Tag Archives: twins

My island

Posted on by

It was lying in bed last night that I began to question why I started keeping this public record of my experience of motherhood. Our windows were open to the summer air, a light rain fell and, understandably, I was feeling contemplative.

Casting my mind back, I thought in the very early days, it felt like this island of my old self in amongst the physical and emotional wreckage that having tiny twins had left in its wake. It linked me and my immediate alien state to the controllable and intellectual life I had known before.

As the months passed and life took on a new and less exhausting structure, my motives changed. I enjoyed hearing other people’s thoughts on what I was writing, and the idea that it gave them an insight into our life with babies in a new country, without me having to spend hours I didn’t have to spare on the phone.

Ever since my new life has come closer to my old life – intersecting professionally in at times quite a surprising way: my work takes me back to the office I sat in daily before the children were born, to the city where many of my friends still live, to the odd evening in restaurants I used to go to before I knew the less romantic reality the patter of tiny feet at 5am really meant. Now I am very busy and I have plenty of islands guiding me to myself.

So perhaps this record has become less essential? But, I thought watching the silhouetted leaves play their game on the curtains, it hasn’t: it’s just that its purpose has changed. No longer purely an overly-stylised record, nor a reminder of what I could do before my mind was addled with sleep deprivation, it has become a precious space for me to reflect on being a mother and what that means to me.

It is where I work out how I feel about certain challenges put in my way. It is where I muddle through how I ‘should’ be dealing with certain three-year old challenges to my desired status quo. High-blown as this may sound, I believe it is where I make note of my ideal of motherhood, in such a way that helps me act like that too (most of the time at least). Indeed, I would even go so far as to say that in writing this blog I possibly become a better mother, which is most likely why I persist.

Now enough pontificating and time to collect the children from nursery. Words are easier than actions.

A chocolate-bringing dragon

Posted on by

The cartoonish face on the screen stretched into a ghoulish smile. Misshapen teeth hung over its receding bottom lip, as it began to squawk, “That’s right. Well done” whilst clapping its claw-like hands. My little girl turned to me with her sweet face clouded and asked, “Is that a girl or a boy, Mummy?” To which I replied, “A girl, I think.” “I don’t like that girl. Let’s watch another video” And, I couldn’t blame her. The face on the screen was so repellent, so un-engaging, whether based in reality or fantasy, that I had no interest in watching it anymore either. 

At this juncture, I should make clear that this was not some inappropriately-chosen horror film aimed at much older children. No, it was the first one of the literacy programme on BBC Bitesize – their educational website. In a bogus attempt to make learning to read more fun, cheap computer animation had got it disastrously wrong – at least for my children. 

 Curiosity had driven me to it. Both children had recently expressed an interest in letters and words and I wanted to see what sort of approach one might take in teaching them more, beyond simply reading lots of books and pointing out the odd word here and there. I suspected (perhaps ignorantly) that whatever was on the BBC might be similar to what they might learn in school – and would therefore be interesting to see in its own right. 

The paucity of this offering, however, was more than demoralising. The content was utterly devoid of context: why should these words be learned rather than others; how would one use them; why were they being presented on a quasi desert island by strange partially human creatures with barely comprehensible voices without any reference to desert islands or  fantastical humanish beings who might live there … ? 

A day later I had the following conversation with my son: “I have a dragon in my home, but it is a very friendly dragon so it does not need to go in a cage. He gives me chocolate that dragon.” “Really?” I replied, “That’s very nice of him.” “Yes. And he’s got some for you too. It’s very delicious.” His imaginary world was littered with reality buoyed up by the magic dust of his own mind. His reality in other words consisted of the stories we read and the places we go to, just waiting to be picked up and played with, depending on what he wants them to do. 

Then it occurred to me that true learning is about creating a certain frame of reference, a certain ‘reality’ which is both fanciful and tangible. They have to be able to experience it, or at least much of it, directly or else it can’t be theirs to internalise and then manipulate at their own will. That’s why children’s authors who bend reality only ever so slightly to allow for wild adventure – Judith Kerr, Quentin Blake, Shirley Hughes, Helen Nicoll (even Meg and Mog go home to have tea on the grass after their journey to the moon, you see) are so wonderful. Such marvels of children’s literature probably do provide the best context for learning to read after all – which in any case is no longer very relevant; my children having temporarily abandoned their interest in words for scooters instead. 

May Day Outing

Posted on by

To satiate any hungry grumbling we first ate cake in the greenhouse – the children picking raspberry jelly off the top. “That’s a pretty tree, Mama!” they shouted as the ran away from us down the path. Looking at the colour seeping back into their peaky cheeks, I felt like Heidi’s grandfather ordering a strict diet of creamy milk and wholesome bread for the ailing Clara. But here, with the skyline of the city still in sight, where the goats don’t produce, it was jelly and cherry blossom that did it.

The thought to be so adventurous with our bank holiday outing had not occurred to me. A friend with a car and a dog-earred copy of a city tips magazine for children suggested heading to the edge of the city, where the Botanic garden is wild and children can roam free. As I sat squashed between the car seats, knees up to my chin, I realised a hard winter and two years constrained by early twin motherhood had made my ideas for days out rather cautious and unambitious. This was the spur I needed.

All afternoon the children raced and whooped and pulled up wild flowers in their sticky fingers. Emboldened by the wide expanse of open sky, they pointed at the man doing tai chi in the distance and began to imitate his slow and loping walk. Hilarity ensued. It turns out playgrounds are not enough for city children. Hamster wheels on a human scale, they are too prescriptive for real excursions.