ‘C’mon kids, time to brush your teeth.’ She shuffled the troupe one-by-one into the bathroom. A few spits and gurgles later, they all hopped in the car.
‘Skooo... skooo...’ Toby said a few minutes later, pointing to Lily skipping off to meet her friends in the school playground. ‘Me go skooo?’ he asked.
‘One day, baby, one day.’ Cara laughed. ‘Believe me, I can’t wait.’
Next stop was Penguins Pre-school. Cara unbuckled the kids, led Jacob inside, then buckled Toby back in the car. ‘Oh, crap!’ She noticed the cylinder on the seat. ‘Oops, I mean crab!’ The last thing she needed was for Toby to start saying ‘crap’ every time something went wrong. He’d already caught on to her frequent use of ‘bugger’. When she’d dropped a bottle of juice at the supermarket, spilling the contents on the floor of aisle four, ‘bugger’ had been Toby’s response. ‘My thoughts exactly,’ she’d whispered under her breath, as an elderly woman raised her brows in disapproval, pushing her trolley away from the spreading deluge.
She unbuckled Toby again, grabbed the cylinder and raced it back into the pre-school. ‘Jacob forgot his show and tell.’ She handed it to Mrs Fern.
‘Thanks, Cara. Have a good day! ’
‘You too!’ Cara waved, already half way up the path.
‘How on Earth do these things get so tangled?’ Item five on Cara’s To Do List was underway. ‘You’d think everything comes to life as soon as I close the drawer, dancing around and tangling themselves for the sole purpose of annoying me!’ She pulled out the can opener, entwined with four or five elastic bands and a candy wrapper, and hooked onto the egg whisk. Toby looked at her blankly, then peered into the drawer. ‘It’s like that Barrel of Monkeys game, Tobes, where you have to link the monkeys and pull them all out together, only with this I don’t have to try, it just happens!’ She continued pulling out gadgets and utensils, linked and knotted together like a set of Christmas tree lights.
The beep of the washing machine gave her permission to end the madness of sorting the drawers. They weren’t perfectly organised like her mother’s, but they would do for now. She closed the drawer, then yanked it open again to check if things had re-tangled themselves while she wasn’t looking. ‘What am I doing?’ She shook her head. ‘Mummy’s going a little bonkers, Tobes! Or maybe I just need another cup of coffee.’ She scooped her youngest out of his walker and went into the laundry, and twenty minutes later the sun was rapidly drying everything she’d hung on the clothesline.
‘Okay, household gripe number two: Where do all the matching socks go?’ Hands on hips and eyes squinting, Cara surveyed the scene: clothes, towels, and underwear swinging gently on the line, and nine socks, none of which had a match. It was like there were free radicals roaming around the house taking socks as they went on their destructive journeys. Actually, there were: her kids. Smiling at her weird thoughts, Cara led free radical number three inside to give the washing machine its second workout of the day.
Toby grumbled, scratching at his chest. Cara pouted, crouching down and lifting his top. White scaly skin and red scratch marks greeted her. Turning him around, she saw them on his back too. ‘Oh dear, Mummy forgot to buy more cream.’
Twenty-five minutes later, Toby having been buckled in and out of the car for the tenth time, she rubbed cream on his skin. She knew it would only last about six hours before he scratched again. It helped somewhat, but Cara thought there must be another solution for Toby’s eczema. She scribbled ‘Book Dr’s appt’ on the notepad beside the phone and decided she’d request a referral to a specialist.
After progress with her To Do List, Cara arrived at the pre-school. The kids filtered out one by one to their waiting parents, carrying sculptures made from cereal boxes and cardboard toilet rolls, Mums and Dads saying ‘Wow, this is beautiful!’ and ‘Of course we’ll decorate the dining table with it!’ while rolling their eyes.
‘Cara, could I have a word?’ Mrs Fern gestured inside.
Oh God, what has Jacob drawn on now? Please don’t let it be another child like last time . During the first week he’d drawn glasses around little Benjamin’s eyes with black marker, complete with a moustache and beard. Needless to say, Benjamin’s mother wasn’t amused.
‘That picture Jacob brought for show-and-tell, did you really draw that?’
‘Yes, I did.’ Cara nodded.
