To the woman in the shops today with the child...

I came home today from work and saw an article by Janet Fraser entitled "To the woman at the shops with the weeping babe".

I saw you today, at the shops, my sister. I saw you pushing a pram, perusing scarves, unable to respond to the bleating, hiccupping cries and jagged breaths of your newborn. I heard the babe cry out over and over, “Help me. Hold me close. Comfort me. Show me I’m not alone.” and yet in your aloneness, you were kept from responding. Was I seeing the trauma of your babe’s birth in action? The fragmented care of a brutal maternity system which prizes compliance above wellness? The ugly effects of industrialised parenting and the mould into which we are all shoved in this 21st century Sparta? I saw your babe’s face as she shut down and stared blankly at you from the pram and I felt my heart break for you both.

And it has encouraged me to write about something I saw today.

I see you, woman that could be me. I saw you stalk by, wound up tighter than a spring and glowering at everyone who passed. You were a woman on a retail mission today, something clasped in your hand and an item in your mind. You and many others were in the store and they were in your way and I could see that everything was going to annoy you. How much it clearly annoyed you that your child was with you, that your child existed in your timeline for consumption today.

I saw your daughter, frisky and boisterous in her enjoyment of the freedom of childhood. Probably irritating as fingers through cornflour, but really, what harm is there in a little frustration at your offspring's mercurial and inexplicable moods? As you stalked by she stopped to gather a trolley for her treasures. Isn't that what childhood is about? Learning to borrow a trolley, learning to keep your treasures safe and enjoying the excitement of a trip to a store when the reason is lost on you? Isn't it about taking time slowly because childhood whips past so quickly? About learning the tradeoffs between having to suffer the inconvenience of accompanying your mother to the shops instead of the park, because you get a trolley for a few minutes?

Is it really important that you had to stop a moment to untangle the trolley for your daughter? Her yelp at being caught up on another trolley was one of frustration but perhaps, if you'd waited, she would have sorted it out and you could have had a wry smile on your face, a mixture of pride and amusement and something to salve your own anger. And she would have happily gamboled along with you instead of slinking along, rubbing her thigh.

Instead, at that yelp, I saw your anger, your hurt, your baggage, gather suddenly and focus on your child and instead of helping her, you rounded on her and took two swooping fast strides down from the pedestal you are on as her mother, and even as she said "No mummy!" in a thin piping but strong voice, you picked her up and bundled her down an aisle and slapped her. I heard it, clear as day. You smacked her, in public and in a way that made me shake on the inside. In a way that reminded me of a childhood, and made me feel sick.

No one stopped you. No one asked if she was alright, even as she cried and you picked her up roughly and continued to stalk down the store. I hope you were mortified and embarrassed, just as I was shaking and upset at this and had to take a few deep breaths.

And I'm no better for putting my employment above standing up for a child.



If my husband did that to me, there would be police called and cups of tea made but because it's a parent doing it to a child, it's ok in many people's eyes. I hate people who hit their children. There is not justification for it. It is wrong and a symptom of how screwed up the world is that people are going to argue with me on that.


 I remember being smacked by my parents and what I remember isn't the lesson learned - I remember so many other things and so many chips in our relationship.

You're doing it wrong bitches

Ok so if I sign up for something that requires me to attend the gym every week for 12 weeks if I want a refund on my fee (incentives, I has them), and afterwards I find out that to get a refund I have to put my name on a list and get contacted for it to be processed (and I do that), and you DON'T CONTACT ME for a month, I'm going to be PISSED when I turn up to the gym and get told:

1. there has been a note on the system since the end of May stating that I needed to provide them a copy of my receipt;
   
2. that I should have contacted them to follow-up despite them not having a direct number for me to contact;
3. that there is no record of me signing up for the program;
4. and that it was entirely ridiculous that I was annoyed, given that MidwifeA managed to have hers sorted out a week after filling in the SAME FORM

given that the woman that was talking to me didn't at any point say "wow I'm really sorry - can I check we have the right number for you?".

