Minnie’s Musings

The washing, that is. Rather a lot of it. Taking advantage of the last of the heat wave you have been experiencing in Blighty.

My youngest, hitherto known as WhizzKid, deep cleaned the kitchen before we got home. It was indeed extremely tidy and clean when we got back.

I know that the clean was deep because I picked up her phone in error (it looks like mine but is a tiny bit bigger) and read her “FFS” rant to her sister – to be known here as MiniMe – that we had barely been in the house five minutes before it was “trashed” (for which read, I put my car keys and the small Tesco shop for tea on the counter and wheeled through the suitcase full of dirty clothes, carefully packed for just such a purpose).

I find this amusing. Welcome to my world, my love. It has been and continues to be one of the Sisyphean routine of endless housework which just seems to invite more housework. Washing, cooking, cleaning, washing, cooking, cleaning, washing, cooking, cleaning.

A friend who went into teaching a year or two before me observed that all teachers need a housewife. If you have children, you have no time to yourself and not enough money to live off ready meals. I know plenty of teachers who are not hitched to someone prepared to share the housework and are run ragged.

In recent years I have been blessed with a husband who did a lot of this during term time, while I kept up with planning and marking, planning and marking, planning and marking. This arrangement was by mutual agreement as Best Beloved recognised that I had done it for 25+ years and wanted to develop my career.

It became problematic when I ceased to enjoy my job, my health failed and despondency and despair set in. At various points this year I have been unable to drain a pan of potatoes or wield a knife to chop carrots. I frequently struggle to get to my feet, such is that state of my knees. This very quickly degenerates into a downward spiral and niggling resentments.

I felt I was not doing my “job” has a wife and a mother. My children occasionally pointed out that I behaved like Queen Victoria when perched on the sofa asking to be brought an orange after supper. Dad – I felt – was becoming the hero for cooking supper and doing the washing, while I “did nothing”.

In hospitals they call the inactivity of some patients as “institutionalisation” hence the sometimes overly robust encouragement to get back on your feet. I can see why it happens. You lose confidence first and then inclination. And it is not good for you, physically and mentally. When you like to spend a Saturday afternoon purging the garage or the under-stairs cupboard to give you a sense of achievement at a fully complete task (which does not exist in teaching) inflammation and chronic pain chip away at your psyche.

Anyway, now that I am on the mend – unemployed for the time being, but happier – my energy is creeping back. My children and husband understand my limitations and support me with unscrewing bottle tops and draining the veg. The youngest even helped me purge the garage of rubbish (but not spiders). His Nibs enjoys periodic trips to the dump. We are finding new ways to exist.

I am still inclined to mutter, “If you really want to know what ‘do nothing’ looks like, I can show you what ‘do nothing’ really looks like.” as I mentally log the detritus I pick up as a potter around the house, the cupboards and boxes I routinely sort and purge, the forms I fill in, the packing I complete for however many people are going away with us, the Sunday roasts… Then I knock back the painkillers and set about purging an upstairs cupboard of clothes and shoes that have not seen the light of day in years.