Useful 0001
Spotted something v useful today: a set of three brushes to clean the spout of the teapot and teakettle (what is a tea kettle exactly?)
I come from a lineage of useful and physically able women. Farmers and fixers and get up on the scaffolding and pick up a hammer and chase a goat and bang a stake. I often wish I could be more useful. I have the ambition to be useful. I can even imagine scenes where I am useful. I have dreams about fixing cars, and strangely flying like Superman (not a necessary trait for being useful). I constantly stop to admire people digging holes and inquire about what they are doing and ask again the next day and the next til the hole and digger is gone. And yet it never fully translates (yet?) into being useful or as useful as I aspire. I lack the logic to carry out the steps towards the useful task, so will randomly batter and fling away at stuff to an unsatisfactory outcome.
But the victory is tall and sweet when it occasionally adds up, like it did with the toilet plumbing dilemma at the weekend. Fixed! I suppose it is legit and useful to go around admiring useful people and people busy being useful are glad of a chat about how much use they are being.
Yesterday when I spent the evening with the new born boyo I was reminded of high octane human need and dependency. I was wondering how you could possibly begin to describe this “fight” that a baby makes to have his/her needs met religiously in these early weeks to someone who hasn’t lived it and hasn’t been so placed. I concluded it’s not possible to describe. It could be glimpsed like frames in a slowed animation here and there, but unless you were present fulltime in that situation the scale of what it is ungraspable.
The mouth, the mouth, (little wonder Beckett gave it a stage of its own) Except it’s gulping at the air. Everything is driven by the mouth.
Perhaps it’s the same on exit. The mouth shuts down. I was fascinated to learn that the loss of appetite and thirst in a near death decline, rather than being entirely negative, can infact promote feelings of wellbeing in the palliative care patient. And how one role of a person present is to provide comfort to the mouth by keeping it moist. The same might be said of decline, that unless it is born witness to day after day, hour after hour, these minute, yet intensely significant moments cannot be described or understood or accumulated.
Again, today more opinions — misguided — on mothering. The Globe and its Africa edition. Has the new editor got a bit of a sniffer for celebs? Indeed he appears to. The paper under his editorship so far has become lighter. The books section (to which I contribute, tho’ after this blog post … who knows!) now contains a review of magazines: what’s on the shelf, which is an annoying ditzation. Other features have been chucked like The Buried Treasure column, clearly deemed too high brow, with the new appetiser menu demand. I’m particularly aggrieved at this since I took nearly three months to write about DM Fraser’s Ignorant Armies, a book I consider well worth three months consideration, to learn that the G&M could not find space for 800 words to allow the book and readers to consider the consideration. The Tuesday essay is sometimes little more than an author penning their own review or a thinly disguised press release and purposeless how I wrote this book themed ding dong. It’s dismaying, most dismaying and readers deserve much better.
I was perturbed to listen to an interview in which the new editor (name to be uncovered in a few clicks… John Stackhouse) described discussing with Geldof and Bono whether to include or remark on Canada’s recent ludicrous stance on maternal heath funding and abortion, otherwise known as the recent shut the fuck up affair. The three males debated and considered and concluded that Africa had more pressing maternal health concerns. (he refers it around 2.06- 2.40 onwards) Be that as it may, I am perturbed that 3 men decide this, 3 men who also do not seem to have an understanding of the words maternal health.
Maternal health considerations must include abortion. Maternal health surely begins with a woman actually wanting to be pregnant. What kind of maternal health, indeed mental health, might ensue if she does not.
But critically our government’s stance should not just be ignored and gauzed over with “far more pressing issues for maternal health and wellbeing… not a pressing concern..”
I love doubling up on reading material: reading at both ends of the pole simultaneously. I especially like reading odd text books for relaxation because I like my brain to do its cycling when reading fiction. I have collected a few odd bod text books one on neural aging, another on virology and had to work really hard recently not to purchase some extremely antiquated guide to going under the bonnet of a car I don’t possess and no one has possessed since about 1969. I have a tiny hand sized book of forestry terms and other oddities.
Today while waiting on something I grabbed a trade journal on aesthetic dentistry and a well know publication for a religious faith that I will not be typing the name of here because I’ll surely be flooded with invitations from them. The dentistry mag was compelling visually — before and after and phoah…. technical surgical pictures. I’d no idea how much things have progressed! Plus the terms like bruxism, malocclusion, are lovely and ornate.
The other religious mag was less enjoyable but more surreal. The text was straight out of Batman. One section was dedicated to persuading young people to say no to premarital sex. It had three lines left empty for the person to fill up. One of the main proposals was that if 2 out of 3 high school kids graduate and are “sexually active” that means one third are not and so everyone is Not doing it. The piece was illustrated by three young folk who had captions explaining it was difficult to say no (in comparison to the article that insisted it was impossible not to say no) and therefore you should say no firmly, walk away and be aware that others will appreciate your qualities. The quality of the writing was so poor I actively felt for the publication.
The country I’ve visited that appeared to have a better situation for mothers and children was Iceland. Their daycare system is subsidized by the government and even when the country had its calamity recently the adverts taken out in the newspaper included the words Think of the children in them …
I also remember reading an anthropology study way back in the 90’s (published long before) which described how children were included in the conversation in the family. If the child interrupted the conversation say, the attention would turn and focus entirely on what the child was contributing rather than shushing him/her then when the child was finished the conversation would resume. The anthropologist (who for some reason is coming back to me as Arenberg (?) recorded these observations in a family set up. Generally there was a great deal more ease around children I noticed when I was there.
I also remember being struck when I was there, and I was not a mother at the time, how children were included everywhere, in bars, restaurants. I recall a line of silver cross prams outside bars and so on.
With the current economic calamities it would be interesting to learn how this has changed. I must ask my good friend there about it. The economic situation has been pretty brutal from what I’ve heard.