Christmas has been strangely relaxed in our house this year. For the first time in 10 years of marriage we spent it home alone, just us, and our little elves, of course. I’ve developed a default habit of doing Christmas with my folks; other in-laws wouldn’t be as accommodating of my need to be en famille year in, year out, but it’s something that’s difficult to explain – probably rooted in some of the ramifications that go with having a family member with ongoing mental health issues. Well this is NOT what I intended to blog about, but anyway – my folks needed to be at home themselves this year, and the unanticipated lack of guests at Christmas opened up to us the previously unconsidered possibility of just staying at home for a quiet Christmas, just the 4 of us. Once the idea occurred to Dada he couldn’t easily be persuaded otherwise, and I felt the need to indulge his desire to pare things down this year. Although we’ve been living here for almost 18 months now, our sense of family and home are still forming, partly due to the fact that any time off is usually spent flying off to be with family, or entertaining a delightful stream of visitors. We love both those elements; the fun of a full house for so much of the year, and the excitement of seeing relatives involving flights and extended stays, instead of some of the taking-for-granted that might go on if there weren’t miles between us. But it does mean we spend very little time just being at home, all together. So this year we’re overdosing on it. Dada has a full 2 weeks off and we’ve no plans of any sort. So far it’s been delicious – a real sense of being-on-holiday-at-home. Admittedly I started feeling a touch of cabin fever today – it dawned on me that if we still lived in London then spending Christmas at home would have meant seeing lots of friends, and although we have a bunch of good friends here, family culture is so distinct here that people tend to see their extended families, and not their friends, during the holidays. I suppose I started feeling the urge for a conversation with someone of the non-male and non-family persuasion. So we did what we do best at times like that; invited ourselves over to see some friends, and then indulged in a little fast food and retail therapy on the way home! So it’s been a happy family experiment in what Christmas is like chez nous without any of the usual engagements or traditions, and while I liked it, I think we’re agreed that next year we’d like to be with lots of people. But that’s probably what’s been loveliest about staying at home; it met an important need to regroup as ‘just us’ for some much needed down-time, but it also reminded us of how lovely it is to have the families we do, and how much we appreciate the time we do spend with them.
The boys have been a delight, and we’ve loved the chance to watching them being very much themselves, at home, without all the adjusting and over-excitement that being away often brings. It’s been really magical to share the elements of Christmas with them; the first one in which they’ve both completely ‘got it’. And I’ve been so aware of having boys who are far from babies. The past 4 Christmases have involved:
2004: being 1 month off giving birth (but thinking I still had at least 6 weeks)...
2005: being the mother of an 11 month old baby, who seemed very much a baby due to the lack of walking...
2006: being the mother of a 2-month-old-baby-and-a-toddler-on-the-cusp-of-the-terrible-twos...
2007: being the mother of a 14-month-old-baby-and-a-toddler-on-the-cusp-of-the-terrible-threes, (which were worse)...
By comparison, this year was distinctly relaxing. My boys ate their Christmas dinner at the table with us, and demanded seconds of melon and prawns, and chicken. I didn’t have to spoon-feed anyone, or refrain from alcohol or pate, and once they’d cleaned their plates they went off together to play with their new toys. It was our first Christmas in a few years without a high chair at the table. In the absence of a baby to put down for a nap, I had one myself instead!
I laughed out loud at myself in Marks and Spencers yesterdat - I thought I'd read the price on a turkey as being £35, so was cackling away at the very thought of such an asurd idea. Then I realised I was right, that THAT was the cheap one. Soon stopped laughing.
Holy Quacamole but there’s something very wrong with the world when we’re supposed to think nothing of spending that sort of moolah on a dead bird. Especially when you consider that the same money could buy you 10 chickens for an orphan family in Rwanda, and feed them for years to come.
I’m having to resist the urge to go all bah humbug and declare Christmas cancelled. I’ll be fine as long as I don’t need to go near another shop tomorrow. I intend to walk on the beach, feast on festive treats, and ponder the wonder of it all tomorrow. No buying anything. Presents are all bought and wrapped and we’ve no need to buy another thing – whatever we don’t have we can live without, and we’re having chicken by way of protest at the ridiculous commercialism of it all.
