There is a bee in my office

Normally, I leave such critters alone. I like bees: their roundedness, their boldness, their sound, the way they look against the purple of the backyard artichokes they are mining for pollen.

But one floor up, in an office that looks over cars and asphalt and has no real opening to the outside world, this bee is out of place and threatening.

I cannot gently hustle him out. I fear it is about to end badly for one of us.










And it has.

Gardening in the summer

I hate gardening in the summer. Down here it's dry and there's no lushness, no fecundity, and almost no growth. I'm just trying to keep a few things alive: the sad yellow basil, some sad yellow roses, a drooping tomato or two. Even the zucchinis, so overwhelmingly abundant in past years, are struggling to produce. This is a time of getting through, when stasis is a win. And I hate it. The things I love, the planning and planting of seeds, the tending of soil, don't happen as I spend my time watering and mulching and hoping for some rain.

But still, I dug around a dry bed of potato plants, put in when things were damp, and there, sitting just under the soil, were rosy Desirees, quietly waiting. Now, there's an allegory that's difficult to miss.

A good thing, too, as things here are at a tipping point. I have been smashed by a tsunami at work. I am the only one left standing as the senior team members are struck down by illness and bereavement. Not so long ago I was the junior person and now I am the senior, with all of the admin. and negotiations and constant emails and phone calls that entails. My boss has been divine in giving me actual, useful support and absolute flexibility in my working hours. But of course, as everyone in an office knows, each email, each phone call, takes a bite out of the time we use for something else. And I suspect I am like most of the working population, in that the something elses that are whittled away are the something elses that keep me half-way healthy and sane. Indeed, the something elses are what fill the well so that I can do my job.

I know this, I talk about this with every other mother I know. I know the magic list: yoga; walking in the morning; 8 hours sleep; no alcohol, sugar or junk food; something creative outside of work; some time with friends; some time by myself. But that list once again sits there unacknowledged and unchecked and I wonder why I'm doing this to myself yet again. I know the answer: socialisation, gender identity, organisational structures, psychological make-up; but my question is, why do I find myself asking the question when I know that answer? Theory alone won't bring about praxis.

So I am writing this down, for me, because when I put something in words it's real to me: I am doing my stuff first. Each morning I am playing with words, each evening I am pottering with the things that matter to me. Each day I am reminding myself that I am not a heart surgeon, nor a U.N. negotiator, nor a rescue worker; no one will die if I do things on my terms and at my pace.

This is an old, old song I am singing here, and I hope that one day, I'll remember the words and stay in tune.

TGIF

Last day at a full time job, at least for the next six months or so. I forgot my glasses and left early when my eyes began to hurt. We went to the park. For the next little while, there'll be a lot more sentences like that last one, I'm hoping, and a lot more swinging on swings, kicking through the leaves and a slowing down of my days.

Things turned out to be different on a Tuesday

Thanks for all the kind words and advice when I was feeling down. Making decisions when we are sick is a bad idea but conversely, I think illness can strip away the veneer of coping and allows us, in our vulnerability, to be more truthful about what we want and what we can have - essentially, it lets us re-think what matters. So there are changes in this household and they were put in place last Tuesday; hey, it'll all be different on Tuesday!

When Al and I had our kids we made a commitment to not having them in child care. This wasn't - and isn't - a reflection on other people's choices; it comes from our own experiences as kids, from our desire to parent our own kids intensively, and it is facilitated by living in a place where it's possible (in theory) to live on one income. But it hasn't quite worked out like that. Some of the unraveling has been easy: Lucy wanted to start going to kinder and we found a really good one, quiet and relaxed, with sofas and yoga, and Lu loves it all. Some changes have been harder: it's clear that living on one income is not possible for us. We have an average size mortgage, no significant petrol or transport costs, a modest lifestyle but still our carefully stored buffer has dwindled to nothing - financially, we can't do what we set out to do. Lots of people do - this is obvious reading all those lovely blogs about parenting and living frugally - but we can't. In the end, we need money in the bank (this is a product of my own childhood experiences) and we like to spend money on some fun things occasionally. Sometimes I am disappointed by this but like most people I'm a product of my culture, and while I can wriggle about in it, it settles on my shoulders and it's hard to shake.

