bhalababy


Crisis or calling?

August 31st, 2010

At a time when I am learning who my friends are … or rather who my friends aren’t … I am learning other lessons that I would rather not and more and more I am becoming disillusioned with life’s textbook. In the process of discovering the extent that social norms dictate the opinions of others towards what we choose to do, I can’t help but notice how much it scares people when you do something out of the ordinary … it shakes up their ideals and makes them wonder how fallible their own nucleus is.

When we are children we are told over and over how to behave, what not to do, that we are being naughty when we are just being children, what constitutes the overly-important word: polite … and we are smacked or punished when we don’t conform. We are, in a nutshell, controlled until our natural instinct for life is sapped and we become clones of this Borg-like social colony that obsesses over the size of their TV, their bank balance and the latest SUV.

Not surprising then how if you sit still for long enough and listen to your heart’s strongest desires – when you choose to follow a path that doesn’t fit the norm – you are not honoured or revered. It’s just not part of what we have been taught as children. People think you’re a problem; they accuse you of having a midlife crisis if you are remotely close to ‘that age’ … and sometimes your therapist even asks you to check your hormones. You become the person people tut about while they wonder if you’ll ever get a reality check.

But whose reality exactly?

I think about how my child, since he could string a coherent sentence together, spoke maturely about his ‘other family’; the one with the brother called SiscoFranco and the father from Spain and the mother from Paraguay … or was that the grandparents? He will be able to remind me because the story has always been the same, which makes me believe that, at his age when he can’t even remember what he had for breakfast immediately after taking his plate to the kitchen, there has been no embellishing. Children are so close to the spirit world that they need encouragement to find who they are now, while they still know why they came and why they chose you … although my child has always stuck to his story that he chose me because no one else was available!

It is a cruel society that shapes our children to fit a mould rather than encourage them to find their own unique fit.

Sure, I’ve been on the other side, blaming people for either taking too many drugs, being in lala-land or possibly just not getting enough sleep. But now I am here, I realise how profound it is to give up the norm and be quiet enough with myself to access what exactly it was all those years ago that brought me into this world in the first place.

Whether out of compassion or ignorance, people tell me they hope I find out who I am. But I have always known … of course I have. We all have an inner knowledge of who we are; it just isn’t necessarily the person people feel comfortable knowing.

It is not so much about change. It is about finding your way back. It is about ‘un’change.

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Fight? What fight?

August 31st, 2010

When you ask someone to please do a cartwheel for you and they say they can’t and you say try and they still won’t and then you beg them to just try the damn somersault and they dig their heels in and you say you are going inside if they don’t at least try … and they turn their back on you and refuse and you reiterate that you are going to walk inside if they don’t just do the somersault to see if they can or can at least do it to please you … Well, when you walk inside, is that a mutual decision or yours alone? Even a child’s logic can figure that one out. I know mine makes it very clear to me when he is doing something based on my not doing anything and he states with no ambiguity that his actions are really my decision.

I have not only been doing cartwheels for years but I have been shadow boxing too … against an opponent who has never bothered to show up but who has always taken credit for being in the fight. There doesn’t seem much point hanging around when the opponent is always a no-show. He will turn up one day and see … everyone has left and he is alone.

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Full disclosure

August 17th, 2010

One of the reasons I started this blog when I had a baby was because I was amazed at how mothers gossip about each other. Everyone has an opinion on how other mothers are coping, whether they have PND, what they feed their babies, when they wean them, how their mothering effects their child’s behaviour, whether they follow a routine, if smacking is condoned and a range of other general issues including reasons for bedwetting and tantrums. Mothers, in their search to find balance and normality in a mind-blowing situation can become … well, they can become a bunch of bitches.

I was, however, determined to let people know how I was doing and what I was failing at and I wanted to make it public so that people could either empathise or just feel like they weren’t alone. I know most of this generation was brought up with a side of shame and guilt at every family meal and I wanted these to be the only things I was willing to conceal under the gem squash skin.

People have commented over the years about things I have written, they have empathised and they have disagreed but they have always taken this blog at face value. Now that I am being public about other areas of my life, however, people have been coming out of the woodwork like bora that you don’t know is there until it’s done a whole lot of damage … people are now judging me about having been so public about baby.

The purpose of my blog is to create a bit of unease; some tension to provoke debate … it is not about causing damage but alleviating pain, both for myself and for others who may be going through the same thing. Like I said in an earlier post, we are all part of the same humanity and what is happening to each of us is also happening to millions of others … so where is the shame in sharing?

People I have known for years, and some I have never met, have used my frank discussions to finally open up about going through the same thing and close friends have only gone public once they have already been through it. I can’t express the pain involved so I know that those people have been to hell and back before they have even told anyone what they were going through.

Despite judgement and criticism, I will always stand on my soapbox. Other people’s secrets are sacred to me but my own life belongs to the collective. I may be scrappy and I may offend people with my lack of regard for issues that some consider too private to divulge so publicly … but I believe my life should come out of my own mouth, not the mouths of others. And when people try and silence me, I only shout louder … only this time I can shout to a lawyer.

However my soap opera plays out in the end, I think I owe it to myself to explore the world out there for an opportunity to grow and connect to those millions of people with whom I share a part in this tragedy. If nothing else, I owe it to myself to rip the words right out of the mouths of people who would rather discuss my life with others.

Gossip is always easier than confronting any issue. It’s not surprising then that it is the people who devour magazines such at Heat and Hello! who are the ones that choose to base their opinions on the gossip that they hear rather than my truth that I publish.

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Monsters

August 9th, 2010

I shouted at my child one evening because he was too afraid of the dark to go to the toilet about ten meters away from where I was making dinner. It’s one of my major faults: intolerance under stress. He threw a tantrum, I threw a wobbly … and I ended up leaving the food to burn while I went to turn the light on, still wondering what the performance was about when he doesn’t usually have a problem with the darkness. I start blaming myself and I get wrapped up in a kind of helpless feeling because I can’t make things right for him. Anyway, I recognised it as a problem and the next night I took him upstairs to the little area outside the two bedrooms. I made sure it was well lit where we were standing but dark in the bedrooms and I explained to him why I think he is scared of the dark – it’s not about monsters but about a time when he was much younger when he came downstairs in the dark while I was watching TV and I walked out of the TV room, got a fright myself, which terrified him so much I think his feet lifted off the ground.

