I didn’t want to go out last night.  It was cold.  I was tired.  I didn’t have anything to wear. 

But.

Em Rusciano was performing at the Cabaret Festival.  Based on her past shows, I would quite willingly trudge through metres of snow, naked, even if I hadn’t slept in days. 

So I put my clothes on, put my face on, and showed up.

From the start of the show when she sang “I’m a motherfucking woman” (apparently that is originally a song by Ke$ha?  Who knew?  It could just as easily be Em’s anthem), right through to “I’m Every Woman”, Em had all of us laughing, singing and dancing along.  For over two hours she allowed us to forget about the chores waiting at home, not to mention the fighting kids or any number of pressures of family life.  Sure – that is what any good performer does, right?  But no other performer manages to do it while constantly reminding you of it, do they?

Em knows firsthand just how hard it is logistically for women just to get out of the house to enjoy a night out.  She acknowledges that in every show she does.  And she is incredibly grateful to her audience for making that effort for her.

Em’s shows are always about her audience.  But this show was just as much about Em.

While we laughed until we cried at her “Try Hard” tour, and then cried buckets of tears at her “Evil Queen” show, written as a catharsis after her miscarriage of little baby Ray, last night we celebrated with her.

Given her lifelong obsession with all things John Peter Farnham, performing with Farnesy’s band members and his musical director Chong Lim, was symbolic of Em having “made it” in the entertainment world.

It was also a very satisfying Fuck You to the haters: those who bagged her after her 9^th place exit on Australian Idol several years ago, right up to the 4recent shitstorm in the media, because Em “may or may not” have referred to the Sydney media as c**ts.

The “Difficult Woman” show was a response to all of the negative labels assertive women are given: opinionated, mouthy, even toxic.  Who hasn’t been called those names?  Em’s response? She is simply a woman who leaves nobody in any doubt about what she wants.

Her call to action was simple: for those of us who are sick of the notion that men build things and women decorate them to say fuck that!  To link arms with our fellow women and pledge to support each other.  To ask for help and to give that help when it is asked for.

At interval we were lucky enough to chat to Vincie, Em’s dad.  Usually on stage with Em, accompanying her on guitar, this time Vincie was happy to be in the audience, nearly bursting with pride.  He told us he always brings his hankie to wipe away the tears of laughter and joy, as he never knows what she is going to say next.  But of this show, he said “She’s loving it…….oh, she’s loving it”. 

And so Vincie, were we.

Em was all of us on stage, living out the dream she had nurtured since she was a little girl: a strong woman taking on everything the world had to throw at her and emerging triumphant (sequinned, and with a 7 piece horn section). 

Battle weary but not beaten.

Scarred but not scared.

Ready.

For whatever comes next…

A crime has been committed in our house.

On the weekend the 12 year old emerged from his room with accusing eyes, demanding answers from the other members of the household.  In his right hand, held aloft like a championship cup, was a purple foiled Cadbury chocolate bunny…………

With no ears.

“Who ate the ears?”  he demanded, as he presented each of us in turn with the bunny (sans ears), watching our responses to his questions.  When it came to my turn, I was equally incensed.  I had questions too. The biggest question being “how had the sneaky bugger managed to keep his chocolate stash hidden since Easter?!”  Easter was months ago!!

Clearly he had hidden his stash well, demonstrating that he has learned something from his mum after all.

How does the old saying go?  Necessity is the mother of invention?  Well clearly as a mother of two children, the necessity is chocolate, and invention is the number of creative hiding spots I have had for said chocolate.  My kids worked out from the moment they were able to climb where it was in the pantry, so I had to be smarter. 

(As an aside, the only chocolate that has ever been in plain sight in my pantry since then are the shiny gold nuggets they call Ferrero Rocher, because nobody wants to eat them.  In fact two members of my family can’t eat them (because, nuts), but that never stopped my father in law gifting them to me from time to time on random birthdays or Easter.  (This is despite the fact that I have been allergic to nuts for 41 years, and part of my husband’s family for 23 of those years).  Thank you for gifting me something that could possibly cause my death.  Or was that the point……)

I have hidden chocolate in a gazillion places, including (but not limited to): the computer desk, in suitcases, in my sock drawer, in my underwear drawer, inside a pillowcase (not ideal during a heatwave of 40plus degrees in Summer), underneath packets of pasta (too noisy to retrieve covertly), behind the dog treats (not recommended; could be dangerous for the dog).