Isn’t the money thing mad, though? We’ve been unusually restrained and I’m proud of the progress we’re making with tackling our debts. Most of the time it seems as though we’re only paying off the interest but the important point is our overall debt is not growing; we’re spending within our means and making ends meet. We’re lucky that we saved up to pay for Christmas this year, but it genuinely makes me feel quite ill to think of families for whom Christmas is just an enormous financial or emotional burden. My guts tell me it’s supposed to be so very different from that. Reading the Christmas story to the boys last night, I was struck by some of the drama and power of the story for the first time in years. It’s just so rubbish that with all our fancy modern advances and cleverness and things, all we really have to show for our interpretation of Christmas is the shops rammed full of people and alot of financial pressure. I think it’s really a shame that we can’t come up with something better; that we’re not more skilled at peeling back the veil and peeking into the heart of the Christmas story, teasing out the secrets that it’s trying to tell us. Next year I’ll be working on a Nativity with a local writer and a bunch of wonderful people; am so looking forward to that.
But for now, Happy Christmas, one and all, hope you find some wonder in it, or a moment to watch the stars, or listen out for angels.
the telly theme, Willie Harcourt-Cooze is the business. And he adores his family, and his wife is an uber-stylish model and she has the same hat as me. And his little girl just said "I've never had lamb before but this is probably going to be the best lamb I've ever tasted." And he's obsessed with choclate. Perfect.
"Mum! We need to buy marshmallows for Strictly Come Dancing!"
That's a direct quote, in response to him earwigging about our plans for a nacho feast and a bottle of wine infront of the Strictly final.
And so, we're eating our body weight in the yummiest marshmallows ever, which has become something of a Saturday night tradition. And salsa-ing around the living room. I wish you could see these boys rumba. They demand scores after each performance, and we shout "Sev-ern!" with gusto. I nearly had to put my new shoes on, just to feel the part.
And isn't Brucie the business? Something about that man makes me feel safe. Odd, but true. In a world moving so fast and lacking consistency, it's nice to watch him on a Saturday night, just like I did when I was a little 'un.
But now: Tom to win. I'm even going to break my own moral code and vote. Do you feel strangely compelled to do the same?
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... the shoes. Undoubtedly what Dorothy would be wearing in the 21st century. Ok, maybe without the socks...
I'm sure I've written about this before, but the Snow Patrol song 'Run' will always send tingles down my spine. It put words around unspoken aches at a time when I'd forgotten how to speak. Fittingly, I learned how to run while listening to this song; I could play it on a loop and watch the miles tick past. It was like a soundtrack to my journey out of the heart of darkness, back towards the light. This song gave me strength, and that strength turned into hope, and that hope has never disappointed me; it's made me who I am, and I'm able to admit to being proud of the person I've become.
Leona Lewis' version of this song is beautiful - her voice is incredible and though it's not my kind of music, I can listen to her sing because of the sheer impressiveness of her voice. But the song; it does nothing for me anymore. At first I thought it was just that her version was too sorrowful - when I first heard Snow Patrol sing it I felt like I was indestructible as the rawness of the lyrics powered my every move.
In a session with my psych (!) this afternoon the sound of my own laugh stopped me in my tracks - it sounded so alive, so vibrant and infectious. I was laughing because he was telling me he thinks I'm 'flying', and that he's thrilled and impressed with the way I'm responding to the sessions, and using them to find the deeper sense of peace that I've been reaching for. Hearing this song on the radio on the way home, I realised he'd hit the nail of the head. This song doesn't reach me as it used to because I'm not running anymore. Instead, I've found my wings.
Has anyone in the realm of science or psychology yet managed to establish why children prefer cardboard boxes to toys? Oh what am I saying, I KNOW it’s the element of imagination; that the beauty of a cardboard box is it’s infinite capacity to be anything - a rocket, a prison, a cat-trapping device, to name just a few of the current favourites in our house. But it still baffles me that my boys bypass the playroom in favour of any and every item that is officially designated Not A Toy. Weirder still is the fact that, knowing this, I still persist in filling my secret cupboard with yet more toys that will no doubt go neglected in favour of my desk or the items in the kitchen cupboard. These kids of mine; last Christmas they were given a play kitchen in the interests of equality and all that. Routinely they use it to fly to the moon, or tip it on its side and turn it into a cave, complete with handy cubby holes for hiding treasure.
