There are women who announce themselves thus, for instance if asked their job: “Oh, I’m a mum!” as though that warrants automatic praise. Carrying the title of Mum says nothing more about someone than that you are capable of ejecting a tiny person out of your cootch… and even that will happen regardless of effort from the mother; after all, how often do you hear tales of a fifteen year old being dragged out of his lazy mother by a social worker: “Well, we just decided it was time we stepped in since she just wasn’t bothered about pushing” You don’t. And why? Because the body will do all of that by itself.
It’s the same with growing up. As is borne out by all the sad tales of neglected children surviving lives of want; scavenging bins for scraps, getting themselves to school in spite of the lack of parental input; they survive, they grow older and go on to have children of their own without a mum’s influence.
I am a mum. I do not introduce myself as one, though, because it isn’t a career or even a job; it’s just another thing I do. In reality it is the part of my life I love the most; the part that makes all the other shit worthwhile and the part that gives greatest return but it is the part that warrants least recognition on my part because it just happens. The kids get to where they need to be, food gets to the cupboards, dirty clothes get to a neatly folded pile of cleaned laundry to adorn bedroom floors and somehow everyone remains (mostly) sane and normal-looking - no thought to the hows and whys, it just happens.
And it is in this spirit that it being baby’s birthday today I give tribute to the smallest yet loudest factor in my mum-ness
Before I do, though; this little moment from the first born on our return from shopping today.
“There’s another reason I won’t ever have kids. I can’t carry anything; I’ve got twiglet arms!” This reminded me of my awe as a youngster at the strength of my own mum. I would be sent out for coal, to end up dragging the huge bucket across the yard and through the kitchen. Mum would appear as I approached the house and just snatch up the bucket as though it were one of those takeaway coffee cups. She could quite literally carry a full bucket of coal in one hand and a stack of logs in the other, whilst having a bundle of lightings under each arm and still stop to stir a pot of food on the stove as she passed through. It amazed me as a kid and it was a bizarre moment to find that my daughter thinks about me in the same way. Of course, I can lift a lot. It’s a while since I did weight training so I can’t remember now what I lift, but the hub-person is 15 stone plus some and I can lift him when he falls; I fill a trolley with shopping, put it all in one of those giant shopping bags and carry that into the house; I will easily move bags of compost about the garden without a second thought. Although I still shamefully do that girly thing in a shop: “Is there someone who can carry it to the car for me?” But we all do that, don’t we?
But anyway:
There is an inherent problem with our reference points to speech being “indoor” and “outdoor” voices… trying to encourage a child to use an indoor voice when they are out of doors gives way to great confusion and what you end up with is a child who even approaching nine has no concept of the fact that some things should be said quietly and will set you up in certain situations; such as the time we were walking behind a very large lady and she says “Mum, we don’t like fat people like that lady, do we?” -shocked glare, I didn’t know what to say- “Not in a mean way; just that she’s going to die and that’s sad!” The woman went to a nearby house and scowled at us very red-faced as she turned to close the door. The trouble is, she genuinely was not being cruel, she really was concerned for the health of this lady, but “indoor voice, please, baby!”
Part of me would love to have that freedom to just tell a person they look exactly like that woman who was on Jeremy Kyle last night and that I hope her boyfriend is nicer to her and to have the pure self-belief that leads to comments like “Drop me here, mum, I’ll walk to [friend]’s house and then come home” – noting that we just happened to drive past on our way home from an outing and that the friend lives almost on the other side of town – “It’s ok, I know karate [3 lessons!] so I’ll just kick any strangers that try to steal me!”
I think it possibly stems from being so much younger than her sisters that she feels more grown up than her years. If I am going somewhere, she insists on being left behind: “I am nearly nine, you know! I don’t need looking after!” In fact, I had a huge argument with her just recently based on the fact that she felt the babysitting arrangement with our neighbour is unfair. The older daughters alternate in looking after the children [seven and ten] but baby felt this should be a three-way rotation: “I’d like to have some money too, you know!”
She even speaks to her friends commanding authority, giving such sage advice as heard recently after her little friend announced she had a new friend and he said he would marry her: “What the one who never does his work? Why him? He’d, like, get a job and never do anything so you’d be all poor… what’s the point? Marry [another boy] instead!”
