I Can See Russia From Here

Back in the 80s Gary Trudeau’s Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoon Doonesbury ran a strip about longtime characters Rick Redfern and Joanie Caucus, two professionals who get married and have a baby. Rick comes home one day to find Joanie bathing their son in the bathtub.

“Hi” he says, “can I help?”

“No” she replies, “ 'help' implies that the responsibility of caring for our child is solely mine and that you are doing me a favour by offering. Go out and try again.”

Rick goes out and re-enters the bathroom.

“Hi. Can I co-parent?”

“No” says Joanie, “you always get the floor wet”.

And this is the problem you see. While one wants to insist on one’s hard-won right to equal help from the male half of the parenting equation, at the same time one is utterly convinced that he is in need of serious training before being let loose on a real live baby. And who has the time? Or the training materials?

My husband, aka Señor I’m Too Practical To Worry About Minor Details So Just Tell Me What To Do In Two Words Or Less Before I Lose Patience, is not going to stand still long enough for me to explain to him why it is not a good idea to doze off in front of the TV while balancing the baby on his paunch or instruct him in the fine art of diaper changing (“Yes, you got the location for the Pamper right but now there’s poo all over the bed. You have to clean him a bit before removing the dirty diaper from underneath his bottom! No, just holding him upside down under the shower is not a better idea”). So, unless I can borrow someone else’s baby, I have the choice of letting him practice on my own child or doing it all myself. Neither option provides any relaxation or time off for me because who can sleep with the anxiety of wondering whether one’s husband is accidentally boiling the baby in the bath?

In addition to forfeiting my conjugal rights to assistance, and possibly due to the trauma of being described as ‘housewife’ on Smuggitos’ birth certificate, I very nearly slipped into the Sarah Palin approach to motherhood.

Having been a working mother and sole breadwinner for many years, it is somewhat difficult to let go of the notion that I am free to make financial decisions at will. The novelty of being followed around a supermarket and cross-questioned as to the necessity of purchasing face cream or a particular brand of soap palls very quickly.

The day I was due to be booked into the maternity clinic there was an ad in one of the daily papers for a Peru Country Manager with an international NGO which specialises in organising working vacations for people (mostly from the US) who want to volunteer with various charitable projects aimed at assisting the less fortunate. It looked interesting so I sent off an application letter and CV and hastened off to give birth. A couple of days after Smuggitos was born I received an enthusiastic email saying that the Vice President for Operations would be in Lima within the next few days and could I meet with her?

Bearing in mind that I had recently been sliced open like a side of beef and could not yet walk unaided, it wasn’t the most enticing prospect but I thought of the price of face cream and said yes. I had to get my husband to drive me to a mall, borrow a wheelchair and prop me up in a beauty salon because after three days in the clinic I looked like Don King on a bad hair day. He also agreed to drive me to the hotel where the interview was to take place, steer me through the door and wait for me outside.

So – like ex-Governor Palin dribbling amniotic fluid while giving a speech – with a double dose of painkillers for breakfast and a post-operative velcro girdle I turned up at the appointed hour and called the VP from the reception desk only to be told that she’d mistaken the day and could I please come back tomorrow.

In the car on the way back home I swore profusely and threatened to tell them where to shove their prospective job. “It’s entirely your decision mi amor” said my husband and, in an apparent change of subject, inquired how many diapers per day on average I thought Smuggitos would be using.

I went back the next day.

I had at first omitted to fill in the part of the application form which asked for my last salary. The fact that it was to be quoted as an hourly rate indicated that this was hardly going to be a job which would keep me in the style to which I would like to become accustomed. When the VP insisted on knowing my previous remuneration package I first smiled modestly and said it wasn’t relevant as I would not be expecting a commensurate salary. The VP then named a salary range which would no doubt dazzle the inhabitants of one of Lima’s poorer slums and asked whether I was still interested in hearing more about the job. Keeping the cost of lamb chops firmly in mind, I said yes.

Basically on alternate fortnights I would be expected to act as sherpa to a group of do-gooding tourists paying to spend their holidays painting orphanages and teaching English. The other fortnights would be administrative work done via email from any location I felt like. Nothing too intellectually challenging but flexible enough to be attractive. “Right” I thought, “I can carry the baby around in one of those slings they use in the Peruvian highlands and breastfeed him while I’m waiting for flights to arrive.” The gringos would love it, a real live Baby Inca to add a touch of authenticity to their trip. Maybe I could carry a tin cup and collect tips, charge extra for photos.

A couple of days later I got a call from the States. Apparently they thought I was the greatest thing since sliced bread and was by far the best candidate but, given my previous salary, they doubted very much I would stay long in the job so had decided to give it to someone else. My dreams of financial independence evaporated.

Of course, having now rediscovered the realities of taking care of a new baby, getting rejected was a Good Thing.

My husband keeps muttering darkly about the exorbitant price of diapers and powdered milk and I have noticed that on purchasing the Sunday papers he invariably hands me the classifieds section first. Well he can sod right off. The only reason he gets to read the Sunday papers at all is because I’m taking care of the baby.

