Georges Seurat in Cauterets

Rather than being at La Grande Jatte on a Sunday afternoon, I’ve actually been in Cauterets all week for the annual ski trip with the in-laws. Overall it’s been a good week and they’ve all been pleased with the copious amount of snow that has fallen. I’ve managed to get out for a few runs, I’ll head off to ride my horse tomorrow, I’ve managed to have a few pints of Guinness, learn some Spanish, get up to date with all my emails before work starts in earnest next week, and to do some reading. One of the other things I’ve done quite a bit of is, rather unsurprisingly, looking after the three kids (even if the presence of their three slighter older cousins has made this task a bit easier than it might otherwise have been). You’ll never hear me say that being a full time mother is easy, although I do have to say that I have found that so long as I address each child related task as an isolated activity, rather than seeing them as a never ending sequence of tasks, then I have found it relatively manageable and many of these interactions are actually good fun when the kids do what I say (does that make me sound like a control freak?). Basically I see the waking up of the kids as different from getting their breakfast ready, which is again different from getting them dressed for the ski slopes, which is then different to getting them shipped up into the ski-lift etc. As I was breaking down my day into this series of regular activities, I then stumbled across the following passage in the book that I am currently reading by Po Bronson. The passage talks about why motherhood and the stories of mothers are difficult to tell… I found it very interesting and thought provoking.

 “Why is it so hard to tell a mother’s story? I put this question out to many mothers, and a few answers came back again and again: 1) a culture that celebrates careers more than parenting doesn’t pick up on the subtlety inherent to a mother’s story. The subtle triumphs of a baby finally going to sleep, or a child learning a new letter, get drowned out by the noise of a big career advancement. 2). Mothers’ lives are very fractured. They don’t have one single project that makes for a simple strong storyline. They’re involved in their children’s lives, in their community, in their schools, in their extended families. Mary Ann compared it to the painter Georges Seurat’s famous pointillist work, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. “It’s laid down one dot at a time. Rarely does anyone else recognize the meaning of that one dot.” In other words, a mother’s life makes a great painting, but not a very linear story. 3). Parenting is so personal; there’s a religious righteousness when parents talk about their philosophies. Talking about it out loud usually offends someone. 4). A good mother doesn’t own her accomplishments. Her children do. And since children can thrive and fail independent of good parenting, it’s hard to tease out what a mother’s contribution really is. You can’t give all the credit to the mom."

I’m not sure if all of this makes the act of parenting easier or harder. Maybe easier for me because I’m someone who likes to see the big picture, and the idea of each dirty nappy changed being one more (brown) dot on the canvas feels like although each activity is isolated, they will all add up to an overall result which is hopefully three happy, respectable and sensible young kids…