The A4 pad that had been floating around the house for a few years now had remained hidden and out of sight for the majority of its redundant life.

It is not just any pad.

It is a pad, sealed along one landscape length with two black magnetic strips on the back. It was a planner pad that must have seemed like a good idea at the time but had soon proved itself useless as the weight of it pulled the top down, bending the card above the top magnet so that the stupid thing would slide down and fall from the fridge, making anyone within earshot jump.

So it got demoted; put in a drawer and disregarded, that is until this most recent move where it has reappeared.

It’s a good idea. An organisational tool for family life, and unlike a calendar, it was not restricted by date but simply boasted the openness of a Monday to Friday grid; the titles of the day along the top, and a column to the left side that states ‘NAME’. The grid is blank save for the word ‘MUM’ filling the first section of the name column, and a title for the overall sheet that tells the owning organiser that the week they are looking at is ‘THIS WEEK’.

The cursed thing, since its resurrection, had been given a second chance. The intentions to use it were honourable at some point I’m sure. God knows, my life has always needed organisation and so, it lived peacefully on the fridge in the new house for a week, before flapping to the floor and making her jump. I remembered why it was disregarded in the first place, swore at it, and placed it on top of the fridge, under the confiscated light-sabre and the small rectangular plastic serving tray covered in sickly cupcakemail design.

And so the pad lays face down and is sometimes used, not for the purpose for which it was designed but instead the reverse of each sheet is sometimes used, admittedly, mainly for list-making – the best, and most traditional of organisational tools. Sheets have also been used to leave notes for her daughter, or to take down telephone numbers.

Quite late I had returned from my sister’s, put the boy to bed, and had a bath. Feeling inspired by the reading material that kept me company, I decided to jot down the quote that had played on my mind before making the ritualistic coffee, lighting a candle and setting down to write. As I took down the pad, turned it over and moved to separate a page to tear it free from the others, it dawned on me that the pad, in the briefest second of glancing over it, made me feel like a terrible mother.

I looked down at it in disgust; is not an organisational tool at all, but rather a guilt trip on paper that asks too many questions at once with the badly drawn images that are dotted throughout the grid. Flowers, because women, and especially mothers, like flowers, right? Tea cups and a kettle, because women, and especially mothers, drink lots of tea and coffee, right? An image of a baby’s vest. A clock. Two stacked saucepans. A couple of handbags. A school bag. A plate, set with a knife, fork and spoon. A plant pot with a healthy green plant inside, because women are automatically able to sustain all life, right? Some stripy bees that look as though the ‘artist’ couldn’t quite decide if he intended butterflies instead. A baby’s food bowl. And three images of women with children: One holding the hand of her animated offspring, bags in hand; presumably on the school run, or perhaps shopping. Another with her child on her lap reading a no doubt riveting work entitled ‘My First Reading Book’, and finally, a child, rattle in hand being pushed in a triangular pushchair by a mother who looks psychotically happy. Surely she cannot be that OK with the obvious hair-dye disaster she has recently suffered.

Considering the quote that I was about to place on its reverse, the contradiction was too strong to ignore. I wonder why the hell I own such a ridiculous thing and I try to remember if I bought it many years ago, in a fit of madness, or whether it was a gift, given by someone hoping it would help me to be more organised, and let’s face it, ultimately a better mother.

The quote, in case you were wondering, reads as follows:

…choice is often an illusion. People are firm believers in free will. But they choose their politics, their dress, their manners, and their very identity, from a menu they had no hand in writing. They are constrained by forces they do not understand and are not even conscious of. But even the illusion of choice is of enormous social significance.

From a menu they had no hand in writing… interesting.

I realise immediately that this so-called organisational tool is just a sub-section of the larger menu. On each sheet we are reminded by the images, presented in their light-hearted, child-like, and animated fashion, or what things we must do in order to be a mother, to be a good mother, and to deserve our name ‘mum’ as given by the tool. we aren’t even permitted to include our own name in the space; we are named by the menu.

Gender role assignation is rife in this tool, that is plain to see, but the irony of it as a platform in which to set hat quote down was too much. I wondered if I had always thought this way, and realised that I hadn’t. I decided I have Univarsity to thank for my changed view of the world, and so cynical as his thinking may be, I am grateful for it.
Ithe is certainly an irritation to be told what a mother should be.

For example, yes, I admit… I do drink an awful lot of coffee – but not because I’m a mother or because I am a female. Instead, I drink a lot of coffee because I love it; because I’ve got an addiction, that comes from being a batista and student, and needing to stay awake for ridiculous amounts of time. I also love gin – there’s no gin image with ice and a slice.

I wonder if there is another pad that just says ‘dad’…. I wonder if it would be mostly blue, if it would include images of tools, a football, a pint of beer, perhaps a racing car. Or perhaps, the identity stripped ‘dad’, just like the nameless ‘mum’, would be presumed to be a single father? and as such would there be images of a psychotically dad pushing a buggy? Would a teapot be assigned to ‘dad’? I strongly suspect not.

You get my point, right?

Damn that menu that infiltrates our lives, consciences, and stationary. Damn it for telling us how exciting should be, what we hold like, and how our identity should be constructed in order to comply with gender roles.

I’m just going to leave this here and step away from the post, the page, and the embedded stereotyping within our society. Sometimes such seemingly insignificant ‘tools’ are the most effective. But to whom do these tools actually belong? Who organises who here?