18 Jul If a job is worth doing…

Cathy Watson discovers that time is of the essence.

My mother was full of adages. “Little children love one another” was a familiar chime as her little children fought relentlessly and created new ways to annoy their siblings. “God loves a cheerful giver”, she would remind us as we reluctantly handed over whatever it was that we regarded as ours or tried to withhold the offering from the church plate. “Charity begins at home” was particularly annoying, as we tried to share with our friends rather than our ungrateful siblings. But the chime that most resonates for me today is, “If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing well”.

As children, most of the time, we concluded that, really, jobs weren’t worth doing. But the repetition of this particular saying sunk in deeply, and as I approached adulthood, I started to do things a bit better. I began to see the merit of a clean toilet. In my shared houses, I met many people messier than me, and to my surprise, the sight of wrinkled sausages in the vertical grill for several days eventually concerned me. My mother’s brainwashing resulted in moderately well-done jobs, most of the time. Without these phrases floating around in my subconscious, I’d be floundering in the fog of sub-mediocrity.

But true nature has the habit of emerging through alien instincts, and now I find myself betraying the familiar chant that refuses to submit to the rigours and reality of motherhood. Creative shortcuts abound.

For the first time last year, I succumbed to un-homemade Christmas cards and form letters. I can see my decline having me question the importance of them at all. I now buy my cheese grated or sliced, keep a packet of cake mix in the pantry for emergencies and frozen peas in the freezer. Quick pasta sauces have appeared on the shopping list and threaten to overtake ‘proper’ food.

When I’m not indulging in online supermarket shopping, I keep my eyes peeled for pre-prepared school lunches, including peeled and sealed oranges. Cloth nappies gave way to disposables. We had a party and arranged for it to be partially catered. The caterers even took away the dirty dishes, and the memory of that still sends me into paroxysms of bliss.

As my standards keep slipping, my children are subject to the new age of shortcuts. I’ve become the queen of multitasking. I’ve learned I can cook dinner, help with homework, listen to my husband telling me about his day and move the piles of sand from my shoes to a corner, all at the same time. Hair is brushed as the children are having breakfast. I’ve been known to read to my children as they soak in the bath and clean their teeth as they spray the soap suds around.

I can’t think of a good reason as to why dinner shouldn’t take place in there as well. Time is at a premium.

Surely, the days when my grandmother milked a cow or my mother made all the clothes and cut our hair (very badly) were of another era when time moved more slowly.

I wonder what messages I’m imprinting on my children’s subconscious. Maybe ‘Cut the corners because they shouldn’t be there anyway’ will be their subliminal message. Or maybe ‘If a job’s worth doing, give it to someone who wants to do it well or is happy to be paid for doing it’. I sometimes feel a pang of regret for summer days spent with my sister armed with our oil paints, idling away hours in satisfying timeless creativity. I do hope my children discover some of the delight in putting their souls and time into tasks worth doing… if I ever have the time to tell them about it. Or maybe I’ll just let them know about it by SMS.