Category: The small things in my head

It’s the school Easter holidays.    The first few days seem indistinguishable, looking back.  I remember an Easter fayre on the last day of school, some pyjama wearing here and there, some telly, a few snacks, the odd shopping trip and here we are, nearly a week later.

Whilst I acknowledge we probably all need the rest I do feel a certain uneasiness after a while, like I’m wasting the holidays, like I’m not providing enough away-from-the-classroom-learning.  My social media feeds seem to be full of pictures of happy kids and parents eating pizza at theme parks – something I know would blow several months’ family-time budget.

Does this sound familiar?

But then I remembered my Mum’s own very special brand of school holiday entertainment: adventure walks.  I say adventure because you could never be quite sure of where we would end up.  It was all about the welcome squish of fruitcake wrapped in foil, the hilarity of a lone, gaping welly stuck in mud, the momentary relief of escaping a herd of cows by sitting high up on a stone wall.  We would pick through the mud for shells along the Penryn river, taking them home in carrier bags to sud them up and paint them, allowing our little artistic efforts to dry on the coal bunker in the sun.

So, a couple of days ago I made the effort to pack food, find wellies and almost carry my daughter out through the door for a walk and it was well worth it.

High in the Surrey Hills, above the village of Chilworth sits St Martha’s Church.  According to the friendly and knowledgeable vicar, people have been worshiping there since as far back as 3500 BCE and it’s no wonder.  Accessible only by foot, the site has an indescribable silence and magic, with views way out over the countryside to the South Downs.  I can only liken the sensation of sitting in the wind on one of the weathered wooden benches outside the church to sitting on the ceiling.

A good friend of mine and I have been visiting this place for years.  We come at all times of the year – in spring for the stunning bluebells, almost to vibrant to look at; in the summer for the sunburnt bracken, arid sand and blue sky; and in the autumn, the turning leaves set before us a carpet of ochres and greens as far as the eyes can see.

Declaring “I’m an indoors kind of person”, it was difficult to get my daughter into the car initially but I knew that as soon as her investigating feet took over, she’d be well away.  And she was.

 

Paddling in the stream, handbag in hand, she moved the sandy stones around with her toes, allowing the sensation of the cool water to tickle her ankles.  “I wonder if there are any fish, Mummy”.

 

 

I took pictures of the diamante water, the rugged stones of the old gunpowder works and bluebell leaves readying themselves for the blue blooms rising.

Then we took the steep, stony path up the hill.  This is the same path we usually take and it is an old, well worn, well weathered route.  I often think of the people who have scuffed the same stones; the same trees; have stopped in the same places for a rest to look out over the same countryside.

The path at the top is hard going and sandy but well worth it.  Feet at an angle and my daughter holding tightly to my hand, we dragged up the final furlong, out beyond the treeline and into the sun.  This is where I can understand the spiritual draw of the place.  It simply makes me smile.

Hunkered beside the 19^th Century walls of the rebuilt church, we ate figgy rolls, drank juice and chatted.  The kids balanced on the solid parameter wall of the cemetery.

It’s a place that makes for good quality breathing.  We opened our mouths and let the wind hit the back of our throats and it felt like it had come straight from the coast many miles to the south, skipping over the hills and into our lungs.

We came home happy.

The thing is, looking back, Mother didn’t take us out on an adventure every day – but these are the days I remember: these are the days that have shaped me.

So, I’ll not worry too much about today’s pyjama day.  Maybe we’ll make sandwiches together at lunchtime, play a little triominos and watch a little Frozen.  We’ll have an adventure again tomorrow.

I was delighted to see a post on Facebook from an old friend yesterday – her daughter has just got an unconditional offer for the degree course of her dreams and I text her straight away because although she was over the moon, I knew her heart would be breaking at the thought of her child leaving home.  I thought of the days spent sweeping at seaweed in rock pools – her daughter holding the bucket, my son with the net.  I thought of ice cream, tractor rides, warm grass and laughing with my good friend at another sleepless night, another pair of jeans ruined, another potty training accident and I shed a quiet tear myself.  Another two years and my own nest could start emptying.

Those early days were a shared experience: my friend and I made our mistakes together.  We worked our way through as best we could, bouncing ideas off each other.