So, we are about to become a two income family, kind of. Al has found The Job, the job he has been looking for since he was seventeen, the job that might finally fit him and make him feel happy to go to work in the morning, and he'll be doing that four days a week. And as for me, well it turns out all those years of working like a man have paid off in some serious long service leave, which my dear and lovely bosses will allow me to take as 2.5 days a week over the course of the next six months, while staying on full pay (don't hate me, please - I am fully aware of just how good my work conditions are). So I get to come back into the realm of the domestic, to regain some knowledge of the routines of our home and the nuances of my kids. Nell doesn't have a lot of words and the words she has aren't clear - Al can understand her and I can't; I want to learn to understand my little one. The girls love to bake and read and play; I want to give them my time to do that. I'll get to pick Lu up from kinder, I'll get to ride the bus with them to the museum with the trains, I'll get to swear under my breath as I push the overladen, hummer-size pram up the hill to our house. And I get to go to work and do the thinking and writing that sustains me in a different way.

This is our way of getting some balance back. More paid work in the household but for me at least, and somewhat counter-intuitively, more space in my days. Al gets a chance to re-engage with an adult world. The girls get happier parents (I never really understood the importance of this until the last few months) and lots more of their mother with very little disruption to their lives. This is not a happy ending because this parenting gig is never going to end. But a hopeful beginning of the next little time in our lives.

These are our choices but they are choices that are bound up in a set of structures: social networks, educational opportunities, class, ethnicity, gender, workplace agreements, local housing markets, government spending priorities. But our particular path is also shaped by luck: I have good, good managers who personally understand the importance of work-life balance; Al happened to meet a person who opened the door to his new employment. It's a reminder that sitting in judgment on other people's choices is an act of ignorance, if for no other reason than we can never be properly aware of the luck and structure that open and close what's available to us.

Centre of power

Until these past few weeks, I have never resiled from my position that Canberra is a hole. It is hot and circular and a nightmare for people who don't drive. It is flat and featureless, I always get lost, and everyone gossips about politics all the time. But now I think it is maybe not so bad; when I was there, I thought maybe this is the kind of place I could live in, maybe this is my kind of place.

Canberra is harsh in its drought but something beautiful has grown out of that: streets with verges and front lawns grown into small meadows as people let the lawn go rather than pour their laundry buckets on it. At every corner galahs nibble at the grass seeds, in backyards cockatoos casually strip fruit trees of their promise, and parrots eat out of the hedges. There's an awful lot of disrespectful medium density development going on - all horrible Moditerranean - but still so many humble houses with crazy veggie gardens out the back and no fences at the front. And the movies! The job prospects! The presence of friends who are easy and fun and generous, who make me smile when I see them. It's a heady thought, that possibility of a different kind of life where the dull bits of this one are coloured that particular shade of green you only ever see in grass on the other side.

Going away has thrown into relief some of the frustrations my town holds for me. It's re-opened that constantly recurring question: do we go or do we stay? Al wants to stay, the girls want to stay, I would go in a heartbeat if I wasn't bound to them. But when I leave the one movie cinema showing nothing I want to see, the lack of deep friendships, the less than promising opportunities my job currently holds, I'm also leaving our ability to live well on one income, to avoid the rush and stress that would come if we needed to put the girls into childcare, to travel without a half hour commute. Single and childless, I could breeze through the disadvantages of city living; as a mother and a partner in this particular family unit the thought of that life is daunting even as many of its opportunities are exhilarating.

I want my cake and I want to eat it too, but I've been well schooled in the knowledge that we don't get to do that. I think we'll stay because I've no wish for a brilliant career at the expense of my family's peace. Sometimes I think my decision to stay is more about my fear of big ponds and big fish, that I use my family as a cover for a failure of nerve...

But then yesterday, up at the area, the blackberries had arrived. And Lu, gobbling them down, said "Mmm, delicious and familiar". She knows what delicious means; familiar, I think, she's just trying on for size, feeling its fit in her mouth. But it reminded me that here is a kid who, for every summer of her little life has walked ten minutes up the road with her family to pluck the fruit from the thorns, who at less than three knows where the best pickings are to be found, and who could say with perfect honesty that those pickings are indeed delicious and familiar. The sharp edges of our big sacrifices are weathered to a softer shape by the daily reminders of what it is Al and I have chosen instead.

Off to our nation's capital to skill up for work. For me, two weeks away from home, with time to stuff my brain full of new things and space to catch up with friends and see a movie or two. For Al, two weeks by himself with the kids and a dog, no family support and limited social networks. That's the thing with parenthood: when one person circles out, the other is forced to fold in. Personal time is a zero-sum game: what I gain, Al loses.

I don't feel guilty - I'm giving up guilt like some people give up cigarettes - but I am enormously grateful that I live with a person who not only says, 'It's fine', he says, 'I want you to go'.