I took him into the dark room and showed him how things looked lighter once he was inside and I showed him everything in the room. I then took him out again and explained to him how the pupil works and showed him the difference between how the dark room looks from an area flooded in light when the pupils constrict and how it looks when the pupils dilate on stepping into the darkness.

That’s all he needed – that’s all he ever needs – a few facts. I forget sometimes that he is only four and I also forget sometimes that he can process information so well. A simple explanation can make a huge difference. He went in by himself after that. He didn’t stay in there for long but I think we are on the right track now to overcoming a fear before it becomes so sunk in his psyche that there is no hope of ever extracting it.

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Fears about peers

August 5th, 2010

People say I’m boring because I don’t drink. And I say I’m comfortable enough with myself to not have to alter my mindset when I go out to have a good time. It works for me. I have a great time out regardless, meet people, make friends, dance my fanny off and wake up with a clear head for my child, ready for a run first thing in the morning.

Besides the fact that I have had my quota in my lifetime already to not need another alcoholic beverage before I die, I honestly believe that if a child never sees his parents drink that he will somehow grow up into a teenager less inclined to succumb to peer pressure. I vomited from alcohol for the first time when I was nine years old. I had seen my parents and their friends drinking all day at the Christmas dinner table and I thought the little tap on the box of wine quite nifty … so I used it until it was dry. And that was me set up for a very early bout of alcohol poisoning and many years of over the recommended daily allowance of flavoured wine and cocktails.

Children who are exposed to parents who smoke or take drugs are more inclined to do so too so why should that not be true of more socially acceptable forms of substance abuse? I don’t know if it will work but surely it’s worth a try. It’s an easy enough experiment but it takes a fair amount of commitment to the cause.

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“Life’s like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

August 4th, 2010

And since the last post I had no idea what I was going to get. I have since been a student on a crash course in duplicity. The great writer that I am (hah), I had to look it up when told that’s what we’re dealing with. It is a word I would prefer not to know and it is a course I would rather not be taking … but then I should have thought about that before dipping into the box of chocolates. Abstinence, like ignorance, can sometimes be bliss.

But just like everything in this wonderful life, there is a great flip side. I run. I run like Mr Gump. And nothing can stop me. And it’s made me remember the first time we took our baby to the paediatrician for his very first check-up. The first thing she did after checking the circumference of our brand new baby’s head was check my husband’s blood pressure. “Now is the time to get healthy,” she said. “You have a responsibility to look after your health now that you have a baby. You have to be sure you are there for him until he is old enough to go his way.”

I remember thinking what a great thing to say and how kind she was to look out for the family unit. We all need to remember those words when we become parents since that is what we need to live by when there is another human being at risk if we leave this earth too soon.

So watch this space for the launch of the Forrest Gump School of Fitness for flabby fathers and mothers. Just don’t expect any chocolates.

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Pandy’s box?

July 28th, 2010

I have taken the below passage out of my latest book club read, Mitch Albom’s, tuesdays with Morrie:

“I’ve learned this much about marriage,” he said now. “You get tested. You find out who you are, who the other person is, and how to accommodate or don’t.”
Is there some kind of rule to know if a marriage is going t work?
Morrie smiled. “Things are not that simple, Mitch.”
I know.
“Still,” he said, “there are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don’t respect the other person, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don’t know how to compromise, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can’t talk openly about what goes on between you, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don’t have a common set of values in life, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike.
“And the biggest one of those values, Mitch?”
Yes?
“Your belief in the importance of your marriage.”

There has been a minor Facebook war over my going public about my relationship, which, incidentally, has been neutralised. It had to do with balance and blame. But the above passage gave me a kick up the arse. The above passage showed me what I should have seen years ago. It isn’t so much about a lack of belief in the importance of our marriage so much as a total lack of importance. Importance comes from communication and my husband hasn’t spoken to me about anything in months and about very little in years. And that is the truth.

But people find it hard to hear the truth about things they have already formulated an opinion on and especially on something that makes them shine a light on issues in their own relationships. I continue to shine my torch under the carpet revealing what others believe should remain there. (see also: http://www.bhalababy.com/2010/06/28/my-life-as-an-open-book) I want people to see that there is no shame in sharing a very human failing. I won’t be silenced because people find what I say uncomfortable and the only thing I am sorry for is how vague I was previously.

Morrie used an analogy I think is appropriate to share: we are not all individual waves crashing on the shore but part of the same ocean.

I am a work in progress. But I have the courage to recognise my flaws, and the inner strength to erect the scaffolding and do the work. My husband, however, is a derelict building site … absolutely fine if it wasn’t for the fact that he thinks he is a palace.

I was asked recently by a lovely young man to be his life coach. He was sweet, I was flattered … tempted even … until I realised that I have done all the coaching I care to do for a while and the next man I am with will climb the scaffolding with me, chat to me while I work and add value to the renovations. He won’t be afraid of the change.

For almost two decades I have loved a man so much I thought I would die without him so I can tell you all that you can love someone with all the stars in the sky but unless he loves you back with the moon, he has the ability to snuff out every one of those lights. He loves me ‘in his way’ he says … but then so do wife beaters and adulterers have a ’way’ of loving. Love needs to shine for the sole benefit of the person it shines upon.

Love is a gamble – sometimes you put everything you have on the table and all you end up with is change for the car guard.

I am not a victim, just a student on one of life’s very cruel courses on love.

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Fizzling friendships

July 26th, 2010

I was caught up in a cheesy email chain letter (try and say that fast) recently. It was about friendships, relationships and those people who drift through our lives passing on a little wisdom, or gathering some, before moving out of our lives again. Being close to those midlife crisis years (allegedly) has given me cause to seriously reflect on the words in the email even though I feel slightly ashamed to have passed it on. Having a baby shifts things with friends, as does getting a divorce. You change, situations change, others change … and you shift up and down rungs of friendship ladders all the time. Yet you still feel like mourning the loss of a friendship regardless of whether the parting is good or bad.

