A glimpse in, May '26
screens, machines & daycare
There’s a whole lot of newness in my life right now. I’m like one of the red onions currently pushing out green sprouts into the dark pit of our pantry, groping for new possibilities.
Some of this newness would shatter the crunchy caricature I’m sure some readers have developed of me while reading my work. Brace yourselves:
Screens, machines and daycare.
A few months ago we drove to the other side of Melbourne to pick up an old $50 Panasonic television. The Chinese man who sold it to us was so perplexed: “Why do all you people want this so much?”
I guess he hadn’t heard that the only TV acceptable for crunchy luddites is one predating 2010 when appliances suddenly started to get really shit. One that doesn’t make you screen-sick with its hyper-real, derangingly bright picture quality. One that you can rig out with your own computer and stock up with the classics so that TV time is an intentional act of togetherness and cinematic appreciation, rather than visual junk food on auto-play in the background.
I can’t tell you how much joy our new-old TV is bringing us. This is after over 5 years of not owning one. We decided our daughter had been cordoned off from screens for long enough and was ready for some quality cinematic exposure. We started with such classics as The Lion King, Mulan, Mary Poppins, and the Studio Gibli suite. Her first series was Pingu which is just so visually wholesome that I allow myself the deployment of some tele-babysitting when I really need to get something done. For a month or so we worked through the entire Avatar: the Last Airbender series together every evening after dinner — a ritual more for us parents than for her (she apparently wasn’t so impressed by it).
Gradually, I’ve had the urge to watch News Breakfast and the evening headlines to bookend the day. You might wince — and I would understand. I had a deep-seated aversion to the news for the better part of my teens and young adulthood. How petty, how insincere, how morally bankrupt.
The news can be all of those things, but I can watch it without being tainted. In fact, it’s a greater marker of health to be able to witness these things without aversion. Aversion saps energy, just as much as mindless consumption.
Despite my crunchy inclinations, I don’t think screens or TV or machines are unambiguously bad. It’s all about the how of usage, of course. It’s a matter of kind.
In an ideal world we’d be a bustling extended family huddled around a campfire or hearth, with aunties to chew our ears off or live story-tellers to entertain us into the early hours of the morning (something I’ve tasted during my travels in the Middle East and Southeast Asia). It is true that the TV displaced the hearth; but in fact the void was first opened to be filled. The hearth was not a material thing. It was the centre of an entire social structure that we can only reconstitute in parts.
(We are measly renters, and deprived of the joy of fire, but in a future home I’d like the best of both worlds: a live flame and the dim glow of a romantic classic in the evening).
Rediscovering quality TV time has been like reuniting with an old love. I don’t know why but I barely watched anything for a decade. Now I’m making up for lost time. My favourites of late are the 1994 BBC Middlemarch series and a stunning 2003 Korean drama titled Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring by Kim Ki-duk (highly recommended). I’m also reading Middlemarch for the third time in a row — by which I mean I’m starting it for the third time in a row, and have finally made decent headway (it doesn’t bother me much that I now know the delicious fate of Dorothea and Ladislaw; I’m reading for the stylistic experience, not the plot).
Another machine with which I am now gratefully re-acquainted: the automobile. It might shock you to know that I only recently mustered the energy to finally move from my Ls onto my full license. Living in the well-connected inner-city for much of my youth, I went car-free for years — a hangover from my teenage aversion to noise and pollution and the civilisational corruption the car represents. Turns out it also incarnates human ingenuity and the thrill of mobility, felt most acutely in those first weeks of driving on your own (I know my days are numbered; I’ll check back in when I have much more to complain about than I do to revel in on the roads — for now, I’m very chuffed to no longer be a passenger princess).
In any case, driving has given form to the other half of my self that doesn’t blindly hate machines. It’s also been a matter of practical urgency since we moved out to the country. The irony is not lost on me that my desire to live regionally for all that the regions retain of the old life, makes driving necessary in a way it’s not on the metropolitan public transport grid where I persisted as a walker/tram-hopper for over a decade.
And the best for last: my daughter has started daycare. Two days a week. That’s right, I am now 2-days-less a stay-at-home-mum.