Thanks, babe.

On the right track

Over at bluemilk (my mac doesn't seem to let me make links but go there - it's such a great blog) there's a post about the opportunities work presents and the constraints we face in taking advantage of them. There are also some comments about the mummy track - the career path women end up on when they have children and find their organisations don't take them seriously as workers anymore. One of the commenters suggested concern about this is 'ego', and that things change over time. I think it's true - things can change - but the point about ego is stinging a little (and I acknowledge this response is about me, and not the writer's intent), so much so that I'm writing this instead of dealing with some work stuff that Needs To Be Done Now.

Ego. It's such a dirty word, and doubly so if you're a woman, and triply so if you're a mother. After all, motherhood is presented to us as the suppression of ego, as a state of sacrifice for the good of our children and our family (and the country's economy if the Treasurer had his way). Worrying about the state of one's career can seem a little off topic when we are trying to raise kids under all sorts of pressures, with all kinds of hopes and fears and caught in emotions so deep and complex - it's overwhelming and beautiful and frightening and there is absolutely nothing comparable in my paid work life. But I'm pretty much on the Mummy track at the moment, and I'm not always entirely comfortable with this, even though it is the best solution for balancing our family’s emotional wellbeing with our financial needs.

I don't like that in the professions, there is only one legitimate way of being a worker. So many organisational structures and cultures expect the total devotion of mind and body, in ways that disadvantage people who are trying to be parents (and in particular, mothers, upon whom the caring tasks most commonly fall). But more than that, I'm frustrated that I can't shine in my career when I'm shining as a mother. This strikes at the core of my identity: I've been a professional for much longer than I've been a mother and I've worked really hard to be respected and to get all the necessary letters after my name. My life was directed to success in my field; motherhood came late(ish) and the desire for children was absent for decades; Kris-as-mother is a pretty recent and unexpected character. That earlier sense of self was not sloughed off when Lu and then Nell came along; it lives side by side - often uncomfortably - with 'Mummy'. And there's ego in it too, I miss feeling that I am (or have the potential to be) a player, someone who's going somewhere.

Work might be vanity, it might melt in the air, but it does matter to me. The work-family balance is usually presented as a question of the fit between hours worked and hours spent with family, but for many women it also a question of balancing the different elements of who we are and what we focus on: worker and mother and partner, ego and sacrifice. These ideas are written as separate, and contain an implicit dichotomy (trichotomy?) but perhaps they should be presented as workermotherpartner, egosacrifice because they're all mixed up together.

I'm lucky that my work lets me write this from home, and that home is where work is currently happening. I'm lucky that I don't have to make a set of hard choices about career and family. I’m on the mummy track, and in terms of what my family needs, this is the right track. I've been telling my friends I have little ambition, and I'm comfortable with its absence. And I am, sort of. But there's still a part of me that wants to travel not the back roads of the mummy track, beautiful and quiet though they may be, but the great boulevards of a successful career, in a motorcade, with tickertape and a marching band and, sure, the key to the city (yes, my ego is that big). I may get there eventually but in the meantime, I'm sometimes going to feel sad and frustrated that and resentful that I can't be seen as a great mother and a shit-hot leader in my field. Because I'm proud of being both.

Never leave a man behind

For every lovely moment there's ten of these: offhand rudeness, selfishness, kicking Nellie in the face, biting and hitting to see if she can hurt me, anger, tempers, cruelty. My daughter can scare me and she sometimes breaks my heart.

*********

The hardest part of walking away in the morning is the sense of betrayal. I've got two hours of frustration, rush and sometimes ugliness before I'm out the door. I have some time to myself as I walk into town and travel out to work on the bus and then I sit in my office and deal with relatively civilised adults who are more less polite. Al gets a whole day of negotiating with a two year and settling a baby. There's no break, no down time, no space. When I'm home, we're in the trenches together; when I shut the front door at 7am each morning and jam the headphones into my ears I feel like I've left a comrade behind enemy lines.

Some days I feel like my family is falling apart. Yesterday, after two time outs before 6.30 am, I left the house to go to work and cried all the way down my street, around the corner, across the park, past the hospital and the cafes, by the fountain, at the bus stop, on the bus, up the stairs and in my office in front of the computer. I think it is fair to say that yesterday I broke apart. Yesterday, I didn't think any of us could be fixed.

