I look over to my living room from the dining room table. I am sitting at with my laptop open in front of me, cursor blinking.
I see my younger daughter, the three-year-old.
In one hand, a slice of cold gözleme. The girls and I made it this morning from the ready-made yufka I bought from the Turkish superstore Tek. I wore an N95 mask with a disposable mask on top when I went there. I wish I inherited my Turkish grandma’s talent of turning a lump of dough into giant paper-thin circle and not exposed myself to potential COVID for the sake of baked goods.
On her top, a long sleeve t-shirt with a drawing of Bluey teasing her dad with the stick of magic asparagus on it. This was the only orange top I could find the day before Harmony Day at Big W for her older sister, so I got a matching one for her to avoid the screams. The older one just started going to school this year. Now she listens to her teacher on Google classroom alternating between “microphones on mute” and “you need to unmute yourself sweetie to talk.”
There’s nothing on her bottom because she’s ‘toilet learning’, potty training is so last year according to the books I read. My wall-to-wall carpet is covered with three blue rugs, a graveyard of kitchen carpets of the past. I grudgingly appreciate my husband’s inability to throw anything away. Rugs are there to protect the carpet from the wees.
On the blue carpets, in the middle of my living room, there are two potties. There’s a little white one from Target that I bought for her older sister when she was potty training to put her dolls on. There’s a green and white one from IKEA. I regret my optimistic thought of making the most of our time stuck at home doing ‘toilet learning’ as I resort to tactics not found in any of the books I read. I make the potties talk to each other to entice the toddler to use them. “She’s going to wee in me” says the little white potty in a squeaky baby voice. The bigger IKEA potty replies with its deeper voice “No, she is going to pick me!” The toddler wees on the blue carpet from laughing so hard at my antics.
Across from the pair of potties, the bookshelf stands empty. The toddler piled all the books on top of the Kmart brand white LEGO table I found on the side of the road at start of the lockdown. The LEGOs that belong to the table are in the highest shelf of my walk-in robe because I stepped on a stray one too many times. The books on the table are library books long overdue but I don’t want to login to the library app to renew them. I have been stood down for the third time from my casual librarian job at that library. This job was going to mark my triumphant return to work after taking six years off to raise these kids.
Under the empty bookshelf are maracas. Wooden, painted with red, green, yellow, and blue stripes under a clear coat of non-toxic varnish. We used it for the toddler’s Gymbaroo Zoom session this morning. The girls did ‘tick tocks’ like a little cuckoo clock. I ran away to my laptop in the dining room table to complete a bit more of a fellowship application I was filling out, grateful for the distraction. I steal time pockets to write, like a thief pilfering small packs of chewing gum from the check outs at the supermarket in their pockets.
Over on the couch sits the older one in her yellow Emma Wiggle pyjamas, which she’s been wearing for two days straight. Her arms hug her knees, and she’s rocks back and forth. ‘Ha, haa, khaa,’ reciting the Arabic letters with her dad, trying to get the guttural sound of خ right. I cancelled her Zoom Iqra lessons embarrassed by her being on the same page week after week due the lack of practice. She also doesn’t do her weekend Turkish Language School Zooms. I used to send her to Turkish school to make some Muslim Turkish friends. The screen doesn’t do the trick.
On the other side of the room, the drying rack. There are eight pairs of size 2/3 Frozen underwear stacked next to each other and the toddler training pants. I bought the ones with creepy grinning bear on it from eBay thinking they would be as good as the other ones I got from Baby Bunting. They weren’t, but I can’t go anywhere now to get new ones. By the time the post office delivers me new ones, the toddler might be potty-trained, I mean toilet-learned.
Under the drying rack, an abandoned jumble of plain wooden blocks and colourful wooden blocks. My psychologist said “play with something developmentally simple” when I complained about my inability to play with my kids without all of us ending up in tears. The toddler insisted that I separate the blocks by colours, I didn’t. We call ended up in tears.
Back to my office, the dining room table. I am in my uniform of black leggings and a hoody. My short hair pushed back out of my face with a golden satin headband I stole from the girls’ hair accessories box. My one-piece namaz outfit with the built-in hijab, the one my husband named ‘prayer parachute,’ touches my back from the chair I threw it on after I prayed Asr prayer. I look at my laptop, Tealy, open to the word processor with these words appearing on it. The stickers on my laptop tell me to “just go for it” and assure “every small step in the right direction counts.” I hit the word count and I finish.
This No Compass edition is supported by Multicultural Arts Victoria, as a part of the 2022 Ahead of the Curve Commissions.
