On Thursday (Dec 29) the baby and I were at King's Cross station in London about to head home. I could see some kind of protest near the station entrance and a few police officers but it was nothing too out of the ordinary for London.
As we got near to the station entrance something happened.* The protestors rushed the police or the police rushed the protestors, who knows, but batons were raised and we saw a bloodied face and a swarm of police and protestors. This was all about 5 metres away from us and the situation went from nothing to something in a matter of seconds. I grasped the buggy tightly and ran onto the main station concourse.
From there we got on the tube home and we were both fine. In fact the baby hadn't even noticed. This was a relief because one day of course I'll have to explain to her that sometimes horrible things happen, but for now I am content to have her think there is nothing bad in the world that her mummy cannot protect her from.
*The only news story I can find about it is here, on the Huffington Post website
Showing posts with label Bad things. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bad things. Show all posts
Friday, 30 December 2011
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Choosing between risks
I'm still thinking about risk. I needed to go to the post office today and pick up a parcel. The baby was asleep in the back of the car having just dropped off after a slightly troublesome night. I needed the parcel but was loathe to wake her.
The road outside the post office has three lanes of traffic and is just after a bend that cars often take too fast. The parking bays are on the right hand side of the car and the baby sits in the back on the left hand side. So I had two choices if I was to pick up my parcel: leave her locked in the car, which was visible from the post office or take her with me but get her out of the car with traffic zooming past me on a busy road.
I took her with me of course. But I did wonder for quite a while what to do. Truth is I suspect taking her out of the car was more dangerous than leaving her in it alone, with an accident more likely than an abductor. Perhaps it is because I am a journalist though that my brain works in headlines. Mother Leaves Baby in Car would be worse than a headline about a road accident.
I was of course influenced by the fact that she was asleep. Any parent knows that sleep is sacrosanct. I have an image of a cartoon in my head in which a mother holds a sleeping baby while the house is on fire. "Come on," says the firefighter, "we need to get you out of here". "Later" says the mother, "She's just fallen asleep."
But where do you draw the line when it comes to risk? If you are buying petrol and you need to go to the kiosk to pay, can you leave your child in the back of the car? At ten years old? At five years old? At ten months old? I have always done this at the petrol station yet wouldn't outside the supermarket. What about if you need the loo when you are out shopping? Can you ask a stranger to watch them much as you would your bag or coat? I would not dare just in case the worst happens. Yet what is more likely - she is abducted by that stranger or she gets ill from licking the toilet floor as she sits in the cubicle while I pee?
Raising a child is about gradually allowing them the independence to weigh up and take risks. I'm fine with that (until she wishes to do as I did and backpack around the world alone anyway). But goodness me the risks we take with them are many and the chances we take are abitrary.
Related posts:
The risks you dare not take
Searching for lost children
My baby, my daemon
The road outside the post office has three lanes of traffic and is just after a bend that cars often take too fast. The parking bays are on the right hand side of the car and the baby sits in the back on the left hand side. So I had two choices if I was to pick up my parcel: leave her locked in the car, which was visible from the post office or take her with me but get her out of the car with traffic zooming past me on a busy road.
I took her with me of course. But I did wonder for quite a while what to do. Truth is I suspect taking her out of the car was more dangerous than leaving her in it alone, with an accident more likely than an abductor. Perhaps it is because I am a journalist though that my brain works in headlines. Mother Leaves Baby in Car would be worse than a headline about a road accident.
I was of course influenced by the fact that she was asleep. Any parent knows that sleep is sacrosanct. I have an image of a cartoon in my head in which a mother holds a sleeping baby while the house is on fire. "Come on," says the firefighter, "we need to get you out of here". "Later" says the mother, "She's just fallen asleep."
But where do you draw the line when it comes to risk? If you are buying petrol and you need to go to the kiosk to pay, can you leave your child in the back of the car? At ten years old? At five years old? At ten months old? I have always done this at the petrol station yet wouldn't outside the supermarket. What about if you need the loo when you are out shopping? Can you ask a stranger to watch them much as you would your bag or coat? I would not dare just in case the worst happens. Yet what is more likely - she is abducted by that stranger or she gets ill from licking the toilet floor as she sits in the cubicle while I pee?
Raising a child is about gradually allowing them the independence to weigh up and take risks. I'm fine with that (until she wishes to do as I did and backpack around the world alone anyway). But goodness me the risks we take with them are many and the chances we take are abitrary.
Related posts:
The risks you dare not take
Searching for lost children
My baby, my daemon
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
The magical impenetrable world of brothers
I've just had news of friends' new baby boy, their second. I know I wrote recently about how much I wanted a girl but it is true also that my heart swells when I hear news of a new set of brothers. There is something romantic and wonderful about brothers. They can destroy each other (think Cain and Abel, think David and Ed) but they can be the making of each other too. If I were into quoting Bette Midler I'd say that they were the wind beneath each other's wings. Sod it, I'll say it. When brotherhood works it's as if they are the wind beneath each other's wings. It's why, although I am proud to be a Labour Party supporter, I cannot feel easy about having Ed Milband as leader of the party. Whatever your relationship with your brother is like, however much you think you can do better than them, you do not stand against them for a job. When Ed Miliband uses standing against his brother as an example of having shown courage I think no actually, it's a moral failing that you did so.
