musingsponderingsandrants

Parenting, profundities and humour

Author: sarahsmale

Hmm... about me...well three kids, a husband (not acquired in that order)... and a love of punctuation...
May — May 24, 2024

May

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There is often a discussion in our house about our favourite month of the year.

We are all clear on the worst month, January, despite two birthdays, closely followed by February. But thereafter we often disagree.

I am not a winter person..at all. I can hold on in a vaguely jolly way until Christmas, bouyed along by the twinkly lights, anticipation and sense of purpose. Even with the offspring growing into adulthood, we are still all together, and enjoy the rituals in the build up and on the day itself.

We have taken to going away to Cornwall straight after to avoid the depression of that dead period between Christmas and New Year. We enjoy a new year’s body board and eat too much left over food and chocolate and play daft games.

But then I have to come home and face the reality of January. For those readers not living in the UK it’s safe to say that the dark, murky days of January; dawn at 9am, dusk by 4pm are difficult. Some people like it. Not many though. In recent years we have had no snow to bring any excitement and it’s often wet and cold and dark..the least appealing combination of British weather.

In late March things pick up a little. There are some early flowers, the clocks change and it stays light for longer. It’s a hopeful month. Early spring can be lovely; crispy and fresh, with little jewels of colour from early bulbs.

But to my mind nothing beats England in May.

There is a burgeoning. Plants seem to grow in front of your eyes. The greens of the new growth are fresh and multi hued. Cow parsley dances in the wind like choruses of tethered ballerinas. Birds sing and sing and sing.

The best May I can remember was in lockdown 2020. I am not sure we have had a May like it before or since. The sun shone nearly every day. Confined to our houses and immediate localities everything I love about May came into sharp relief.

We all had to slow down. Every day on my permitted walk the crops in the fields had grown another inch or two, hawthorn blossomed and turned the air heavy with its rich, musky scent. Bees buzzed madly over my garden of alliums and geraniums and salvia. It felt like nature got a foothold back.

But even in damper versions of May there is a beauty. Rain drops caught on new leaves. The water releasing the smell of warming earth. Snails walking down the pavements.

The light is incredible as we build to the longest day. Nature wears its new clothes with pride and abandon. There is no point trying to tame it, the weed battle is already lost.

Others love high summer, July and August, our traditional holiday months but to me the world is already tiring and dimming.

Autumn has its fans with its colours and mists and bounty.

But for me May has it all. And every year I greet it with the same sense of excitement. And mourn it’s passing.

Small Things — February 17, 2024

Small Things

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I have reached that point in life when my nest is emptying. It still has one fledgling, and for her I am very grateful. And the other two migrate back to their home nest on a relatively regular basis (last week being a case in point), and are always very welcome. But those years of us as the four musketeers are over.

I haven’t found it as bad as I thought I might, mostly because Youngest’s sport takes up a lot of time. And also because I try to believe the perceived wisdom.

That perceived wisdom is that a mother should be glad when her offspring fly the nest, because their upbringing has all been leading up to this point. The years of love and care have produced young people equipped to make their own way in world. They were never yours to begin with, they were on loan. Etc.

And I agree with all of that. I am pleased Eldest and Middlest are off in the world smashing it. And that Youngest will soon follow. I am immensely proud of the people they have become. They are wonderful human beings, whom I adore.

But today I went to my hairdressers. I parked in a car park I haven’t really used for a couple of years, because for some reason my car feels wider than it used to and I prefer the overground one now. But I went there today.

I walked from there to the hairdressers through the carpark of the Lidl, and down the alley way to the street. And then it hit me that all those years of my taking them to that same salon for their half termly tag team of haircuts (always preceded by an animated discussion on who was going first), walking from that same car park, down that same alley, followed always by a pizza , were over.

They won’t ask me again what those strange boxes are in that Lidl alleyway. They asked me that every time we made that 6 weekly walk throughout their childhoods and adolescence. First as a genuine enquiry and then as a joke. Every damn time.

Today there’s that small thing that has floored me.

It’s a rat trap baby, and I’ve been caught.

It has been a while… — January 30, 2023

It has been a while…

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So I have sat down to write this blog and realise it has been over 8 months since my last one. Which is scandalous really. Although I guess no one really cares.

