Blog goes pop!

I've planned, and discarded, lots of blog posts over the past few months. Thoughts come into my head but by the time they are half formed, or even half written, I've moved on. One of these was a list of things parents of young children do. You know the type of list, the ones that do the social media rounds frequently. Things like Fifty ways you know you were at school in the eighties or If you recognise these logos you were a student in the nineties etc. 

I only got to two things on my list before moving on:

Things parents of young children do

1. Start a parenting blog

2. Give up the parenting blog

The thoughts though, they're like bubbles. And I've written before about how important bubbles are in childhood. They are there one moment, beautifully formed, ready to be caught, and before you know it - pop - they're gone. 

Bubbles are quite a useful metaphor for many things, or so I thought. Last year my then two year old started to ask about death. There were sunflowers in a nearby front garden, dying, and she asked daily about them (daily, ha!, no toddler asks daily. She asked at least hourly, often more), and where they go, and started to use words associated with dying.

I tried to use the bubble metaphor. Bubbles, I told her, have a beautiful, but short life. You don't know when they will pop, but they will, and that's okay it's what bubbles do. They go on a journey, up and down on currents of air, and then their journey is over. 

Yeah I know, I was sleep addled. With literary pretensions, A dangerous combination.

There's a scene in Peppa Pig (which I have also written about before) in which Daddy Pig, asked how they work by Peppa, tries to explain about magic mirrors at the fairground and how concave and convex glass reflect light differently. "Do you mean it's magic?" says Peppa. 

That's what my daughter, quite rightly, did to me, when faced with the whole bubbles going on a journey bollocks. "Do you mean they go pop?"

I did mean that. Except, of course, the ones that go splat, like this post, which is not going anywhere at all really, other than it has been posted, which is more than most of my posts have been this year. 

Which brings me to a third item for my list:

Things parents of young children do

3. Restart the parenting blog

Pop!


-----------------------------------------------------

Actually this is the second post of the restart. The first can be found by clicking here.

The Tottenham Snail

I live quite near this mural, on the side of a house on the Seven Sisters Road in Tottenham, north London. I don't know how long it has been there but it must be nearing thirty years. When I was younger, it was always a sign that we were on the home straight, just a few miles from home, and though perhaps being near it now shows just how little the distance is that I have flown from my nest, I find it reassuring every time I see it. I love that, give or take the odd graffiti tag, usually painted over quickly, this snail has lasted for so long. I love the incongruity of it, on a road that just leads people to places, and is never a destination in its own right. But most of all I love that it is a snail. The kind of creature that we say yuk to, that along with slugs and puppy dog tails makes up small boys, the scourge of gardeners, and yes, covered in slime. Yet there it is, proud, bright and still there, heralding to my daughter when we drive past it that we are nearly home.

Where does all the time go?

I was thinking this week as I left work that what I think I have lost, in being a parent, is that sense of time. I walked past a student sitting in a comfy chair reading a book and drinking a coffee and I thought about how I never really appreciated the idea of having time when I had it, when there are no competing demands and time is something to be filled.

I wish I'd appreciated the glut of time when I had it. Now each unit of time must be accounted for - just enough time to have a bath before I need to feed the baby. Just enough time to zip the hoover around the crumbs she's made. Just enough time to swig a drink before making lunch before facilitating a nap before heading to playgroup before fitting in emails before putting the washing on before thinking about dinner before ringing my mum before grabbing a cheeky cuddle with my husband.

My favourite line ever from a play is from Waiting for Godot.

Vladimir: That passed the time.
Estragon: It would have passed in any case.
Vladimir: Yes, but not so rapidly.

It's been nearly a year since our daughter was born and each moment, even the most difficult ones, have been magical, enough to almost turn athiest me into an agnostic. But where the time has gone, I cannot say. It has passed far more rapidly than it used to.

I hate coming home

I like going to work. I don't mean the actual working, though actually I enjoy that too, but the actual going, the journey. At the moment one day a week I drop my daughter off at her childcare and drive about an hour to work. Sometimes I just enjoy the silence for a bit. Then I listen to the Today Programme. I hate the Today Programme with its in-jokes and smarter-than-you quips and up-its-own-arseness but oh the joy in listening to it uninterrupted.

I get to work in time to have a hot drink. Yes, a HOT hot drink, and a think and a read of the papers and time to plan my day and then I spend the day, you know, working, being intellectually challenged and busy and full of thought. It's all great.

But I hate coming home.

On the way to work I have a purpose - to get to work, and the luxury of time to myself. At work I am working, including through my lunch break to ensure I can leave immediately my teaching finishes so I can pick up my daughter. On the way home though the only purpose is to get home. Having not thought about anything but work all day, on the drive home I can only think about seeing my baby. It's a panicky feeling that every car I let go ahead of me and every mile under the speed limit and every red light makes worse.

It's glorious seeing my daughter at the end of the day, but truly, coming home, the journey, is awful.