laundry

The Magic

Spring, 2024

If I had looked at the forecast, I would have known there was a storm coming, but I could never have predicted its magic. At the end of the weekend, the sky crashing, flashing alight blue, pink, orange over and over. The closest thing to fireworks the four-year-old had ever seen. ‘Nature’s fireworks,’ I almost said, but decided to leave the noise-making to the world outside the darkened room for once, an inversion of the usual chaos of dinner and bedtime. We stood close, still, looking out to the west in astonishment at the intensity, the electricity of plain air.

The days leading up to the storm had been windy, sure, but not unbearable. Good laundry days, I called them. The onesies and tulle dresses billowed out then defied their own pegs. Tiny socks spread themselves about the garden, but at least it all dried. And a good laundry day is a good kite flying day.

We stuffed the nine-dollar Kmart kite into a pannier, rainbow tail flapping eagerly, and rode down to the reserve to set it free, let it tug us gently, let it let us tug it gently back.

The kids got bored long before I did —  ran to the playground with their dad — so I took the reins, allowing the kite to swoop and loop, watching it try to arc gracefully through the ground and falling short. Each crash my cue to wind the string up, haul it back in, but before I could pack it down completely the wind would grab it again and off it went, off I went letting out its lead with a click click click of the wrist. Our dance of pull and release. Every time: a crash, a gather, a gust, a yield.

At one point the wind blew hair across my face and when I cleared my view I thought the kite was a heart. Not the squashy bulging forms my daughter has learnt to draw on birthday cards, but a proper anatomically correct blood pumping organ. My own old blood pumper flying as free as one can when they’re tethered to the ground by the comforting weight of family, the constant calling of Mummy Mummy Mummy.

Or was it my own child pulling the cord to come, come but asking me to stay? Let out more string, it seemed to say, long enough to let me dance in the high air you’ll never reach but don’t let me go. Either way the kite remained at the mercy of my flicking wrist and the wind itself, until it was us — my kite-heart-child and I — co-conspirators putting the wind to task, daring it, forcing it to keep us aloft. The thunderstorm not yet visible on the horizon. The magic still to come.

Parenting is…

… 60% laundry, 10% a niggling feeling that you should be doing laundry. It’s waking up after two hours of sleep ready to get into the day or waking up after six hours wondering how you’re going to zombie yourself through the morning routine. It’s somehow managing to get through regardless. 

Parenting is laughing along with your three year old’s shenanigans – pyjama top half off or feet kicking away the socks you’re trying to help put on until it’s suddenly just not funny come on now we have to go. It’s a tiny hand in yours as you walk around the block marvelling at the bees in the weeds or a small piece of rubbish that sparkles in the sunlight. It’s that same little hand breaking free from you to fix a slouching sock when you’re in the middle of crossing a road. 

Parenting is back pain. Sometimes from lifting and rocking and patting and shooshing and jiggling, sometimes from being climbed on like a horse or scaled like a mountain or just from waking up huddled and scrunched. 

Parenting is a small collection of rocks at the bottom of a school bag, a handful of leaves carried faithfully then discreetly discarded, it’s a pocket full of things you’ve picked up off the bedroom floor intending to put in the bin at some point. It’s an assortment of sticks around the house that look like letters or dinosaur bones.

Parenting is finding a moment to go to the loo and on the way clearing dishes from the table, while I’m here I’d better sweep those crumbs up, take that discarded sock to the laundry – should I be doing laundry today? Checking the weather on your phone and reading three new messages before remembering you really need to pee as someone calls you to their own urgency. 

Parenting is a series of urgencies.

Parenting is a pattern of rushing chaos followed by eery calm. Moments of never having enough time interspersed with moments when everyone is finally asleep and you’re not sure what to do with yourself. Parenting is sometimes just not knowing what to do with yourself when you’re finally and briefly alone.

Parenting is calling your own parents to describe the quirks and frustrations of the stage you’re enduring – the explosions of emotion, refusals of certain foods, usually green – and being told I remember it well, unable to decipher the tone as wistful, empathetic, regretful or… vengeful?

Parenting is simultaneously looking forward to the next stage while scrolling through google’s remember this day? photos whispering to yourself, yes! How was that three years ago? or no, no, no, I don’t remember that day at all. It’s an exercise in letting go, farewelling each phase of the small person as they change before your eyes the way the sun sets just slowly enough to make the clouds pink around the edges, both brighter and darker at the same time. 

Parenting is watching a sunset and knowing you still have a whole night of maybe sleeping, maybe waking to get through before it will rise again. Perhaps the morning will be pink too or foggy with condensation and sleep deprivation, or perhaps the sun will rise above the clouds and stream down like divinity on the clothes line and tomorrow will in fact be an excellent day for laundry.