I have been trying to think of reasons why I have not put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard, whatever) and here is the list:

My kids and their friends read these posts. I only discovered that quite recently when a friend of Middlest told me he loved my writing. After the initial flood of pride I did start to panic gently about all the frankly quite revealing stuff I have written over the years, It makes me feel somewhat hamstrung, topic wise. I used to write really quite personal stories about our lives and I am not sure that would be massively appreciated by my offspring as they venture off into the world.

So that leaves me. And I am not all that exciting if I am honest.

We have had a lot of work done on the house. Well I have. My entire summer and autumn were taken up managing workmen and what little non grey hair I had left fell victim. Suffice to say home renovation is not my favourite thing. I find it very stressful and I am not yet over it enough to write that blog, which in any event would be very dull. And basically boil down to: everything took longer than expected, cost more than expected and made me very very tense. Waking up in a cold sweat tense.

Eldest left home. That has taken an enormous amount of adjustment for me and him. No more details. He reads this stuff. As I think I mentioned.

Youngest is playing for a top girls football academy which has put our weekly taxi-ing on a whole new level. We have levelled up taxi driving wise. Level 5. Welcome to Hell.

Middlest and Youngest both have big exams this year

Middlest and Eldest are going through the UCAS process, neither in a straight forward apply to Chemistry, get 5 offers and wait way…. no they have to be difficult and decide to study subjects that require a whole lot more work. Medicine and art if anyone is interested.

I have gone back on mumsnet. Enough said.

There are probably other reasons. But suffice to say the muse has well and truly dried up. I am sure it will come back at some point In the meantime I leave you with this dull snippet. In case you were wondering.

Let Somebody Go… — May 18, 2022

Let Somebody Go…

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This Friday Eldest is leaving school.

I am just leaving that there.

For me that sentence takes a while to settle. Like a heavy stone on my chest.

I seem to have been preparing for the big day for a long time. Sourcing school shorts big enough for him to wear on the last day as if he were still in the junior school (it’s an upper 6th Leavers Day tradition). Helping him apply to university. Providing food and support during the endless rounds of revision. Attending and supporting the ‘lasts’ of everything. Last Christmas concert, last Spring Concert, last rugby match, last hockey match, last cello lesson, last Monday…..

Throughout this process I would like to say that my overriding feeling is pride at the amazing young man he has become, which of course I am. Because he is.

But what I feel the most is unbearably sad.

“I called the mathematicians and asked them to explain. They said love is only equal to the pain”.

Coldplay ‘Let Somebody Go’

The Change (Part 2- The Revenge…) — April 10, 2022

The Change (Part 2- The Revenge…)

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So regular readers may remember my post a while back about the menopause. I have just checked and I published it 4 years ago in 2018, when the world was a different place. The Change is still one of my most read blogs of all time. So I thought it time to revisit it.

So here is my first observation…. I wrote that blog 4 years ago. And here I still am waiting for the actual menopause to happen. For those not in the know to be classed as ‘through the menopause’ one has to stay period free for 12 months.

So in my case I have, a couple of times, reached the 9 or 10 month mark and then, well you guessed it, an emergency trip to the feminine hygiene aisle. Well actually that’s not true because a while back (about a month before my first nine month stint) I invested an horrendous amount of money in pairs of period pants. A relatively new invention which are truly life changing. And landfill saving. Well they would be if I had used them more than thrice.

Sorry I digress. So I still haven’t made it through. The clock restarted again for me last December. Its all rather annoying. If by annoying I mean fucking irritating.

I haven’t gone down the HRT route. Mainly because I can’t face trying to get a GP appointment. That’s a whole other blog but I have during the pandemic just rolled on ‘as nature intended’ or not…as I am redundant evolutionarily speaking and if nature was truly taking its course and doing what was intended I would be pushing up daisies. Well again not actually as I want to be cremated. Good cliche though.

Since the pandemic (or rather since we started ignoring the pandemic) primary care hasn’t got all that much easier to deal with so I have not yet summoned the requisite emotional energy to try to sort it out. That’s an ongoing symptom a lack of emotional energy. Or indeed energy.

