Joan

I like Joan* despite the fact that she is the kind of girl who irons her sensible underpants, combs her perfect pencil thin eyebrows and probably scrubs the already pristine toilet after every use (I’m sure her excrement is germ free and pine scented).

When I first met Joan three years ago, she was flawlessly dressed, wearing a Cue skirt with a Country Road top. Her hair was bobbed becomingly and her shoes matched her handbag. I soon learned that her entire wardrobe faultlessly mixed and matched – comprising tasteful shades of black, beige, charcoal and pearl grey (no favourite pink jumper or ratty blue sweats to be found).

Her handbag was perfectly organised, her workstation was immaculate – her calendar was always on the right month and she never had piles of paper on her desk, she had fans. She could fold up a newspaper/napkin/letter (and, I’m told, strip of toilet paper) so quickly and crisply that she could have created Sadako’s thousand cranes on her own before morning tea. I’ll bet there were no lolly wrappers on the floor of her car – in fact, even the car mat lint and dashboard dust was probably in hiding in fear of its life.

Joan remembered everybody’s birthday and gave understated, elegantly wrapped ‘thoughts’ to one and all. She worked harder and longer than everybody else. She didn’t sweat at the gym.

All this, and she was nice.

Surprisingly, soon after I met her, Joan told me she was never, ever having children.
She couldn’t cope with an animal, let alone a baby.

Joan regularly murdered pot plants. Nintendo Pocket Pets in her care continually carked it and the only living breathing pet she had ever (briefly) tolerated was a goldfish. Even that became too much for her and was dispatched to take its chances in the sewer system. A baby stood no chance in her world.

Let me add some further context…

Joan was an individual who lined up her (same brand) herbs and spices in alphabetical order – with all the labels facing front. Ditto CDs. And books.

She told me her idea of a ‘fun night in’ was rearranging the tins and packets in her pantry, refolding and colour coordinating the (beige and pearl grey) towels in her linen press, updating her DVD catalogue spreadsheet or arranging her shoes (still in their boxes) by colour, style and replacement value.

Joan has been known to drive halfway to work, idly wonder whether she remembered to raise the bathroom blind and rush home to check that she did (not because some poor pittosporum might need the sunlight but because her house would not look symmetrical if the bathroom blind was down while the laundry blind was up).

Then there are volume/heat/power controls. Joan could only run an electrical appliance on an even numbered setting. The car radio, for instance, could only be played at volume level two, four or six (eight would be too loud). The hairdryer could only be operated on heat setting two (of three). I don’t even want to think about more personal appliances.

Joan also had laundry neuroses.

She had to separate her laundry into whites, colours and darks (fair enough). She then had to divide colours (clearly mostly her partner’s) into a rainbow of loads – pinks, oranges and reds; blues and greens; yellows; and greys. O-o-okay. Slight overkill, methinks, but it takes all kinds.

Here’s where she lost me. She had to subdivide each pile into clothing types (evidently, the washing machine would explode if a shirt were laundered with a load of socks). She must have done thirty loads of washing every week. She probably singlehandedly kept Lever & Kitchen in business.

And on the clothesline? Only pegs of the same colour could hold up the same garment (for example, you couldn’t have a blue peg and a pink peg – or *gasp* a wooden peg – hanging up the same top). And if the pegs actually matched the garment (pink pegs, pink top – so much the better). OCD much???

Joan cleaned under her fridge once a week, dusted daily, and squeegeed her shower screen twice after each shower. She could only have silver and red ornaments on her Christmas tree and just the thought of tinsel gave her hives.

My point being, if plants were disorderly and fish were untidy, imagine what a kitten – or, indeed, a baby – would have done to her well ordered world.

Fast forward and Joan straggles in to work an hour late on her first day back from maternity leave in a rumpled dress and a pair of ratty leggings because she hadn’t given a thought to clothes and hadn’t even realised she didn’t own any trousers that would fit. Her shoes are scuffed, her hair hasn’t seen a cut or colour in six months and there’s a blob of baby puke on her left shoulder. I don’t think she’s wearing any makeup. And when someone mentions housework, she just laughs.

Ms Consc-y does not a scrap of work all day but instead swaps baby stories and photos with the other young mums, repeatedly calls the childcare centre, expresses milk, reads my magazine over coffee and leaves before I do.

I am not criticising here. I think it’s bloody hilarious. And lovely.

Little Miss Ava* has finally enabled Mama Joan to loosen up!

…I wonder if Joan still has daytime throw pillows for her bed and night time sleeping pillows that need to be swapped over each morning and evening...I’m guessing not.

*Not her real name.

Image: Clare Bloomfield