Escaping to Durban meant my child was away from his school friends again for another month. He forgot their names. Everywhere we went he played with other children, behaving like he had a new best friend each and every day … only to forget that person the next time he met someone new. I couldn’t help but wonder why we fixate on the breaking down of long-lasting friendships when often the best thing to do is just let them run their course and then let go.

There are a few friends that have just drifted away and then there are those I have turfed out intentionally. I can count on one hand only the ones I have turfed intentionally. They are: the girl I shared digs with who slept with every guy I brought home for ‘coffee’ … hence having to wait an extraordinarily long time before I could find someone to harvest my cherry tree; the guy who almost beat up my husband on a small road in Putney outside the house we shared with him … I suspect it had something to do with pent up frustrations over my forbidden fruits; and there is the guy who I have known for longer than I have known my husband who, like all good gentlemen do, has backed the horse he feels will come out tops and is giving my husband advice on our divorce.

I used to obsess over the severing of these relationships as though they were limbs I could still feel even though they were no longer there. But through my child I am learning to look at what I have right in front of me … not only the magnificent friends I have and love but the incredible people all around me waiting to be delved into; waiting for that spark that begins it all.

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Old habits die hard

July 23rd, 2010

“You’re not grumpy about me, you’re grumpy about your car,” he stated when I was short with him moments after failing to push-start my car down the hill, having to abandon it at the bottom of the neighbourhood. I had searched everywhere for my car key so I could get him to school and discovered it – as I often do – in the ignition. Only this time it was different … the key was halfway on. My luck never seems to run out when it comes to my car always waiting there in the morning with the key begging someone to steal it, but this morning I sensed my luck was not going to get the car to start as I remembered how, while I was washing my car, my child had been listening to the radio while imagining he was his favourite new TV personality, The Stig. After pushing it halfway around the neighbourhood, over two very tricky speed humps and down two monstrous hills – I know because I usually run up them – I gave up and marched my child along the road to school.

But he never lets me get away with taking my frustration out on him. He always reminds me how important it is to separate my mood from his behaviour, like the time he sensed my mood and told me, “I don’t want to talk about this now,” knowing the outcome would change if he waited until I was in a better mood.

I think the most tortuous path one takes as a parent must be the undoing of injustices in your own childhood, not knowing if you’re only creating a new path to perpetuate the cycle.

He stands up to me, which is a great start as it is something I am only now learning to do with my own parents. And speaking of my own parents, I have spent a month with them and he stood up to them as well. When my mother told him to eat his food he told her, “I will eat it when I am ready.” When she told him to look at the pretty smoke coming out of a factory chimney he said, “It is not pretty smoke, it is bad for the environment.” When my father was getting impatient he said, “Just calm down poppop, it will be done when it is done.” When my mother threatened to smack him if he did something naughty he told her he’d smack her back if she did. He is called cheeky, he is sometimes called rude, but I let it slide because I always took exactly what was given to me and it seems that’s a hard habit to break.

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Ubertravel

July 22nd, 2010

Someone one said that you forget what people say to you and you forget what people do to you but you never forget how they made you feel. I could wax lyrical about that statement all day long but what I want to use it for right now is to try and prove that taking a 4-year-old child travelling to India – or anywhere else for that matter – is not something that can be easily forgotten … and I mean for the child. There are details about our trip that I can’t even remember but my child talks about them often. He’ll tell me that we caught a train to Siliguri after Varanasi; he’ll tell me about the place in Kalimpong and the one in Jaldaphara, where we had to fill up a bucket before pouring the water over our heads from jugs to wash. He asked me where we got lost when we found that nice taxi driver to take us to the Science centre, which he remembers was closed. He’ll tell me where we only had cold water, where we didn’t have a shower at all and where there were only squat toilets. He tells me in detail about his swimming in the Ganges and recognises the names of the places we went to when he sees India on a map. Someone may have said something to you several years ago, something that had a profound effect on you at the time – you will probably have forgotten what it was a few days or weeks after the words were spoken but the effect will live with you – possibly forever. Memory of the detail will fade … maybe …  but what he will always have is the memory of how the trip made him feel. He will always be that uber-cool kid who went backpacking around India when he was four and that is sure to feed who he is and work its way into his makeup. He is changed because of it … I suppose we both are.

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Forking off

July 21st, 2010

My mother asked me what my next move would be. She was referring to the next step in the process of taking myself and my child through a divorce after my husband’s decision to fight for our marriage was followed swiftly by amnesia.

“To go for a run,” I replied.

On the brink of something so huge, I can no longer think in terms of years, months or weeks … sometimes even a day ahead is a stretch … so I think as far as the next few hours, and the only steps I can think of are small … and usually involve running. It ties up quite nicely with my intention to run a full marathon before the age of forty, a milestone that is fast approaching and one that I intend to reach in clichéd fabulousness. It means I can take all these next steps in a positive strength-gaining manner and achieve something solid when everything around me is tumbling down.

Or is it?

There is something to be said about rights of passage, something that begs the question on the outset: Is this really necessary? As it is with climbing mountains, the view from the top always surpasses the obscured view at base camp and the feeling of getting to the other side shifts all previous protestations into cries of, “That was so worth it!” So why are some mountains so damn difficult to climb? Is it because of the baggage we’re dragging … or the people?

Adapt or die. Is that the thing it boils down to? It’s taken me five years to adapt to life back in South Africa; five years to find my way to the life path I was searching for during the money-spinning days of London’s investment world; five years to turn my world on its head and redefine my life and who I am. Adapting to save a marriage would be devolving … it would be like both adapting and dying simultaneously.