That said, the little dude knocked over the library’s Christmas tree (or prissmas tree, as they call it) today. Oh, the mortification. He managed to apologise, albeit with a twinkle in his eye and a naughty grin, but the lady seemed won over. Like I said, these boys of mine are tricksy.
Sooo much floating about, so little urge to commit it to the screen. There was a time when blogging was my mental outlet, and though I stand by the value of that process, I have so little need of that these days. Lately a paper journal catches the chaos of my attempts to grow from sessions with a psychologist. We’ve talked about the ‘lightbulb’ effect of this course of ‘therapy’; the eureka moments they bring to small parts of my identity, and how the insights gleaned in those moments fill up my soul and make me feel invincible. But later comes the realisation that a lightbulb only serves to illuminate what’s been lurking in the dark, so I’m sometimes hard on myself and find the process filled with pitfalls. It’s fair to say I’m a work in progress lately, and while that sometimes makes life feel erratic, I’m giddy from the view I’ve got from here; I get glimpses of where I’m headed, and it looks good.
We’re in flux about the boy’s impending school application. Northern Ireland has the lowest statutory age of entry to school in Europe, which means he’s starting Big School a year ealier than would have been the case if we’d been in England, or Scotland for that matter. That doesn’t worry me; the challenge is choosing the right school. The fact is we’ve too much choice. The school we were least likely to choose has only one P1 class, with only 16 children in the class – that alone would be enough to make it seem streets ahead of many of our options had we stayed in London, so I’m conscious that too much choice can turn us into fussy parents. Thing is, we’ve found a school that looks perfect – but it would mean lots of driving, or a house move, or sending the boy off on the school bus scheme, which is about the only time that I feel 4 is way too young to be going to real school! In reality he's more than ready - he's straining at the bit to write his name, and draws pictures of himself that no-one believes he did by himself. I can't imagine holding him back another year, putting off his urge to reach out for new milestones.
But am I ready?! I’m zapping through the options and dilemmas like a mad thing. The realisation that the little dude could start nursery school in September too, leaving me free to work half days five days a week, has me all bewildered too. I felt a kind of pressure to think about career plans, but the nagging voice that whispers only ‘write’ won’t quite go away. Dada makes all the options sound so appealing; he paints a picture of me perched in coffee shops with my laptop, armed with time and energy to pursue my words, but that idea seems small and fragile, and I’m all at sea about what’s best to do. But Christmas has been bought and paid for – with my words – and a small fund has been building up in an account from little pieces that I’ve written, which this week amounted to exactly the amount required to buy a fabulous pair of shoes – with heels – and in red, no less! So they remind me that anything is possible, and encourage me to keep the writing going.
I’m out of time. Tomorrow sees me off on an adventure, with two small travelling companions, and I have three suitcases (or soup- cases, as they say) to pack.
The thing about blogging is you need, now and again at least, to pause long enough to delve into the daily stuff and pull out something worth wrapping words around.
Life has been positively stuffed-full of blog-worthy material, but the moments slip through my fingers like grains of sand, treasured for their moment and then lost to forever. I haven’t been finding space to lay down the little incidents and anecdotes that will be my memories. I feel the need to harvest them, to store up the wonder while it’s with me, the food that will feed my soul in years to come, when little boys retreat to their rooms or to the football pitch and no longer beg me to play being-baby-Jesus with them.
Nanny A came and it was an exceptionally lovely time. The Boys were in their element and somehow spectacularly ‘on form’ – so often their interactions with friends and family from 'home' can seem a little fraught or volatile; they can become markedly different from the boys I know and share every day with. I’m often not sure why, though I suspect the small intricacies of routine and structure underscores some sense of peace for them, and without those things they attack the boundaries with gusto, jostling to work out who’s in charge, and what the rules are, and most of all how best to buck them. All things I’ve come to LOVE about them; their spirit, and what Nanny deems leadership qualities, but still, it’s lovely to share them as I know them to be in the course of every day, and to hear affirmed so much about who they are becoming, and what a joy they are.
