I love this blogpost by The Sarah Monologues. I am like Sarah’s husband –  I’ve failed miserably at Statement Presents and organising sufficiently special celebrations for birthdays, Father’s Day etc.  Like her husband, for me it’s the little things that say “I love you” without actually saying “I love you”.

My Husband is more like Sarah. He makes sure my birthdays and Mother’s Day are “special” ie. chore free (at least until 11am) and he loves to give and receive thoughtful presents on these special days. Making the day special is what says “I love you” for him.

Sarah’s blogpost also reminded me of a fight Husband I had many years ago. I had been suffering from the flu and I asked if we could postpone his birthday celebration until the following weekend. Husband said “Of course”. At least I thought that was what he said. The next day, as agreed, we did not celebrate Husband’s birthday and that night Husband had the only tantrum of our marriage (I will not disclose how many tantrums I’ve had, lest I lose the shaky moral high ground from which I narrate this story).

To put this into context, Husband is as relaxed as I am highly strung. So his reaction to the non-birthday was a complete mystery to me. I launched the “But you said…” Defence, which failed.  Then I tried the mature response of flying into a hysterical rage, which also failed. And then I did what any woman would do in this situation – I called my best girlfriends to complain.

It was Friend B who told me about Love Languages.  Now I am not one to buy into self-help or pop psychology. (Actually, I totally am.  I love self-help books and even though I don’t have time to read them any more, I still occasionally buy them in airports in the hope that the mere act of acquisition will help me to live more authentically and take control of my life NOW etc).

The Love Languages theory goes that people show their love to others in different ways; and people need different things in order to feel loved.

In my family, my parents rarely say “I love you”, they never gush with emotion, birthdays are barely celebrated and I wouldn’t expect any one to buy me a cake let alone a present. But I can not think of a single day when my parents did not make me feel special or loved. They expressed this love by looking after me and I showed it back by looking after them and myself. My Husband’s mother thinks my upbringing was part Dickensian, part Vulcan.

So, shortly after Birthdaygate, when she blamed herself for her son’s tantrum righteous indignation with a “I should have bought him a cake, I always buy him a cake,” I resisted the temptation to administer the Vulcan death-grip and I realised that throughout Husband’s life, his beautiful mother made her son feel loved all the time, but especially special on birthdays – the big cake, the big card, the big present. This is how Husband understands being loved on this particular day and I had not said “I love you” in the way he needed to hear it.

When Husband and I got married, we should have exchanged decoder rings rather than wedding rings. It took Birthdaygate for us to start deciphering each other’s often heavily encrypted messages of love. Reverting to my professional training in times of crisis, I drafted Husband a contract list, stipulating my “acts of love”. The list included (but was not limited to):

– cooking his favourite food and making dinner every night;

– making sure his laundry was always done so that he didn’t have to go to work commando (cue the soundtrack to Born Free);

– enabling him to play football with his friends every week whilst I looked after the children, cooked his favourite Sunday lunch and checked his underpants;

– making time to talk, cuddle and check his underpants.

Whilst all this makes me sound pathetically Stepford, it is perhaps just typically Sri Lankan. I have been raised to show my love by looking after the object of my love. The self-martydom that is synonymous with this kind of “loving” will be reserved for a separate blogpost.

I also gave Husband a list of some of the things he does (…or could do) that make me feel loved by him:

– making my morning coffee;

– picking up after himself immediately rather than leaving it for “Later”, the place chores go to die or wait for me to do them;

– helping with household chores instead of assuming the magical house fairies will do it;

– doing the hard stuff with the children, not just the fun stuff;

– taking out the trash without being asked (I told him this is really all the seduction I need. I am quite easy.)

Specific performance of the above makes me feel special. I’m not saying I would say no to a Clinique gift pack or a Battle Star Galactica box set. I’m just saying that such gifts are not adequate damages for failure to comply.