‘It’s fantastic!’ exclaimed Mrs Fern. ‘You have quite a gift. ’
‘Um ... thanks.’ Cara said, relieved that Jacob didn’t appear to have done anything wrong.
‘Listen, I was wondering ... would you be interested in doing after-school art classes here for the children?’
‘Oh! Um...’
‘I was thinking one afternoon a week for about an hour, perhaps a Wednesday if that suits you. You’d be paid of course,’ she explained.
‘Wow, I’m really honoured. I’d love to!’ A thrill rippled throughout her body. ‘I’d have to figure out what to do with my other two children though, depends if my husband’s working or sleeping off his night shift.’
‘If you like, they can join our after-school program in the building next door. There’s a room for the littlies, and another for the primary students,’ Mrs Fern suggested. ‘They can stay free of charge for the hour, as a thank you for your time and effort.’
‘You’ve got yourself a deal.’ Cara shook Mrs Fern’s hand.
‘Great! I’ll give you some forms to fill in when you come by tomorrow, and you’ll just have to agree to a police check about working with children, then we’ll be good to go.’
Police check? Cara hoped Jacob’s unnecessary call to emergency services wouldn’t be a problem.
And working with children? That’s all I do!
‘Oh, and if you could bring in a list of ideas for the classes, we can work out a schedule of activities for the next month or two, and I’ll get some flyers printed to give to the parents.’
Mrs Fern sounded organised, and Cara was convinced the woman’s drawers would be tidy and all her socks would have matching pairs.
‘Sounds good. I’ll bring a list of ideas tomorrow.’ Wait, did I say tomorrow? It occurred to Cara why her To Do List was never completed. She kept adding to it.
When Pete had left for another night shift and the kids were tucked up in bed, Tommy Teddy tucked tightly under Toby’s armpit, Cara retreated to the bedroom and got out her notepad. Before writing her ‘To Do List’, she’d always write a ‘Done List’; things she’d achieved that day. A mother from playgroup had suggested it: ‘It allows you to focus on the things you have done, rather than the things you haven’t,’ she’d said. Only thing was, the ‘To Do List’ always seemed to be longer than the ‘Done List’.
The Done List :
1. Did two loads of washing.
2. Remembered Jacob’s show-and-tell (and, got a job offer from it, yay!)
3. Bought more eczema cream for Toby. Okay, so I forgot in the morning, but I went back later.
4. Dealt with the kitchen drawer conspiracy. But I’ll be checking again tomorrow to make sure!
5. Checked Facebook and told my friends I still exist. Well not literally, I posted my status as ‘ Cara Collins is wondering what it feels like to sleep through the night.’
6. Got distracted by memes, mindless quizzes, and predictive text games on Facebook.
7. Did the shopping (and remembered the toilet paper this time!)
Smiling at her accomplishments, Cara turned the page and began a new ‘To Do List’. She listed things still to be completed, and added more :
1. Book a doctor’s appointment for Toby.
2. Find missing socks.
3. If socks are found, stick them together with safety pins. Actually, better make that clothes pegs, as safety pins aren’t really that safe. At least, not with my kids.
4. Do what Liz Ashford said and ‘find time for myself’. I don’t know where I’ll find that. Probably the same place the socks are hiding.
5. Write a list of ideas for art classes, preferably ones that don’t involve cardboard toilet rolls.
‘Actually,’ Cara said. ‘No time like the present.’
She turned over another page.
Art Class Ideas :
1. Self portrait drawings.
2. Paint plaster shapes. Butterflies and bugs perhaps.
3. Papier maché balloons .
She crossed out idea number three on remembering the time she’d tried papier maché with Lily when she was younger. Lily had attempted to fashion a papier maché shoe over one of her brand new and very expensive ballet slippers. Besides, a room full of pre-schoolers going crazy with newspaper strips and glue? No thanks. She’d leave that to Mrs Fern or some other unsuspecting victim.
3. Large group mural canvas painting with some sort of ‘wholesome’ theme.
4. Paper lanterns with cellophane ‘lights’.
5. –
‘Maaama!’ Toby yelled.
Cara sighed, and before attending to the rescue, turned the page back to her To Do List and added one more item:
6. Accidentally-on-purpose lose Tommy Teddy, and buy a bigger teddy that doesn’t fit through the bars of the cot.