Despite appearances, I’ve never thought daycare was “bad.” I breastfed and coslept and kept my daughter close for two years (we still cosleep), but I always held it as a possibility that either I or my daughter would need to integrate some degree of care after that 2-year mark. Turns out she’s been ripe and ready for it for several months now — and she’s having a total ball. The centre is small with intimate, low-light, homely rooms and the most beautiful educators who I knew upon first-meeting that I could trust with my child.
I’ve been lucky (or perhaps this is to my credit?) that every milestone and developmental leap with my daughter has felt utterly natural. Weaning at the 22 month mark was natural — no resistance. The transition to some part-time, external care has been seamless — no resistance. I take this to mean that I hadn’t tried to foist these things on her before she was truly ready.
And what for the home-centric, stay-at-home life about which I tend to wax lyrical? It’s still the ideal, and still in essence what we’re doing (and striving for), but I’ve surrendered to the fact that our circumstances don’t at present fully support it — not 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It would seem more viable to me once additional children are in the mix, children that can care for and engage with each other, and once (if at all) we have some extra hands on deck to help out — retired grandmothers, old children helping with the young. Having some kind of family business, a communal project, a homesteading effort around which to structure ourselves and our days would be conducive too (not something we can currently achieve with our pitiful 25 sqm of rental yard). This is still the dream, but we have a fair way to go to get there, and 2 days “off” a week for me, and for her (she has become abysmally bored of me and the homespace), is in fact the right step in this direction.
The plan is to fill these two days in with some kind of paid employment for me that will double as an investment in the skills I want to cultivate moving forward and serve our vision of a more thoroughly self-sufficient household (I’m trying to get a foot into regenerative farming — more on this soon). But for now I’m reveling in deep-cleaning the house without it unraveling instantaneously at my feet. Today I danced Greek around the kitchen while my ancestors rejoiced in my belly.1
On our remaining days at home together, I’ve had to get creative to maintain that always tenuous balance between housework and my daughter’s voracious appetite for expansion: currently this consists of me drip-feeding her 1/4 cups of plain flour, adzuki beans, tap water and various other neglected dry goods to mix together on the kitchen floor at my feet. The potion-making era has begun, and I’ll trade the extra clean-up for some peace at the stove or my keyboard, even if I must peel dregs of flour off the lino. She recently dropped her daytime naps so I’ve had to completely relax into whatever mess she wants to make to occupy herself.
It does hearten me that she’s taken such a keen interest in cooking — how could it be otherwise when that’s what she sees me doing 85% of the day. I’m not yet brave enough to let her try her hand at cracking eggs, and I think she can sense this because it’s all she asks for.
Autumn has crept in around us as we’ve contracted slowly into the rhythms of the cooler months and amassed a rainbow of pumpkin and squash from various local growers. The pumpkin truly is an extraordinary creation; I understand why it serves as Cinderella’s carriage. It’s a daily staple for me at the moment on the GAPS diet — and it’s almost even more nourishing as a visual feast of decor throughout the kitchen.
Amidst these novel developments, the return to a semi-regular writing practice here on Substack has been a welcome grounding force; this format most of all, which I committed to this time last year on a rainy autumnal day full of domestic beauty; a day that served as a sweet reminder of all those minor happenings that make up the pith of our lives:
“Sometimes I feel I need to remind myself that I don’t always have to make a point in my writing here. I can just observe, and allow others to peek in to share my vantage. I started the day building an essay on social conservatism but by mid-afternoon, when our household lay quiet with our daughter at rest and then filled up suddenly with the sound of rain, I felt the need to step away and register all the simple beauties that wait for us, unassuming, to take notice.”
As the dust settles from the structural changes in our daily routine, I look forward to recommencing my monthly commitment to the glimpse in, and I hope you enjoy sharing a peek in.
x
Penelope
Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis speaks of the ancestors we carry with us in our “gut/intestines” — such a powerful notion, but probably rendered better as belly in English.
This felt so cozy to read 😌 also thanks for the tv recommendations, I also haven’t watched television in ages but there is something really nice about being able to relax into a show or a good book that I miss.
Another beautiful reflection. Seems you're on a wise path. I was talking to my husband today about when we should let our daughter have something sweet (other than fruit) and when we should expose her to movies, etc. The goal (in my mind) is never to shelter, but to nurture and slowly release her to the world so she might function as a healthy woman. I never want to be the overpowering, over bearing, over protective mother at any point in this process.