Ode to a Dead Nightingale

Last week I didn't know if I was ever going to get work again, and hence get paid (my slightly paranoid state of mind leads me down this path every now and again); and this week I have more work than I could have wished for. I find myself, once again, juggling both my professional work as a teacher with my life-work as a mother. It's never an easy balance at the best of times. Here's how the last 24 hours has worked out for me.

I couldn't attend my mother's birthday dinner last week with my family as I was away for my daughter's netball carnival.  So I said to mum to bring my two gorgeous nieces over this Sunday (yesterday) to have lunch with us and extend her birthday celebrations.  Not only did the girls not attend with my mum and step-father, but there continues a strained relationship between my mum and my brother (and therefore me too) which was the catalyst for them not coming and for my sharp and steady rise in anxiety levels. Then, after shopping for and organising the three courses, including a birthday cake with fresh produce from our neighbour's garden, a storm blew across the city and all the power went out in our little town (and therefore my oven) and I was left with no lights, no heating and uncooked cake, rosemary potatoes, pumpkin frittata and buttermilk bread.

I shifted gear (I'm quite good in the actual crisis - it's just I fall into a heap after it's all over) and began making what I could on the stove-top (which is gas). I first and foremost took a massive gulp of wine, sent my family to open the presents in another room, and got started on mashed potatoes, Mexican casserole, steamed pumpkin and an endive salad.  I figured we'd have coffee and a Tim-Tam instead of cake.

So lunch worked quite well considering, but being an abnormally abnormal family (which is not intended to be a double negative implying normality), we didn't stay on the polite topics of football and the weather; we had an all out 'discussion' on the causes of both World Wars (my husband is German - "whatever you do, don't mention the war!"), plus the value of religion in the 21st century, and then (to round off) whether there is actually anything new being done in the world of fine art, and if so, what.

The electricity came on briefly and my cake got baked (orange and poppy seed with lashings of cream) and then went off again and is still not back on 27 hours later. I was happy to see the end of the family lunch yesterday (not an uncommon occurrence unfortunately) and, afterwards did the mass of dishes in tepid water and got out of the house as quickly as I could (leaving my daughter on her laptop running down the battery and my husband and son playing chess by candlelight) to go walking out in the wild and woolly weather to the local national park falls.

 I often wander there in wet weather and perch on the rocks under an umbrella and contemplate my life and the universe.  I also do my walking for exercise in this area, along the old railway line and heritage trail in the hills where we live. I find this place to be a natural retreat from the world and, like the Romantic poet Keats, my pains and sufferings are assuaged in the world of natural beauty. "Fade for away, dissolve, and quite forget/ What thou among the leave hast never known,/ The weariness the fever, and the fret".  I would even like my ashes to be one day scattered here.

Well before I get too carried away, let me tell you yesterday IT DIDN'T WORK. The fever and the fret remained and, by the time I dragged my wet and sorry arse back to the car, I was denouncing, not just Keats, but his whole bloody Romantic philosophy of loving nature for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else. I wanted to throttle his nightingale and smash his sodding Grecian urn into a thousand pieces.

It didn't get any better when I arrived home.  Still no power, house dark and cold and each kid wanting his/her eggs cooked (in the dark) in different ways - one scrambled and one fried fucking sunny-side up! And to top it off, I couldn't even read my book, Martin Amis' 1980s British classic "Money".We were all asleep by 9pm due to complete and utter boredom (yes, yes...a First-World problem if ever there was one) with no undies washed for the next day, no uniforms for the kids, and no hope in sight for a better day ahead.

I am Tofu-Hearted Mother (who feels like Rubbery-Favourless- Raw-Tofu-Mother at the moment) and this is my crappy story.