Seriously, when it comes to chocolate, my kids are like airport sniffer dogs.  They will find it.  And if they don’t find it immediately, they will hear you trying to open and consume it.  I have lost count of the amount of times I have nearly choked while covertly trying to inhale a chocolate frog to avoid detection.  The worst is those bastard Flakes.  Do you remember the ad for the Cadbury Flake in the 80s? 

That woman in the white floaty dress and white hat sits delicately on the grass as she unwraps the flake, which doesn’t flick up everywhere all over her as she unwraps it, and then she slowly puts a tiny piece in her mouth as the voiceover sings “Feel it crumble and melt in your mouth”.

Yeah, what a load of false advertising that was.  That Flake will not only crumble in your mouth, it will crumble all over the floor and then you not only have to consume it at the speed of light, you also have to get the bloody vacuum cleaner out and suck up the evidence without being caught.

My only remaining hiding spots are on the shelf behind the cleaning products (yuk, no thanks), or as one good friend ingeniously suggested, in between the recipe books.  (That is where she hides her Haighs chocolate frogs).  Unless you have a budding  junior Masterchef in the house, which I certainly don’t, those frogs are going to be safely hidden for some time.

Anyway, back to the crime.

Obviously I was off the hook pretty quickly as he knew that if I had been aware of the existence of that rabbit, it would be missing more than its ears.  I mean, everyone knows the feet are even better than the ears, so they would have been gone too.  Then I would have had to cover up the crime by disposing of the rest of the evidence.

My money is on the 10 year old, but he is steadfastly refusing to own up.  Perhaps the Easter rabbit mystery will continue…..

7.31 pm “We are going to lift your baby out slowly, so you may not hear him cry”. 

Ok, so why isn’t anyone else in this delivery room making a sound either? 

7.33 pm  “He is having a little bit of trouble catching his breath, so we are going to take him to the nursery to give him some oxygen”

Is that why he is purple?

8 pm “It is getting late and your baby is still having a bit of a hard time with his breathing, we are thinking of transferring him to the hospital down the road as they can offer a higher level of care.  Just in case…”

8.07 pm Seven minutes?  Seven minutes ago you announced you were “thinking” of transferring my baby “just in case” and now here he is in a space age ambulance humidicrib with some kind of dome over his head and how did these people get here so fast and I’m starting to freak out and….

“What is your baby’s name?”

Joseph.

“My name is Anne. I promise you, I will look after Joseph”

Anne.  The nurse with the black curly hair, the red rimmed glasses and the kind smile.   Anne’s face is the image I cling to throughout the night as I drift in and out of exhausted sleep, punctuated by phone calls from the NICU at the hospital down the road…

“CPAP not working…Surfactant ….Meconium Aspiration….sediment…ventilator…oscillating respirator…”

Over the course of the next 10 hours and several phone calls only a few words managed to cut through the panic and exhaustion clouding my brain.  As I fretted about my newborn baby boy with his purple skin and his bloated face, the panic started to rise up and threatened to overwhelm me.  “He’s with Anne”, I would repeat over and over to bring myself back from the brink, and I would focus on the image of the nurse with the black curly hair, the red rimmed glasses and the kind smile. 

As dawn finally broke the epidural had worn off enough for me to be transferred to the same hospital as my baby. After 4 days of gastro rampaging through my house like wildfire, taking my 2 ½ year old son, me, my husband and even my mum down with it, followed by 14 hours of labour and a rush in to theatre for an emergency caesarean, then the night of anguished torment I had just lived through, I was like the walking dead. Little did I know that I wasn’t emerging from Hell, I was still in it.

