The dark side of December
Since we're quite on our way in January, I thought it would be safe to post my last writing tasks. It's about a mother's terror in December. I't a long story, but I put two assignments into one. Have fun, and please let me know what you think.
The dark side of December
In spite of what the golden lights on the Christmas tree, the warm, sparkly lights in every shopping street, the flickering, heartwarming candles and crackling fires in living rooms are trying to convince me of, it can never compete with the dark, miserable feeling that overwhelms me when December starts. It is the month that my motherhood is challenged the most. No, it is the month in which I have to face up to the fact that I am possibly just a terrible mother.
It starts with Sinterklaas: a group lie Dutch parents tell their children, just to have a useful threat at hand for a couple of weeks. Two of my three girls are luckily not believers any more (and I decided the third one won’t ever be – I’m telling her now in the middle of the crowd that watches Sinterklaas coming into town that this is a man dressed in a strange robe and a fake beard). But school has found a solution for older children not to miss all the fun: draw lots and make a surprise present and a poem for the one you selected. And then they return home. At first the piece of paper is moved from the table to the windowsill, from there to the kitchen, and if it doesn’t disappear in the recycling bin, it will be buried for ever in the bits and bobs drawer. Until that terrible question on the third of December: “Muhum … where is the lot? And what should I make? And what name did I draw?”
It all ends with this scene: my husband is jigsawing, gluing, hammering, nailing, and sweating, and I am trying to rhyme the life of this kid I have never seen together. And if I ask my daughter: “What kind of a boy is Tim? And what does Senna do after school?” the answer is always: “He is nice and she goes home after school. I don’t know him/her very well!”
The morning of Sinterklaas we drive to school with the boot full of ‘surprise presents’, in the afternoon we drive back with a trunk full of ‘surprise presents’ and then I hope I soon find a way to get rid of all this rubbish.
Then the yearly ice skating trip is coming up. Which means that the girls need skates – ones that fit, preferably - and the school needs transportation to the ice rink, for which they turn to the MOTHERS. My children want me to drive too (I don’t know why, I’m terribly moody with a lot of children around) but I snap that I am busy enough trying to fix the ice skates in time. Mind you, we have FOUR pairs upstairs from previous school trips, but that means only one pair fits (the youngest one) and they are ice hockey skates and she is never ever going to wear them. She wants figure skates and my temper can’t beat hers. It takes me two nights of calling, driving around, exchanging with other parents to get this done.
And all this with the next obstaclein sight: Christmas Crafts-morning. A very nice, cosy tradition of the school, in which all MOTHERS participate. The school is transformed into a Christmas market. In every classroom there are two crafts tables where different kinds of craft-things can be made. The children can run around the school all morning and choose the crafts they want to make. Every mother signs up for a table and sits there all morning, on a toddler’s chair if she’s lucky: they glue, paint or clay, depending on the required end result (this year, it was the ‘Wooden Santa’ for me)
Now what you should know about me is that I have zero skills in crafts. I can only glue my fingers together, whatever I cut is crooked and I will merely paint my clothes. So the least comfortable position for me is to be at a craft table, trying to teach children how to do it.
But before I was seated at a table, I’d already had a very stressful morning. Apparently I missed one of the school’s e-mails that told me that all children should bring a big box to school with Christmas decoration, floral foam, nice green stuff, a wine glass, toilet rolls, jam jars, old socks … My beautiful girls could remember every detail of this instruction, but only thought of telling me on the very same morning of the craft hell. So I went through the house, moaning , whining and scolding about how on earth I could manage to fill this box. Speaking of which: where the F*** could I find two boxes? All boxes were picked up the day before. For me, at that moment, not having oasis was one of the most terrible things that could happen in my life. ( Why me? Why me?)
We finally arrive at school with some Christmas decoration in two pretty, small boxes that used to be perfume gift boxes. It wasn’t until we went home that I realise that the boxes were meant to bring all the crafts home and that I have two girls in tears because only one of the TWELVE Christmas thingies fits in the box. So I walk up and down to the car to put it all in, leaving a trace of shattered Christmas balls that fell out of their Christmas arrangements due to my slap-dash handling.
In the car I try to it make up to them. “I’m sorry. Next year we will take a big box.” The eldest sniffs. “You think it is rubbish anyway, all the things we make.” “No, that’s not true, I think it is beautiful!” “No, you’re lying” , the second girl weeps. “Last year you said when the Christmas holidays were over: thank God, can we throw this shit away now?” I mutter something indefence, but I am afraid there is none. This really sounded like me.
The rest of the day I want to stay in bed, preventing myself from hurting my kids even more. But the next challenge is the same evening: school choir performance on the Dickens market! Needless to say I spend all afternoon trying to find clothes that fit in Dickens age. At seven o’clock the choir needs to assemble in the middle of the shopping street. It is freezing cold. Not as cold as last year, when the temperature dropped below minus five and the snow caught us by surprise. However, the performance is exactly the same as last year: same songs, same incompetent conductor with absolutely no sense of rhythm, the same not-singing children, same horrible sound engineering, same note to myself that I should get them out of this so called choir.
During all this, I’m trying to make it through the piles of end-of-year assignments and make 60 hours a week, at least.I can’t walk my dog properly and he is eating all the furniture out of frustration and I’m trying to find excuses for why our Christmas tree isn’t up yet.
Between all the e-mails clients send me, I discover the school starts spamming:
“(From the class parents) We’d like to make a nice Christmas present for the teachers, to give them the day before the holiday. Can you give your child one euro and a piece of nicely folded paper with a Christmas wish on it?”
“We need a hand with cleaning the class rooms. Can you help out on Friday afternoon? The children are just free then.”
“Please make sure that your child clears out the desk before the holidays and that you provide a plastic bag to put all the stuff in.”
“All the lice capes should be brought home and washed during the holiday.”
“Please remember that the children need to hand in their papers before the holidays.”
I click them away, agitated and frustrated. There is another very, very big struggle to fight before this all ends. Christmas dinner at school. The day before the holiday, all children eat together at school. A few days before, children can write on a piece of paper what they really like to eat and a Special Christmas Dinner Committee selects the dishes and asks MOTHERS to cook the meals. I’m really proud that my kids don’t fill in ‘fries’ or ‘pancakes’ or ‘pizza’, but that they put down: ‘spinach quiche’ or ‘sauerkraut from the oven” or ‘Catalonian meatballs’. But you can imagine what happens: I get all the orders. So I take another afternoon off to cook (I spare you the stress related to this part), bring the warm, lovely smelling dishes to school in the evening, go home and clean up the mess in the kitchen, cook for my husband and my youngest daughter, go back to school and collect my kids and the bowls and plates. Back home, when I unwrap the aluminium foil, I see that with the ‘left-overs’, I can invite at least fourteen people for our own Christmas dinner and keep them satisfied.
“Mama, Í liked the sauerkraut”, one girls says quietly. “And my teacher too.” And the other girls says: “There were fries and pancakes, but I only ate three of those spinach quiches. I didn’t want to disappoint you.”
I have the firm intention not to yell and snap at them anymore for the rest of my life and I hug them, burrying my tears in their hair.
The next morning, they wake me. “Mum, it’s our last day at school. There is a play and I am Maria. I need a blue gown. And a baby doll. And what is a crib?” The other girl goes: “Yeah, you should come and watch us mum. I’m a shepherd. Have you got a real shepherd’s staff?”
A few minutes later I have cursed, scolded, yelled, banged a door and called the office that I will be, again, not present this morning.