So I talked to my boss, spilled it all amid tears and tissues, asked for leave so we could try to get some equilibrium back. Instead, he has given me leeway to organise my work in anyway I need so that I spend time with the girls and Al gets time off. He found some support services, told me some of his own struggles with his family, and asked how the organisation could help Al. Could you estimate how many such managers exist in Australia? Less than ten, I'd wager. The crunch so many of us feel as mothers and fathers and workers can only be changed through dramatic structural and ideological shifts but some days, an individual can make all the difference.

I ended my working day crying, telling Al what we'd been given. Today, I still can't believe my luck. I wish everyone had a boss like mine, I really do.

******

Today, I planted some seeds, we went to the duck park and I played with the girls while Al did some things that had been piling up. The girls were happy(-ish), Lucy was so much more relaxed, and they are both sleeping well. We realise both Nell and Lu have been stressed, maybe by our own stress, maybe by my absence, probably a bit of both. In the long run we'll have to re-visit how we manage our life and my work but for the moment there's some calm in our home.

Having my cake and eating it too

We're still off the junk food. This is good for us in so many ways but I must now work harder to sate my sweet tooth. I was always more of a savoury lover, choosing cheese over chocolate for example, but pregnancy changed that. With both Lu and Nell I had an overwhelming craving for bleach, rubber boots and cuttlefish; only XXX peppermint lollies could temporarily assuage the need. All that sugar permanently re-built my tastebuds and I look for sweet things daily. In the absence of lollies and ice cream I've returned to baking cakes.

I've got a few posh, glossy cookbooks but I'm most often guided by the Kenmore State School Cookbook. I'm not sure when exactly it was published but the Brisbane phone numbers are only six digits so it's getting old now. Other telling signs: the recipe titles are capitalised and maraschino cherries make regular appearances. A far better indicator of its age, this is the book I used as a child - turning the pages pulls me back to Saturday afternoons in rural Victoria: Bran Loaf, Chocolate Sponge Cake (always served with whipped cream) and Simplicity Chocolate Cake, made up by my mother in double quantities, baked in a large rectangular tin and served with chocolate icing on very special occasions.

It's the relative frugality of these cakes that strikes me most. Contemporary treats suggest chocolate with 70% cocoa solids, lots of nuts and lashings of cream. Those cooking in Kenmore circa 1970 worked variations of the basic theme of eggs, S.R. flour, sugar and butter. Many recipes don't even require creaming the butter and the sugar, my great failing as a cook. Using this book is a return to those times when cakes were a no nonsense way of filling bellies, when they were not 'sinful', 'indulgent', 'decadent', and made no obvious moral judgements. Standing at the bench, I feel I should be wearing a pinny and sensible shoes, and that's a feeling I'm quite comfortable with.

In this book, between Energy Cake and Pudding Cake lies Peach Blossom Cake, one of the minor disappointment of my childhood. When I baked this for the first and only time, I expected magic, wonder and beauty but it's just a tea cake with some pink colouring mixed in. The bubble of excitement deflated on the very first nibble. I couldn't have been more than nine, and I've never eaten it again. To this day I remember its stale, dull taste.

I'm not sure how a peach blossom cake should taste, but I know it should smell of daphne. Each day as I walk to the bus I pass a bush with its modest flowers and remarkable scent, almost overly sweet but with a tang that shifts it back from cloying. Daphne has been one of the surprises of my life down south. I had been excited about raspberries, daffodils and roses but had never really thought much about this plant. Now everyday it pushes itself into my senses. In one of those odd associations, my first sniff, the day after I had dragged out the Kenmore book, pulled the peach blossom cake into my head and I thought, 'This is what it should have been'. I am so very pleased that a little of that childhood expectation is restored to my life each morning. To keep me happy, I clipped a little bit of the daphne (really, there's plenty on the bush) and popped it into a jar to sit on my desk and sniff when the anxiety started to gather in my chest.



Yesterday was blustery, cold, sometimes sleeting and never welcoming; a very good day to sit inside and eat cake. Which is what I did, in my office, with a cup of green tea. I had packed the All in Together Cake in my lunchbox, the same cake Lu spat in (but surely 40 minutes in a moderate oven solves those sort of issues?); the crumbly slices, together with the flowers, made a little bubble of calm in an otherwise overwhelming day.

So here I'd like to record my thanks to the person who placed the daphne so close to the path, so that we can all share in that remarkable scent: Madam/sir, you made my day.

Crunch time

There's lots of research telling us women feel stressed when they combine work and family. These pressures are greater for women with more than one children, women with young children and women who work in the professions. I tick 'all of the above' and while I manage the difficulties as best I can, I am failing to do so, and everyday I feel as though I am failing a little more.

