Myths of womanhood

I’ve been falling apart over the last few weeks. Recently, at a place where I should have been engaged and serious, I started feeling my body parts floating away. I had to spend that whole meeting focusing on someone’s nose so that I can ‘force myself together long enough to get home. Why was I falling apart?

I think I tried to be superwoman. Fun wife, supportive daughter, sister, and friend; a fully hands on mum and house management. Well I think I managed it for a while, but I started falling apart. It started by losing sleep. Getting so tired that the body refuses to sleep, or forgets how to sleep. Then zoning out right left and center… then getting uber forgetful. In one day, I forgot to carry fare, was zoned out all through the days meetings, lost my precious cables (USB, Earphones, Computer charger), lost all the money I had withdrawn from MPESA, then to cap it off, took the wrong matatu home with barely enough fare to find the right matatu home.

Super woman is a myth. We love portraying ourselves in public spaces as women who have everything together. Then we pressure other women around us to be as together as we work so hard to portray. When one woman asks for help from another, its usually leads to some patronizing conversation about organization. IT’S A LIE! ALL OF IT. There is no way one woman, can cook, feed the little ones, make sure the husbands clothes are good enough for work, listen to or chat with the husband, keep the house clean or get a disorganized house-help to get the house clean attempt to make an extra buck to get home in time to pick little one from school, feed him while engaging baby for all the hours gone, make dinner, make sure the kids are clean and fed and still have energy to be a good wife. Yes, so some-how I managed to live in that whirlwind for about 3 months, but it all fell apart royally in the last few weeks. Now lazy help is gone, I unapologetically lock both kids out to give me space to be productive. I am also working on delegating all household duties apart from making dinner to an organized and driven house manager.

Maybe I can try find pieces of myself that floated away and put them back in place.

Dog Food and No Househelp

My son, he finally ate dog food today. I say finally because if I was totally honest with myself, it was only a matter of time before he discovered that the dog food is actually yummy in an off way. I know from experience. 

But how did Little Man aka The Rioter get to eating dog food in the first place? 

My house-help decided she must go today. She called me after I had just started my work in the office, 2 highways and a major road away, she had to leave by 1 pm today. Now this my current help has been the most annoying help I've had. She says she can't manage the housework because of the baby. This baby is 7 months old, sits up on his own and is comfortable with being carried on the back. Anyhoo, so she decides she has to go on leave today! So I say fine, she can go, after the baby sitter comes. Sometimes she has a lot of work to, so for the days where I know it really is a lot of work a sitter comes in for the baby and all things baby related. The sitter then decided to come in at 10 am and God knows what happened she too decided she cannot be left alone with the baby! So its just past 10 am and I’m getting calls from these two women to come take the baby they need to go.

A girl (me) has been a hands on mom and has been working sporadically from home for some time now. There are times I had no help with a baby barely 3 months old. I cleaned, washed and fed people. So when some-one comes and tells me that a 7 month-er is too much work, that floors cannot be cleaned and my living room dusted (she is not cooking, I cook in my house) or the laundry done… I do not understand her language.

So on the way back home from an aborted day at the office. I start calling agents I have used looking for a replacement. One agent says she has a girl ready to be interviewed. It’s on my way home so I go. The girl looks very shy, and looks like a hard worker. Then I ask her if she can manage a house with a 2 year old and a baby. She says she can manage the 2 year old but not the baby. So I ask her why, is she scared of handling a baby? Is it that she has never handled a child? Why is it hard to work with a baby? She says, the baby will take too much of her time and some babies don’t sleep enough to allow for housework.

Now when I was growing up I remember people used to tie baby on the back and work. What happened? Or is it that I am a country child and city people don’t tie babies on their back? The house-help who has ‘gone on leave’ refused to even try putting baby on her back! One I interviewed looked at me strangely for even suggesting it. What’s happening?

To cut a long story short, I am looking for a house-help who appreciates what work is. I think I’ve been hosting people in my house and they help with chores and get paid. No, I really need a worker.

Scar Tissue, Legacies and Sleep Crawling

This is for my mummy when I was a little girl, this is for my girlfriend whose struggle so mirror those of another woman 30 odd years ago in another Africa, Kenya, another town. This is for me on those nights I completely and absolutely hate my husband and the Saturday mornings when it’s all I can do to reign in my anger and not throw a stone or two at hubby dearest. This is for the deep hurt that women have carried because their men are just men.

I woke up extremely late and extremely tired. I had no energy to be apologetic or make the calls I needed to make to realign my day. Baby baby AKA Ovals is very active in his sleep in ways that are less than safe. He wants to crawl so bad that he actually crawls in his sleep! He crawls off the moses basket that’s his sleep space next to my side of the bed. Twice I dared to sleep and found the guy a second away from a face first drop to the floor. So yeah I haven’t slept at night in a while. We need to move him to a cot I know… but but but… many buts. I digress though. So I looked at this smiling sleeping lump of cuteness and I wondered how many hearts he will break. How many he will break intentionally, how many he will break that he never knew he had, how many he will break out of his manly foolishness… that he will break hearts among other things like glasses and doors is a given. He will as surely break a woman as he will break a glass. This is because breaking is what men do. Breaking their women, breaking their womens spirits, break the work of their womens hands… just breaking. But must men break?

I look at this little lump of lovely mooshness that is my baby boy and I realize that as his mother I have a responsibility to him and to his father to do my best and try limit the number of animate things he might break. I need to have the wisdom to know when to speak and when to feign ignorance to give this my boy boy the space he needs to grow and the knowledge that his parents have his back. I need to remind his daddy how important he is as a role model to his boys. In today’s world, men get lost in the rat race because that’s how the bills get paid, that’s how the kids go to school, that’s how he makes his name in the world. Many men forget that their legacy rests with these young ones that wait for him to come home and listen to their escapades for the day.

There are many broken children who are now becoming parents. Broken as their homes broke as they were growing up, broken as morals and values in the home were swept under the carpet to ensure they get premium education. We have broken children in designer suits driving shiny big cars living in big houses in the leafy burbs… who are now parents. They hide in the clubs ‘networking’. They hide their children in playschool with the nanny at 10 months and spend time in the spa ‘centering’. Behind these plausible lifestyle stories are kids, broken… trying not to break their progeny like they were broken.

This picture reminds me of my Rioter when he was a baby... my guns were on fire

My mother, my friend, me. We were broken for the scar tissue to toughen us up to be the parents we need to be to unbreak the world that was broken in our childhood. We hold the memory of brokenness to create a legacy of strength. Take heart when you want to kill him. Remember you are the healer and not the breaker. Make the choice that will be best for you and your legacy and if its worth it… his legacy too. Never forget however that you, woman, broken as you are, you are the only one who can heal your world.

When my Rioter (Little Man) and Ovals (baby baby) grow up to read this. I want them to know that their choices are the difference between leaving a legacy and leaving broken fragments of a dream.