Combine that with 3 teenagers, none of whom have yet learned to drive, and I just can’t seem to fit it in. And yes I know I should ‘prioritise my self care’. Prioritising self care is just another way to make people feel bad about their apathy… or maybe that’s just me.

Anyway what are my other new observations 4 years on?

In my last blog my main issues were cyclical. Not now. Now they are constant. Hot flushes, irritability, tiredness and yet also insomnia, cognitive decline (or ‘going upstairs to get something and standing at the top of the stairs at a complete loss after the 30 seconds it took you to get up the stairs’), lack of emotional energy, weepiness or extreme rage, much more swearing.

However the main change since last time has come as a quite horrific shock to me. For my entire life until about a year ago if I put on weight I did so on my hips and arse. In a reassuringly heart friendly way. And I was able to channel my inner Monroe until I could be bothered to reduce my kettle chip intake.

Over the last year, and due to a combination of pandemic, some tough issues we faced with Youngest, being peri menopausal and just generally not ‘prioritising my self care’ I have put on weight.

I am not alone in this… we are a nation slightly plumper as we dealt with all the deprivations of lockdown in that time honoured way of comfort eating. I guess some people got thinner, due to a combination of Joe Wicks and making the most of that one permitted walk a day, but my guess (and I have done absolutely no research here) is probably not many.

In times gone by (for instance in my first year at Uni, horribly home sick and with a bakery serving the best vanilla slice I have ever eaten on my route home to halls for lunch) any extra weight was easily dispatched by a double pronged attack of aerobics and sensible eating.

And even at my heaviest (that year at Uni is still it remarkably) my stomach was flat and my waist trim. A fortuitous accident of genes I imagine. I always dressed for my waist.

And now as I hover dangerously close to that weight again I can tell you people that I no longer have a flat stomach or a trim waist.

Fuck.

Recently I read that the NHS may change how they measure fatness from BMI to waist to height ratio. I can guarantee you that any woman through or approaching menopause will fail. Unless they are that ‘haggard thin’ some women keep into old age.

No worries, I thought, I’ll go back on the Weight Watchers app and lose the excess. (Other diet apps are available. If you can find one with a more complicated ‘points system’ I’ll be amazed. My depleted cognitive function struggles I can tell you). And I’ll also do some exercise DVDs and stop pretending that a bit of light housework daily ‘counts’.

So I have. And let me tell you that stuff does not want to shift. I have stuck religiously to the diet. And almost killed myself 4 times a week and lost 1lb. Over 3 weeks. One measly pound. And none of it as far as I can tell from my waist.

Fuck.

So it’s depressing. I’ll be eating plain chicken and salad forever. Or I’ll be unhealthy. Take your pick.

Anyway I am soldiering on against all the odds. Until my weight, wherever it lands on the old bod, is at least comfortably in ‘normal’ BMI range although my waist to height may never get there, unless I grow, which seem unlikely.

So I have bought boot cut jeans and loose shirts and floaty cardigans. For the first time ever.

Fuck.

Witness — February 11, 2022

Witness

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You small patch of uninspiring mud
And tangled shrubs and broken bricks and sporadic grass
Graveyard of deflated, lost spheres
from games long over
Revealed in winter’s barrenness
What witness you have borne

Zip wiring teddies hung by their ears,
Trebuchets of poles where once beans scrambled
Paint mixed from gravel, water daubed fences
Chalk emblazoned flag stones
And shelters of sheets.

Naked abandon in sprinkled water freezing
Tepid pools deserted after one day of sliding
(For bugs and grass and rain)
Sun hats (with flaps), sun suits (with reluctance)
Surprise cricket matches (with Grandmas)
Police cars, and red cars, and skateboards and diggers.

Hot wheels on hot days out of the window
Ping pong and croquet (wood worm still allowing)
Bouncing and flipping and screaming and laughing
Tap tap of sticks and off cuts of carpet
Records broken in ruined socks.