I embarked on a spiritual journey just over a year ago. It is not a conventional journey but one that has led me to make choices such as giving up alcohol, caffeine and certain foods. Peer pressure aside, it has been relatively easy because I have come out with a greater sense of clarity, a strong, healthy body and energy I so desperately need to summit the next peak, baggage in tow. The feeling that I have gained from this journey has made my decision relatively simple. Not easy – never easy – just simple. I have realised if someone can choose a house, a bedroom, the TV, a bag of crisps and a pint of beer ahead of a marriage, then not choosing those things to the detriment of the marriage should also be acceptable.

But then in divorce no one is right. I desperately wish it wasn’t over but I am doing what I am being pushed to do – I am forking off down the road less travelled where my pioneering skills will lead me to a place of no mountains for a while. Or perhaps I will just have to go climb a real one.

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“Same, same, but different.”

July 20th, 2010

Just like the expression that rolls off the tongues of so many Nepalese stallholders, it just so happens that my sisters all have a totally different take on our household environment and the way we were raised … as though we were raised by different parents. What’s interesting though is that the older we get the more common ground we find … as though our cellular memories are starting to meld.

During this time of ‘escaping to mummy’, I have had the opportunity to spend the first ever quality time with the sister who is number three in line (I am number four). She’s never liked me but it’s never been relevant since we have never spent enough time together for it to matter. But talking this time, we have together discovered the reasons for this dislike.

You grow up in the same household as someone and just go ahead and assume what you know is known by your siblings too. You also assume you are being brought up by the same parents. Both these things are not the truth. I was stunned when my sister told me that she had no idea that I was a paid informer. I thought it was known across the whole snobby middle-class neighbourhood that my mother rewarded me to snitch on my sisters. It just seemed so obvious … the same way I learned never to tell my other sisters anything that I didn’t want my mother to know. I have had three sisters for almost 40 years and it is only now that a foundation for any kind of sisterly relationship is developing because of a mother who incites a kind of sisterly antagonism every time she is around. I know she never meant to but I can’t help but wonder whether deep down she harboured a jealousy of a bond she couldn’t be part of. Perhaps she was concerned that we might shut her out. Regardless, I ponder the reasons she seems critical of the bond I have with my own child and I realise that I carry with me a lot of her baggage when I proclaim that there will only be one child in my life.

“There are no facts, only interpretations.” Nietzsche

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My life as an open book

June 28th, 2010

You get people who brush things under the carpet. And then you get me. I lift the carpet. And then I search. With a flashlight. And I broadcast what I find.

I blogged about my travels. I put it all out there for everyone to read. People could read with horror or wonder and know what I was experiencing almost daily. And when I came back, I didn’t have to try and pack into a single conversation the enormity of the experience of travelling through India with a 4-year-old. Everyone just knew and asked for only a little information to fill the gaps in the story. A cultivated result.

But we tend not to do that with other life-changing experiences. We tuck things away and in the face of an enormous experience such as two great people parting ways, we have to explain how we got to this place without anyone noticing.

People were shocked when they heard my marriage was breaking up. It took them by surprise and I have been explaining for months what should have been out in the open for years. When you get to a point of needing support, it is useful when people know what you need the support for instead of having to bring your nearest and dearest up to speed. I had left a trail of crumbs on Facebook … a trail that didn’t lead me back home but rather straight into the witch’s house. My Facebook page became a forum for all the people who themselves had been tucking things away. Is my midlife crisis merely a sign of these new sandwich years – a generation stuck between a parenting style of shame, guilt and denial and a new enlightened age of gentleness and introspection? I haven’t seen the driver. Regardless, life’s experiences need to be shared. Not only do we learn from our own experiences but we also have an opportunity to teach. We don’t – and can’t – live in a vacuum.

“If you share with others, they will share with you”, I keep telling my son. And that kinda means I have to do the same … only this sharing thing just got a lot more grown up.

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‘Mommy Dearest’

June 25th, 2010

“Just make the decision to stay, and that’s that!” she says through puckered lips. I always find it amazing how someone of five foot can look down her nose so effectively.

I am in Durban at the moment. I ran ‘home to mummy’ to escape the stress of a tricky separation. Most people who know the relationship I have with my mother think that decision justifies a few months in a mental institution … and I might just be heading that way. What I was hoping for, and what seemed a few weeks ago like a very real opportunity, was the chance of using a truly shitty situation to heal the extremely tense and volatile relationship I have with my family. My friends may have a point though. In only one day, she went from being supportive to self-righteous and I feel like being a rebellious teenager and shaving off my hair. My child is all for it. Of course my husband thinks it’s about him. But my mother is too wrapped up in the fact that another daughter (the third) is getting divorced that she doesn’t care about my motives; all the wants is for me to martyr myself rather than risk the shame this will bring upon her. After a few days I realised that she would rather just ignore it, choosing not to speak about it lest something is not about her.

My child has already picked up on the volatility of this relationship. He was playing in the bath with a water pistol and he sprayed the ceiling … and the curtains and the wall and the floor. He froze, looked at me with his huge blue eyes and asked, “Are you going to get into trouble now, Mum?” Perceptive.

But the fact that I have chosen to spend five weeks in a household I spent 19 years of my life trying to get out of and the next 19 years of my life trying to heal from gives you some indication how bad the alternative is right now.

You can have a mother but if she isn’t there for you emotionally, then you may as well not have one at all. And I suppose the same could apply to all your relationships.

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Favouritism or just a different perspective?

June 23rd, 2010

I was speaking to a mother of two girls and a boy – someone who claims to love her two daughters but to be ‘in love’ with her son. The topic of favouritism came up and she denied she has one … a favourite.
Is her denial just self-preservation because she doesn’t want to seem like a bad mum or does she really not see it? … because, really, it’s quite normal isn’t it? … to prefer one child over the other/s since, in the big mix up of DNA, the more children you have the greater the chances are of having one that is so like you, you just can’t help loving that one more. We show them that they are ok because someone else has the same quirks as they do. We provide a comfort. My mum favours one of my sisters while my dad favours me. I always wanted to be my mum’s favourite but, like my friend, she always insisted we were all equals. If she had just made it clear from the start, would it have been easier? Would I have been under less pressure to try and please her? Children always pick up on stuff anyway so surely we need to make it clear how things are so they don’t spend half their lives trying to find a way through the fug … and the other half in therapy.

