What a pleasure it is to come here after a long day’s journey into execration. The truth here has grace, wit, and moves like Fitzgerald made Daisy Buchanan move the first time he allowed us to see her.

A deep bow for the Hag, with a flourish at the end. (We probably need to bring the house lights down now, so I can straighten my knees.)

Then, you should be able to open the photos in your email, and depending upon which email service you are using, you may be able to “forward” the email with photos attached. That’s how it works with most cell phones and most email services, but there may be exceptions.

The point is that we are always looking for a savior to be president and to kiss our boo-boo and make it all better. There is no savior. We need a common man in the presidency and we need to fix the system to where a common man (or woman) could do a credible job.

That is my point.

Househusbands are rare, unappreciated breeds and often frowned upon. So what prompts them to put their career on hold and opt for nappy changing? DEANA LUCHIA discovers that like women, they love the kids but hate the household chores.
Househusbands, stay-at-home dads, or full-time fathers.Although the men who run homes and manage childcare may disagree on what to call themselves, they tend to agree on one thing: taking care of their kids is the most satisfying thing they’ve ever done.
As for the housework… well, that’s another matter entirely. If you check out the websites that support househusbands such as the UK’s http://www.homedad.org.uk or the Italian http://www.uominicasalinghi.it, it’s clear that men have the same attitude to housework as women who stay home.There are the odd few who love it, but it seems that many men see it as a largely thankless activity.
John Vella, 43, of Cospicua, took on the role of househusband for a year when his daughter was born 20 months ago.“My wife had restricted maternity leave so it seemed that the best thing for me was to take a year’s parental leave. I took care of the baby, cooked, cleaned, and ironed. I did almost everything and I really enjoyed it,” he says.“There was a lot more work than I expected and I was tired every day, but I’d definitely do it again. In fact, I would be a househusband permanently if we could afford it.”
The three men interviewed all saw childcare as their main activity and housework as a secondary, albeit necessary task.
“Childcare takes up most of your time,” says Vella,“and that’s the part I enjoyed the most. Doing the housework is OK, but you need time to do it and with a small baby there’s not enough time to do everything. So the housework was done when all the baby’s needs were taken care of and then when my wife came home from work, we would do the remaining housework together.”
While Vella describes being a househusband as an exhausting 24-hour a day job, being close to his daughter made it all worthwhile.“The moment you see your child, you instantly forget how tired you are. It was very exciting always being there and watching my daughter change day by day. Especially after the fourth month, you see them becoming a person. It was a unique experience.”
A common complaint from housewives is the feeling of isolation. Was it ever lonely staying home? Vella laughs: “Not lonely.With a child crying and something burning in the oven, it
was never lonely.”
Vella’s year-long experience increased his regard for housewives: “I have so much respect for women who stay home. Now I know what they go through… how much they have to do.” However, in some quarters there remains precious little respect for anyone who does housework, even less so if that person happens to be male.
“It was a surprise for most people,” says Vella, describing how friends andfamily responded to the news that he was taking a year off work to stay home. “They’d say,‘I wouldn’t do it’.When I told my work colleagues I was leaving my job to be with my child, it was like committing a crime. Even my mother was confused at first, though I have to say that eventually she was very supportive of my decision.”
Many men don’t even considerstaying home as an option, says Anna Borg of the Employment and Trainingn Corporation’s Gender Unit.
“In fact, neither sex particularly thinks of a man staying at home, as an option. We live in a Mediterranean society where man’s identity is closely linked to work, to being a good provider and the majority of men would never consider taking a career break to stay home. And the majority of women would never consider being the main provider.
“But, the ultimate experience would be to have an opportunity to assume both roles. As it is, anything relating to housework is still seen as degrading, in that women are not remunerated for these household tasks. Attitudes definitely need to shift.”
Borg goes on to describe a househusband interviewed by the Gender Unit, whose mother was praying for him during his year break from work:“He wanted to be home and he had an agreement with his wife.Yet his mother was praying for him as though it was a tragedy.”
While parental leave does exist – one year in the public sector, three months in the private sector – it’s unpaid, which means very few men, even if they want to, can afford to take
it up. In fact, only 1.6 per cent of fathers took parental leave last year. “With most Maltese women out of the workforce,” says Borg,“where is the family income going to come from?”
“It’s ridiculous that parental leave is unpaid,” says Vella, who works for a public sector company.“You work for a large company for 20 years and you want to take time off to be with your kids, but your years of service to the company are not recognised at all.The
situation needs to change.”
Matt Bordonaro, married to the US Ambassador to Malta, Molly, is father to three children, aged six, three, and 18 months.“Raising kids full-time is the biggest challenge to patience and tolerance,” says Bordonaro,“but you can’t ride a better ticket for personal development.”