With this on my mind, I woke early this morning to the sound of the birds.  The sun not yet quite up, I remembered doing the same many years ago, nested with my son when he was just a few weeks old.  I thought what I would tell the 24 year old me – my eyes at once wide with new experience and heavy from sleep deprivation.  This is what I came up with:

1. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Breastfeeding is an amazing experience, challenging at times and not possible for everyone but it is probably one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. It seems distant and not entirely relevant, however, when your child is 16 and you are supporting them through their exams/girl trouble/learning how to be a man. It’s all about perspective.
2. Sweat the small stuff. I remember one afternoon after watching the full solar eclipse over Falmouth harbour, I climbed down off Trefusis fields with my baby son on my back and drove home to our little house when all my childless friends were going out to party. I felt so left out. I spent the afternoon listening to old U2 albums and my son slept, fed, smiled and slept. I wouldn’t have remembered the pub crawl I would have done with my friends but the human warmth of that afternoon will never leave me.
3. Feel okay doing things your way. Be a magpie in collecting shiny pieces of advice from younger and older people, magazines, professionals and the T.V. but go with what your heart tells you is best. Utterly exhausted, I finally conceded to combining bottle and breastfeeding one afternoon at the suggestion of a close friend, despite the misgivings of my health visitor. It was the best thing I could have done for my mental and physical health at the time.
4. Give yourself permission to enjoy the now. Days blend into weeks, into months, into years. So many advice columns console parents with lines like ‘this phase won’t last’. Don’t be too eager to look for the next stage, it will come in its own time without you hastening it. It’s exhausting but the early days will become a memory sooner than you think.

5. 

   The talking, playing and sharing will pay off. I always had a strong feeling that these were more important than keeping an immaculate house or flattening laundered clothes. As a working single Mum, I had a busy schedule but when my son was a toddler, I instinctively knew that when he became difficult to handle, what he needed was for me to sit on the floor and drag the toybox out. We’d watch Top Gear and build train tracks that snaked through the living room and out into the kitchen, under the dining table chairs. Now that my children are older, my role is transforming from carer to mentor. I had no idea just how much easier I had made this by securing good lines of communication when they were learning how to talk and trust.

6. Never let anyone else demean what you are doing. When I was at work, I was at work: there were those who wondered why a woman would leave her three month old son to go spend the day in an office. At the time, I would have lost my home, my car and essentially my life if I did not go back to work after the end of my maternity leave (which was a matter of weeks back then) but I also went back to the office because I needed some time to stretch my brain, learn new skills and talk to other adults. This was ok. So was turning down a full-time job when my son turned five. At the time, he needed me to be there every day to pick him up from school. I still stand by that decision now.
7. Having a second child doesn’t take love away from the first, it multiplies it. My son’s father was at first worried when he heard I was pregnant by my second husband, worried that his boy would not receive the same level of attention or love anymore. (My ex now takes my daughter out for milkshake and they sing daft songs together, so all is well.) With a nine year gap between my kids, my son has learnt skills that he could not have acquired anywhere else, not to mention the adoration he gets from his little sister. I have had the joy of watching the two people I created mesh a relationship that will likely last longer than I will.
8. Children are loud and they run around. Of course, they need to learn appropriate behaviour and speech but this is a long term project. Broken kids make for broken adults. As long as you have the situation in hand, let the tutters tut – their discomfort is not your problem: it’s theirs.
9. It’s ok to compare your children. I’m not talking in a competitive way here but they are individuals and what worked for one might not work for another. They have their own unique skills and challenges: talents that seem to crawl out of the woodwork unexpected and quirks that are a reflection of the ones you’ve spent your lifetime dealing with. Siblings can be encouraged to learn from each other’s strengths and provide support for their challenges because one day you won’t be around to perform this task anymore but first, they need the tools to find out what these are.
10. You can choose to replicate your own childhood environment or re-evaluate it. Deepening the coastal shelf (to quote Phillip Larkin) isn’t necessarily inevitable. There is always time to change the way you think.

I think the most important thing I needed as a young mother was confidence.  This, of course, comes with age through the media of hindsight, perspective and experience but I’m glad I launched unimpeded by fear into parenthood – and that was my youth at work.