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The chicken and the egg

June 21st, 2010

It sounds surgical every time I say this, but I am separating from my husband. I often wish it were surgical as both the procedure and the recovery time would be shorter. Besides all the material I have on the subject which you will no doubt be subjected to at a later date, I have to mention that our child has not slept in his bed for a very long time. Now most often when couples allow their babies/toddlers/children to sleep in their beds I would profess to an unhealthy marriage and one that is most likely going to break up. But my child has been in his own room, in his own bed since the day we arrived home from hospital and has only slept with my husband and me since we have no longer been sleeping in the same room let alone the same bed. I can’t help but wonder that perhaps the child in the bed thing gets a bad rap. What if the child in the bed is only the scapegoat for a marriage that is on the rocks anyway? What came first: the broken relationship or the child in the bed?

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Strings attached

June 19th, 2010

No matter how free from attachment you might become, there is always the child. That child can take everything from you: your time, your money, your patience. But he is always the most important thing in the world, regardless of that little resentment that sometimes creeps in. But when he strokes my face in the morning to wake me up with “I love you mummy”, I could give him my soul as well.

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We’re back

June 18th, 2010

We’ve been back for over two weeks already … although I can’t say ‘back home’ as the term ‘home’ requires a fair amount of redefining right now. The old adage, ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ does not ring true in my case. Less hostile perhaps but not fonder. What absence has done, however, is give me clarity as a person free from attachment and therefore free of influence from other people, where I am, or what I am doing. I have come back with a stronger sense of being.

All those who accused me of needing to run away to India to find myself were way off. I didn’t need to find myself since I never lost who I am. We never do you know. We always maintain exactly who we are but access different parts of self at different stages of our life, adapting and changing to different circumstances.

As suspected, the memories of India have blurred and faded and even looking at the photographs feels more like looking at someone else’s holiday, bar the gorgeous boy with long blond curls who looks very familiar. I don’t. India was the mountain I had to climb to get to ‘the other side’ and the person in the photographs who looks a bit like me is the person I lost touch with only days after touching down on home ground. The smile has faded too. But the strength and the courage and the feeling that I can do anything that I set my mind to … that’s still there. I may not have climbed the mountain to find myself but I have come down off the mountain with a far greater sense of self. I conquered fears and stereotypes and I created a whole new part of myself.

In a moment of missing his dad while we were in Bahrain, my son insisted on buying a book about a little boy whose dad wasn’t around and he imagined him to be on the moon. In trying to explain the moral of the story, I asked, “If you had to imagine where your dad was right now, where would he be?” “On Mars,” was his quick response. Hmm, just a coincidence? ;) As I grow up … and just grow … I look for some element of change or growth in my partner. But, just because he’s not ready, doesn’t mean I need to wait; we’re all on our own timetables and have to evolve at our own pace. I know we still have stuff to work out but that will have to be in our next life. And what about the child, you ask. Well, he’ll be just fine.

As Darwin once said: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor is it the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

