GIVE ME A BREAK:In the midst of psychological meltdown, there are ways of spending €4,000 a week that start to make a strange kind of sense, writes Kate Homquist.
When I'm stressed to the point of being overwhelmed, my inner poltergeist takes over. The mobile phone goes missing or stops working (did I pay the bill?), keys disappear, I wake up in the middle of the night with my heart pounding, convinced there's an intruder in the room (a flashback of real events, so maybe it's not so crazy) and things start bursting into flames.
While writing my column, the doorbell goes and the neighbours shout "your house is on fire!" Fortunately, the fire is at the side door where we keep the hot-ash bucket, which somehow set the bicycle tyres on fire, followed by the bicycles and an old wooden mirror, with spectacular results. My quick-thinking neighbours put it out with the garden hose.
The central-heating boiler is broken, so we've been using coal fires. As I'm pre-menopausal I don't mind the cold (I wear my coat if necessary), but my middle child decides to leave home, determined to survive "in the wild". I discover this when I notice yet more flames on the back patio. Her fire is neatly and safely arranged within a ring of stones, just like Bear Grylls has shown her on TV, and nearby what remains of the garden furniture has become a makeshift hut. So I do what any sensible mother would: I get the marshmallows and chocolate-covered digestives and we all sit around the campfire and toast them because it's now warmer in the garden than it is inside the house.
"A normal mother wouldn't be letting us do this," one of the kids says.
"Well, aren't you glad I'm not a normal mother?" I say with frightening pride. There's a fine line between normal and nuts.
"Can we do this every night?" says my son as he climbs a tree and breaks off dead branches to throw on the fire.
"On special occasions. And next time we use the barbecue," I reply, remaining on the normal side of the line.
I take the kids to see a preview of The Spiderwick Chronicles in a private cinema (which I can't find, so I have to ring the distributor's press person three times for directions). I can't turn off my newly purchased €39 Russian ready-to-go, so when a text comes in I am ashamed about disturbing serious fellow-viewers Pat Kenny and Donald Clarke and that nice It-girl from TV that you usually only see in an evening gown, so I sit on my phone to drown out the noise.
When the film's over, I leave without my phone. So I ring the PR lady again and we organise for me to get it back. When I see her the next day, I know from her expression that my nervous breakdown hasn't passed her by.
My own mother, when she was in this state, used to stand staring blankly into space, with one hand on the kitchen counter, while the frozen vegetables burnt black because she forgot to put the water in. Or she'd be driving and, fed up with our bickering, she'd just park at the side of the road and stare into space. Or she'd lock us in the car while she went into the mall to check out at the checkout. Once we got so hungry that we tried to grill cheese with a cigarette lighter. Then I felt a little confused, resentful. Now I know exactly how she felt.
Is there some place where stressed-out mothers can go for a mental-health break? A comforting place without fire and mobile phones, where kindly women listen to your problems and convince you that your poltergeist is manageable, while rubbing your feet and organising a small Lotto win so that you can get the central heating fixed? Has the Irish Hotels Federation thought of this?
A few good things happened this week too, though. I'm sitting in my car in a loading zone, waiting to collect a child from the cinema while keeping an eye out for those faithful Dún Laoghaire parking-ticket writers (they deserve a medal for their devotion, really) when a car pulls in behind me. The driver has one of those baby-pouch things strapped to her chest and I think, ahhh, those were the days. She asks me if I'd please tell the traffic warden that a woman with a baby had to dash into Argos to collect something.
Of course I will, I say, remembering how hard it was get anywhere to collect anything with a baby. Soon the new mother returns with one of those multidimensional, colourful, soft baby mats that have an arch across the top with toys dangling off them so you can lay the baby down to amuse itself while you try not to burn the vegetables.
The woman comes right up to the car window to thank me. Psyched up to admire the infant, I'm in mid-goo-goo when I realise that this pouch-creature is too hairy to be a baby. It's a small, white, fluffy dog. Its mother tells me about its Crufts-winning parentage with the same pride as mothers whose human babies are running marathons and writing poetry at the age of nine months, having been sired by the genius sperm bank. "I'm so excited I can't stop shopping. I've spent €4,000 on her in the past week!"
The scary thing is, it makes sense. Thirtysomething childless single woman with deep maternal drive finds surrogate baby that is incapable of lighting fires in garden. When I relate the story in the office later, eyebrows raise. "But it's a trend," I say, defending the dog-mother. We respect trends in the office, so a few heads nod sagely (or else they're trying not to laugh, I can't tell).
When your life is going up in flames, toast marshmallows.
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