Fatigue

Monday is my Bobby day but when you’ve been playing catch-up on a film edit that’s badly behind schedule for most of the weekend you start the week pretty tired, so the thought of looking after my six month old son and his four year old sister for a day is exhausting. On top of my age, the fatigue is made worse by a year of short and broken nights, last night no different, when I was woken first by Bobby's cries and capitulated as usual to bringing him into our bed and then, just as I was managing to blot out his snuffles on Lu’s breast and drift off to sleep, Grace climbed in prising open a space between us that shunted me to the edge of the mattress where I clung for an hour, worrying about overdrafts and the distance between us, until finally forced to bail out to the spare bed in Bobby’s room where I snatched a final hour before jerking awake to the sweet tinkle of 6.00am phone alarms that usher in the day, every day.

The thing about childcare, as if I didn’t know it by now, is how utterly exhausting it is. During the next two hours, for example, I will settle Grace in front of C-Beebies for half an hour having capitulated to her demands for a bowl of Golden Nuggets on the sofa in the living room rather than in the kitchen where crumbs don’t matter; I’ll make her packed lunch for nursery having forgotten to buy ham; I’ll change Bobby’s shitty nappy and wake Anna who’ll be grumpily drowsy from watching Casualty too late; I’ll take a cup of tea up to Lu and give Bobby breakfast knowing that the pears are too hard; I’ll rouse Anna again and as Lu showers and stretches, grab toast for myself, feed cat, before the usual set-to with Grace over the wrong tights, a confrontation that escalates when I switch off the telly; I’ll shout at Anna for yet again losing the wallet containing her lunch card and bus pass, which means instigating a panicky last minute search with a heavy baby on my arm, that turns up a range of lost combs and phone chargers but no pass; I’ll reluctantly lend Anna £2 for lunch and bundle her crossly out of the front door before pecking Lu goodbye as she heads off, late again, for another day working with the dying in Birmingham; by which time it’ll be time to get Bobby and Grace into the car and set off for the nursery, three miles away, where I’ll leave Grace for the morning and start wondering when I might be able to squeeze in a snooze.

Childcare is hard work, harder even than work-work - which can feel like a holiday by comparison. Years ago we sat round in groups and analysed this. What was childcare we argued, courtesy Engels ‘Origin of the Family’, other than the production of labour-power for tomorrow’s work-force? And who did it? Women of course, whose mothering role was a natural extension of the wifely role that ensured her husband left for work each morning rested, sexually satisfied, and well-fed. And what was to be done about this? Men were to do their fair share, that’s what. Men who could afford to, that is, and who were sufficiently in control of their working hours to cut down and spend more time at home. This usually meant middle class men in unconventional working situations, in short, men like me. Which partially explains why, four decades later, I’m leaving the three labourer’s cottages knocked into one that is now our home and heading off through the village to the nursery in Chipping Norton with two of my five children in the back and mixed feelings about the day of childcare ahead.