Blog No. 5 - Citrusful of Inspiration

What inspires us? What makes us keep putting one foot in front of the other despite the hardships.

My Pink Peril do that for me.

Knowing I have the support and backing of a community do that for me.

Knowing I have the backing of a family does that for me.

Having my work performance assessed as poorer than previously in a process that I don’t agree ‘works’ properly, let alone is a valid thing to do, doesn’t. Yes it’s performance assessment time in my office.

I’ve had a rough week this week, as far as work is concerned. No this is not a sour grapes bitch, I only have so much room to blog and because it’s all about the detail and the detail is complex. In short form, my work performance has been assessed, by a group of faceless men (despite me knowing them all by name) based on how well other’s provide me with the information I need, yet that is something I have no authority to control. I haven’t been given it. They sat in a room and tut-tutted; no doubt, over the fact that my project was lagging, whilst it has never been given the priority it needed and I had no authority to move it up the list. In turn this means my rating such as it is, won’t be getting me a pay increase this year (even one matching CPI)!!! Despite my very best efforts.

Essentially though, I’m up against a machine of a system that I don’t agree with. I will voice my protest; sure and it will be heard with a smugly satisfied attitude that the tick box of allowing the employee to protest has been done - but nothing will change. I am left with only the choice of bending over, bracing against the nearest piece of office furniture and taking the ‘situation’ as it is up to the hilt OR standing rigid on my laurels (knowing I have done a better than mediocre job with the tools I have to hand – which were none) and giving them the Big Kit-Kat as I hold my head high walking out (hopefully to a waiting position in another more agreeable company). There isn’t any middle ground here, most of us know this issue – take it or leave (it). Most of us know what it’s like to be an employee, working for the man.

But this struck me as similar to the struggle I have with a faceless system that doesn’t recognise me as a parent, that however is a role I don’t have the option of walking out on, I have to plod along trying to change it. Why don’t I give up? Well of course there is my Pink Peril and the support of my loving partner (despite our occasional upsets over dishes not done and whose turn it is to do them when we are both tired at the end of the day).

But this week I have to say, it was comforting and inspiring to read an article by Jacqui Tomlins. It rebutted much of the nastiness I found in an article likening children born through Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) from a soon to be retiring Archbishop (who shall remain faceless) and the diatribe of one anatomically incorrect (as well as politically incorrect) pastor.

Jacqui’s description of her family and it’s work-a-day dynamics gave me the same ‘arrr’ feeling as sinking into a ‘just right’ bath for a good long relaxing soak. Her children’s chatter around her home, the interactions between her and her partner and children all spoke to me of ‘family’ and if felt warm and friendly and something I not only want to be a part of but AM a part of damnit! We’re not a semi-family, not quite part of ‘the real’ community; this is real.

Here is a little of the text (a very little) reproduced.

I sit watching the kids at dinner. Corin is eating his spaghetti with mind-numbing slowness. He has his book secreted on his lap and we are both pretending it isn’t there.

The girls are talking non-stop - our youngest has just started Prep and she’s full of it. There’s a red dot on the page, she explains, and you start at the top and follow the lines and today we did “S”, which is very tricky, Mama!

Then Scout, her older sister, takes up the story: Maddy was mean to Jenny, and Mia told Maddy she should say sorry, but Jenny had already gone off with Sophie. An ordinary family meal played out with some variation in millions of homes every night.

I look at my messy floor at meal times and the fact that the peril grow in their tastes and confidence in self feeding with every meal, every day and think... Yeah we have a variation. I’m sure as parents we all feel like this and should have the right to feel like this, without pre-judgement making us feel nervous about our position.

Yes for me it’s been a tough week, work has wrung me through the wringer but what I’ve learnt is

• Life is hard for parents, they don’t need to be made to feel inadequate on any level but instead supported to be the best parent they can be (including giving them legal status as such)
• When life is handing you sour yellow citrus (and yes I know – this risks blogging a cliché), you really appreciate others with the same green-grocery dilema, joining your corner to make a giant bucket of refreshing lemonade.
• Finally, it surprised me how wonderfully soul nurturing the fact that a family with two mothers is so much like one with a mother and a father is so much like one with two fathers because of shared love for children born of A.R.T. and that bond of similarity can support and strengthen us; bringing us together enough to drag one foot over the next to squish judgmental old sourpusses.

So if anyone out there knows Jacqui Tomlins the writer of that wonderful punch article, I hope you’ll let her know that she inspired my week and helped me through it and maybe, just maybe a little of my writing will help give her some of the strength she needs to go on and write another powerful knockout punch.

Terry