Baby has very strong ethical beliefs and speaks out quite loudly (as you would expect!) about all “things in general which harm the environment”; for instance passing the garage as she heads to and from school will elicit a very vociferous coughing fit and much waving of the arms, as does being passed by any car churning out the vaguest plume of smoke from its exhaust. She gets incredibly involved in such things as Children in Need, watching the videos carefully before thinking how the world’s imbalances can be resolved and having a cry at the fact that she cannot instigate that change and as for the over-hunting of rare animals: “They should stop hurting the animals, because it makes me cry!”
She isn’t all serious, though. She has a demon sense of humour with an imagination to match! She once announced quite boldly: “I do know when someone is being sarcastic, you know. I can see sarcasm; I can smell it; I just can’t hear it.” But she does hear it perfectly and is so immensely quick-witted that she will always fire back with something equally funny and can halt the most mischievously teasing granddad dead in his tracks.
Her biggest quirk is food. All three of my children have had peculiar tastes (glossing over the first-born and her penchant as a child for peanut butter and sprout sandwiches!) but baby really is the oddest, eating things most children will turn away from. She absolutely loves canned mackerel, to the point where we seem to go through it like water. On a recent shopping trip I bought two tins after being told we were out but upon our return, she started to pack away the cans and laughed aloud, saying “Mummy, I tricked you! I told you we’d run out of mackerel so you’d buy two tins, now we have three so I can eat lots, that’s just how I’m rolling!” She will devour a punnet of mushrooms raw in seconds, likes to dip drumstick lollies in raspberry instant porridge and insists she can (and will!) only ever eat one prawn in a sitting.
It goes without saying that I have imparted every last ounce of my sporting knowledge to her… regular readers will be aware of the extent of the data I have at my disposal and will be unsurprised at such glimmers of wisdom as: “Which team are we voting for? Oh, the green ones. Can’t we vote for the red one and his friends?” – “No, because he is the referee!” or the fact that she sorts her football cards by shirt colour, choosing to swap the ones with dull shirts because they don’t look nice and I am sure you all remember well her wisdom from the Rugby World Cup.
So what else does she teach us?
We learn that one of her sisters is a butterfly; beautiful, graceful, elegant and brightly coloured and that this sister looks “all pretty and shiny” when she cries even if she does live in a room that “stinks like a kangaroo going to the toilet in Canada”; we learn that the other is more a bumble bee; always busy, slightly chaotic but with a clear purpose, colourful, misunderstood and under-rated – but that wearing a bra makes her angry although “she is always so nice when she doesn’t have one on”.
And I know, 1500 words about the wonder of one child makes me the biggest baby bore in the world, but since I started this post talking about being a mum, I will close now with some of her brighter Mum-moments, such as drawing such an accurate image of me she even included the double chin; her announcing that she is reporting me to the police for “murdering [her] to death” after trimming an inch off her hair; the time she woke me before eight on a Saturday declaring her loneliness, to decide once I had dressed and moved downstairs that she might just take her dad’s Ipod and go back to bed; her demands that if I must sing along with “such horrible bad language at least be quiet for the naughty bits”.
But the two things that truly stick in my mind:
Catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I noted that my jumper was baggy and decided it must have stretched. To which baby’s response was “You may have lost weight, turn sideways.” So I did and received a peculiar side-on hug. “Yup. Lost weight. Definitely. You used to be cuddly and snuggly.”
And the last (for now):
Snuggled on the sofa in our PJ’s, she suddenly announced: “I’m going to go and hug my big teddy now. It’s just like hugging you, but he’s fluffy, not spikey. Just saying, not being mean or anything!”
And off she went.
I am aware of how fleeting these moments are, especially facing the prospect of child one leaving home this summer with two not far behind her. I love that I have this space to share them with you all and hope that you have at least raised a smile or two on my behalf!
And if nothing else, she will be able to read this back in years to come and think “Did I really do those things?” – and you all know how much I love embarrassing my kids!
Have a wonderful day. Celebrate every small joy, for they each truly are a blessing.
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