Snowflakes on sleeves in wonder and confusion
Food sprinkled for four hoofed sled pullers
Snowman delivered by hand to the door
Water in guns and frozen in balls
And countless battles amongst boulder strewn fields

Fights with the shiny hard orbs of autumn
Harvesting melons and raspberries and cucumbers
(And strawberries, yellow and black soldiers permitting)
Birds logged and counted and nest boxes mounted
Teaching and watering and digging and planting

Muddy circles on free flapping laundry
Lost spectacles found in peg bags
Stumps and posts and nets and bare patches
Paint on tables and dollies in baths
And photos and photos and photos and photos

You small patch of inspiring mud
And exciting shrubs and useful bricks and field of dreams
Collector of lost but now returned spheres
For games still to come
Rediscovered in winter’s barrenness
What witness you have borne

No news is good news… — January 12, 2022

No news is good news…

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For a long time once my kids were born I paid absolutely zero attention to world affairs.

I became one of those people living in my own little bubble. There were many reasons. It was mostly down to time, which was in short supply, exhaustion, see time, and apathy.

Becoming a mother can shrink the world. Down to its ability to harm or hinder one’s carefully grown and expelled off spring.

The day is taken up with the survival, development and ultimately the flourishing of these small people. Well at least it was for me.

I retreated to a world of toddler groups and coffee mornings. PTA meetings and NCT groups. Soft play, zoos, woods, the playground. Teaching my kids to walk, get dressed, use the toilet, ride a bike, make friends. Everyday had a pattern. As did every week. And year.

There didn’t seem room in this existence for the cold reality of the outside world. The country was enjoying the last throes of a Labour government I had voted for. We were unaware of the problems being stored up. I didn’t care. I could see a GP when I needed to. The schools had cash.

Even once that hand cart started its slow trundle towards Hades I still didn’t much care. We had school events and parents evening and sports fixtures and the long school holidays full of adventures and trips. Life was mostly wonderful.

However it made me insular and woefully inadequate in any company where children were not the main focus. I was out of my depth at my husband’s work functions. I was uninformed.

But here is the thing. It helped me stay happy.

Since the start of the pandemic I have been reading a daily paper again. Looking at dashboards. Listening to round the clock news. Obsessing about the what ifs and what might have beens.

And whilst I am now very well informed I am also less happy.

For what started off as worry about the pandemic is now a worry about the environment, Russia, climate change, China, knife crime, Trumpism, the pandemic, the woeful state of our democracy, refugees, inequality etc etc.

The impotence I feel in nearly all these areas of world affairs is hard to live with. As is the indignation. The vitriol. The unfairness of mostly everything.

And although I am not advocating being wilfully uninformed about the world around us there is something to be said for the ‘head in the sand’ approach.

It’s tempting to retreat, ostrich like, to my bubble.

Free fall — December 14, 2021

Free fall

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You know that bit on a roller coaster? The part of the ride when you have climbed at over 45 degrees up a slope for what seems like an eternity. The rack holding the cars is creaking alarmingly.

Your adrenaline is flowing and you are not really sure why you spent all those minutes standing in a queue inching your way painfully forwards until the point when you could work out how many revolutions remained until you were going to get to take your seat. Would you get the front seat. Or the back. Or be lost in the middle.

The only view you have is of the sky and your hands, clenched white on the safety bar.

There is a pause as you reach the summit. It feels long and pregnant with anticipation.

And then the plummet starts and your stomach is momentarily in free fall. You put all your faith in this mechanism to see you safely round. Back to where you began. But with a feeling of exhilaration.

I never liked that part of roller coasters.

And that is what every day feels like at the moment. Whilst we wait for the next wave to crash over us.

It’s just that at the end there won’t be exhilaration. Just death and pain and possibly more privations.

And I have no faith in the mechanism.

At all.

Deep breath everyone.

Dual control… — November 17, 2021

Dual control…

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Over the last 17 odd years of parenthood there have been quite a few times I have felt totally out of my depth.

As soon as Eldest popped out (and that’s a kind way of putting it he didn’t really ‘pop’ more sort of extruded in a long and anguished battle of wills that, I cannot lie, felt at times personal) I was out of my depth. We couldn’t work the car seat, I had no idea how to ‘latch him on’, he cried for hours and I was totally unable to work out why.