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A Magic Carpet Ride

May 28th, 2010

I tear open the freshly-baked croissant and shove two triangles of white Toblerone inside. I eat it as it begins to ooze out the sides. This is my breakfast. I’m trying to find the two kilograms I lost in India and Mills is helping with her sublimely creative cooking; restoring me, body and soul. The Toblerone croissants were all ‘me’ though … who else could come up with something like that?
And so began a week of indulgence. That’s what Bahrain is all about it seems … the part we’ve been exposed to anyway. I wasn’t ready to go back home after Kolkata and it became clear why when, on arrival to total comfort and relaxation, I collapsed for two days, as did Nic. And just over a week later we are exhausted again, but for entirely different reasons to the things that exhausted us in India. We are exhausted because we are on a Milly itinerary – less adventure and way more holiday. There’s the food, someone else doing my washing and making my bed and someone driving us everywhere we want to go … it’s just totally indulgent.
We got kissed by the Middle Eastern sun at the Ritz-Carlton Beach Club where the sea is warm and the people more so. When the wind blows you don’t feel it because it is the same temperature as the sun that sits suspended in its own heat-induced haze and the sound, combined with the hum of the palms and the fountains, serenaded me to sleep on a chaise longue padded with towels brought by employees of the wealthiest man in Bahrain. The Ritz-Carlton makes it easy to settle in and is the trap that keeps people here. Why would you leave? Nic already looks the part in his Hugo Boss-style swim shorts and his new designer sunglasses from Dubai International. He chews gum. He postures. He thinks he’s cool. And, boy, is he just. He’s content. I’m relaxed. We’re happy. The sea is flat, the sand is white, palm trees frame the scene and the water is just cool enough to make the salty sting worthwhile. As if this indulgence isn’t enough we get confirmation of a luxury yacht trip out to an island – Melissa is writing about it for gulf Life magazine. After salivating over the pictures online, Nic declared that the “really huge one” would be just fine for him and he began planning his trips and his guest list. In Kalimpong he asked me if he had to be a monk when he grows up. I said no, he can be whatever he chooses. “But, Mum, I want to be a monk when I grow up.” “Ok, fine.” “Actually, Mum, I want to teach the monks.” “???” “Like the Dalai Lama, Mum.” But children can be fickle. A week in Bahrain and his conversations have taken a turn. He asks Melissa, “How much money have you got in your pile in the bank?” Melissa tries best she can to explain her financial position. He continues quizzing her while she navigates his questions without divulging too much information. Eventually she turns it around, “Why are you so interested in how much money I have?” “Because,” he says, “I want to have a thousand, million hundred in my pile of money when I’m older.” Ah, yes, the yacht he covets is the reason he no longer wants to be a monk. The wind stole the dream away but Nic was as unfazed as I was devastated. He said he didn’t mind because he was going to buy one anyway.
Unfortunately I found out after a marathon shopping spree, which ended only when my card was rejected, that our budget doesn’t stretch terribly far here. My exchange rate guesstimate has clearly been way off. The Bahrain Dinar is very strong; petrol really is cheaper than water … and pretty much everything else too. “I’m not that crazy about that one, Mum,” is what I get when I suggest clothing purchases to Nic. He chooses his clothes because he knows exactly what he wants … right down to the man-about-town straw hat. He’s looking island cool … apart from the Tom and Jerry T-shirt he couldn’t live without. But, after being dragged up and down escalators and into every shop with attractive window dressing for two hours in his swimming shorts with the promise of an outing to Wahooo water park on the shopping centre roof, I ran out of excuses not to take him immediately once Visa could no longer deliver the goods. “I don’t want to hear another word about it,” Nic said waving me away as he ran off to the toddler pool. The sight of the water slides and the noise of the water gushing from a giant-sized metal pail filled him with terror. He stayed well away from me in case I took him down one of the giant tubes that spit people out along with gallons of white water … but only at first. He is, after all, a far more confident child now and half an hour later he was running up the flights of stairs to whizz down the supertubes on his own. The Master Blaster nearly took my hair off … so I went again. But my screams drowned out the sounds of everything else and I discovered once again that I’m a totally different kind of thrill-seeker – speed just isn’t my thing. After 3 hours at Wahooo, Nic was amped for anything and the 1.2 meter height limit was all that kept him off the ‘thrill-seeker’ rides by the end of the day. He slept well.
As he did when I left him with Glenn on Tuesday night. It was the first time in five weeks that we were apart and we all survived … even Glenn who was terrified at the prospect. Dinner was at Bushido, a Japanese restaurant surrounded by a shallow moat lined with pale grey pebbles. We sat outside in the warm dry air and, guarded by models of samurai warriors, watched as the dust and the clouds made way for the stars and the moon and the palm trees were lit up in technicolour. The wind which had been howling all day had dropped just enough … not enough to go on the luxury yacht … but enough. It was a perfect finale to a day that was spent at the museum and fort where Nic relived the battles of generations fighting for the trading wealth of this small island – he was bored until Mills filled his head with soldiers and gun fights, and his audio guide completed the picture for him. We saw the excavation sites that once housed the first human skeleton Nic has ever seen and he lapped it all up. The wind rivalled Cape Town’s black southeaster though – my skirt filled with it like a spinnaker sail and we conjured up images of pirates and conquerors. As I clung to it in order to prevent my bare legs from tainting the minds of onlookers, a woman clutched her abaya close to her as though she wasn’t fully clothed beneath. It doesn’t feel like a conservative country when so much time is spent in a bikini but this was a reminder that those indulgences are well sheltered from the local lifestyle which comes with burkinis … not a typo but a lycra burka-style swimsuit – it’s the upmarket alternative to going in fully clothed.
Needing to leave Nic again for a night out, Nic vetoed the option of using Kamala, the housekeeper as a babysitter when Glenn had to work late. I suggested her son, Kamara, who has driven us around a few times, and Nic, like the Tom & Jerry pose on his new T-shirt, gave him the thumbs-up. Like everywhere we have been, he has craved the company of men, a sure sign that he is more than ready to be with his dad now. Mills and I went to La Fontaine with the promise of a deep meditation session. Seated on the floor amongst tea light candles on timber planks that still smelt of the tree, a heavy night breeze pressed in through Gothic-style doors. We were given a talk on fear. But then the lights were dimmed and the microphone was handed to another woman who began speaking gently in Arabic. Thinking I was still waiting for the English translation, I got up, went to the loo and collected another bottle of water, which I guzzled while glancing around at the peaceful gathering. The woman stopped talking, the lights were turned up and everyone got up to leave. I had totally missed the meditation. Thankfully the talk on fear which dealt primarily with attachment, and resonated with my dependency issues, plunged me back into the cesspool of self-knowledge that I had waded through so often in India and provided me with more benefit that the deep meditation I was initially after.
“Where is all that singing coming from?” Nic got quite frantic the first time he heard it, running around looking out all the shutters that surrounded the rooftop pool back at La Fontaine. We had just had lunch and Mills booked a massage so that Nic and I could lounge at the pool while we waited for her. We had ridden a camel in the morning and in true Bahrain style, it seemed perfectly normal to now end the day on loungers at a spa pool overlooking the city of Manama where towers of glass are strapped together by bridges and boast their own wind turbines in a paradox of eco-friendly and flashy. Perfectly normal since I imagine the camels might very well be getting the same treatment. Mills laughed when I asked if we could go on a camel safari – Bahrain just isn’t like that – but instead she arranged a trip to a camel farm where a Sheikh has built palatial shelters and brought in 400 camels because he thinks Bahrain needs camels – Bahrain is like that. It isn’t a tourist place and the entrance states very clearly that we shouldn’t enter but Mills had arranged a camel ride so we drove in anyway. It felt slightly unsafe at first, wandering around amongst these extraordinary creatures that bob their heads haughtily above you while looking down at you with hooded eyes. Occasionally one dives at you as though the puppeteer has lost control of the head string … but it is only to nuzzle on a sleeve or a beaded necklace and not remotely aggressive. The ride was short. Comfortable though and it gave me a taste of the trip I will one day do across the dunes of Oman, Bedouin-style. But that is for another day. Sitting poolside at La Fontaine, soaking up the dessert heat, the call to prayers begins. Like opera, it is magical and spiritual and wonderful in my lack of understanding what it means. It begins on one side, then becomes stereo and momentarily hits Dolby 5.1 surround sound before fading out as suddenly as it began. Mint sorbet completes the scene. And the end of the day is again marked by utter exhaustion and satisfaction.
We got our boat ride in the end – not the luxury one but the one to Al Dar Island. It may have been quick but it was exhilarating. Just this simple journey gave Nic such total pleasure that it made up for missing out on the luxurious trip – it made no difference to him; it was still a boat and he just couldn’t believe how fast it was going. It was choppy and it almost made me throw up, proving again how Nic’s thrillometre is set way different to mine. Al Dar is a patch of beach just off the main island of Bahrain, where you can hire a Bedouin-style bed and sip cocktails between dips in the flat salty sea. You can sunbath on a floating jetty and hire pedal boats for a jaunt around the island. You can swim until 11pm and dance till dawn at the full moon parties. It’s just another indulgent way to spend a day out in Bahrain. The wind was up so we couldn’t partake in all it had to offer but just a taster was good enough for me.
Bahrain is a quiet oasis of date palms and muted shades. It is a hub of consumerism but not outwardly bling like Dubai. It has a beautiful old town besides its beaches and islands and fabulous restaurants. It has been good to us. It is a wonderful island-style city and my time with my sister has been relaxed and rejuvenating. We have been indulged in all the best that Bahrain has to offer and I now feel restored and ready to go home to whatever awaits. Nic not so much. Apart from desperately wanting to be with his dad, my intrepid little travel companion has slotted right in here. Travelling looks good on him. My experience has expanded me though and I doubt I will slot easily back into my life. These seven weeks that have been just a blip for everyone else, have felt more like seven years for the growth I have experienced and, for Nic, this journey has been epic. I will have to take Nic somewhere else to accumulate his wealth though. My wealth is depleted and my tolerance for unadulterated indulgence is almost maxed out. I washed everything I bought in the bath – not because I had to but because I wanted to. I’m odd … but then no one who embarks on a journey like this in the first place can be anything but. Bahrain is mystical and magical and full of the finest things money can buy. But although I have found lifestyle here, I have found no soul. Definitely no regrets though – soul or no soul, this was essential down time with my sis.
Since people got over my taking Nic on this journey … although some haven’t quite … questions have turned to whether such a small child could possibly benefit or even remember anything from such a journey. All I can say is, “Absolutely!” His focus is so uncluttered that he remembers so much stuff that I think the more appropriate concern is whether I will in fact remember anything. I know the memories will begin to blur and then fade like I expect my eyesight to do one day … but I have one and a half thousand photos to jog my memory when the synapses fail to fire.
I’ve learnt not to try and predict what awaits so I can’t say if I will ever be back here even though I suspect I won’t … actually, I can’t say anything anymore. I am not at a crossroads; I am at a spaghetti junction that looks something like the slides at Wahooo water park. I could go on the Master Blaster or through the Black Hole but I suspect I may just sit in the toddler pool for a while and play in the gentle fountains. I’ll be ready for the thrill-seeker rides again one day but for now I am ready to go home. I feel like I have been breathing in for so long and that I can now finally breathe out. But, besides anything else, Nic has work to do so he can get us that luxury yacht and I’d rather it was this side of geriatric.
We’ll be home tomorrow night. Give me a day and then … run and hide before I subject you to the epic slideshow.