Hours before, I had been blissfully unaware of the existence of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Even as we drove into the carpark of the Adelaide Women’s and Children’s Hospital I had no concept of this amazing hive of activity filled with the sound of beeping machines and the smell of hand sanitiser.  A place where the air feels thicker, perhaps made so by the weight of the myriad of life and death decisions that are made there.  A place where miracles happen daily but sadly, also a place where little angels often grow their wings.

The first time I saw Joseph in the NICU he was connected to a range of tubes, most importantly the one down his throat which was connected to the oscillating ventilator, a machine intended to shake loose the sediment of meconium that had settled like road tar in his lungs. Intellectually I know that to be its function, but witnessing it first hand was like watching some kind of torture device.

The image of my newborn baby son violently vibrating was so horrific that to this day it still provokes a physical reaction in me, causing the bile to rise in my throat.  Where was Anne?  I needed to see her to calm my escalating panic.  Apparently Anne had finished her shift but here was Helen, another nurse with a kind face, reassuring me in her sing song voice with the strong Scottish lilt that Joseph was in good hands. 

It was a few days before Joseph was declared stable, several more before they took him off the ventilator.  Our experience in the NICU was a rollercoaster of conflicting emotions.  We were so thankful he was alive and breathing (even with the assistance of the torture device), but wishing he was home with us, learning to breastfeed and keeping us up all hours of the night.  I keenly felt a sense of loss – having experienced with my other son what the first few days with a newborn were supposed to be like – while also feeling guilty for feeling that way, when we were surrounded by so many tiny human beings clinging desperately to life.  Friends were often afraid to call or send a card to celebrate his birth because we were all so unsure of what the outcome was going to be.  In stark contrast were the NICU nurses, ready to celebrate every victory, no matter how tiny. In the world of the NICU, even a slight improvement in oxygen saturation levels had everyone cheering.

Throughout it all, the NICU nurses were there.  There were so many who gave him such wonderful care but Anne and Helen remain in my heart.  Anne not only helped me through that first harrowing night but she also allowed me my first cuddle with Joseph, 5 days after he was born.  Helen spent many days and nights with Joseph and consulted us beforehand so that when decisions needed to be made in the middle of the night, she knew what our wishes were.  She even left us a special note when Joseph “graduated” from the NICU to the Special Care Nursery.

Joseph spent 16 days in the NICU, another 7 days in the Special Care Nursery, and then came home on oxygen for the following 6 months.  It felt like a lifetime.  But at the same time, looking at our strong, energetic 7 year old, it also feels like a lifetime ago.  The experience of Joseph’s birth has left scarring on his lungs, and we bear the emotional scars, but it has created a special place in our hearts for these amazing doctors and nurses who saved the life of our baby, and made possible all of the things he can do today.

“A mother is not defined by how many children you can see, but by the love that she holds in her heart.” – Franchesca Cox

This Mother’s Day I will not wake up wondering how long I have to pretend I’m still asleep until someone remembers what day it is and decides to make some attempt at breakfast in bed (or at least makes their own breakfast). I will not sigh disappointedly at the presentation of a hurriedly scribbled card after realizing my sons have forgotten a gift. This Mother’s Day, as with those that have gone before, I will embrace anything the day brings, knowing it can only be better than that Mother’s Day.

That Mother’s Day when I was discharged from the maternity ward without my baby son. The physical act of walking out of the lift, across the hospital foyer and out of the double doors meant fighting against every fibre of my being. Silent tears streamed down my face, while inside I was screaming from the ache of my empty arms.

That Mother’s Day I had earlier been sitting beside my newborn son in the NICU, who was hooked up to all sorts of machines that were assisting him to breathe and helping to shake loose the sediment of meconium that had settled like road tar in his lungs. From across the room I watched a mother say goodbye to the tiniest human being I have ever seen. Born at 24 weeks gestation, this fragile little boy had been in the world for 6 hours, but would not survive the day. All of the babies in the NICU were fighting the battle to live, but this little one was losing.

The visceral pain of that mother the moment her baby son died was like a physical force, exploding through the hearts of every person in the room. The sound of her anguish reverberated through the core of my being, and today, ten years later, echoes through my head at the thought of it.