I don't want to complain. I make a good wage and my workplace is better than most. We have no real money troubles and we are healthy. Plus, there's not very much new to say about the time crunch, in my life or as a general proposition. But this morning, talking about insurance issues with Al over breakfast, I was interrupted by Lu who told me not to talk in 'that voice, that grumpy voice'. I hate that my children are picking up the edge to my voice, the one I try so hard and so unsuccessfully to soften.

Never once in my schooling did I recieve 'must try harder' on a report card. And now it runs in my head in a continuous loop. I know, I know, don't be so hard on myself, we can't have it all. I know all these things in theory and I agree. But how do I walk the talk? And is it ever okay to use that phrase, even while typing it with an ironic twist to my smile? And, come to think of it, is that in fact the saying?

My day in brief

FAAAAARRRRRRKKKKKKKKK!

Thank you for listening.

Update: two special Mummy drinks later and I'm starting to accept I have to go back to work tomorrow.

Sagging

No, not me (well, maybe just a little) but the hyacinths. They've flopped down onto the desk and are looking a little ragged around the edges. A botanical metaphor for the effects of work on our bodies and our souls? Or the obvious result of cranking up the heater till the office feels like a tropical afternoon, so hot it won't be long before there are vines growing from the ceiling? The floppiness disappointed me until I was struck by the cascade of pink, a little aged and soft around the edges, and a little more approachable than their bold and upright former selves.

Straight or bowed, those flowers are good company through the day. And I need the company - I had no idea how homesick and babysick I would be. More than anything it's the lack of physical contact. Nell spends a lot of time asleep and Lu's a bit too busy for cuddles - the occassional resting of her hand on my leg or 'joke pokes' are the most I'm allotted. But over the course of the day it all adds to the warm fug of physical intimacy and this is sorely lacking - obviously and perhaps rightly so - from my work. And the cold plastic of the breast pump is a very poor substitute for Nell's snuffling, suckling and grasping. I'm almost running the last stretch of my walk home, so desperate am I to smell and touch and drink in my girls. By almost any standard I've got a good job - a great job even - but it's not as good as the one at home.

Back to the hyacinths. Could they be the way to solve workplace tensions and boost morale? It's hard to be cranky at a co-worker when you're faced with a flash on bold and unapologetic pink on the desk.

Thanks everyone for your kind comments, and for sharing your own experiences. I make sense of my world through writing and through thinking about what others' have written and seeing how it fits in my own life. Knowing your thoughts helps me think my own.

Eating from the garden: just the walnuts in the muffins I take to work. Such scanty pickings compared with two months ago. Ah well, the cabbages will soon be ready for the pot.

Pink

I calculate that over the last ten years I've spent more time in my offices and than I have in my homes. For a long time I felt more comfortable at my desk than in my house, and I felt a sense of relief when I put the key in the lock each morning, and a pang of loss when I closed the door behind me at the last possible second at the end of the day. But yesterday I went into work to drop off my clothes for the week, and I felt so alienated in that space. The institutional, grey carpet, the perfectly acceptable and perfectly uninspiring beech veneer furniture, the blinds - they are all so very blah. There's no life in that space and no welcome for me. Unlike the room in which I am now sitting, the office at work as neat as a pin with no dolls, toy engines, prams, wraps, mislaid socks, towels to mop up Nell's spits, and pen marked furniture. There are no scuffs, flakes, marks on the carpet, and bits of dog and cat fluff. There are none of the bits and pieces of my current life. Boring.

I think the office needs some pink, so tomorrow when I go in these will come along with me.
They're hyacinths, pink and happy. I'm hoping they will remind me of the garden and home and family. And when I start to lose my vision and get sucked in to the ever increasing demands of work, they'll remind to shift my focus back to what makes me feel best. Besides, I think we could all do with a little more pink in our lives.

In the meantime, they're sititng in my study at home, brightening this cold and wet day. My plans to build a compost heap and plant more green manure have been scuppered by the weather, so I'm doing the week's baking and making some soups to freeze for those days when I come home to shattered to cook (I don't think the freezer is big enough to store all the meals I'll need to deal with that eventuality).

Eating from the garden: not much really, just the last of the walnuts in some more muffins. It's a barren time of year, between the last of the bok choy and the first of the cabbages. If we needed the garden we'd be going hungry now.