So I am temporarily acclimatising myself to reminding my husband to pay the light bill as he rushes off to work every morning. Once I’ve got Smuggies off to school; fed, bathed and changed Smuggitos; arranged by telephone in tortured Spanish the installation of internet and telephone; lugged a large bag of dirty clothes to the lavanderia on the corner; walked to the supermercado and back with the shopping; and made daily progress on unpacking my books, I can settle down in front of the TV and watch some international news. And when I see Sarah Palin on her book tour or burbling some fresh incoherency on climate change, cradling her baby all the while, I don’t despair. Very soon I’m going to get tired of playing house and will need a real job before I lose touch with the international arena. But until then, if I sit on the steps of the balcony and really crane my neck, I’m sure I can see Russia from here.

Suffer the Little Children

Despite advertising itself as following the international curriculum, my daughter’s very expensive school is international only in the sense that it charges in US dollars. In her last school, in a class of 23 students on average there were 18 different nationalities. Here, the students are predominantly Peruvian and Catholic. They have Religious Instruction classes where they learn hymns and compose acrostics on JESUS CHRIST. Other religions are superficially examined under the rubric of ‘Traditions’ in their Unit of Inquiry class.

There is a House system, meant to promote teamwork and camaraderie but in reality increasing the pressure to conform – all perceived infractions are not just punished on an individual basis but also attract demerit points for your House. So if you fuck up you have to deal with your own sense of failure as well as the opprobrium of your schoolmates. And, just to ensure that gender roles are well inculcated from the get-go, the Houses are headed by House Masters assisted by House Mothers.

Poor Smuggies has therefore been struggling to cope with the shock of moving from an environment where diversity was the norm to one where conformity is essential. After a joyous first day where she was the toast of the girls in her class, things went rapidly downhill. The teacher told me that she was repeatedly pestered with questions as to why she had not done First Communion. She replied politely at first but after continuously being badgered she said “my Mum doesn’t believe in God, so I didn’t do it”. I understand from the teacher that this caused great consternation among the students including the conclusion that “your Mum must be a very bad person”. Smuggies defended me valiantly and insisted that I had even been voted the coolest mum in the school by her former schoolmates but it seems she has been marked for all eternity from that day.

To this initial setting apart was added the inevitable challenge of finding a niche in an already established social order. Girls are in a minority in her class and there is a strong clique led by Florencia, an Alpha female with the much-admired talent of being able to hold her breath and turn bright red at will. She apparently rules the assorted Alejandras, Andreas and Antonellas with an iron fist. Initially welcomed as a new recruit, Smuggies fell afoul of her when, having refused an order to be the counter in a game of hide and seek when it wasn’t her turn, she was told that she was to count “because I say so. And if you don’t I will make sure that no one plays with you ever again.”

Smuggies resisted and the sentence of ostracism was carried out with all the girls of her class swearing a solemn oath never to play with her again. She has been spotted by the teacher hiding behind walls on the playground. When asked why she is not mixing she pretends that she’s playing hide and seek with someone who is at the present moment hiding.

She understood much faster than I did that while it is all right to make fancy PowerPoint presentations on Hanukkah as a class project, diversity just don’t cut it on the playground. She is both desperate to fit in and subconsciously indignant at the need to do so. In her quest for acceptance she is vigorously suppressing all that makes her unique. In the hope of achieving straight hair she has managed to shave off a patch at the front and, when she was singled out as having a beautiful voice and selected to sing a solo in the Christmas show, she was at first delighted and then flatly refused to do it.

“I don’t want them to like me for my voice Mum.”

She falls over herself to be obliging and suffers agonies of anxiety in her desire to please. When the girls in her class liked the chocolate spread sandwich she brought for a snack, she swiped the entire bottle to take to school for them. One girl enjoyed the mango she had for dessert so now I have to send several each day. When she was selected to represent her House in basketball and running on sports day she threw up from the sheer terror of failing because she saw it as a last chance to gain glory and acceptance.

This desire to please combined with the daily frustration of being the outsider is explosive and inevitable leads to trouble. The other day I got a call from the school. They were very sorry to tell me that my daughter had been involved in an ‘incident’. A boy had been teasing her relentlessly in the playground so she aimed a kick at him, missed and kicked another boy. She was very sorry indeed, apologised profusely and, in order to make it up to him, offered to take revenge on his behalf on anyone he cared to identify. He accepted this offer and pointed out a third boy, an innocent bystander, whom Jade then obligingly kneed in the nuts.

When hauled up before authority she admitted that she knew what she had done was wrong and that violence is unacceptable but kept asking in a hopeful voice, “are you going to expel me?” She now has a permanent black mark on her school record and I’ve been called in for a meeting with the school psychologist.

She has since made up with Florencia the Red but still hides behind walls in the playground. Why? “I know the other girls want to play with me Mum but they swore an oath to God” so she doesn’t want to be responsible for consigning their souls to eternal damnation if they break it. I told her if she got me God’s cell phone number I’d call and have a chat with him about it but she was indignant at my frivolity.

“Cell phones weren’t invented back then Mum!”

So now I’m contemplating writing a letter to the Pope asking for special dispensation to let the other girls play with my daughter at school.

Ever wonder how religious wars get started?