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One knot in a hand-tied carpet

May 22nd, 2010

There is a loose thread that still connects me to our first night in Bangalore when, lying restless below the air-conditioning unit, my eyes snapped open and I said, “What the f*ck are you doing here?” I was addressing myself of course. But myself didn’t have an answer, only a whimper and a mantra to help her sleep.
I wrote before about sitting on the cusp of my story but now, trapped between the end of one story and the beginning of the next, there is joy in the remembering and heartache in the letting go. I cried a tear in the rickshaw on the way to New Jaipalguri railway station to catch the Darjeeling Mail, an overnight train to Kolkata. India has claimed another small piece of me and, sitting in that rickshaw, I felt it hurt a little. But I have taken a little piece of her too. I somehow doubt she hurts as much but I’m sure she has cried even more than I can imagine. I may be hardcore but she is just that much more hardcore than I am.
“Step aside and wait,” I was told after waiting several minutes with a queue growing audibly restless behind me. After fleeing strikes and mob violence and certain nothing else could go wrong, we were stopped at the check in counter at Kolkata airport and told we were not allowed to board. No explanation … only worried looks and a lot of flicking through the pages of our passports while cross-referencing the computer screen and the scans of our Bahrain visas. With only forty minutes to go to departure, my head spun with scenarios that involved being stranded in Kolkata or having to fly directly back to Cape Town without the head-clearing transitional space that Bahrain was sited to provide. The problem was resolved with no time to relax before boarding the bus to take us all of ten meters to the waiting Emirates airbus. We made it out of India. Just.
Our night in Kolkata was in a gorgeous boutique hotel, the Bodhi Tree, that Mike had organised to help us recuperate. His plan was to get us into a hot bath … I suppose he felt the grime of Madahirat even where he was in Cape Town. And I suppose he also tasted the bile that rose in my throat when I felt my child’s life was in danger. And perhaps he smelt the stench of adrenalin-tainted sweat as we fled the area that caused so much stress. But in India the realities are not always in line with the ideal. The thing is no matter what you spend on a night in an Indian hotel, the plumbing is always the same: the toilet always stinks and the water runs slow and cool. The closest thing to a bath was the bucket which saw our final load of hand washing. But the room was an oasis of eye candy, from the handmade Indian puppets and masks and the original Rajasthani artwork to the silk bedthrows and brocade-covered furniture. Buddha resided over the private dining area and the halls smelt deliciously of ripe fruit and incense. “Is there any chance I can get alu poori and chai for my final breakfast before leaving for the airport?” With breakfast included, I had to ask. With one click of his fingers, his staff stood immediately to attention. I trusted my request would be fulfilled. And it was … moments before our final ride in a Kolkata yellow cab past the South City Mall and the Science City where we had spent the previous day, our final in India.
“Dad was wrong,” Nic said when I asked him how it felt to finally be leaving India, “you didn’t lose me.” He was genuinely amazed and I realised just how much of a burden he had been carrying around all this time.
Arrival in Bahrain was as calm as leaving Kolkata was chaotic. Thobes in slow motion floated across the airport floor and women in abayas made Nic step back in fright. There were so few people in the airport it felt like we were somewhere we weren’t meant to be. It was unnerving. The carousel wasn’t even working anymore when we got through immigration and all the luggage had been taken off by eager porters. Glenn fetched us in a real Jeep and drove us in air-conditioned comfort to our home for the next ten days. “Your bag stinks,” he stated on off-loading it. I declined his offer to help, knowing just where it had been in the last five weeks and I flung all 16.5kg over my shoulder, handing him my daypack, which smelt marginally better.
My sister, Melissa, ever perceptive to my need for therapy, welcomed me with a range of Crabtree and Evelyn bodycare products (she felt the grime too), supplements to my depleted wardrobe (I had been discarding things along the way) and several kettles of boiling water to top up my bubble bath which wasn’t quite optimal temperature. Not only that but I was presented with phyllo-wrapped salmon for dinner. And Kamala did my laundry.
I have done nothing but rest for two days, feeling slightly restless and as though I am late for something all the time. I emptied all my bags and washed the stench and grime from them. It felt like the first normal thing I had done in 48 hours; my definition of normal taking an interesting turn … like the twist in my tales.
I finished the Secret Life of Bees in Goa. And, as always, I found the last chapter so difficult to read, skipping backwards over the final pages in an attempt to prolong the inevitable end. But, with every story, the end always comes and I close the book with a forlorn sigh and a feeling that I will never find another quite the same. And I never do. Sometimes I have to wait a while until my head is clear of the one before I can begin the next. And the next is usually just as rewarding no matter how different. Like everything, it just takes some getting used to. But, regardless, one story has to end for another to begin. I began The White Tiger in Varanasi. I have three books next to the soft king-sized bed where I am propped up against the headboard with two extra soft pillows. There are no geckos, no mice, no peeling paint or ammonia smells wafting from the bathroom. And there are absolutely no roaches. I finished the White Tiger but I can’t yet wade into the next story. I am not quite ready to move on.
Yes, India has taken a piece of me but I am not walking away empty handed. She has showered me in her perfumes and filled me with her hope. She has fed me bravery and sprinkled it with kindness. She has dipped me in the cesspool of self-knowledge until I have choked and gagged and she has pulled me out and resuscitated me with reality. She has been generous and cruel, fiery and calm, spiritual and unforgiving. I love her and I hate her. She is like me. I breathed her in and she spat me out. We can’t get too close without taking a break from each other. But we will always see each other again and we will always love and hope and cry together. No two stories are ever the same. But neither are any two readers.
The Bahrain itinerary begins in earnest tomorrow. Not my itinerary this time. I don’t have to plot and plan. I just have to wake up, stretch, shower and dress. The rest is sorted.

