Sweet Stay-at-Home Moms

Years ago, as a schoolgirl with ink-stained fingers, I studied a dreadful poem called Sweet Stay-at-Home.  Written by W.H. Davies, it was the narrator’s ode to his sweetheart, whom he described as Sweet-Love-One-Place.

The poem began with the lines:
“Sweet Stay-at-Home, Sweet Well-Content,
Thou knowest of no strange continent;
Thou hast not felt thy bosom keep
A gentle motion with the deep”

It then went on to list all the things that this secluded maiden had never seen: black fingers pick cotton, the North Sea send out bright hues, plains full of bloom, and so on and so forth. Then the smug narrator concluded that he loved her anyway, for “a heart that’s kind/ not for the knowledge in thy mind”.

Yes, well. Each to their own. But what did this has to do with us—a classroom packed with 43 adolescent girls, eager to make their mark on the world. All frantic to hop onto the first possible Air India flight, munch on their first burgers and wander around Harrods? We all agreed that the poem was patronising and that Sweet-Stay-at-Home was a cow. For decades, I imagined her as a broad-faced woman, plump, placid, and submissive.

Which is why I’m so alarmed by the thought that I’m turning into a Sweet-Stay-At-Home myself. (Or even worse, a Sour-Stay-At-Home.)

The realisation struck last Friday. I’d just landed after a three-day trip to Gwalior, where I’d been conducting a series of book readings. I was looking forward to a sleepy weekend, chatting with the girls, and recovering my voice. All through January’s weddings and music exams, and trips, I’d been waiting for this lovely lull.

Then I switched on my phone on the Mumbai runway, the messages poured in, and I gaped with dismay.

Naima’s teacher wanted to do an unscheduled cello class on Saturday morning.

Then choir — which had been cancelled for almost a month — was starting again on Saturday. The teacher wanted to know if the girls could make it. “Nisha, Naima can come,” I responded. “But Aaliya has a filmmaking class in school.”

I got into the taxi, called home and then wished I hadn’t. “Hi mummy,” Aaliya greeted me. “You know right, Tiana’s birthday party is now on Sunday? So can I go to see ‘La Boheme’ tomorrow evening? My teachers say I really should go and I really want to watch an opera.”

“But Aaliya,” I tried to remonstrate, “you have four hours of filmmaking class on Saturday. And homework, and music practice? Do you really have the time?”

“Why are you always making such a big deal of things?” demanded my teenager. “I’ll do everything. By the way, you remember that I have a Hindi test on Tuesday? I haven’t done anything because you weren’t here to help me.”

Wow. Now I was feeling both guilty and resentful — but I tried to sound upbeat when Naima came on the phone. “We have homework,” she said. “And you remember that we are baking this weekend?”

“Yes, yes,” I muttered, wondering what other moronic promises I’d made before I left.

I found out soon enough. Within minutes of reaching home, I was reminded about all the things we absolutely had to do in the next couple of days. We had to go for a jaunt to the Kala Ghoda Fair on Sunday morning. Then, not only did Aaliya have to go for a dance party in Worli on Sunday evening, her friends were thinking of coming over an hour early so that they could all dress up together.

By this time, I was twanging with tension. So I wasn’t particularly receptive when I spotted an email from the girls’ music class, urging them to attend a concert rehearsal on Sunday evening. “This is going to be a marvellous treat for one and all,” promised the chipper message.

“Except for the mummy who has to ferry them back and forth,” I muttered madly to myself.

Nobody else seemed to see the problem.  “It’s the weekend and so we can have some fun,” Nisha pointed out.

“Exactly,” Aaliya chimed in. “I can’t understand. You only want to stay at home all the time.”

I was speechless — partly out of indignation, partly out of terror. Was I turning into that slow-moving, heartily derided figure of my girlhood? Was I becoming a Stay-At-Home?

There was no time to work this out, however, I was too busy organising tickets, drops, carpools, and meals-on-the-go; just surviving this jigsaw puzzle of a weekend.

Never before have I so gratefully greeted a Monday morning. And never before have I felt a sneaking sympathy for Sweet-Stay-at-Home. The hurly-burly of life with a bunch of pre-teens and teens can clearly do strange things to you.  

I arrived home mid-evening, the girls updated me.

“We have homework.”

(Shabnam Minwalla is an author of children’s books, a journalist, and mother of three daughters.)