Every Mother’s Day I remember that woman in the NICU. I recall with absolute clarity the mind numbing fear I felt at the threat of losing my son, coupled with my amazement at how, despite losing such a precious part of her, she didn’t shatter into a million pieces.

This Saturday we will celebrate my son’s 10th birthday. It has been ten years since he was born purple, silent and still, and then fought like hell to stay on this Earth. Many weeks after that Mother’s Day, I was finally able to walk through those hospital doors with my baby in my arms. As his body has healed so have I been able to retreat from the abyss of grief.

So many mothers are not that lucky.

Carly Marie Dudley knows the incredible pain of losing a child. In 2007 her baby son Christian was stillborn. From Christian’s death something beautiful was created. At a beach in Western Australia, Carly Marie works most nights at sunset, writing and photographing the names of children who have passed, on the seashore of remembrance. Since the middle of 2008, over 20,000 children’s names have been written in the sand at sunset on Christian’s beach.
Born out of the need to share her experience with other families “walking the road of pregnancy, infant and child loss”, Carly Marie and her family created International Bereaved Mother’s Day. Typically held the Sunday before Mother’s Day, it is a day to acknowledge women who have experienced the trauma of losing a child. As Carly Marie says:

“Anna Jarvis officially founded the traditional Mother’s Day to honour her mother Ann who experienced the death of 7 of her children and somehow through the years it has turned into a commercialized mess that card companies make millions of dollars from, but the worst thing is that bereaved mothers are completely forgotten. This day was created in honour of a bereaved mother. 
The traditional Mother’s Day has proven to be an emotionally difficult day for so many mothers around the world. International Bereaved Mother’s Day is a temporary movement…. It is our greatest hope that sometime in the near future all mothers will be remembered and recognised and there will be no need for this day at all.”

International Bereaved Mother’s Day is this Sunday, May 6th 2018. It was created for any woman who has experienced the cruel pain of being unable to conceive, the heartrending loss of miscarriage or stillbirth, the death of a sick baby or indeed, a child of any age.

Women who are still standing despite unimaginable loss.

Stand in any room full of women and you will find an astonishing number who fit this description. At work, at the supermarket, the gym, or school drop off, there are women who may hold some of their children in their arms, but others only in their hearts. Women who know the ache of empty arms, but hopefully also know the overwhelming joy of wrapping those arms around a warm, snuggly child.

We all have our own stories to tell. Let’s acknowledge, respect and cherish each other for the amazing, strong women we are. Let’s remember the reason why Mother’s Day was created, and reclaim the day for all mothers.

With my eldest son turning 12 this week (!) and both of my sons’ teachers having just had their first babies, I have had cause to reflect on where the time has gone. I wrote this for them, but it is possibly a little bit for me too…………..

Twelve years ago when I stepped out of my classroom for the last time, and took a giant leap into motherhood, I had no idea what to expect. My friends and colleagues hugged me and wished me well, many giving all sorts of advice. I thought I would share with you some of the advice I wish I was given. 
5 things I wish I had been told before my first baby:
1. It’s ok to be terrified
I was never ready for children, until one day my good friend – who was 6 months pregnant – confided in me that she was terrified. This secret was the best gift I was given. It gave me the permission to try for a baby, even though I was terrified too. 
When my boys were born, I was terrified about a million things: what if someone hurts them, what if I hurt them, what if they are not getting enough milk, what if they are too hot, too cold, what if they stop breathing when they are asleep, what if they don’t get enough sleep, what if they get germs from the shopping trolley, what if they won’t eat, what if they eat too much…………………………. aaaaggghhhh!!

My boys are now 12 and 9 and I am still terrified of a million things. It never goes away. Terrified is your new normal. But that’s ok. At some point along the way your heart reaches out and wraps up all of your worries and anxieties (and sheer terror) in love and while these things do bubble to the surface every now and then, the joy of the love you feel for this being you grew inside of you, always overrides your fears.

