There are fourteen programs on my washing machine. That’s eleven more than my NuFace facial toner, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that I expect a lot more out of my Nuface than I do my washing machine.
My Nuface, for example, (if I ever bother to use it) will eventually turn back time. Stop my cheeks from sliding into my neck and turn the corners of my mouth upward again, or at least find a more neutral position, so I don’t resemble Pinocchio’s miserable mum every time I look in the mirror.
My washing machine on the other hand is destined only ever to get clothes wet and toss them around a bit.
So why fourteen programmmes?
Because I can’t shake the feeling that if I understood the answer, it would unlock a door to a life that I also can’t shake the idea of. A seamless existence, in which, all the automated automatons I need, whirr away in the background whilst I get on with sweating the big stuff. Less stress. More production.
This is looking increasingly unlikely. Because like everything in life, it’s always more complicated than it promises to be. Today for example, I turned around and my washing machine was flashing numbers at me. Numbers than ended with letters. Two letters. KG.
Looking at them, in the midst of cleaning my teeth and weighing up whether I could be bothered to use my NuFace, I experienced a brief surreal moment in which I imagined my washing machine had turned a cold square eye on me and come up with my weight. What else? We all know what KG means.
Which is not its remit. No matter how varied and precise its tossing and rinsing skills are.
Of course it wasn’t. It was weighing the load I’d just rammed in. And then flashing the numbers around the bathroom with all the urgency of a NASA countdown. Another piece of superfluous information in a world spilling over with superfluous information. Wall to wall 24 hours news, and sports commentary that starts three weeks before the sports event.
I know … Hands up in surrender mode … I know, the machine is weighing the load, to measure the water needed, in order to save water. Which isn’t superfluous at all. And I don’t wish to make light of that. That’s not the point.
My point is why tell me?
I don’t need to know. It’s just another piece of information my brain is going to have to sift and sort and store. Likewise, I don’t need to know when the programme ends. (One of the two I only ever use.)
And who invented that little gem? That bleep bleep bleep bleep bleeping alarm, designed to let us all know when the machine has finished its cycle?
I’ll tell you who. A man.
Women don’t need to be reminded when a cycle ends. Women live with cycles for most of their adult life. We anticipate their beginnings, muddle through the middle and heave silent relief when it’s all over. (Until of course it really is all over and we enter the change, which from now on I’ll be calling the upgrade … and Oh! There is so much more of this coming…that’s a promise.)
Women have become so wholly accustomed to getting on with it, before, during and after, an alarm simply wouldn’t have occurred to us.
Think about it. Can you imagine a woman ever seeing the need of an alarm to alert both herself and all those in the immediate vicinity that a task, a chore, a menstrual cycle, a daily occurrence, even something as rare as an exercise routine done two days in a row, was completed?
And what are we supposed to do anyway?
Leap up, down tools? Stop the microwave. Interrupt the recap of our partner’s day, we were pretending to listen to?
Pause Anatomy of a Scandal?
What was it my mother said?
I’ll tell you. No-one ever pinned a medal on her chest for turning up: Every Single Day.
So, a pompous little alarm, boasting that the job is done? No. A man invented the alarm along, with those eleven completely unnecessary programmes.
Bear with me … I’m warming to my theme.
On the first day of my grandfather’s retirement (we’re talking 1970ish here), he walked into the kitchen where my grandmother was going through her long established, hitherto problem-less, Monday morning routine (i.e. the washing) and proceeded to explain to her how to load the machine. This story is now part of my family’s folklore.
And I think it holds the key, towards what I’m fumbling my way towards.
This unquestioned confidence. This self-programmed, self-belief.
I read a fascinating article this week about the role of hormones on a post-menopausal woman’s brain.
It spoke of how the dropping rates of certain hormones result in a – to put it bluntly – caring less attitude. Caring much less. About what others think, about whether our grown kids are consuming their rainbow of fruit and vegetables, and frankly not giving a toss if our partners can’t find the milk which is the only thing on the middle shelf, in the middle of the fridge.
You get the gist.
My washing machine, you see, isn’t looking for a mate. It doesn’t temper its behaviour to appear more docile and compliant (valued feminine and maternal qualities). It hasn’t spent a lifetime anticipating and then reacting to the needs of others.
Oh no!
It goes through life bleeping and flashing and signposting and generally making its voice heard, without a scintilla of a blush at how useless and superfluous most of its content actually is. Without ever being aware of anyone else even being in the room!
And there. I’ve reached it.
I’ll never understand my washing machine.
And I’m just going to have to try harder at accepting that.
Accepting that I’m already in the midst of the biggest automation of all. And it is already whirring away in the background whilst I sweat the big stuff.
I’m a writer and now a publisher. I’m a wife, a mother, a daughter and a sister. On any given day I have way more than fourteen programmes spinning in my head, as I suspect so many of you reading this do. In our fifties we are in the middle of it all, ageing parents, teenage children, fundamental physiological changes.
We don’t need alarms to tell us when we’ve finished out work. It’s ticked off across our hearts as we collapse into bed at night. Another day spent caring and contacting those we hold the closest, doing our best, and now, in midst of this upgrade, learning not to give a fig if anyone else thinks otherwise.
Yours bleeping sincerely,
Cary
P.S. I will endeavour to write once a week, usually on a Sunday. (Think of yourselves like Lady Grantham from Downtown Abbey, starting your Sunday with a cup of tea in bed and a 5 minute read.) However you’ll have to forgive me if I miss a week here and there. Life is hectic as I gear up to publishing my first book, A Midlife Holiday, on May 17th. Yes of course you can pre-order it Here
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Brilliant! I loved this post.