This morning, the alarm buzzed at 6am and I stumbled out of
bed to make a cup of tea. Back in bed 20 minutes later and I sip my tea, and gather myself for the day ahead while my husband sleeps like a baby next to me. My second alarm (well, my third alarm if you count the one that goes off at 5am so I can take my daily dose of thyroxine early enough to have my equally necessary 6am wake-up cup of tea) goes off at 6.50am – I
get out of bed, wake the kids up and jump into the
shower. Husband is STILL soundly asleep.
Five minutes later, I am out of the shower, I get half dried and half dressed and head downstairs (stopping off
in the girls’ rooms to strip their beds).
Husband is just stirring, rubbing his eyes and sitting on the edge of
the bed.
I put the washing
machine on, sort out breakfast for the girls and start to clean up the detritus from the previous night's attempts at meal-making. While the washing up bowl is filling, I run upstairs to half dry my hair and finish
getting dressed – husband has just finished brushing teeth.
Back in the kitchen,
and I continue the great clean up, unloading and loading the dishwasher, and get the girls’ water
bottles ready. Husband saunters in, sits down at the kitchen table and
begins to stare at his iPad. I
send the girls up to brush their teeth, he carries on looking at his iPad.
The girls come back
down stairs and I ask husband to help them get their reading books and finish
their homework. He sits at the kitchen table and tells both girls that they are
lazy because they won’t go and get their books. I carry on with the washing up and make a much-needed cup of coffee.
The eldest of the two
girls completes her homework while husband sits next to her seemingly in a
trance. He is surprised when she says she has finished. The younger girl gets
her words out to read and he becomes agitated with her because, after spelling
out ‘fill’ perfectly, she keeps pronouncing it ‘feel’. She loses heart and
refuses to carry on. I step in and gee her on with words of encouragement while hanging the wet washing on the clothes airer in front of the aga.
Both girls are, at this
point, still in their pyjamas. I am rifling through the ironing mountain trying to cobble together their uniforms and the phone rings. The phone is in the kitchen. Husband is in
the kitchen. I am not in the kitchen. The phone rings. It rings again. And
again. Eventually I ask husband if he would mind picking the phone up. He gets
up, mumbling that there is no point answering the phone, it will just be
someone from the school calling to tell us it is open. It is my dad. He is not
calling to tell us the school is open, or closed.
I get both the girls
dressed and, in an attempt at efficiency, husband takes the hairbrush I have just
spent precious minutes locating and puts it ‘away’, just as I need it to brush
the girls’ hair. I retrieve it and brush youngest daughter’s hair while husband
helpfully complains at the elder daughter for not being able to put her tights
on (she is 6). I finish the hair, and move on to help pull on the tights - husband has retreated to his iPad and steaming hot cup of coffee - and
then do the second mop of hair. Meanwhile husband is engrossed in his iPad. He
complains for the 6th or 7th time about a Facebook
‘discussion’ that he has got involved in and then berates me for not drinking my coffee before it gets cold, at which point I snap.
I haven’t had time to
look at Facebook all morning, I say, nor have I had time to do anything but take mini sips of coffee. I have been running round a blue bottomed fly. It is precisely this moment that he looks at me and, absolutely
seriously and with a completely straight face, tells me with accompanying hand
gestures that I am a pathetic martyr. I am flabbergasted. My breath is taken away.
The rest of the
morning is spent in strained silence (husband works from home) and I ponder his
outrageous and outlandish statement. It shocked me and hurt me to
the core. While I spend the day cooking, cleaning, making beds, washing floors, hoovering and ironing - without a cup of tea (I refuse
husband’s hostile offers to make me one but then can’t make one for myself as
it would look petty) it occurs to me that far from being appreciated, this daily hard
slog is actually resented and I begin to wonder if I really am a martyr or, at the
very least, a doormat, after all.
