The extreme enervating task of play the role of a mother would definitely resonate well with many moms out there. When you are bound to perform your duties from dusk to dawn without having a moment to sigh with relief, it’d become pretty hard to be calm. Especially when you’re the mother of five kids of different age groups, there’s no escaping the role.
Clover Stroud, the author of My Wild and Sleepless Nights: A Mother’s Story has her story of arduous tasks to tell. Being the mother of kids aged three to 19, she had to work day and night to make the ends meet. And her problem would increase more when she has to catch a train to her work after doing all the household chores. She usually had to yell at her kids to wake them up and get them to schools by 8 am. “You’re my mum, not a sergeant major,” says her 19-year old son, Jimmy when she’s been shouting at him to catch his college bus.
The 44-year old mom felt like she has so much to do in a little time due to which she mostly felt distracted. She says, “When I was a child in the 1970s, less than 50 percent of women worked at all, and while I’m proud of my career, I know the pressure I put myself under to work and bring up my family isn’t something my mum bothered about.” Plus, she observed that she’d been messing things up more often when she began feeling overburdened.
Besides, she also knows that she’s not the only one. Moms with a full-time job face this trouble quite a lot. But surprisingly, things have changed when they all have to stay at home during the lockdown. Now she doesn’t need to put the strenuous effort in finishing the tasks. She and her husband Pete do most of their work from home. Even her kids are properly co-operating in the present scenario. She doesn’t have to shout at them to practice handwriting and writing stories.
Moreover, there’s no pressure of going to school. She doesn’t need to find school shoes. Neither shebothers to see Lego all over the floor. This gives Clover an extra time to play shops with her daughter Evangeline and to make train tracks with her kids, Dash and Lester. Due to this moment of isolation, she has got more time for her family as they have to rely on each other for any sort of entertainment. Also, she’s been trying to prepare clothes for her daughter’s dolls and her husband is playing a 1000-piece puzzle game with the kids.
They’re now busy having games evenings and movie nights. That’s the perfect way to keep one’s state of mind in a cheerful state when you know everything out there is pretty messed up. Clover felt overwhelmed after a long time when Evangeline said, “Mummy, I wish you could always be my teacher,” while they were reading Roald Dahl’s book on a sofa.