We bought a Christmas tree, and made valiant efforts to decorate it while the boys attacked the tinsel. I realised later that mince pies and mulled wine was all that was missing, but we sprinkled a little Christmas magic around the house, and the boys loved sharing it with Nanny. She brought with her the most fabulous Advent calendar in the world. It’s a wooden Christmas tree, bought last year, but this year each tiny daily drawer has a craft or thing to do, and we read the slip of paper in the morning and get to work in the afternoon. So far we’ve made paper chains and hung them in the house and last night while I sought retail therapy the boys and Dada made Christmas cards together. I don’t think we’ll ever overcome the glitter storm, but I quietly like that there’s gold dust in all our hair, and that there seems to be a trail of sparkling light accompanying us wherever we go. And of course the cards are a work of pure art. Today's drawer dictates that we'll be baking cakes and sharing them together for afternoon tea. Fabulous.
I was early for nursery pick-up time yesterday and got to hide in the hallway with lots of teary-eyes Mums and watch The Boy and all his classmates practising their Christmas concert. Don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so sweet in all my life. We’re practising the songs at home and talking endlessly about the baby Jesus. He assures me that the cows breathed on the baby to keep him warm in the manger, and if I have to pretend to be Mary asking for a place to stay one more time, I might need to start upping my daily caffeine allowance.
These days are sweet and easy, and you’ve no idea how much joy it gives me to able to say something so simple, and so good.
We all stayed up late last night in honour of celebrating Thanksgiving with our friends from across the pond. The boys raced around the place like something out of Swallows and Amazons, as only being at Dada’s place of work allows. During the ‘things we are thankful for’ moment after dinner, some kind soul said ‘Children, and all that they bring to a night like this,’ which was a very gracious way of acknowledging that they were careening around like little testosterone-fuelled lunatics. I said ‘bedtime’ and people laughed a little TOO much. Joking aside, one of our dinner party gave a little speech about what Thanksgiving means and it was one of the most fabulous things I’ve heard in a long time. She touched on the sort of picture-book side to Thanksgiving, told the history of the first settlers in America, and then paused to reflect that today the imagery of the things we associated with Thanksgiving can seem more like myths than reality in modern America. “But myths can animate culture,” she said, which strangely made my spine tingle, and then she encouraged us to imagine a time and a place where the hopes and dreams that Thanksgiving represents could become tangible, real, true. And then we ate pumpkin pie until we could barely move, and reflected on the things we’re thankful for.
Later we collapsed into bed, exhausted, and woke up this morning approximately three minutes before The Boy was supposed to be in school. I threw on last night’s clothes and was suddenly thankful for having been to the hairdresser’s yesterday and so being able to fly out of the house looking halfway presentable. The Boy was already dressed, despite being somewhat dazed by the speed of our departure, and he ate only a Clementine for breakfast but was pacified by Dada’s insistence that he’d get croissants after school.
It was also our first day of driving the new (old) car, which Little Brother is terrified of, for reasons that I can’t fathom. And also, predictably, the first day of snow. Hence the windscreen being frozen. Dada went to boil the kettle, without realising that the amp from the plug was still in the iron (don’t even ask) so the boys and I were treated to a colourful display as he electrocuted himself and danced around the kitchen trying not to swear. Finally we were in the car and on the way, but I had to keep opening the passenger door to check for oncoming traffic because my window was all iced up and wouldn’t wind down. At school I apologised to the teacher for being late and she manhandled me in a friendly way and assured us that we weren’t, which visibly put the boy at ease. Then on the way home the car spun on ice and for what felt like forever, we skidded all over the road while Dada heroically tried to regain control of the car. I would have thrown up on the spot except I hadn’t had time for breakfast while flying out of the house. Later, when tying up the insurance for the new (old) car, we discovered we hadn’t been insured, so if the skid had been worse we’d have been even further up the creek without a paddle.
“It was my plan to make this call at 8am, after I’d hovered out the hire car,” said Dada, at 10.17am.
When it was time to pick up The Boy, Little Brother echoed all our sentiments when he said “I no like this car, this silver car a baddie one. Where the blaaaaack one?”
The hire car company had asked me to leave the key under the doormat in case they needed to collect it before 12, which I duly did. When we came home from school the car was gone, but no sign of any sort of paperwork. This morning when Dada shouted DID YOU LEAVE THE KEY UNDER THE MAT across the lawn we joked briefly about the neighbours stealing it but that would be a step too far, even on a spectacularly bad day...