It slowly dawned on me through my sleep deprived haze that there is no handbook for parenting. I had read books. They all said totally contradictory things. Yes there was no one way to do things and certainly no ‘right way’.

As a natural rule follower, list maker, control freak and fine detailer this was intensely terrifying.

The longer motherhood goes on the more you realise that the roles it involves are myriad and diverse. Some of them fit easily into one’s natural psyche (I for instance never miss a school letter, return a form late or fail to have the right child at the right place at the right time) but others…don’t.

In this last week I have been:

  • chef
  • maths/ English/ biology teacher
  • taxi driver
  • therapist
  • logistics manager
  • gaoler
  • confidant
  • baker
  • cheer leader
  • repairer
  • finder of lost treasures
  • cleaner
  • team manager
  • boss
  • tester
  • entertainer
  • party planner
  • butt of jokes

and that probably only scratches the surface. But there is one recent role that I absolutely loath and that is ‘driving instructor’.

Firstly I want to say that the mere fact that that child I extruded the blink of an eye ago can sit behind the steering wheel is unfathomable to me.

But leaving that aside (which I really can’t but that is another blog) being a driving instructor to one’s offspring is frankly terrifying.

I am not a good car passenger. Over the last 17 odd years the amount of driving I have done has been astronomical. I am the main driver now (partially due to my ‘bad passenger’ vibes but also because I do not drink) and as such my ability to tolerate others’ (and here I mean Husband’s) driving is probably somewhere below zero. I am a terrible passenger. I squeak at late braking, I grab the handle above the door on corners, I get stressed and tense and I offer ‘advice’. All of which are intensely annoying.

So when Eldest asks to go out in his car with me to practise my heart literally sinks. Probably how he feels when he hears me say ‘lets have a family board game evening’.

When I learnt to drive my parents never took me out driving. It took me a year of lessons to finally pass. Eldest does not want to wait a year. Frankly neither do we. We need him to take up some of the logistics slack. Leaving aside the eye watering cost.

So although I agree that I should take him out to practise I still do not really want to. It’s scary. He is not a terrible driver. Just not me. So he does things when and how I would not. It takes all my will power not to let out little shrieks of distress when he pulls out into a gap I would not. I breathe in when he passes parked cars. We fall out. I undermine his confidence.

So this morning at 7.10am (I kid you not) we went to the local village car park to practise manoeuvers and I determined not to speak/ shriek/ offer advice/ breathe in.

It went quite well. I think.

I am not sure teenagers really understand what it is like to just have to assume these roles, for which there is no training, which you would never do as an actual job, and for which you are totally ill equipped. No I am absolutely sure they have no idea. And why should they?

Still a little understanding wouldn’t hurt. Or a dual control car.

How was Saturday? — November 10, 2021

How was Saturday?

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So Youngest plays football and this year got signed on a training contract with a big league girls academy.

It’s an amazing opportunity one that is sometimes quite tough to deal with. All that pressure to do well and make the most of it.

It is also tough because the contrast between where she is playing her matches (grassroots boys) and where she is training (girls academy) could not be starker.

For instance at training last night the head coach asked her how her match on Saturday had gone.

I was quite interested in her response because this is what Saturday went like….

Her U15 side played an U16 side in the County Cup. She rocked up to take her place on the field with a bunch of 14, 15 and 16 year old lads. She does this every week, usually without the 16 year olds.

The parents were mouthy. Afterwards she said that when she had won a free kick near the opposition parents there had been quite a lot of, how shall I put this politely, scepticism.

At one point our goal keeper was taking flack from an opposition player. Boys rushed in to defend their mate. It got quite lary. A punch was thrown. Cards were shown. One team went down to 10 men.

The opposition persistently referred to her as the ‘little girl’ and mimcked her shouting. ‘The little girl says she has 3, poor her’ etc etc.

At one point 2 of them tackled her at once and she won another free kick. One of them told her that’s why she should be playing with the little girls. She told him to f*** off.

During the contratend two spectators stormed onto the pitch and had to be ordered off again.

They drew 3 all in full time and went to pens. They then lost in sudden death. To be honest I just wanted it all to end.

I asked her what she told her coach when he asked her how it had gone. Her answer?

Fine…

Not sure it really did it justice.