Sunday, May 25, 2014

MY WORK AND MOTHERWORK

A mother's work, as has been said so often, is never done.

Every May, I begin full of joy and eagerness: a whole month of being with the daughters, planning and doing a whole lot of things in the summer vacation. This month, we went for swimming classes, Monday to Friday early morning. Then we sat down together, did home lessons in school subjects and also learnt Bengali.....

Plus, we went to workshops at various museums (on interesting topics like mapmaking and fossils), went to watch plays at Prithvi, movies at nearby theatres, went for some shopping, as well as for walks along the seafronts when the FIL came to visit.

All this, plus the spring-cleaning. Gave away old books and clothes, cleaned (some of) the cupboards, aired the (never-worn) sarees, and did the usual daily bits of cooking, cleaning, shopping.

And the 'my work'?

At the moment, that amounts to:

1. writing an article for a national journal on mom-blogs.
2. writing an article for an international e-journal on filmi mothers.
3. writing a chapter on food-blogs for a book.
4. editing and commentating on an e-book on the history of Bengal.
5. going through some of the texts that I mean to study for my Ph.D.

1, 2, 3 and 4 are all piling up, with different but definitely approaching deadlines. I am yet to panic, but the pressure is building up.

It's easy to push back me-work till that panic stage, but the motherwork cannot be, so the balance always gets tilted that way, does it not?

Do I hate the panic, or do I need it to push me into that 'finish my work' mode?

May will tell....