What would you add to the list?

 

I went to a party recently.  It was a most excellent party, hosted by a good friend of mine who has made most excellent parties an artform.

Whilst the evening was exceptional for many different reasons, what stood out for me was a question that came up time and time again and it was this:

so what are you?

I found myself stumped.  My powers of speech a little dulled by a few Proseccos, I wanted to give a two word answer like bar maid, fire fighter or beach lifeguard but as I opened my mouth, I would instead take a sip of wine, make some indistinguishable noises under the thumping tunes and pass the breadsticks.

I suppose I could have said that I was a FTM (full time Mummy) – a possible contender for job title but this had to be viewed in light of one of the best quotes of the evening.  This came from a gorgeous forty something, in what she confirmed was a Westwood frock: and it was the kind of crisp, elegantly designed affair that would sit next to the word ‘frock’ in a picture dictionary.  She exclaimed, to much hilarity ‘how very middle class Mummy we all are – dancing at the Aga!’  We were all indeed, dancing at the Aga, using the towel rail as a pole albeit vertical rather than horizontal.  The delightful frock, she informed us, had been acquired on Ebay, showing a remarkable sense of thrift, we all thought before someone picked a bottle of Prosecco off the walnut wood topped kitchen island and passed it around.  We drank up and laughed some more.  (I’ve got my fraudery off to perfection in such situations: the kind of social gatherings I was used to as a child involved worn sofas, ashtrays and sugary, dark tea in chipped mugs but the tourist in me smiled, quite genuinely.)

But it made me think: am I a full time Mum?  Whilst I’m a dab hand at knocking out afterschool cake and end-of-the-month curry, I no longer dedicate every waking moment, nor the greater part of my intellectual or physical energy to my family – or at least not to the same extent I did when my children were babies.  Is that what full time Mummies do?  Even of older children?  It’s all so very confusing.

I could have said that I’m a community worker.  I’ve always had a firm belief that the early years are pivotal in a person’s life, so when the opportunity arose to help manage a local toddler group, I took it up.  I had no idea that I would still be running it two years after my youngest was in full time school but it has secured me at the centre of a community and has supported the development of many children and their adults.

But is that the sum of what I do?

Could I have passed myself off as a writer?  I write this blog, for example, I write for my friend’s charity website and I have, over many years, written all kinds of material from press releases to planning applications.  I have somewhat of a talent for panning for information on the internet and although this has been part of what I’ve been employed to do in the past, I’ve never had a doohickie on my desk that says ‘writer’ and I don’t have a book in Waterstones.  I must also confess that I was intimidated by the sheer weight of professional writing talent in the room at the time but does the exchange of coins for words a writer make?

So, back to my party.  What did I say?

I waffled a little about my friend’s charity website.  It is an important cause, so I was happy to promote it.  I spoke of my children and of my blog but I had no title to give: no embossed words for a business card.

It was the following morning, dragging my hung-over body to the local shop for toilet paper (in fine form, my friend had taken better care of ensuring a healthy supply of mixers than ensuring a good stock of this very essential of essentials), when I spotted by the side of the pavement a few mushrooms growing in some gravel.  They were tiny, grey and inconspicuous against the stones but in my daze, they stood out.  They were the answer I had been looking for and it was all to do with the contrasting palates of colour.

It was a mild October morning and all around, fallen leaves littered the path: rich, decaying ochres, warm and mushy like pumpkin stew with barley and spice.  But here, nestled against a fence and no doubt ignored by every other footfall were neutral, silent, simple tones: there was something very peaceful and restorative about them after such a dazzling night of stars.  And I felt happy to have encountered such a secret joy in such a public place: the buzzing traffic and the plugged in joggers had no idea what was at their feet.

And this is what I am: I am the Queen of Small Things – this is the shoe that fits.  I delight in the achievements of my friends, applaud those who climb ladders and celebrate the people who smash glass ceilings but I’ve been round long enough now to know that my pleasure lies in the small things because I own that pleasure like a secret: it is mine.  I have given myself permission to be happy with what I have.

So, next time I’m asked about the nature of what I am over a glass of bubbly, I may simply speak of small mushrooms and autumn leaves

– that’s only if I’m not too busy dancing at the Aga.