Childcare

"How's it going?" they all ask, in the hushed confidential tones ordinarily reserved for questions to which the response is "cancer" or "twenty five to life."

Michele has gone back to the US and I am on childcare duty.  My friends, other parents, mostly, exhibit more concern than I would have expected.  I'm not entirely sure who this concern is for: me or the children.  They examine my offspring surreptitiously, checking for signs of neglect - dirty clothes, distended bellies, compound fractures - and finding none, smile warmly but with a touch of pleasant surprise.

There is an image, perpetuated by marketers of various cold remedies, laundry detergent and suchlike, of Dad as Incompetent Knucklehead.  He gapes, uncomprehending, at the washer, the cooker or the iron like a farmer who's discovered an extraterrestrial space vehicle in his haystack.  He feeds the children cake for breakfast.  And lunch.  And dinner.  The family dog, matted and mangy, stands atop the crumb-strewn dining table, gnawing his fleas and alternately licking the dishes and his anus while the sink overflows with plates and cutlery, the remnants of the meals cooked and frozen prior to mum's departure hardening on them like concrete.

I have always been offended by this image.  I am more than capable of doing the laundry, the cooking and the ironing, thankyouverymuch (though the last, I must admit, is not my favourite), and I suspect a fair few other men are equally skilled in the domestic arts.  Right? Uh, back me up here, fellas.  Hello?  Well, regardless, I'm offended by the image.  Imagine the outcry if a Madison Avenue agency cooked up an ad campaign generalizing women as poor drivers.

So it's now been almost two weeks of just me and the kids.  It's not been without its fractious moments.  I swore in front of them once, not AT them, mind you, just NEAR them.  It was a senseless moment, and I regret it still, even moreso because Michael, who can't hear me tell him to put his socks on until I've repeated myself at least twenty-seven times, suddenly develops bionic hearing when I drop the F-bomb.  And I'm sure I've put him off tablets for life now, having forced him, with much crying and yelling and pouring water over him, to swallow half a Panadol for his fever.  He always gets a fever when Michele's away.  Always.

For the most part it's been fine, though I've had a significant amount of help from friends, who have kindly taken the children after school and fed them dinner, a favour, or rather a whole lot of favours, for which I am extremely grateful.  But I get them to school on time in clean clothes, I work a full day from home, I pick them up from wherever they've been causing mayhem for the afternoon.  They are showered, teeth brushed, stories read and into bed a bit later than usual, but still within the bounds of reason for respectable middle class children.  I get them to where they need to be on the weekend, with the correct equipment.  I make nutritious, if not entirely kid-friendly lunches every day (strangely, although my children like broccoli, eggs, milk and cheese individually, when presented in a beautiful golden-brown homemade quiche they're 'yucky'.)  All in all, I think I've done an OK job.

But I'm ready to go back into the office now.