Herding Cats and Cutlery
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“The same carefree woman who in her adolescence was hanging out of a friend’s sunroof singing to the GoGo’s whilst chugging back a West Coast Cooler, was now labelled a control freak.”
“To all the schools, workplaces and friends houses our children have frequented over the last decade; we have your cutlery,” began my Facebook post accompanying the photo of the random knives and forks I found in my kitchen draw.
“It is safe, being treated well and this will continue as long as no harm has come to ours.”
Like a knee reflex test, back flew the comments with stories of crockery, Tupperware, and socks from friends suggesting a swap-meet might be in order.
This reminded me of one of my favourite sayings, one that I seem to have occasion to use quite regularly—“Herding Cats”.
Wikipedia will tell you this is ” an idiom denoting a futile attempt to control or organise a class of entities which are inherently uncontrollable.” My attempts at satirising a hostage situation was a pent-up release of the things in life we can’t control.
I think it is fair to say I was an uptight mum. Add three kids in 3.5 years to a heaped tablespoon of anxiety and watch the need for certainty and control take hold.
The same carefree woman who in her adolescence was hanging out of a friends sunroof singing to the GoGo’s whilst chugging back a West Coast Cooler, was now labelled a control freak.
I thought I was doing swimmingly well as I managed the kids at home but in hindsight, it was the contained environment of the house that soothed my fears of losing anyone or anything, and negated the need for the duct-tape one may consider using having three kids and only two hands.
Then came the inevitable. First day, first-time school-mum, everything was labelled with bomb-proof precision. I would be all over this like a rash!
Alas sadly, within the first week a hat was missing. Then there were the jumpers, the lunchboxes, and a shoe…not a typo; a single shoe.
My son was missing a shoe but seemed content with the fact he had brought home two shoes even though one wasn’t his in size, colour, or brand. I felt confident the mystery would be resolved the very next morning but spent a perplexing two days searching for another odd-shoe wearing child, to eventually discover the other little boy had been kept home unwell.
Was I horrified at the other mum for not thinking my son might need his shoe, or jealous at her relaxed approach to such a significant event?
By the time I had all three kids at school I’d wised up and relaxed enough to take on the advice of an older mum, a seasoned professional to whom I lamented losing another hat. She told me to help myself to another one from the lost property pile.
Initial horror became slight reluctance, being sure no-one was watching. Before long, however, I was elbows deep in the lost property pile on a weekly basis.
My litter of kittens were running amok and I started pondering whether this communal clothing could apply to the drop-off/pick-up line in the school driveway. If you drop three kids in the morning you collect three kids in the afternoon, whichever three are ready to go.
This would improve the flow of traffic leaving only Friday afternoons to get the right kids in the right car, assuming parents might want their own kids for the weekend. Stroke of genius!
As the kids got older we started haemorrhaging household items such as, but by no means limited to, cutlery and crockery, towels, sleeping bags, pillows, skateboards and approximately 3,472 drink bottles.
Now the kids are adults, I have time to go through those storage places in the home that I once kept stuffing things into whilst rounding up the herd.
Apparently we have ‘borrowed’, for nearly two decades, some witches hats, a buoyancy vest, netball bibs and a Grade 1 reader.
It was the cutlery draw, however, that spurred my reflection back to a time when my anxiety was challenged but my heart was full.
Before all the mayhem of the school years when my little kittens in their mittens were contained and manageable, I would take them to a playgroup where in the middle of winter one little girl would arrive dressed in the most delightful sundress and sandals.
When I asked her mum if she was concerned it was too cold, she told me her daughter insisted on dressing herself and showed me the secret stash of cardigans and jackets in her bag.
“I only fight the battles that matter,” she wisely told me. I haven’t forgotten that after all these years, but I’m still a work in progress.
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