Being Mum

The last week has been an interesting one, juggling some work and mainly being Mum / Head Entertainment Organiser for my 3 daughters who had their half term week break from the Green School.  My husband happened to be in Singapore and Hong Kong (sometimes I think he feels outnumbered by us girls - even our pets are all girls), so it was up to me and my girls to entertain ourselves in Bali.

By the beginning of the week, I had already organised 2 sleep-overs and a  couple of playdates at our place and was feeling quite exhausted from the fear of children knocking themselves out by precariously swinging from the tree and divebombing into the pool and chasing themselves around the house playing tag as they slid and slipped across the wet tiles with our two Bali dogs excitedly barking and running close on the heals of the children. My biggest fear was not so much the children cutting their heads open on the slippery stone and tiles, but where on earth would I take them to in a place like Bali.  I knew my route so well to Accident and Emergency in Singapore, I could have done it blindfolded but I've heard the standard of healthcare in Bali is a far cry from Singapore, so rather than worry about something that is more likely to happen if I did think about it, I decided to turn my attention to everything turning out ok, which it fortunately did!

Being Mum, also requires for some unknown reason, dealing with the pets that the children claim to own. It was early morning, the girls had eaten their breakfast and were quietly occupying themselves. Even though I was dressed in my gym gear (including wearing my anonymous cap and sunglasses) I didn't feel like going for my usual walk/jog with the dogs so I decided to do some skipping instead. My peace was shortlived, when the two dogs who happen to be sisters started bickering at one another.  As the volume of their screeching became louder and louder, I had no choice but to intervene, trying to split the dogs apart with my skipping rope. All I could see was our black dog, Midnight, seemingly mauling our cream coloured dog - Cream- by the scruff of her neck, so much so her white fur had turned pink from blood.
My immediate reaction was to shout and scream, which only heightened the noise and created even more havoc. Hearing the din, my two Balinese house staff came running to help me out, so now I also had two people who didn't understand me as well. We reverted to sign language and then I noticed that Midnight's teeth had got caught up in Cream's metal choker collar. Cream was suffocating as Midnight tried to pull away and Midnight's mouth was full of blood from her teeth being stuck in the chain. I wanted to faint at the sight and smell of blood. In spite of being brought up as a butcher's daughter and taking pigs tails and cows eyes to school, so that all the other children would be in awe of me, I become quite pathetic at the sight and smell of blood. By now there was blood everywhere as I tried to hold the frantic dogs together and tried to think of a way to untangle them.  Strangely enough my children, had vanished from the scene of carnage.

"Pliers," I shouted to the staff trying to demonstrate that we needed to cut the collars in order to free the dogs. The wife ran off in a frenzy and quickly brought back a pair of the smallest scissors I have ever seen!

"No, no bigger," I exclaimed as I tried to demonstrate 'big' by holding out my chest, while desperately clinging onto the dogs, the one going beserk in pain and the other almost dying from suffocation. The wife ran off again and came back with a pair of huge shears that were so heavy that her petit frame could hardly lift them! There was no way I was going to slip these shears under the dog's collar that was already so tight it was choking her to death. 

As we struggled to keep ourselves and the frantic dogs from falling into the goldfish pond, my driver turned up for work. He casually looked at us, smiled, spoke some Indonsian to the husband and wife and walked off! He re-appeared after about 5 minutes with a pair of pliers.  Oh thank god, even though my driver's English is limited to "Raining today" or "Sunny today", he had the common sense to realise that we needed a pair of pliers. As he approached the dogs with the pair of pliers, they both jumped up and magically released themselves from the tangle that they had got themselves into. When I asked the girls what had happened to them, they said they were too scared to help! This whole little episode seemed to wear me out for the rest of the day. Luckily in the afternoon, we had the good fortune to pop over to a beach destination in Bali called Sanur. We met up with my 10 year old's teacher who also used to be her teacher in Singapore and we had a lovely, relaxed afternoon looking out onto the beach and calm, blue turquoise sea.

The next day I was determined to have a good time, so we drove up to Ubud to do some Christmas shopping (living away from the UK, I have to be organised when sending back presents for Christmas). I had a romantic idea of my 3 daughters and me merrily walking the streets, admiring the little boutique shops and happily buying presents. We arrived and parked in Ubud at 11.15am, five minutes later my 5 year old started complaining about how far she had walked in the heat. The sun was beating down and the pavements in Ubud are pot-holed, broken and totally uneven, so it was like climbing a series of mini mountains for my youngest daughter. My two older girls started to complain too and wanted to stop for lunch. So we stopped for early lunch at 11.30am and abandoned our early Christmas shopping plans. Fortunately we were in Ubud for another reason, where I could kick 'Plan B' into action and after a surprisingly enjoyable, complaint free lunch, we drove off to find our friends who also used to live in Singapore and now lived just outside Ubud.  My friend, Louise, told me that we should drive straight, pass the big temple and we would easily see the sign for their place. She failed to tell me how many temples there were before we got to the big temple!  In Bali every house has a temple and they are of all shapes and sizes. To add to this conundrum, there seemed to be many temples along the road that all looked fairly big. Every corner we turned we thought we had hit the big temple only to find yet another temple along the road. I never realised Bali had so many temples until I started looking for one big temple.

It was like trying to spot the odd one out in a Balinese procession!

As we kept on passing yet another temple, my driver very kindly pointed out to me "Many temples, Ms Janet." We continued driving and my instinct told me that we would soon bump into this big temple. I wasn't sure how big it would be, but somehow it would stand out, maybe like the Eiffel Tower, although the further along the road we drove, the more rural it seemed to get.
Suddenly we saw a different coloured temple that was made of dark grey marble which had a sign with gold engraving on it. We had made it and shortly afterwards saw Louise's daughter waiting out on the road for us. We had a great time with Louise and her girls at her villa, so it was well worth observing the number of temples that do exist along a short stretch of road in Bali.

Finally, at the end of an entertaining week, after putting my tired girls to bed, I started to switch off all the lights downstairs when I noticed the cat and dogs on high alert. The dogs were barking at something in the kitchen and the cat was in her 'ready, aim, pounce' position. Curiously, I leaned forward to see what was going on and was startled to see a medium sized rat (or extra large mouse), with one very long tail, squealing and sitting up on its back legs as it perched on our kitchen stool! In the dim light, the shadow of the rat almost looked cute, like a squirrel without a bushy tail. I quickly came to my senses and reminded myself that this was not another pet in our household, but unwanted vermin that was hanging around my kitchen. For a short moment, I wondered whether I should search the house for a large spade and attempt to kill this unwelcome visitor. Instead, I decided to leave them all to it and just retired to my bedroom exhausted and hoping that the rat wouldn't look for solace where I was!

Although I could have easily filled my time with work, I was glad I made the time to be 'Mum' and value the adventures, memories and life's lessons that my girls and I experienced together during their half term.

As the wonderful and wise French novelist, Honore de Balzac quoted:

"A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future, but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories."

Being 'Mum', although exhausting at times, has rewards that far outweigh being anybody else and brings lots of happiness.

Janet

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