When Did They Stop Seeing Me?
DOMESTIC DIVA
March 2015
The washing machine broke down; so this morning, I addressed the pile of washing old school style. I am trying to remember the last time I washed more than a couple of intimate items by hand. Before I got married, I had a Washman, who came by weekly to pick up my laundry and would deliver them washed and ironed a few days later.
Everything else, I dry-cleaned, except of course for intimate items such as lingerie. Growing up, my Mum used to say to me: ‘A woman needs to know how to do housework. Even if your husband is able to employ Stewards and help, one day they might not turn up for work. What do you do then?” I used to think: “You leave it until they resume work! What else?”. Hmmm…
Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it! About four or five years ago, I was pondering all the life experiences I have had: I had lived the life of a single career girl, travelled around the world at my own expense and to exotic places at the behest of my employers; I had worked in the cut-throat world of profit, in best-in-class local and international organizations; worked with the Church and travelled on evangelism mission to a country where I did not speak the local language; and I had worked with government officials at all levels representing international agencies and relating with diverse groups of stakeholders to deliver aid programmes to various states in the country; and I had been an international student in a foreign country. In all of this, I realized that the only experience I had never embraced or fully immersed myself into was being a Mother and a homemaker. Before I got married, I had domestic help in addition to the Laundryman who picked up my clothes every week. For a very brief period after marriage, I had no help because my husband felt we did not need the intrusion. As soon as I got pregnant, that isolation became impractical, so we got help. When my baby was about 8 months old, I left for the UK to study for my Masters. There were two house helps when I left. When I returned from the programme, courtesy of my commuting husband, I was pregnant and a few months after my second child arrived, we were blessed with a Nanny-Housekeeper who was with us for 13 years. I, therefore, had never had to actually care for my children myself and I honestly did not feel that I had missed on anything, after all, I had the best of both worlds: I was a Mother and I had a career. Some years after we moved to the administrative capital, I felt very strongly that I needed to focus more on my family so I took early retirement from my international development career.
Being a stay-at-home Mum did not change much for me domestically: I essentially supervised the Nanny-housekeeper whom I gave a free hand to run things once I had trained her. Within six months of my early retirement, I had given up on trying to live the life of leisure: going to the gym and pool, having a weekly sauna and massage at the club, early lunch by the pool just before heading out to do school run. As my husband had suspected, the allure of the life of a kept woman did not last very long. I was bored beyond my mind. So I headed out to the UK to embark on a long-desired doctorate. Visa difficulties for our older children truncated that plan. I had promised not to leave anyone behind so I returned to Nigeria. Back home, I launched a website to provide an outlet for my writing. After two years of being distracted by that, the niggling thought came back: “Why do you keep running away from taking care of your own home?”. “I take care of my own home”, I contended with my inner voice, “or more appropriately, I have ‘people’ to do that. I don’t have to be the one who mops, shops and cooks for my home to work. There are ‘people’ who are great at that”. Deep inside though, I was beginning to face up to the fact that I was terrified to do house chores. Perhaps I felt it would mark my eventual decline into the type of married life I had told myself I would never have: the bargain-hunting, always harassed, market-trudging housewife I hated to see women become. “That would never be me”, I had told my fiancé just before we got married. “In fact, to be perfectly honest, I hate going to the market and would sooner buy something from the corner shop for a few Naira more rather than spend the time and energy to go the market where I will be shoved and prodded just to save a few bucks. So if you are the type of man who thinks I will not be a good wife except I go to Mile 12 market every week to drag through the mud in rented boots, now is the time to let me know”. In all fairness to him, it did not seem to be a deal-breaker. So a life with house helps and Nanny-Housekeepers it was and the chief of all their tasks was going to the market! The one chore I could not BEAR to do myself.
On the day in question when I told my dear friend about my desire to become a domestic diva and conquer my loathing for household chores, I was sort of thinking out loud. I had not quite figured out how I was going to do it but I was articulating my deep desire to challenge and stare down this fear of mine. My fear of domestic work did not come from not knowing how to do it. I think it stemmed from a deeper place. A place of wanting to prove my Mother wrong for all her domestic drilling. I was determined to prove to her that she had been unnecessarily over-emphatic about the value of chores and sure that she had expended a disproportionate amount of her energy in making sure I got that part about being a woman down perfectly. The reason for my aversion to domestic chores was summarized in one statement: “I do not want my Mother to be right!”
