I went to London last week. For the day. All by myself. This, on its own, was cause for excitement. I wore a skirt, not to mention a top that is dry clean only. I even found my make up bag, which took quite a while as it was last used sometime in the last decade, and put some slap on. Then I went in the quiet carriage of the train and concentrated on reading a book.
Obviously I had a lovely time, but the London experience isn't the thing I'm referring to in the title. The thing I took so much pleasure out of? Oh, that was when I came back from London, arriving home at 6.30pm to discover Dave at the door looking down the street to see whether I was nearly back yet. Obviously his desperation was because he had missed me enormously over the day and wanted to see the love of his life back at his side once again. But it was probably more to do with the fact that for 3 hours he had been left in sole charge of 3 children.
To be fair the 3 hours were the post school witching hours when everyone is tired and cranky. The older 2 fight each other for fun whilst Sam, still getting used to the child minder, seems to think that it is child abuse to be put onto the floor for any length of time greater than 5 seconds. And the post school 3 hour hit also includes cooking supper and, more stressfully, feeding it to the ungrateful hoards with the compulsory 'you will eat your veggies' battle.
I have to admit that Dave did well. He had done Fun Stuff with them. They had been worn out with quantities of outdoor running around. They had been fed and watered and were in the bath.
The man was exhausted and a teeny tiny part of me felt exultant for I knew that in the scale of looking after children he'd actually had a pretty easy time of it. Yes he'd done the 3 child childcare hit. But, the food cooked was that which I'd already prepared for him. No form of housework of any kind had been completed. The house was well and truly trashed and, even by my own slovenly standards, needed urgent tidying. Washing or hanging out of any clothes was nowhere near the agenda. I was back in time to help with bedtime itself. Whats more, he doesn't need to get up and do it all over again tomorrow.
It did make me feel better. Sometimes I feel that I 'only' stay at home, 'just' being a Mum and that is somehow an inferior, easy job. It is good to remind myself that it really is one of the hardest jobs in the world.