Get out of the kitchen

Four years ago I went to a conference where the keynote address focussed on the corporeal effects of neo-liberalism, which is just a fancy way of saying our work patterns impact on our wellbeing. The gist of the talk was this: we are working harder under conditions of uncertainty and our bodies are paying the price. The topic was a hit and over the coffee break many people - most of them women - talked passionately about their experiences. But the message didn't resonate with me. I thought, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen".

Last week while in Brisbane I caught up with an old colleague. We were discussing the ways in which our institutions require us to work longer hours in increasingly diverse roles. I'm not so pleased with these expectations but my colleague felt differently. She said - you guessed it - "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen". I murmured something non-committal but I've been stewing over this exchange, wishing I had said what I thought: "Bullshit". How times do change.

What worried me about the comment last week was the tone. There was no attack, just a clear suggestion about the best way to deal with a tricky situation. But why is it self-evident that we need to bend our families and ourselves to the demands of our paid work? I'm trying to think through, and not just feel, why I find this expectation is more than a little bit wrong.

A couple of days ago we were very busy, bumbling and bustling in the autumn mists. Lu and I planted some broad bean seeds (probably too late for anything to happen to them) and she learned the difference between broadcasting and placing seeds in furrows. Then we searched for walnuts and cracked them open with a brick before hunting strawberries and discussing the merits of cleaning out the chicken coop. After this exchange (we came down in favour of not cleaning the coop today), we read Hooper Humperdink eight times in succession ("and Olivetta Oppenbeem. I'll have to order more ice cream" – I love that line, it’s very fine poetry). I fed Nell and to her delight, played "heads and shoulders, knees and toes" with her body, many times over. While Nell slept I walked the dog down to the deli to buy some thank you gifts and then dropped them by at a friend's house. Then Al and the girls went to the park while I went for a swim. Home to cook dinner, bathe the girls and dose them with cold medicine, and put them to bed with more stories. Not a dramatic day, and a good day.

In six days' time I won't be doing any of this. I'll be sitting at my desk, passing as a professional in a smart jacket and my nice shoes. Al will be looking after the girls and he won't be doing half these things; my day only happened with two parents on the ground. Next week, the intimacy and frustrations of all day contact will begin to dissolve. This isn't an epic tragedy but my small domestic losses have a cumulative effect on my world and our shared society.

It probably doesn’t really matter that Lu is learning self-sufficiency in the garden, or that she can forage for protein. But our day could be described as more than a series of tasks: I socialised my children; opted out of – and back into – consumerism; I invested in social networks; ensured my family enjoyed a balanced diet; and looked after my – and my family’s – physical and mental health. These actions are all social goods and many also have indirect positive economic benefits for society. But I suspect I would have to explain this to most people, whereas the goods of paid work seem self-evident.

It’s not a new issue, I know, but it’s new in my life. I’ve never really felt the need to justify my work and family choices in a way a lot of stay-at-home mothers experience, probably because I’ve always been heading back to work – thus fulfilling my duty as an economic being – and Al looks after the girls at home – thus avoiding the fraught debates over childcare (Al’s choices, on the other hand, confuse and confront almost everyone we come across). But I get the feeling I’m going to have to start explaining why I’m not working weekends and evenings, why I’m saying ‘no’, why I won’t be travelling; in short, why I won’t be giving my all to the organization that pays my wage. Even putting boundaries around my time I will feel I will be sacrificing a lot, and I will be, because my family is my core, my centre, my axis, and I feel most comfortable expressing this through my domestic activities. For other women, going back to work is a blessed and invigorating choice, and they may show their love for their kids in other ways. But my colleague – who’s a smart and critical thinker, and who openly struggles with the work-family balance herself – talks about the role of work as a given. It’s neither a choice nor a sacrifice but the natural order of things: work first.

I’ve spent seven months away from work and, while there’ve been some very hard time, it’s been on balance quite wonderful. I keep saying to people, “It’s such a luxury”, mindful of the economic pressures and truncated leave entitlements most people work under. But as I get ready to start up my work self I’m increasingly sorry that what we’ve had is a luxury – it should be something available to everyone. As I write this I think, ‘Well that’s not economically feasible’; even in my wish life the taken for granted-ness of the centrality of work asserts itself. But I’d like to think that I won’t forget what I’ve learned about the value of time and family in these months away, and that I’ll protect those lessons and values from the encroaching demands of work. I’m planning to stay in the kitchen – the metaphorical one, and my very own as well.

Eating from the garden: surprising strawberries, big as Lucy’s fist; rocket in sandwiches but not much else.