Family’s Holiday For Mother

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28784, 3 January 1959, Page 2

Family’s Holiday For Mother

[By GRACE ADAMS)

There is a saying that, for a mother, holidays mean little else than a change of sink. As I see it, this is a fairly accurate summing up and the change is usually for the worse.

When holidays take us to dwellings where there are primitive conditions we can but wonder what unwise counsel we followed to wrench us from civilised home comforts. We think of the vacuum cleaner in its cupboard. Yet here in the holiday house, floors refuse to look clean no matter what energy is expended upon them. At home too, and lying idle, is a heater and iron, not to mention that modern marvel, the hot-water service. Cold Water Washing For the modern mother on holiday, there is hardly a more gruesome combination than neverdiminishing mounds of napkins, clothes and ice cold water. What a bold mountain of courageous spirit rises up each Christmas when the roads are jammed with the thousands of parents and colourful broods, setting out on their yearly argosy. The actual journey is always exciting for us. Beforehand, the long drive (as seen through the haze created by a frantic pack-up, clean-up and meals as usual) looks like the straw that will break the camel’s back. It never is. We close our mind to the next huge effort of arriving, unpacking, bed-mak-ing and tired children and enjoy every moment of the drive. The first stop finds us still in town. Out of a gaily-decorated shop Dad comes with bags of pears and cherries. He has chocolates too. but they are skilfully hidden, waiting for the inevitable emergencies which they should be brought forth to silence the unruly mob.

Then we are really off in earnest. The mountains are 50 miles

away and in two hours we will be climbing and winding through them, preparing ourselves for a new world of towering heights and peaceful bush, tangy air and splashing, friendly creeks. The miles slip effortlessly behind us. We almost feel we are part of the car and have never lived anywhere but in it.

When the car has really stopped I know that the luxury of living in it has ended too. There is always at this time a fierce inward struggle of not ever wanting to get out. I would give anything to be climbing into my own bed but the sight of the open door beckons. The suitcases are dumped on the veranda and I am well aware that the “second round” is about to begin. Probably the keen mountain air and late sun behind the high ridges provide the antidote to tiredness. There is a definite holiday atmosphere about the hut. The tall, tin chimney begins sending out its signals that we are in residence. The children are absorbed with the new environment.

It surprises me at times that good fun can be had with movements so restricted and small children needing the same attention as always. I am not convinced of this while we are still at home surrounded by pressbuttons and hot-points and all the usual trimmings. But I always make the worst of things beforehand—sandflies and confined quarters. wet weather, wet clothes and so on, plus the mam* moth efforts required to pack up and get there, pack up and return. It is enough to make me quail throughout December. Yet, we like holidays. We do not ever want to return from them, and we are always waiting for “the same again next year." Let us pass over the dishea to the floors, Remember how they refused to look clean no matter

what 7 Just leave them! Leave them until they demand to be reckoned with. Wait for the second to last day before giving them the full treatment. What is the result of this slap-happy approach? First, the floors remain the same as ever they did (through sunglasses certainly). Second it gives several extra hours available for picnics with the others. So far then, we have managed fairly well, but the babies’ washing still has to be done. “Find an answer to that one,” someone will say. At this stage, I apply the saying of “Where there is no way out there is usually an easier way round.” So I turn my back on the small, poorly-lit sink and kettles of boiling water. I take soap and a large light tray and go off across the river bed, ambling with the older children. A little cairn leads up to our specially selected pool and into its bubbling midst the clothes are tossed. One by one, they slide towards our breakwater at the head of long shallows. Here I squat and wield my soap, throwing the cleaned pieces back again into the most efficient rinsing machine of all time. The children herd up spry cockabullies into sandharbours. We shout and sing in some form of unison. The water is cold but not overpowering. Washing proceeds at a leisurely pace. There are mauve and orange moths to look at and a big tree ruin upstream to be examined. The clothes are done long before we return home. I visualise the model holidaying mother as one who says that for sixpence, she would exchange her modern suburban home and all its gadgets, for this simple, happy life she is enjoying—a time which will later be woven into the sweet nostalgic memories labelled “Happy Holidays.”