Another post in a long series subtitled: ‘Why childless people should count their blessings.’
We went away for one night. One whole night of our lives.
The last time we went away for one whole night of our lives was last summer.
On a good year we manage maybe two weekends a year when we are alone together, bound only by the chains of holy matrimony and not with snot and stickle bricks. I’m not talking long weekends here folks. I’m talking leaving Saturday morning, coming back Sunday night. Although to be scrupulously fair I do vaguely recall one time when we might have done two nights away.
So, we are not exactly international jet setters. The last time we went away we went to Birmingham. We live forty five minutes away. Last night we went to the Cotswolds. It was an hour away.
My friend asked me if I wanted to go to the Pudding Club last August. Blithely I said yes. In hindsight I should have run for the hills, but hey, nothing ventured right? It could have been pudding paradise.
So, here’s the thing.
It has taken months, and I kid you not, months of planning to sort this out.
I have three children. People want to look after other people’s three children like Superman wants to look after Lex Luther’s private stash of kryptonite. It just ain’t happening. Particularly when there is such a large gap in ages.
Speaking from bitter experience I will vouch for the fact that it is fairly impossible to find something that a nine year old, a five year old and a two year old can do safely and happily together for more than a nanosecond unless it involves sweets. Sweets and bribery work best.
People manage two children reasonably well. Particularly two children who are potty trained and house trained and sociable. When Jason and I were first courting and there were just the girls, my mother had them for ten days while we went to Las Vegas. If that happens again in my life time I will eat my shoes.
Three is too many for most people. It boils down to people you can pay and people who love you to much to refuse you. People who you pay will keep them on an indefinite basis. Unfortunately it costs more to have them looked after than it does for you to go away. Kennels are cheaper. Kennels with televisions and hot and cold running Chum are cheaper. Then there’s the whole thing of making sure that the ’professionals’ you hire are not ‘professional baby killers’ or ‘professional alcoholics’. This means that if, like us, you are a little paranoid about such things, you need to road test these people first, over a period of time, at vast expense, before you settle in to the whole, we’re taking our toothbrushes and heading for the hills thing.
So. In these cash strapped times you go for people who love you. Unfortunately they generally don’t love you enough to want to take your children off your hands for more than two days. This is the rule of thumb. As a relative of unsuitable exe’s used to say; ‘Guests are like fish. After three days in your house they start to go off.’ With kids you can imagine unrefrigerated kippers and draw your own conclusions.
In September I asked my mother if she would have the children for the night. She said yes. She said she would write it down. She is somewhat unreliable over things like dates. I checked several times that this was o.k. She assured me that I had asked her well enough in advance that it would be fine.
After Christmas I was chatting about our night away when my dad said: ‘But you can’t go away then. We’re at an antique fair.’ I looked at my mum. She looked at me. I tried not to scream and wail and shriek. He said: ‘Can’t you do it on another weekend?’ Like this was the most reasonable thing in the world. I explained it had been booked since September. I explained that there were nine of us going. I explained that Jason was working most weekends and this weekend had been specially written into his project plan. My dad said: ‘Well. You just can’t go.’
My mum, who felt hideously guilty, decided on Plan B. Plan B involved my dad driving my mum from the depths of Staffordshire to my house on Friday afternoon and dropping her off. She would look after the children for the night. My dad would go home and get up at the crack of dawn to drive to the fair on Saturday morning. When we got back from our time away, we would bundle everyone into the car, drive to Staffordshire, drop my mum off and then turn around and drive home.
It was not ideal. They reckoned the earliest they could get to us would be five in the evening. We had elderflower presse waiting by seven thirty and potential traffic jams on the Longbridge Bypass. We had planned to spend the day meandering about the Cotswolds on Saturday, possibly moseying into Oxford. Now we would have to hurtle back after breakfast and spend the day driving around the potteries.
I called our old nanny. I begged her. I offered her huge sums of money to help us out. She couldn’t do it. She already had work commitments.
The girls dad was no help. He would be sunning himself in California.
We had no choice but to go with plan b.
It’s what we did.
It’s what we did so that we could spend twelve hours of our lives alone together with a suet pudding.
We’d do it all again, without the suet pudding, given half the chance.
We must love each other. Nobody would do all that if they didn’t.
On a brighter note, we did go home via the Emma Bridgewater Factory Shop this afternoon and Jason let me indulge myself to cheer me up.
