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Monday 28 May 2012

when in rome?

If the year was 900 and we'd set up house in Rome, our fellow countrymen would be suspicious as to why we were a household without domestic help. Living abroad with a child and without family, and deciding not to opt for life with a maid - when this is a perfectly acceptable thing to do in the society in which you live - is asking life to throw a few curveballs your way. And why wouldn’t you? For the same price as a significant caffeine addiction, thrown in with paying weekly for a cleaning lady in the developed world, who wouldn’t want a quiet, subdued, pretty, young girl at arms reach to have dinner on the table, replenish the cupboards with fresh laundry and attend to your fever-stricken child overnight? We obviously get a kick out of living life the slightly more inconvenient way. So without a helper at our beck and call, that raised her siblings from birth and knows every trick in the book when rearing children, how is one to approach a raging fever in a baby without having been down that road before? I guess you all lose sleep together, all share the deluges of tummy bug vomit together, all brave the same episodes watching Big Ted together, and try as hard as you might to avoid the Children’s A&E department, where great big signs warn of Fever Zone. This is where it becomes apparent that the Continuation of the Species fervently relies on apples not falling more than a few hours drive from the tree. Unless, of course, the tree is retired, with a healthy accumulation of frequent flyer miles.