2. Babies don’t care about birth plans, or lesson plans, or any plans 
As a teacher, you make lists. You make plans. You cross off items on your list and feel accomplished. You reflect on your lessons and evaluate them based on how well they followed your plan. You measure the success of your students against key outcomes. When your students achieve, you also feel that achievement. Sometimes, your students thank you for the lessons you prepared and planned and delivered. This makes you feel great.

Your baby does not know – or care – how much planning and preparation has gone into their arrival. Your baby does not know that you need sleep to function and be the best mum you can be. They don’t know that it has taken you half an hour of preparation just to leave the house and be in clean clothes and when they projectile vomit all over your clean clothes and their clean clothes and your face and hair and sometimes even a little bit ends up in your mouth, that this was not how you planned it! They won’t care that you have planned their Christening Day for weeks and that 3 seconds of explosive diarrhoea they have in the car on the way to the church is going to take you 3 hours to properly clean the baby seat, 3 packs of nappy wipes to clean off the baby and that in the photos your hands still smell like baby poo and you are holding the baby so the camera angle won’t pick up that small yellowy brown tell-tale mark of the earlier incident.

Unlike your students, your baby won’t thank you (at least, not for a few years). But they will smile at you, and that smile will be the benchmark against which you measure your success.

3. Your baby has never done this before either (so they don’t know when you stuff it up)
You are a wonderful teacher. Were you wonderful on your first day of teaching? Probably not. None of us were. It takes years to become proficient at a skill, many more to become an expert. So don’t expect to be an expert at all of this “mum stuff” from day one. Just because you are female and are growing this baby and will give birth to it, doesn’t mean you will know exactly what to do with it once it’s here!

This “Mother knows best” crap is wrong on so many levels. (Except your gut instinct. Always trust that. Even on days when you have had 5 minutes of broken sleep and you feel like you are stumbling through fog, your Mama bear instinct will still be with you). Most mums don’t “know” best. We simply make decisions based on what we think is best. Every day, we make decisions for our kids and often we make the wrong ones. That is parenthood. With this in mind, whenever you hear an opinion from a so called “parenting expert”, take it with a grain of salt. Think about how many years a person would have to be a parent to become proficient at it, let alone an expert. Then ask yourself how many kids of their own they have. I’m guessing you would need at least 20 kids of your own to come close to being an expert, and those poor women who have that many children are too bloody tired to share any opinion!

4. Some days are just shit
They are. But there is always tomorrow.

5. You are enough
From the day this beautiful tiny human being began growing inside of you, you have been everything it needs. This won’t change once they are born. You will have days when you feel like you are doing it all wrong. Try not to let it overwhelm you. Your baby loves you. Your baby will always love you. You are their world. Every day, in every way, You. Are. Enough.

To the lady who looked at me in disgust in the supermarket carpark because I called my 12 year old son an idiot:

I am the mother of boys.  My boys are boisterous and loud and physical.  The reason for the name calling was because they were pushing and shoving in the carpark.  When Master 12 went to kick his brother, his shoe came off his foot, sailed over the top of the car, and landed on my head as I was packing the groceries in the boot.

I am the mother of boys.  Prior to the car park “incident”, my boys had been chasing each other down the dairy aisle, jumping up to whack the paper signs as they went.  This was after they staged a WWE wrestling match in the fruit and veg section, with the ferocity ad dedication worthy of a televised performance.

I am the mother of boys.  If you were affronted by the word idiot, it is lucky you were not witness to the friendly banter in the car on the way home: one called the other a dick.  His comeback?  He called his brother a vagina head.  At this they both laughed uproariously the rest of the car ride home.

I’m guessing you are not the mother of boys?  Are you a mother of girls?  An aunt? A grandmother?  Actually, you know what?  It doesn’t matter. You are a woman.  As a woman, you should recognise the unwritten rule of the sisterhood not to judge another woman who is clearly trying the best she knows how.  Women are supposed to lift each other up, not judge and deride each other.

In any case, please do not waste any more time thinking about it.  You can be safe in the knowledge that I don’t regularly call my boys idiots.  Sometimes I call them worse names.

