Carol’s Column

What goes thump in the dark?

HAPPY Mother's Day to mothers everywhere. To all of you like me, who are sitting up in a bed of burnt wholewheat crumbs, eating rock-hard toast which has been made lovingly and specially for you.

It doesn't matter if your dental bridge-work can't take the strain and you swallowed your R140 gold-cap with the luke-warm coffee. (Why shouldn't your dentist holiday on the French Riviera?).

Nothing tastes nicer than a hard-boiled egg and still-frozen kipper unless it's the second piece of toast, soft and soggy.

Be grateful, for it's the thought that counts.

This is the day you've been waiting for all year.

Your day to sleep late, lie-in with the newspapers, dogs and kids, have an hour-long soak in the bath without being interrupted by the phone, plumber, neighbour, mother-in-law, daughter's best friend, son's best friend, son's best friend's father or traffic summons man.

Today's the day you can live a little dangerously and squeeze the toothpaste tube from the top.

Relax and enjoy yourself — you deserve it.

I mean, this Motherhood's a pretty serious thing.

Oh, we all think we know what we're getting into and most of us cope pretty well with the routine things.

The nappies and sleepless nights that never end. The tears, wails and cuts and grazes.

The teething and toddling and walking and talking.

Measles, mumps and chickenpox.

It's the unexpected that nobody warns you about.

About how to cope with a Houdini in a playpen or what to do when your child gets wedged in the toilet or swallows a bottle of brandy, carpet cleaner or prune juice.

Did you know you'd have to learn to resuscitate dead birds, comprehend calculus in Standard 8, take soccer practice when the coach has flu, be a tuckshop mother 783 times and dissect frogs for biology pracs?

Only mothers can fix bicycle pumps and wire broken spectacle-arms to frames. Stitch fallen hems, burst rump seams and sew on buttons to infinity.

And then there are literary gems that flow from mother's pens throughout the nation. About sore throats, lost school shoes, blazers, diarrhoea, flat feet, school outings and other such esoteric subjects.

Never before have so many listened to so much. Shakespeare at the kitchen sink, Henry Miller in the bath, Asterix while cutting hair that's too long for hair inspection and Superman while collecting worms, slugs and snails for insect week.

Add it up and you'll find you've spent almost half your life watching rugby, soccer, tennis, netball, softball and cricket matches.

Which is why your voice has lost its girlish timbre and your derriere is permanently flattened into a wooden-bench-with-a-slat-in-the-middle shape.

Your arms are weary from slicing and buttering 17 472 slices of bread a year.

And who said by the time kids turn 21 they'll pick up their clothes, tidy their rooms, make their beds and wash their necks?

Washing rugby shorts that run away when you try to catch them, then clog the washing machine as they disintegrate, may not seem like much to those that have never had the pleasure.

In fact, if you think about it — Motherhood's a bit of a con.

Who on earth wants to be a mother?

But then, what goes thump in the dark?

It's my four, flat-footed, knock-kneed children as they tiptoe into the bedroom, shine a torch in my face, poke me hard in the ribs then whisper loudly "OK, she's fast asleep!"

They then place four vigorously-wrapped parcels on my pillow almost amputating my nasal extremity in the process and then tiptoe out again as silent as a herd of buffalo in full flight.

Hey. Stop the world . . . I want a return trip.

And Happy Mother's Day to you too.

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