The first couple of years after Birthdaygate I bought spare birthday cards, diarised reminders months in advance and researched presents – all for the dual purpose of making Husband feel special in the way that he understood it, and sadistically reminding him what a baby he was. The passing years have relaxed and reformed me. I now enjoy making Husband feel special on his birthday without making a point. He does my chores on my birthday and he does his chores most other days of the year. He does the hard stuff, not just the fun stuff, and often he makes the hard stuff more fun. On birthdays we both enjoy getting homemade cakes and cards from our children and we both love it when he takes out the trash.

Michael Ondaatje once said something really clever about his Sri Lankan family and their penchant for exaggeration. I can not remember his exact words because every time I try to recall them I get distracted by what I might actually say to Michael Ondaatje if I ever ran into him. Of course even in my imagination I get so star struck I end up saying something really cheesy like:

“Hi Mike, I love your work. Can I call you Mike? No, ok, I totally understand. Really sorry. Did I mention I just love your work? Sure, I’ll leave you alone now…”

For the record, our Au pair Anecdotes sadly do not involve any exaggeration, it is all true – and very little of what you are about to read is funny. I don’t think I could make this stuff up if I tried. After we hired and fired Au Pair 1 (the negligently dangerous, irritatingly lazy one), and before we hired Au Pair 2 (the wonderful one I want to adopt), we hired Au Pair 1.5. She is named Au Pair 1.5 because she stayed half as long as Au Pair 1 ( ie. 3 weeks) and I probably should have fired her within 1.5 hours of hiring her.

I interviewed AP 1.5 several times over the phone as she lived interstate. We also interviewed her on Skype. During this time we asked her the usual questions. For example: “Now that I have explained the role, do you have the energy, fitness, stamina and strength to handle a job as demanding as this one?” On Skype, AP 1.5 explained that she was a little overweight but that she was trying hard to lose it. She said she understood the job and was confident she could do it as she had done similar live-in jobs before.

On arrival at our house, which was the first time we actually met her face to face after she had flown-in to come live with us, I didn’t need my GP mother to tell me that AP1.5 was not overweight. She was morbidly obese. I am not at all weightest and  I have nothing but sympathy for her.  However, her condition meant she could not:

(a) bend down to pick up things such as, you know, a small child;

(b) comfortably change or bathe the younger children;

(c) run after a child if one ran away from her in a dangerous place such as, you know, a carpark; or

(d) take the pram down our driveway.

Whilst I was still wondering which part of the au pair job AP1.5 thought she could actually do for us, when she told me in her interview that she could “do it all…”, other problems emerged (oh yes, there were more).

In her interview AP1.5 explained that all babies loved her, she had never met a baby that did not take to her in all her years of childcare. Her inability to physically pick up a child might have been a problem had my younger children been prepared to go anywhere near her. Every single time she entered the room, for the entire three weeks, Newborn would start crying and run away from her. Tercero’s reaction was not quite as bad. He was friendly with her, charming even. Unless she attempted to go near him, at which point he would put his little hands on his little hips and yell “Get away from me, don’t touch me. Please.”

In her interview, AP1.5 explained that she had lived with families before and she was comfortable with the intimate arrangement. Perhaps a little too comfortable. At night, AP 1.5 would come out and want to talk to me and husband at length, wearing a scanty, red, silk slip. From her dental hygiene to her swollen and discoloured ankles, AP1.5 actually reminded me of an elderly hobbit. The kind of hobbit where you are not sure if it is a male hobbit or a female hobbit. Don’t get me wrong, I love the hobbits. They saved Middle Earth and although they aren’t as glamourous as the elves, they have more courage than all of Elvendom put together. I just don’t want to see a hobbit in lingerie right before I go to bed. Husband and my father politely made it clear to me (not her) that they also did not want to see it.

