In Which I Have an Incredible Revelation

So I still can’t watch the funniest video of the year without wanting to die, but I do love more than the lives of my own children (just kidding) their follow up interview with the BBC. It’s completely wonderful and I’ve watched it many times, even, for the moment, setting aside food and cats.

And because I’ve watched it so constantly, I have now had some very troubled dreams in which this family was mixed up with The Manor House, so much so that I woke up having had a revelation. Ready?

I complain too much about modern life.

The key began to click in the lock for me when the fake Lord of the Manor sat at his beautiful dinner table gassing on about himself to his son’s tutor (a man of color you might say, just to be super offensive) and the other guests of the evening (also of color). All the fake servants were lined up against the wall passing embarrassed glances back and forth. We’d just had half an hour of the different people in the house describing how basically their lives and their relationships had completely unraveled because of the strict hierarchy they’d endured since signing on to the project–the lady and the young son had no time to speak except for a few minutes at tea time, the lady and her sister had their modern dependence on each other broken because of the addition of the lady’s maid, the servants had no unity amongst each other and no communication with their own families, the list of all the unraveling goes on and on. Nevertheless the fake lord leaned forward in his chair, stabbed another potato and had the gall to say, ‘well, but the system works doesn’t it.’ An embarrassed silence enveloped the room but he didn’t hear it and so went on to explain how well the system works for everyone, but really it was only good for him.

Interpose that over the funny BBC video and I initially think to myself, ‘boy, something’s not working here either.’ When the woman has to crawl in and drag the terrible children out, prostrating herself before the screen, something is obviously wrong. And it can feel like that day by day. That single moment captured perfectly the chaos and insanity of modern child raising. It’s nuts. All the toys and the technology and panic. It takes hours to go anywhere and all you do is feed people and clean up and go to bed. You stand there in the kitchen and think, ‘this would all Work Better if I had servants.’

But really, not necessarily. (Not that I’m knocking domestic help for mothers! Perish the thought!) In the follow up the husband and wife sit there and joke with the BBC and each other about how crazy it all is, passing their massive baby back and forth while the little girl dances around and bangs on everything. The baby gets to be a baby, and the little girl gets to strut, and there they all are together. All the people in the manor, all of them except the lord, would look at the cozy relaxed ease of that modern family and salivate with covetous jealousy.

For one thing, the modern family can speak openly. For another, the father gets to hold and care for his own children. For another, the mother is right there, knowledgeable and interested in his work. For another, clearly they don’t work All The Time. For another, it’s fine, it’s crazy, but it’s fine.

And that’s what I think is a good decent reminder for someone like me who thinks she’d like the perfection of beautiful dishes and perfect order. First of all, I wouldn’t be the lady of a house like that, I really would end up being the scullery maid. And second of all, even if I did get to be the lady, I would be lonely, and then controlling, and then have hysterics because of the endless number of strange corsets I had to shove myself into. I mean, of course, whatever you’re used to is what is normal. And I just complained a whole bunch about having to wear jeans every day.

But still, the modern way, where men know how to pick up and wrangle their own children, and know what their wives are up against, where wives know the work of their husbands and can do interesting work themselves (obviously not talking total single mother poverty here, that’s for another post) and children aren’t relegated entirely to the nanny and then the tutor, that’s not a bad way. It does work, it just doesn’t look so romantic nor so orderly. And honestly, it seems a lot more psychologically healthy for everyone involved.

And now excuse me, I have to watch that video just one more time.