Little boys are more work than little girls. I am now deeply certain of this truth. I have the following evidence to support my position:
• When I visit with friends who are mothers of little girls, I spend the time running after Sasha - who is likely to be pouring milk into the ear of a cat or dropping my keys down a grate - while my friends’ daughters sit quietly and play with something innocuous, like last week’s mail.
• It is the only way I can explain the fact that my mother sailed through being an eye surgeon while simultaneously bringing up us three girls. We must have been a walk in the park.
• Yesterday
Allow me to elaborate on the last item: yesterday. Yesterday was proof positive that boys are more work than girls.
If you had happened to be strolling around the Arc de Triomf area of Barcelona at about 11:45am local time yesterday, you would have been privy to a screaming spectre stomping down the street in the general direction of her home, carrying a fighting, sobbing boy under one arm and a muddy plastic motorcycle under the other.
Harried would be a kind euphemism for the picture I made yesterday. So would dishevelled, angry and stressed out.
I realise now that yesterday I committed the dire error of trying to combine two weekend activities: Doing Errands and Being a Mom to a Two Year Old. I have now decided that these two activities are explosive when combined, like molten magnesium and water or Mumbai food and the unwary tourist.
The thing is that Sasha loves his little moto and is actually getting pretty good at getting around town on it. Conversely, he is getting less and less tolerant of being strapped into a baby stroller and fights us every time we try to manhandle him into it now. So yesterday I thought that if he wheeled around beside me, we could get my passport photos taken and go to the post office to mail my new passport application. The only thing was that the electrician was coming at noon. On my own, I could complete these two errands in less than an hour. I had planned for contingencies and had left a generous hour and 40 minutes to complete the two tasks with Sasha.
I failed to account for the fact that while Sasha can go pretty fast on his moto, he has his own ideas about when to go fast and in which direction. After examining every apartment block on the way to the photo place – and him nearly trashing the whole camera store (thank goodness for tolerant camera sales people) – we had burned an hour of the allotted time. I had also almost lost my voice trying to keep track of Sasha while he did wheelies around the store and down the street. Needless to say, my passport photo is terrible.
We still had 40 minutes left and the post office was only a couple of blocks away. Easy. We headed that way. Once inside, there was hardly a queue. Lucky me. But it still took me a while to send the package because I had to run after Sasha who was trying to wheel out into the street, and escape the confines of the post office, every time a new customer opened the door.
Once back on the street, we had 20 minutes left. The race was on. There was no way I was going to be late for the electrician, who was responsible for our house being turned upside down last week and whose visit that morning was key to ending the chaos.
Sasha was sort of tired at this point in the morning, having wheeled his way all over several stores and streets of Barcelona. I urged him on. He dawdled. Precious minutes ticked by. I cajoled him smilingly to get on with it. He examined a cigarette butt on the sidewalk. I urged him on, a little louder this time. He ignored me totally and completely. My blood pressure started to rise. I raised my voice and counted to three. He began to advance. I sighed in relief. After 10 feet, he stopped again.
We went on this way for a while, until we got to the middle of an intersection. He stopped dead. In the middle of the road. Cars began to honk. I started yelling at him to get moving, repeating the word DANGEROUS lots of times. Frightened, he froze and started to cry. To get him to safety, I picked him up bodily under one arm and grabbed the moto and scurried across the street. I looked back. We had covered one block in 10 minutes. There were five more to go. I was in despair.
I told Sasha that mommy really, really needed to get home and I needed his help. I told him I would give him yoghurt when we got there. I told him to get a move on or else. Nothing worked. As I worked myself up, so did he. I alternately pushed him, carried him and dragged him home, yelling the whole time. By the time we got home, he was crying in earnest, wondering what the heck had happened to his mum and who this mean lady was.
I remember seeing moms just like this before I had kids and thinking to myself – “Would you look at her, a grown woman, losing it on the public street, and unable to control her child.” And then thinking, predictably, “I will never be like that.” I wonder how many people saw me yesterday and wondered the same thing? Good luck to all of you.
We made it home at twelve noon on the dot. I was exhausted. So was Sasha. He went straight to bed. I waited expectantly for the electrician to show up. He did. One. Hour. Late. I wanted to strangle someone.
I’m not sure if this scenario would have played out the same way for girls. Maybe. I just know it was about ten times harder than my day job. I’ve just been to Tokyo, Cannes and Mumbai this last month, speaking on stage in front of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people. It’s pretty stressful. But it’s a cake walk in comparison to being a good mom.
I know it will get easier. I know that at 16, it will be my friends’ daughters who cause more worry than the boys. But that is FOURTEEN years away. I might not make it that long!
Here’s to all the full time mothers out there. I just do not know how you do it.
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