On our first day together, after knowing each other for about an hour, AP1.5 told me during breakfast that she had many health issues. Apparently she was born with double the number of organs and whilst I was sympathising with these clearly terrible health problems, she told me that she “had two vaginas”. AP1.5 told me what no employer should ever have to hear. AP1.5 explained that she could not “have sex, [she] could do other stuff but not sex.” Too much information over porridge. Too much information, too much information. Too. Much. Information.

Whilst AP1.5 was very, very comfortable with us, she was not so comfortable with new people who came to our house. She would often be unable to make eye contact with new people and would sometimes walk into the room and stand between me and the new person I was talking to, blocking them with her back and then tell me something as though she could not see that I was just in the middle of a conversation with some one.

I didn’t mind the social strangeness with newcomers, it made me feel sad for her. Secundo and I suffer from shyness and I am hardly socially competent. I didn’t mind her trainspotter-like obsession with the historic movement of tectonic plates and earthquake tracking, the minute details of which she would run out of her room to share with us in an almost tourettes-ian way on an hourly basis. I am a bit like that with Star Wars. I didn’t mind that her friend Jane had researched our property on the internet and she and AP1.5 knew more about it than our agent, lawyer or mortgagor did. I too would research my new employer although I might not tell them about it. I didn’t mind the deep, irreparable grooves that were gouged out of our new, expensive, hardwood flooring, at the place where she sat at her computer researching us and her earthquake updates. I know it’s only wood.

I did mind that I often found myself at 5:30pm, alone, feeding four hungry, tired children. Prima and Secundo would be snapping at each other because one looked at the other the wrong way. Newborn and Tercero would be trying to climb onto my lap and push the other off at the same time. Whilst the older two deteriorated into a scene from Taxi Driver, and the younger two vied for territorial control, I had to wonder where was my au pair, who I was paying to help me in exactly this situation. AP1.5 was hiding in the kitchen, binge eating her dinner.

I know that AP1.5 had some serious physical and probably mental health problems. I am not heartless and I am sympathetic. The social justice lawyer in me recognised the importance of the Disability Discrimination Act and protecting the employment rights of people with illnesses. The former corporate lawyer in me recognised that AP1.5’s failure to disclose her health issues during the interview process could be construed as procurement under false pretences and wilful endangerment of the children’s safety (How did she think she was going to catch Tercero in a carpark?). In the end, it was just the mummy in me that hid in the bathroom (with several small children) and cried into whatever toilet paper was left on the toilet roll.

From about 6am until 9pm every day, like every mummy and daddy, I work: wiping tears and bottoms, nursing sicknesses, mediating conflicts, checking homework, cooking, cleaning, laundry, schlepping to activities and more. At about 9pm, I take a moment and all I ask for is two things in life:

(a) 42 minutes during which time no one is allowed to talk to me, cry near me, whinge at me or vomit on me. In these precious 42 minutes I must be allowed to watch some ridiculous American crime drama involving an interesting but not-too-challenging plot, an endearingly quirky ensemble cast and an attractive male protagonist (in this case Mark Harmon in NCIS. Mark, the passing years have been very kind to you); and

(b) a little help around the house please.

One Sunday in May, husband left on a two week business trip to London. We had just been through a week of bronchitis, bronchiolitis and a burst eardrum. We agreed that we would address the home help problem after the London trip because whilst he was away, I desperately needed a second pair of hands. I was outnumbered by sick children so any second pair of hands would do. The day after husband left, AP1.5 told me she was leaving us too. Her reasons were that she had a chest infection that might affect her undisclosed heart condition, and she was not able to do parts of the job such as “reach the cupboard on top of the fridge”. Yes, that was the part of the job she thought she could not do. She gave me 2 hours notice and left. The next day I hired an au pair agency who found me Au Pair 2 (the wonderful one I want to adopt) a few weeks later.

Michael Ondaatje, if you are reading this, every word is true. I could not have made it up or exaggerated it if I tried, even though I too suffer from that Sri Lankan affliction of Chronic Exaggeration. And Michael, I love your work.