He really does love me. Even if I do look a bit like Yvette Fielding.
I’m really with you on the need to get away by yourselves. Even so, no matter how you feel about things now you will be amazed at how quickly the years pass, and they are all grown up, and you look back at old photos of the way they were and you wish you could go back…………..fade into the sunset, strike up the violins.
Oh bum. It just makes the whole point of going away just feel not worth it. We don’t have family in the country we can rely on for help so we either a) pay someone vast amounts of money or b) have to ask friends who through sheer kindness and gritted teeth say yes. Which is why we’ve only gone away 4 times in 5 years. Admittedly the trip to Paris in Dec last year was two whole nights – but my husband’s company paid for the childminder.
Now you see why the thought of me upping sticks and sailing across the ocean for 5 weeks is a slightly ludicrous plan. But where there is a will, there’s a way.
I do hope the pudding made it all worth while?
This is the rather unfortunate aspect of having severed ties with my parents and having had a falling out with his. We have no babysitters. Even if we did, no bastard wants a 13yo, a 10yo, a 3yo and an infant. No bastard. I shall have to live vicariously through you for the next six or seven years, by which point I shall feel comfortable leaving both of the younger children with one of the older ones. It’s a good thing your tales are such glorious word confections, Katy. I feel as though I’ve lived a little.
Steve,
I know. It would just be nice to have a bit of balance now!
Homeofficemum
Yup. It’s going to be a lot harder for you. I’m glad granny only lives ten miles away.
Nope. Pudding club was ghastly. When you’re feeling more chipper, schlep over to my earlier post and read all about it. It’s a long, long, whingefest. you have been warned.
Ali
I am happy for you to live vicariously through my disasters! When your kids are older and we are free we should meet up and compare notes.
There were three of us when I was growing up. My sister is 2 and a half years younger than me. My brother is 5 years younger than her. Generally my mum would manage to get rid of my sister and I for at least 2 weeks of every year by sending us to either my dad’s or his parent’s place during the holidays. My grandparents lived at the other end of the country so they were willing to do it as it was they didn’t get to see us for the rest of the year. It was rare that she managed to get rid of all three of us though.
Bev
See. It’s an age old problem. you think someone would have come up with a better idea by now.
i blame this modern (post-WWII) world passion for individuality. up until the end of the War, it was not uncommon for several generations of families to live together: doddering grandparents and doting maiden aunts, and spinster sisters and bachelor uncles and young married couples and the next generation of progeny. there was always someone about to ensure the continuation of that particular DNA strain.
after the War, it was suddenly everyone’s “dream” to have their own home and be “independent” and take the pseudo freudiean advice to separate from your parents… what did freud know? he lived with his wife and her sister and who knows who all else, all of whom watched his spawn as he made his way lecturing through the capitals of europe. so we wound up with the “babysitting” phenomenon of the 50s and 60s and now, with extended adolescence, it’s even hard to find babysitters because a young woman of 12 or 13 is considered to still need a babysitter herself. as for the grandparents — off doing their “own thing” — skiing in Aspen, antiquing in Kent, competing in the olympics… it’s depressing.
of course, in the old pre-War days, grandparents kicked off in their 50s, and doting maiden aunts might also be dotty and believe the children to be possessed of the devil, while the bachelor uncle might drink heavily and offer plug tobacco to the little ones, or feed them some of his “cough syrup” or who knows what all else?
easiest solution? have no children (obviously too late) or have sooo many that you can have the older ones look after the younger ones while you’re away. of course, you might wind up with a few less children, but in all the connubial bliss arising out of a weekend alone, you might not mind so much.
an essay in today’s New York Times addresses some of this issues:
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/parents-need-help/?hp
Bronxbee
There are pluses and minuses to it. I like living separately from my relatives. They like living separately from me. On the other hand I would quite like them all to live separately but in the same street. That would do nicely.
that’s exactly how i would like things to be. i’m one of those rare creatures who actually gets along well with my varied siblings, sisters-in-laws, parents, nephews, nieces and other progeny. but most of them live in some crappy rural area where i would feel like i was entombed alive in a neverending hell… so we live separately. i would like my parents to live down the block, and my varied other relatives sprinkled generously througout my neighborhood. i now have one aunt, and one sister, living nearby. much better than nothing. i was, of course, being a bit sarcastic about the living under one roof thing… mostly.
Yep. I like the one roof thing fine for a little while, but we are all such different people it’s hard if there isn’t any space.