When I hear of a second son being born, I think of this line from an incredibly moving article by Simon Stephenson that I read in The Guardian in July, about the death of his brother Dominic in the Asian tsunami:
"To have any brother in this world is to be part of an exclusive club to which no riches, no secret handshake, no guest list can ever gain you admittance."
And it makes me hope that I have two boys in the future.
*************************
I've not read it yet but here is Simon Stephenson's book, Let Not the Waves of the Sea.
And here is another very moving book about losing, and searching for, a brother. It's called The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky and is by Ken Dornstein whose brother died in the Lockerbie air disaster.
*************************
Related post: Am I a SMOG?
When I hear of a second son being born, I think of this line from an incredibly moving article by Simon Stephenson that I read in The Guardian in July, about the death of his brother Dominic in the Asian tsunami:
"To have any brother in this world is to be part of an exclusive club to which no riches, no secret handshake, no guest list can ever gain you admittance."
And it makes me hope that I have two boys in the future.
*************************
I've not read it yet but here is Simon Stephenson's book, Let Not the Waves of the Sea.
And here is another very moving book about losing, and searching for, a brother. It's called The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky and is by Ken Dornstein whose brother died in the Lockerbie air disaster.
*************************
Related post: Am I a SMOG?
Friday, 12 August 2011
My baby, my daemon
I used to laugh, before I had a baby, at women who happily watched psychological thrillers before becoming a mum only to ditch them for romcoms afterwards, who said they could no longer watch the news because all the bad things went from sad to unbearable, or who, like a member of my bookgroup, didn't want to read The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (by Kate Summerscale) because it's all about the murder of a very young boy.
In fact when my baby was born I started joking about this kind of woman. People would ask me "What's it like being a mum?" and I'd say "Well, not much has changed except as a mother I now really hate peadophiles!" as if I didn't before.
But joke as I may, becoming a parent does change you. Not because non parents don't appreciate how horrible bad things are, but because it's only when you've known the all encompassing deep rooted obsessional feelings that you have for your own child that you can envisage what it might be like to lose them.
I don't hold with the idea that your child has no sense of self for the first couple of years. My baby has very obviously known from the very beginning that although we are clearly, profoundly, connected, she is her own person. I smooth her path in life and provide her with absolute and unconditional love, but without me she would still survive and flourish. It is me who now has no sense of self. My fate is inextricably caught up in hers. I do not think I could be happy if she was not. I realise she is my daemon, like those in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, and without her I would be a shadow, a soulless entity.
Which is interesting because it means having a child hasn't 'completed' me, it has (literally and metaphorically) shattered me. I have been ripped into pieces, of which she is one, and though her piece operates as a whole, my piece doesn't. Which is why I think I now understand why the bad things are more unbearable when you are a parent, why the story of the McCanns whose daughter Madeleine is lost, why the lament of Tariq Jahan whose son Haroon died in the riots earlier this week, why all the stories that make the news of parents losing their children of any age, why films in which baddies seek to harm the families of goodies, why books detailing the murders of young boys, are all worse once you have a baby. Not because it wasn't bad before but because it's no longer unimaginable, and because you realise just how horrendous the consequences would be should it happen to you.
In fact when my baby was born I started joking about this kind of woman. People would ask me "What's it like being a mum?" and I'd say "Well, not much has changed except as a mother I now really hate peadophiles!" as if I didn't before.
But joke as I may, becoming a parent does change you. Not because non parents don't appreciate how horrible bad things are, but because it's only when you've known the all encompassing deep rooted obsessional feelings that you have for your own child that you can envisage what it might be like to lose them.
I don't hold with the idea that your child has no sense of self for the first couple of years. My baby has very obviously known from the very beginning that although we are clearly, profoundly, connected, she is her own person. I smooth her path in life and provide her with absolute and unconditional love, but without me she would still survive and flourish. It is me who now has no sense of self. My fate is inextricably caught up in hers. I do not think I could be happy if she was not. I realise she is my daemon, like those in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, and without her I would be a shadow, a soulless entity.
Which is interesting because it means having a child hasn't 'completed' me, it has (literally and metaphorically) shattered me. I have been ripped into pieces, of which she is one, and though her piece operates as a whole, my piece doesn't. Which is why I think I now understand why the bad things are more unbearable when you are a parent, why the story of the McCanns whose daughter Madeleine is lost, why the lament of Tariq Jahan whose son Haroon died in the riots earlier this week, why all the stories that make the news of parents losing their children of any age, why films in which baddies seek to harm the families of goodies, why books detailing the murders of young boys, are all worse once you have a baby. Not because it wasn't bad before but because it's no longer unimaginable, and because you realise just how horrendous the consequences would be should it happen to you.
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