Desperate? Us? Nonsense

I remember my Awali days when I first came here as a wife and mother.

It’s pretty self-sufficient with it’s own little supermarket, church, school, restaurant and bar. Not to mention a cricket club, a bank and amateur dramatics club as well as a couple of swimming pools and a DVD shop. A mini village where it was more than possible to not leave the place for a week at a time and still not be left wanting. Sounds pretty damn good on the surface and I hated it! It reminded me of those low budget American films where you see all the men reversing out of their garages at the same time and the women (including myself) had nothing better to do than take turns hosting coffee mornings where we spoke about nothing except our children’s latest antics and the best way to cook whatever it was we had planned for dinner that night. Mind numbingly boring! Don’t get me wrong, I’m as proud as can be about my son but that’s because he’s MY son. Let’s face it, all mothers have seen a child’s first steps/first word/first day at school so someone else’s description of how it was for them is soooo not necessary. It’s like looking at other people’s holiday pictures, after one or two the only person still interested is the person who’s showing you the picture of themselves wearing a beret and holding a baguette in front of the Eiffel Tower. As for recipes, I love to cook but spending hours slaving over a hot stove for the family to walk in and wolf it down with little appreciation of the time it took to prepare isn’t the most rewarding experience. I became the queen of the tasty yet quick meals. Well, It’s not brain surgery, is it?
Anyway, enough reminiscent waffle from me, that was a few years ago and I wouldn’t have a clue about suburban life these days. But I met a few ladies who do. Emma Best, hostess with the mostest, kindly invited me round to chat with her and some of the other wives and mothers in her compound. Several generous glasses down and the talk-was-a-flowing-a-plenty. Despite the fact that being a wife and mother is a full time job in itself, Emma also works full time with most of the other ladies doing some kind of part time or charity work.
Traditionally many working mothers have a feeling of superiority over stay-at-home mothers, with the misconception that because they go out to work and earn their own money, they have greater independence and are on more of an equal footing with their partners. Not so with these women. They are already confident in the fact that they are on an equal footing with their husbands who fully appreciate the work they do. Mother-of-three Michelle Powell made me giggle heartily, saying: “My husband respects my role as woman of the house, if he didn’t he’d be in the dog house. If the roles were reversed, he’d probably last quite a long time but the girls’ hair would be in dreadlocks!” Behind the walls of this compound there is no right or wrong as to whether a mother should stay home or go out to work. “It’s all about choice and what suits the family,” says Michelle.
For some the days fly by in a hive of activity. Emma’s starts by getting her two daughters (eight and 10) to school and then goes for a run before she’s even made it to work. Home for lunch and then back to work followed by home again to make dinner, homework with the kids and then finally a little time to relax before going to sleep and starting all over again. She says “I hate leaving the kids at lunchtime to go back to work — but then saying that, I love my work too.” Personally I can’t imagine how hard it must be to keep motivated in two such different aspects of my life like Emma does and yet when I met her she seemed totally in control without a care in the world. You Go Girl!
Would they change anything about their lives? Jane De Voest has an 18-year-old son and 20-year-old daughter and would have loved to have taken another course, after having the children, in order take on another profession. Melanie Sarginson would have her husband cook dinner and Edna Patterson would choose to live elsewhere. As for Michelle, the only thing she would change would be to have her friends and family from the UK as neighbours.
So how much in common do our housewives have with the inhabitants of the infamous Wisteria Lane? Only Emma could answer that one for me as surprisingly enough she is the only one who’s really watched it. In her opinion there were some definite similarities with too many people with too much time on their hands, taking too much interest in other people. On the other side of the coin, Michelle said: “We’re all a great bunch of mates, an extended family all rolled into one but I haven’t seen Desperate Housewives so I can’t say how we compare.”
It seems one of the biggest misconceptions that society has about housewives is that they don’t have the ability to make their own decisions and that they are living a life that is programmed for them by their husbands. As I looked around me, I found that hard to believe. Whether they worked or did lunch, these were woman who knew their own minds, they were educated, well spoken and opinionated lasses who had left their husbands at home to come out for a drink (or 10) and a good old chat with the girls. Cheers Ladies!