I am the mother of boys.  I reserve the right to tell them when they are being idiots so they may grow up to be decent, well mannered young men.  The type of young men who are willing to help judgemental old ladies with their groceries or return their trolleys for them.  Then, instead of giving me the stink eye, you can simply give me your thanks.

You’re welcome.

Have you ever experienced one of those moments in life when you see or hear something that completely changes the course of your day? A memory that you thought was safely boxed away, that enough time had passed for it to be labelled emotionally “safe”, is triggered and once again your heart splits open, vulnerable and aching. This happened to me when I read this post on my facebook feed:

Kim McWaters
Our youngest son Timothy was the kind of son every parent wants. He was good natured, gregarious, talented, fit and healthy. He was definitely a lovable Aussie larrikin and made Sharon and I so proud because he succeeded in so many ways. Timothy was a state champion athlete at 16 with coaches mapping his future to the Olympics. He achieved honors in classical piano and a piece of his artwork was chosen for a charity art auction. He was awarded the arts award for drama twice by Prince Alfred College in Adelaide where he studied on a full scholarship which he earned. All this was expensive for us but he deserved everything we gave him. He made the space he was in a better place for everyone else. We were so proud of him and hopeful of where he would go. 
On Monday 16th May 2005 he was a passenger in a car hit by someone driving on the wrong side of highway 1 near Port Wakefield and around 3.30am Tuesday 17th May circulation to his brain ceased and he died. I cannot describe the emotional trauma of that time or the pain the memories of that time still cause me. There is nothing worse than losing a child in such tragic circumstances.
Next May will be the anniversary of his death and the anniversary of four people getting a new life through receiving his heart, pancreas, liver and kidneys. Sharon and I would be so blessed and honoured to meet any of those people and hear their stories and maybe listen to Timothy’s heart again. We have no desire to burden them with any form of guilt but only seek to rejoice in their lives with them. Official channels will not tell us much about the recipients but we would dearly love to meet them. To this end I would like all my friends and their friends to pass this on in the hope that the recipients of Timothy’s organs would like to know a little more about where a part of them came from. 
Thankyou to all who read this and even more to those who repost.
Kim and Sharon McWaters
Minlaton, South Australia

Tim was a student of mine. He lit up my English classroom with his enthusiasm and pure joy. “Today feels like an ‘A’ day, Mrs B!”, he would exclaim as he came bounding in to my classroom. “Tim’s here”, I smiled, pleased at his unrelenting effort to achieve the A grade that had so far eluded him.

It would be easy to interpret his father’s words as the skewed perception of a proud dad, a grieving father who wishes to forever keep his son on a pedestal. Yet that is not true in this case. Tim was most certainly a talented athlete, musician, artist and actor. Having grown up in a small rural town, Tim clearly relished the opportunities he was given at his prestigious city college, throwing himself wholeheartedly into the Music, Art and Drama program, while still maintaining his athletics training, particularly in his preferred area of Pole Vaulting. 
Like all of the boarding students, Tim had gone home for a 3 day Exeat weekend, a brief respite from the rigours of his Year 12 studies. He was returning to school early on the public holiday Monday for rehearsals of the school Musical, when the accident occurred.

By pure circumstance, my husband and I decided to use that public holiday as a chance to get out of the city, driving towards one of our favourite spots on the beautiful Yorke Peninsula. On approaching Port Wakefield we were caught in a bottleneck for over an hour, as police carefully directed drivers around the accident scene. I said a silent prayer as we drove past the wreckage, not knowing at the time that it was Tim in the car the ambulance officers were working so hard to free. To this day I have trouble reconciling that image of Tim with the ebullient young man in the front row of my class.

When it became clear Tim was not going to survive, his parents made the decision to honour Tim’s wishes and donate his organs (Tim had signed onto the Australian Donor Register soon after he first became a blood donor). Tim’s liver saved the life of a young woman who had gone into renal and liver failure after giving birth to her first child. A married mother of two in her early 40s who had been on the transplant list for six years received Tim’s right kidney. His left kidney and pancreas went to a married father in his early 30s who had been waiting for over two years. A middle aged man was the recipient of Tim’s 17 year old heart.

Tim’s eyes and lungs were damaged in the accident, making them unsuitable for transplant.

