EXCERPT FROM A GOOD ENOUGH MOTHER
Must be the kitchen that does it. Any kitchen. It’s really the only room in the house I feel at home in. I’ve spent most of my years in a kitchen, I suppose, one way or another. It’s one of the things that used to make Tess so furious with me when she was a teenager. She did a calculation once where she added up all the hours I spent on a daily basis buttering bread, cooking dinners, making school lunches, ironing, washing up.
I can’t remember the result of her sums, but I did my own recently. I used the calculator thingy on that fancy mobile phone that Aengus, bless him, gave me for my birthday. He put his own number in first, on something he called speedy dial, and it means I can always get in touch if I need him, with one miraculous touch of a button.
So I went ahead and did my own figures: adding up six kids, twenty-five years of childrearing, more or less, and three meals a day. That all came to about six thousand hours a year, every year, in the kitchen. But knowing that surprising figure was unsatisfying, so I didn’t go any further. We both know that looking after a family is about more than the hours spent keeping its everyday wheels turning.
A GOOD ENOUGH MOTHER by Catherine Dunne will be published on the 18th of June.
“She did a calculation once where she added up all the hours I spent on a daily basis buttering bread, cooking dinners, making school lunches, ironing, washing up.” #excerpt from #AGoodEnoughMother by @DunneCatherine #comingsoon @BetimesBooks
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