Families (not an "ugh" post either)

Families are confusing things. What defines a family? Google tells me lots of things but the first I like the most - "a social unit living together". So that makes my family ManFriend and Zaria the Super Kitty and MidwifeA.

Other people's families:
- two parents, two kids, 2 cats, 4 cars, one caravan
- two women, two children, one from each woman and about to be adopted to complete the family
- three women, one guy, no sex going on in the house as they all have partners outside of their house
- one guy
- two sisters
- married couple plus 4 cats
- cohabitating couple plue 2 birds and a lot of yarn

and so on. No "man woman 2.3 kids" on that list. What is the current standard" family though? Is it still that? Or is it something else? Is it a generational thing? Does a house make a home? Does having a family make a house a home? In my case, yes, it does. I live with TheHusband and one of my closest friends. When we procreate we'll still stay in this arrangement I think. Well that's the aim anyway. Then it'll be Offspring#1 and the rest of us, and maybe by that stage MidwifeA will have a MrMidwife and then there'll be 5 (6!? Zaria counts right?) of us. In a huge 3BR house that is probably 4 times the size of our previous house.

This ramble is brought to you by 2 cups of coffee, an assignment due tonight, and our first party at Casa del ArcherMorgan and our housewarming on 20/06/09.

It's the economy, stupid... or the stupid economy?

The economic meltdown is yet to really hit here in Australia - there's bits and pieces about it affecting a shift at the car manufacturer here, (but that is probably because they insist on making big V6 cars here in Adelaideand making the much more sensible in oh so many ways smaller cars overseas) or a mine here, or an exporter here, but as yet it's not Really Hit Home. I find the web is therefore a REAL eye opener about people losing their jobs suddenly and horribly for that reason.

Comments around various blogs about the manufacturing issue with the USA - applies here too. We lost our entire clothing/footware manufacturing not that long ago, and not only did we lose the skills but there was also a move away from blue collar work being available to people, and towards people having no choice but to be unemployed because they can't (or granted, won't) do the work available.

In some ways I agree with the throwaway comments being made about "bring on another depression". People are soft. They don't know how to cook, or sew, or grow, or look after animals, or bake, or live communally, or raise children, and that means they are chasing something unreal and "higher" and ?more laudible than making a home and family work.

I just read a rambly post about this topic from the perspective of Gen X. It talks a lot about the change that people are making to going back to their hearth and raising children and running on one income rather than outsourcing childcare and food making and clothes construction, and chasing a bigger house and a second car and more and more debt. So many things have been outsourced and that makes us all very vulnerable when the economy contracts and people aren't able or willing to do those things.

And I include myself in all of this - I rely on society to do things for me that I don't want to do. Society is about that at a basic level (we can't do everything for ourselves!) but it costs money to do that, and it costs more for Jane to do x for me than it would me for to do said x for me, so there is an inflation involved in that. As more things are outsourced, I have to earn more or rack up more debt to get the same things as before, and so I am now living beyond my means. Multiply that by the whole economy and we're suddenly screwed. And there will be a day/year/decade of reckoning of this and it's going to hurt.

Where are the communes these days? Not so much in the free love kind of way, but in the "farm with workers" or the "boarding house with employees living in" or the "large house with family running it" etc. We live in way more space than we need or use and have spare rooms just in case, and a craft/yoga/study/library room that we use hardly ever and try to fill with stuff that we can't afford to have and don't use and so we spend more money that we don't have to entertain ourselves instead of reading a book or doing a workout or crafting.

And raising families - it takes a community to do this. An article I read recently suggested that what defines Gen X and Y from the previous generations is that we count our friends as or above families in terms of how much we see them and what we ask of them or do for them.

This also comes at the same time as peak oil is more part of the discussion, and people are worried about the impact that the reduction in cheap energy will have. I see so many of my friends getting bikes and scooters, and moving close to where they work, and reskilling, and embracing crafts and reuse/recycling/repurposing, and living in share houses even when in adult years.

I am trying to work through what this means for having a family plans in the next year or so as well. If the economy does implode here, I am relatively safe as I will always be able to find work. I can't say the same for many of my friends and family though, which is distressing.