Tim was a young man with a huge heart: I am sure the man who now has the privilege of it beating in his chest knows how lucky he is, as do the recipients of Tim’s other organs. This Christmas I will be thinking of these people: I’m sure for them every Christmas is an extra special blessing. I will absolutely be thinking of Kim and Sharon, Tim’s parents, who for years have endured the grief of losing their son. Above all, I will be thinking of Tim, who gave the greatest gift of all – saving the lives of four other people – and who lives on in them.

Dear teachers of my children,

You know I think you are superstars: you care about my two favourite humans, and you teach them amazing things. I am usually one of your biggest supporters. Usually. Just not today. Today, you have made me Lose. My. Shit.

Why, you ask? Oh, I think you know. But just in case you don’t:
Last week, Master 9 came home with his assignment to make a show ride. Said show ride must have “at least one moving part”. Hhhmm, ok then.

The next day, Master 11 comes home with the task of constructing a suitcase – from scratch – out of either cardboard or balsa wood (ok, so it’s definitely going to be cardboard because I don’t even know where to buy balsa wood). The suitcase needs to be realistic for the time period in which it was used. Our interviewee migrated from Italy to Australia on a ship; I am doubtful that a suitcase made from cardboard would have survived that journey but I will humour you for the purpose of the assignment.

This is not the point at which I lost it. Not even when he came home and said we have to make the hinges on the suitcase. (Ok, so maybe I did lose it a bit then, but not as much as the meltdown of epic proportions that occurred today).

Today, the 11 year old produced another assignment: to construct something out of cardboard that has a battery, circuit, and working light. Oh, and it is due exactly one day after the suitcase.

What. The. Actual….. Have you people lost your minds???!!!

Since neither of you are parents yet, let me tell you how this works. (Actually, I can only tell you how it works in my household; it probably doesn’t happen like this for parents who have their shit together). Once my kids come home with these assignments, it inevitably becomes my assignment. You know that, right? Firstly, it is my job to go out and buy all of the necessary materials (just so you know, if I can’t buy it at Coles or Woolies it is not being purchased). Then, after school I get to nag my boys about 60 million times to stop kicking the ball (at the fence, at the dogs, at each other’s heads), and come inside and start their homework. Now, because they both have “construction” assignments to do, they both need my help at the same time. They also inevitably both need the scissors / glue / cardboard at the same time. I on the other hand, just need chocolate. And alcohol. To block out their fighting, and then my screaming at them to stop fighting. Fun times.

After exactly 5 minutes, they both crack it and give up. At this point, guess who is the lucky duck who gets to take over? Just to be clear:
I fucking hate craft. Or construction of any kind. Just in case you think I’m exaggerating, let me tell you a story…..

In Year 9 I took the “compulsory elective” (nice oxymoron right there) of Woodwork for one semester. For the entire semester, I sat and planed and sanded and finally varnished my – wait for it – wooden chopping board. Yep, while other kids built spice racks and step ladders, I sanded a piece of wood until it was about the size of an Ipad mini (and therefore useless as a chopping board) but nevertheless, I passed!!!

So now you have some idea of my level of proficiency. I am a teacher too. I am “down” with Vygotsky. But let me tell you: constructing a show ride, or suitcase, or lighthouse / fridge with working circuits and lights is so far outside my “Zone of Proximal Development” it is not even funny.

So, to conclude my rant I would simply like to apologise in advance for the absolute crap my children pass up. Please know I did my best. And please, for the love of God, just tick the box of whatever Key Competency / Achievement Standard on the Design and Technology Strand of the Australian Curriculum that needs to be ticked so they can pass, and let’s all move on, shall we?

Here at Musings Of A Footy Mum I am all about keeping it real, discussing the journey that is motherhood in a lighthearted way, while still acknowledging that some days are just hard work!

Slowly but surely, the more I write about my experiences as the mother of sons, as a 40-something year old woman in the world, I hear the voices whisper “me too”, and one by one our tribe is gathering.

Welcome to our tribe! There is only one rule in the Footy Mum community: be kind, always.