I am waiting for my kids to come home. Not imminently for I
am currently in the pub drinking. Not alcohol you understand, but a pot of tea.
Not the coffee house tea; not the tea that comes in a pot that you can squirrel
away in a mitten if push came to shove, but a great big, heat-preserving pot of
tea that pours enough for four cups through a spout that doesn’t piddle it down
the outside of the cup or even up your arm in the gravity-defying manner that
only tiny chrome teapots can.
I have had 2 croissants to buffet myself against the storm
of offspring to come. They came on separate plates (the croissants, not the
offspring though I am sure that Royal babies are delivered thus and on a Duchy
Original napkin) with separate jam and butter portions and a knife each. They
thought I was ordering for two. Does anyone
ever satisfy a meal-sized hunger with one croissant I wonder? Are those the
ones that can get their jeans on? Clarity is emerging through a fog of
chocolate and pastry now that I am no longer famished by the 14 minute walk
into town. Though, playing devil’s advocate, a croissant fills you up as air would
if it was dusted with icing sugar. Is that what a croissant is,prawn-shaped sticky
air that someone’s thrown wafer thin pastry flakes at…and most of them have
fallen off?
I deserved two…I have trauma coming. I need the sugar. They are returning from 4 days at Dad's!
Approximately 350 days of the year, I bring up three
children by myself…without a break… without let up…without whisky or
anaesthetic. They in turn, never get a break from me and my highly strung panics,
leading to a month or so of box sets. They constantly have to eat food with
absolutely no taste or thought put into it, and minimal preparation though despite
this, it’s generally overcooked. The only thing I will say for myself is that
they constantly complain about the amount of veg they are asked to eat in
comparison to their friends. Tick. Good mother. They are getting at least 4 of
their 5 a day in one sitting though that makes mealtimes less about togetherness, and more a collection of huffs, but I am secure in my good motheryness so that’s fine.
I don’t usually stay in the huff for longer than 20 minutes in any case.
My
children, have been, by and large…if not self-cleaning –then at least low
maintenance. I’ve never had to use the guarantee. There was a broken wrist at
one point but it really wasn’t a punishable offence so it’s unfair that they
still blame me. I am forever being told
how lucky I am, how I don’t know I am born, how spoiled I am that they are the
way they are, and it’s not only the kids themselves that tell me so. For my part, I suspect
that in order for them to have turned out this way, it took a certain amount of tantrumming, rule setting and expectation from me. (Should newly invented adjectives embrace a double ‘M’? It reminds me of this
year’s Christmas concert where the chap behind me repeatedly sung ‘Seven Swims
a-Swanning,’ against his will and became quite panicky and upset before finally
saying ‘Aw fuck it!’ and embracing the new lyrics) It hasn’t
been easy, being an Earth Mother. It’s a thankless job when no-one is telling them not to speak to
their mother like that, or backing you up in any way butI have been, by and large, quite certain of my path. It’s the one thing that seems to come quite naturally
to me, that I am confident in…boundaries. I have rarely doubted myself. But
now, I seem to have hit a brick wall and it is scary.
I thought it would be all
downhill from here…feet on the handlebars…feeling groovy. We were through
unscathed. In the next 20 months, one then another will have left for Uni. I
have got them through it. I am almost out of the thicket. True, the nipper has
always been more of a handful and though the 15 momth gap between the elder two
worked well, the 4 year gap between the younger two (in a Venn diagram my son
would be in the overlap) was fabulous but only up to a point. That point is
now. It’s nearly just me and her. Me and her…I know who’ll be in charge and for
the first time in my parenting career, I suspect it won’t be me.
At my New Year's party this year, one blameless parent (let's call her Pam) saw her golden
boy carried home unconscious due to an overlap in a Venn diagram being filled to the brim with undiluted whisky when he had promised only to paddle in a shallow end of shandy.Shall
I tell you that as he eventually snored his way peacefully through the night watched over by shifts of folk who were supposed to be enjoying
themselves, that I Pam had an overwhelming urge to kick the shit out of him? Nah!
It’d make me her look bad.
Happy New Year!
