I write this from my hospital bed. Which sounds way more dramatic than it really is. Nonetheless, amid a global pandemic I find myself in a hospital ward wearing fetching surgical stockings and awaiting an MRI.
The Liar's Daughter
I’m lucky. The pandemic has eased enough that I can at least have one of two nominated visitors come to see me.
I’m luckier still that I don’t feel terribly unwell even if tests have shown that something is definitely not right.
I sit here, in a room on my own, well enough to be able to check my work emails, write this piece and later I will probably start to work through the edits of my next book.
I was admitted yesterday. My children (now 16 and 11) didn’t seem terribly bothered at the thought their mother was going into hospital or that, because of visiting restrictions, they wouldn’t be able to see me until I get out again.
As I left the house, telling them I loved them, they simply went back to sleep. Long gone are the days when my children would cling to me if I so much as suggested going to the shop for ten minutes.
And while I don’t want my children to cling on to me, I did feel a little surplus to requirements as I carried my bag out to the car.
But I needn’t have worried too much. Because, it seems, even if a mum is on hospital awaiting tests she is still expected to parent.
In the last 24 hours my phone has pinged repeatedly.
‘Can I get a snack?’
‘Mum, can I make Mac and Cheese?’
‘Mum, can we get pizza?’
‘Mum, did you wash my jeans?’
It’s worth saying that my husband, the father of my children, is at home with our children. To my knowledge he still retains the power of speech and can agree to the provision of snacks and pizza. He can also okay the making of Mac and Cheese and while his skills in the laundry department are limited, he is able to wash jeans and hang them on the washing line.
He is as an equal a parent as I am and yet, a mother’s work is never done and a woman’s emotional load is, just like the laundry, never done. Even when said woman is in hospital. (Note to reader, I have received these same messages/ calls when away on business/ at work/ on a well-earned break)
The ‘emotional load’ consists of the invisible work women carry out to manage households, often in spite of working outside the home as much as their partners.
It’s the remembering of appointments, and adding to shopping lists, and keeping an eye on forthcoming birthdays, or back to school arrangements. It’s making sure the children brush their teeth, the dog is walked, the dinners are planned and the washing is done before everyone runs out of clean clothes.
It’s the keeping in our minds constantly what snacks the children have had so we know whether or not they really need more, or if directing them to the fruit bowl is the best option. It’s being the loo roll fairy, the waterer or plants, the toothpaste buyer. It’s household management at its finest.
But it runs deeper than that. My children may no longer find it particularly cool to wrap their arms around me and tell me they love me. But they can let me know every day that I’m still their safe place. I’m reliable. Caring. I know where their clean clothes are and what food they can eat. They trust me to make those decisions for them.
Yes, I suspect I also need to give them a stiff kick up the bum to wash their own clothes and take on some of that emotional load themselves, there’s a comfort in knowing that they still need me.
And any mother who says she doesn’t like feeling needed and useful is, in my opinion, telling fibs.
Although I shall happily be delegating the practical tasks to their father over the next few days, I will revel in this pinging of my phone.