Why I took the Visa Officer’s advice and chucked my PhD
“I have been to the UK embassy one time too many for a student’s visa“, I thought as I left the Embassy. I had recently quit my development sector career to spend more time with my family but being the over-achiever that I was, I soon lost my taste for the life of leisure and lost sight of the greater good. So I contrived to while away the three-odd years I had deigned to spend on my family on a doctorate programme. Armed with my admission letter and several other pages of documentation, I arrived at the consular office for my visa interview. I knew it was going to be a breeze because I knew the drill. The British need our neo-capitalist lust for the foreign degree to oil their economy and educational system. I had travelled to the UK enough times and having already studied for my Masters’s degree in the UK and dutifully returned to my Country, I had enough appeal as a Highly Skilled Migrant candidate who would be welcome to stay but was even more of a visa delight because I had demonstrated that I might choose instead to return to my own Country where I would spread the gospel of UK higher education through my lifestyle and accomplishments. It was a win-win situation.
As I sat smugly watching the visa officer glance through my documentation, I was totally unprepared for her question. “Why do you want a PhD?” Huh?! Didn’t see that one coming. “To increase my options?” I answered a little quizzically, not sure I heard her correctly the first time. Why should she care what I need a PhD for? Shouldn’t it suffice that I had chosen her Country as the recipient of my hard-earned foreign currency for the next 3-4 years, at a rate that would guarantee full-time undergraduate education at least 6 UK students at home-students fees rate? But she wouldn’t stop. “I can see from your Passport that you’ve travelled the world, you’ve worked in 2 international development agencies and already have a Masters from an Ivy League UK Uni, so why do you need a PhD?” I guess she does not expect an African to reach quite so far, I thought. Not really feeling that the answer needed further elaboration, I decided to treat her like she was slow because she probably was. “Well, it’s like I said: to increase my options”. Realizing she could not deny me a visa on any legitimate grounds, she abruptly stopped looking through the documents and muttered: “You probably just want to live in the UK”, as she waved me off, handing me a slip that indicated I should pick up my visa in a couple of days. I decided not to let that one go. “I don’t need to spend money to live in the UK. I could live in the UK as a highly-skilled migrant and have someone pay me to do so,” I said. “Have a good day” I ended cheerfully, as my good manners would not let me leave her feeling insulted, although she would have deserved it. If I had glanced backwards, I would surely have dropped down dead at her feet, clutching my throat as her icy look would have no doubt plunged a huge knife through my impetuous African jugular. Within a week, I was off to start my latest adventure.
One day – a few months into the PhD – as I travelled by rail back from the packed city to my family residence and tolerated yet another glare in response to my cheery ‘Hello’ as I got on the train, I came to my senses. There I was in the cold, icy British climate and culture, while my husband and children were on another continent as I continued my self-serving habit of choosing my career and self over my family. So I took the Visa officer’s advice. ‘What the hell do I need a PhD for?’ I thought, pocketing the rest of my hard-earned foreign currency and returned to the warm sunshine and loving embrace of my long-suffering family. I came back home to the land where your greeting is always met with a smile.
The Invisible Mother
It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I’m on the phone and ask to be taken to the store.
Inside I’m thinking, ‘Can’t you see I’m on the phone?’
Obviously not; no one can see if I’m on the phone or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all.
I’m invisible – The Invisible Mom.
Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more.
“Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this?”
Some days I’m not a pair of hands; I’m not even a human being. I’m a clock to ask, “What time is it?”
I’m a satellite guide to answer, “What number is the Disney Channel?”
I’m a car to order, “Right around 5:30, please.”
I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history and the mind that graduated summa cum laude – but now they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again. She’s going, she’s going, she’s gone!
One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England. Janice had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well.
It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself. I was feeling pretty pathetic, when Janice turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, “I brought you this.” It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe. I wasn’t exactly sure why she’d given it to me until I read her inscription:
“To Charlotte, with admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees.”
In the days ahead I would read – no, devour – the book. And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I could pattern my work: No one can say who built the great cathedrals – we have no record of their names. These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished. They made great sacrifices and expected no credit. The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.
A legendary story in the book told of a rich man who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, “Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by the roof? No one will ever see it.”
And the workman replied, “Because God sees.”
I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall into place. It was almost as if I heard God whispering to me, “I see you, Charlotte. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one around you does. No act of kindness you’ve done, no sequin you’ve sewn on, no cupcake you’ve baked, is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can’t see right now what it will become.”
At times, my invisibility feels like an affliction. But it is not a disease that is erasing my life. It is the cure for the disease of my own self-centeredness. It is the antidote to my strong, stubborn pride.
I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on. The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree.
When I really think about it, I don’t want my son to tell the friend he’s bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, “My mom gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for three hours and presses all the linens for the table.” That would mean I’d built a shrine or a monument to myself. I just want him to want to come home. And then, if there is anything more to say to his friend, to add, “You’re gonna love it there.”
As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot see if we’re doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women.
Great job, MOM!
Courtesy: www.mikeysFunnies.com
Ovie Farraday is a wife and mother of five (including 2 teenagers and a pre-teen) living in a sub-Saharan West African suburb. She is married to an Architect and Enterpreneur. Ovie Farraday is a pen-name.
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