Actually, I’d like to talk to Heavenly Mother if that’s OK?

The noise began this  morning at about 7am.  I was already awake, reading the internet in bed, awaiting for an epiphany as I grappled with my current crisis of faith.  Morning noise always begins with the sound of the toilet door and then it escalates from there.  At about 8:15 the din in the boys bedroom was causing me anxieties. The banging and thrashing sounded ominously like a hole in the gib waiting to happen.  I poked my head reluctantly around the corner only to find four of them up on the bunk, smiling broadly a very enthusiastic good morning.  ‘We are playing Avatar’, announced Finn.  ‘Can you do it without breaking things?”  I asked.  They looked affronted, ‘We haven’t broken anything’, as they looked furtively about to see if this was indeed so.  It turned out that the thudding came from the pounding of their heads on the walls as they vigorously positioned themselves on the upper bunk ready to assail would be opponents.  Nathan slept through it all.

Finn’s voice is always the loudest.  He has been heard all morning shouting,  ‘Jake Solly, Jake Solly’.  The twins I think have been playing the role of native as I have heard their , ‘Chang, chang, chang’ – reminiscent of arrows or gun fire.  Deacon will be Jake Solly himself.  At 9  years old he ensures that he always has the lead role in any fantasy play.  Finn however is the ideas person, with his vivid imagination he is well placed to keep the action going.  My house is a riot of noise as it is transformed into first a futuristic colonized planet, where stairs become tree houses and mountains.  Then it becomes a football field with my dining table a likely candidate for a goal.  Then there is quiet from down below which I can only attribute to food or facile  cartoons on SkyTV.

I am in hiding.  I like it here in my room.  I have a lock on the door and it makes me feel safe.  We work hard to pay the mortgage on our rambling suburban home and I feel annoyed that this is the only place that I have to call my own.  Out of 283 sqm  I can claim and cordone off only one tenth of that space.  The rest seems to have been colonized and conquered by boys.   A teenage boy who takes up our family’s space with his pronouncements of dissatisfaction, and his consistent lounging, the careless placement of kitchen receptacles, and a bedroom with a stench coming from it that I can only attribute to the festering pile of clothes in the middle of the room.  A 9 year old boy who takes up space with his demands for positive affirmations, a 7 year old boy who takes up space with his mouth noise, another 7 year old boy who now and then fills the house with his unreasonably loud shrieks of injustice,  and 5 year old twins who take up space just because there are two of them.

I like it here in my room, but I’d like it better if I was able to talk to  Heavenly Mother.  I’d tell her how much I hate boys, and I’d whine that I didn’t have a girl, I’d tell her I want to run away, that I just don’t understand males,  that  I don’t want to play their games or listen to them chunter about things they can do, or things that they know.  I’d regale her with the story of how Nathan asked me to have date night at the stock cars thinking that I should like it as much as he does because ‘Its awesome’.    I’d tell her I resent being married, and that I think its over-rated and wouldn’t be great to be single again – or even childless.  I’d tell her I feel  frustrated with old Rip Van Winkle lying next to me having a jolly time somewhere in REM while his nose is at full throttle as the kids demolish the house,  and that our marriage would be much better if there was a fairer distribution of domestic tasks.

I’m sure she would answer with the perfect feminine answer which would go something like this:

“I know, I know, of course you do… no there’s nothing wrong with the way you are feeling, I can only imagine dear, yes I felt like that when I was a mortal mother – those boys just drove me spare and don’t get me started on what God was like….”

And so it would go because she’s a girl like me (albeit a pretty great and perfect one).  And when I’d finished talking to her all of that angst would be gone,  and with everything that had clouded my head off-loaded to  my special lady mother in the heavens, I’d get up off my bed (I wouldn’t kneel because she knows my centre of balance is different to men)  my head would be clear and I’d  be able to smile at motherhood and wifehood again.

But my religion prescribes that I talk to Heavenly Father.  Which is quite nice in its own way.  But it seems he doesn’t want me to whine.  I have to  start the conversation positively  with a ‘Here’s what’s great about you’.  Then I have to give him a list of wants and things I’d like him to take care of.  I’ll have to accept his time frame  and try not to be too pushy, and if there are things missing off the list I’ll still have to tell him how great he is next time we have a chat.

It’s nice that they are both up there, but I’m thinking of starting the LGL (Lady God Liberation) movement  in the hope that some angels advocate for her having more  of say in mortal affairs.  I’m not suggesting that Heavenly Father take a back seat.  I’d just like the choice of whom to talk to and I think it would be pretty great if Nathan had a chat with her on occasion as well –  because I know she’d back me up.