With the embassy staff on hand, there’s not much call for Bordonaro to clean and cook the way he did in Oregon for twoand- a-half years prior to the family’s move to Malta.“But I change nappies, I pick up after them, you know the usual stuff. I go down to the kitchen and make the kids a sandwich,” he says.
For Bordonaro and his wife, having the father stay home was an easy and mutual decision.“I worked in the venture capital world and after 9/11 and the stock market decline, it was the right time for me to take time off,” he explains.
“We were both rushing out every morning, and then we had our first child and it was chaotic. And then we had a second child and we decided one of us should stay with the kids.That was how I was raised and it’s what my Catholic faith has taught me children deserve. So with Molly’s career on the ascendancy, it made sense that it was I who stayed at home.”
Aptly diplomatic, Bordonaro won’t comment on other people’s specific reactions to his opting for full-time fatherhood, suffice to say, there was some negativity coming his way. I ask him if men’s eyes ever glaze over the way some women’s did when I used to tell them I was a full-time mum.
“You get some of that. Mostly it’s them thinking that we might not have enough in common and, you know, it’s tempting to talk about what I did three to four years ago in the investment world, but most people eventually believe it’s a luxury spending serious quality time with kids at such an impressionable age. It’s a gift and the return on that investment is huge.”
What has been the biggest learning curve? “That unlike most women, I couldn’t multi-task,” says Bordonaro. “When I first gave up work, I thought I could have a project fixing up houses in the evening or weekend, but in fact I focus all the time I am at home on the children.”
Finding anyone quite as relaxed and positive as Bordonaro is difficult. It seems almost pointless asking him if he ever feels frustrated staying home.“Sure, there are times when it’s demanding,” he admits,“but I do other things.When Molly comes home, she can’t wait to be with the kids so I go for a run every day. I ran the half marathon last year and I’m gearing up for the Half Iron Man competition, which is the ultimate in triathlon.
“Besides, being a full-time father is not something you do for your ego. I’m doing it because I’m trying to provide the best for my kids. I’ve had 40 years of doing my thing and I will get to do my thing again once they go to school, but for now, they deserve this attention. I think that when my kids are older, I will have more of a relationship with them because of these years with them.”
Bordonaro encourages other men to follow suit. Firstly though, you have to make sure it’s what your wife wants; secondly, the economic factors have to be in place to allow for one
parent to stay home, and finally you have to make sure you are prepared to accept that role and put your career on hold, because men aren’t necessarily raised and educated to be nurturers, he says.
Hans Mever, 41 is a househusband living in Lija. He does most of the housework and takes care of his two children, aged nine and seven. Mever has been a stay-at-home dad since
January when the family moved to Malta from Germany where he worked as a farmer and in agricultural machinery sales. He and his wife have always shared the housework.
We talk in a spotless kitchen showing none of the devastating signs of a hectic, school-morning breakfast. It’s only 9 a.m. and the dishes are done, the table cleared and there’s a load of washing in the machine.
“I do all the housework,” says Mever. “I’m not a good cook, but I do it. I plan the week’s meals with recipe books and I do the laundry, the ironing, the floors. I hate cleaning the
oven, but ironing is not a problem.”
Mever finds taking care of hischildren fun and rewarding, but with both of them at school, he has rather too much time for housework, which he admits he doesn’t particularly enjoy.
“You clean.You cook every day. You don’t really see the results as you would with a job. Every day is thesame. It’s never ending and I can totally understand the housewives who hate being a housewife.And also staying at home alone all day in the house is not so nice. It’s not good for your brain. You know, when I worked I had to organise meetings and appointments, machinery and so on and now I think of whether or not we have enough bread, enough meat for the week.”
Mever cuts a lonely figure at the table; I don’t imagine he gets many housewives popping round for a chat.What he needs, he says, sounding like so many housewives before him, is a part-time job.
“It has to be part-time because my wife works full-time and the children need me here when they come home from school. I like time with the children and they enjoy their time
with me and it’s very important that one of us is home to be with them. In Germany, when we both worked, they were at kindergarten all day.This way is much better for them.”
Despite the monotony and mindlessness of housework, he does thinks it’s a good experience and everyone should be a househusband for a year or two.He notes that being at home hasn’t at all changed the dynamics of his relationship with his wife and hesays he really appreciates having time to read the newspaper, a book, or to just do nothing, which never happened when he worked full-time.
Still, I ask, could he live this way forever? He shakes his head and laughs:“Definitely not.”
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http://www.state.gov/outofdate/bios/54087.htm

Before they sent her to Malta, the Bushies put her on the board of Fannie Mae.

I took a nice cell phone picture of the banner over the main entrance to the John Lennon exhibit at the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame in the city and can’t figure out if or how I can download it into my computer. I do have it as a nice bit of “wallpaper” in the phone though.

We’re both techno-boobs in our own ways.