After nearly two decades of legal training, my life – even my mummy life – is broken down into 6 minute billable units. I can’t help but see the passing of time this way.  I’ve never had a biological clock; it’s always been a billable one.  Today was a day like any other day.  I call it Every Day. The billing narrative for Every Day goes like this:

0645: Wake up, pry Newborn from crook of shoulder, extract Tercero from opposite leg, roll over Prima and/or Secundo to dismount new king sized bed that sleeps entire Duck family.

0651: Microwave porridge (for 6 minutes), unload dishwasher, sterilise Newborn’s bottles from multiple night wakings and our desperate attempts to pacify him by overfeeding because the effectiveness of shush-patting is a myth and who has the stamina to control cry a baby at 3am?.

0721: Wipe the table, floor and baby chair after breakfast. So much of my life is spent on the floor that I have learned to maximise my time and do some of my best thinking down there. Recent brilliant thoughts include:

• Email Simon Cowell about an idea for a chart topping CD.  I could record myself bleating incessant entreaties to my children to eat/change into their school uniform/brush teeth/do homework/attempt music practice/stop whingeing/stop fighting.  The CD could be marketed as a new form of white noise. Instead of womb sounds and whale songs, my voice could be used to lull babies into hibernation (or stasis); as it clearly does my children;
• Call my health fund and check if my cover includes RWI (Repetitive Wiping Injury); and
• I really need to wee.

0733: Bend down and pick up toys/clothes/food/tissues/nappies and return these items to their “proper” place. My need to return things to their proper place should be the subject of its own blog post, or at the very least, aggressive therapy. Make a mental note to call my health fund and check if my cover includes premature hip replacements caused by RBI (Repetitive Bending Injury).

0821: Forget to shower, stare longingly at the toilet, eat contraceptive pill and children’s leftovers for breakfast, spray children with strawberry flavoured hair detangler and sunscreen as they run out the door.

0827: Try to remember how I did this when I was working. Remember that I felt like I did everything badly. Realise I still feel like I am doing everything badly.

0921: Return from school after drop off. Go to the bathroom. Sit. Notice that the toilet roll is empty. Go completely crazy.

It’s the empty toilet roll that breaks me. The empty toilet rolls talks to me. It says that the last person who used the toilet (man, woman or child), did not care enough about the next person (ie. me) to change it. The empty toilet roll also says to me that the last person knew that I, mummy, would change it for the family; that their time (and bottom) is too important to take a moment to change it but that my time (and bottom) isn’t. This malicious little tirade by my overly articulate toilet roll sends me over the edge into the porcelain abyss.

Filled with Empty Toilet Roll Rage (this is a well documented clinical condition) I tear it from its holder and crush it with my bare hands. Whilst replacing it with a new toilet roll, I rail insanely and incoherently against the relentless domestic servitude of motherhood. If just one person in the family had done this one small task for me instead of leaving it for me, it would have been one less thing for me to do, one less chore, one extra moment in my day. One little thing would have made an enormous difference. One less thing might have made me a little less crazy.  It’s the little things that count.

1503: Pick up Secundo from school. Watch him push other kindergarteners out of the way to press his nose against the window, his enormous eyes light up when he sees me and draw me in. The door opens, he jumps down the steps, suffers my kisses with a shy smile and takes my hand. He still takes my hand.

1509: Find Prima in the playground and watch her crazy curls bob along a sea of children; a tiny, perfect body in an oversized uniform. See her start laughing uncontrollably when she finally sees Secundo and me. Brace to catch her as she throws herself into my arms. Breathe in strawberries as she locks her arms around me and won’t let go. She won’t let go.

1515: Walk home and talk about the little lizard that lives at our house. According to the children the lizard travels to school where they also see it regularly. The very same, adventurous lizard.

1521: Arrive home, say hello to the lizard, find Tercero and Newborn waiting for us with husband. Babies clamber onto my lap each pushing their little noses and soft lips into my neck. Four arms and four legs grip me hard. Feel two little hearts beating fast against my chest. Tercero’s warm, wet lips whisper “I lub you mummy” in my ear.

1527: All four ducklings challenge husband to a game of Keep Daddy Down. Husband pretends to be overcome by the immense strength of his offspring who have learned to wrestle as a pack. He collapses on the ground laughing that rich laugh I love. Watch family play. Exhale. Inhale. Close eyes. Exhale.

1533: It’s the little things that count.

Last week it was our wedding anniversary. Ten years, four children, 53 stitches and one migration later, we found ourselves back at the Canberra Hyatt, the hotel where husband and I spent our wedding night.

A decade ago, we arrived there after a seven hour wedding ceremony. Neither of us had eaten all day, our facial muscles had frozen into some kind of smiling rictus and after kissing four hundred of my parents’ closest friends we were both coming out in a rash.

And then of course there was the whole mortifying experience of the trip to the Hyatt itself. My father insisted on driving us because the family astrologer had told him that our marriage had to be consummated by 8pm. No one knew whether this was Colombo time or Canberra time and I really wished they would just stop talking about it. Either way, my father, a man who takes all his duties seriously, sped the entire way to the Hyatt and marched us through an expedited check-in. At 7:50pm, he solemnly shook hands with my husband and then said (a little sheepishly), “OK, I’ve done my job. Now you two go and enjoy yourself.” I desperately wanted the Hyatt to collapse on my head but husband took it like a man, shook my dad’s hand back and said, “Thanks Uncle, we will.”

Ten years later, husband surprised me by booking a room for us at the Hyatt.  We arrived, I changed into my favorite John Lewis flannel pyjamas and went to bed. Husband turned on the television and watched the cricket for hours whilst I caught up on 8 months (or is it seven years?) of sleep deprivation. We were briefly interrupted by a waiter bearing a complimentary bottle of sparking wine. Apparently husband had ticked the “Honeymoon” box on the check-in form, as there was no a box for “10 year wedding anniversary” or “14 hour respite from children”. The waiter would have found the eager groom riveted to the Ashes and the blushing bride, dressed and snoring like a grandma.

On our tenth wedding anniversary, husband organised a beautiful hotel room (for him and Alastair Cook); a lovely dinner for him and me; he gave us a 14 hour break from our children which was enough time for him to watch the Ashes, me to get some sleep and both of us to miss them; he let me choose the TV channels (after the cricket was over for the day) because when I go to a hotel all I want to do is watch TV and sleep; he stole everything I requested from the toiletries cart parked outside our door and when he wasn’t watching the Ashes, he spooned me. Me, me, me. This is very important because usually I wake up with one to four little ducklings all demanding to be spooned. I am always the spooner, never the spoonee.

Lately Prima has been fretting about marriage – apparently my mother has told her that she has to get married and have at least one child. Husband has a policy when it comes to Prima and discussions about marriage. He goes against his Sri Lankan instinct to tell her what to do and who to marry. It must be hard for him to fight this genetic imperative, but he does it clearly and consistently because he feels it is in her best interests. Personally I think he is wasting an excellent opportunity to brainwash her.  I blame his Western liberal education.  When this beautiful little girl says in her serious voice with her serious eyes (that look exactly like his own), “What shall I do Daddy? I don’t want to get married.” he tells her that she can do whatever she wants, if she doesn’t want to get married she doesn’t have to, and she can stay with us forever.

After our anniversary celebration of sleep, the Ashes and more TV, husband drove us home. On the way he surprised me again, when he made a detour and took me to the Old Parliament House. It is a stately, beautiful building and I love it because we got married there. Ten years, four children, 53 stitches and one migration ago.

Don’t tell husband, but when Prima asks me about marriage, I break his policy although I do temper my genetic imperative. I tell her she can do whatever she wants, she doesn’t have to get married, but if she does, then it is important to choose carefully, and if she is very lucky she might marry some one wonderful like her father.