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It’s a jungle out there …

May 20th, 2010

I could feel eyes boring into me. There was nowhere to hide. I looked down at my lap where I was holding onto Nic’s head, keeping him out of sight, out of harm’s way and trying to ignore the attention. But, as it began to get dark and we were still stuck at the station, the lights inside illuminated me, drawing even more attention from the gathering crowds outside. I felt like I was in Amsterdam on the wrong side of the glass. And as more people gathered, the shouting began. They began banging on the side of the carriage. They were screaming at me to get off the train. But even if I had wanted to comply, my body would not … could not … move. The adrenalin was prickling the back of my neck, working it’s way up behind my ears and turning my heart cold. There was a vacuum where my stomach had been. The crowd had become a mob.
I searched the carriage with my eyes. I needed someone’s help. A poster was stuck to the carriage opposite. It showed a man behind bars with the caption, “Harassing woman passenger is punishable offense.” Reassuring if not entirely helpful in the circumstances. My eyes found another pair. Wrapping my terror in an annoyed attitude, I asked, “What the hell was going on out there?” He sliced his finger across his throat. Before I could take it personally he explained … best he could: “One woman dead. Head off.” A woman had slipped getting onto the train at our first stop outside of Siliguri. Decapitated. “Person under the train” rang in my ears from the London Underground. The difference was that on the London Underground, people stay in their seats looking annoyed and bury themselves deeper in the Evening Standard. Not so here. People leapt from the train, cameras and camcorders at the ready. Even a cow ran with the crowd. But it was after they had filled their heads with gore – once filming conditions were marred by darkness – that they began drifting back up the platform … that they began gathering to stare, became restless, decided they needed to focus their anger on something. That something turned out to be me. A riot started. I was told not to move. There was not enough English in the carriage to know what exactly was going on but there were enough people on my side of the window to keep the riot on the outside and to lock the doors.
“It’s ok my noonoo,” I cooed, “just some angry people, that’s all. Try and get some rest.” I was trying not to rub the hair right off Nic’s head as I stroked it to keep him calm … to keep myself calm. And I tried to breathe. And tried not to look out the window. I was in the middle of nowhere, somewhere between Siliguri and Madahirat, en route to Jaldaphara Wildlife Sanctuary for an elephant safari. It was dark and I was scared. I had to be brave when all my body wanted to do was cling to the window bars and hurl.
The police did eventually arrive – 10 minutes sooner might have been better timing – with their sticks and their mustaches. And the mob just melted away as though it had never been there to begin with. Two policemen shone their big torches into the carriages while others, I presume, removed head and body from the tracks. And we were on our way again, deeper into the jungle, surrounded by people who couldn’t communicate with me but who were clearly intent on my personal safety.
The day had started climbing into a share jeep in Kalimpong at 9am, remarking to Nic that we might have to change jeeps due to the stench. Turns out my bag was smeared with crap which had made its way onto my hand and half way up my arm. It smelt human. Thankful for my hefty supply of wetwipes, antibacterial soap and liters of water, it was a minor hiccup in the day’s journey. On arrival in Siliguri, caked with dust-dried sweat, we were told all hotels were full, it was impossible to get a train ticket anywhere south and there was a strike due to start the next morning … a 12-hour strike that was likely to get violent. We had to get out of town and the only advice we could heed was to go to Jaldaphara (near the village of Madahirat) where we would be safe until the strike was over. With no bank facilities in Madahirat, I had to draw cash but every bank I got to closed or ran out of money as I got to the front of the queue … seems everyone was stocking up. By the time I eventually found one open, the sweat-sodden dye from my red t-shirt was draining into my white shorts, turning them the same colour as Nic’s cheeks … he looked faint. We now had only 15 minutes to get our train. I threw a bundle of notes at a rickshaw driver and told him to pedal fast.
It didn’t take long to wish he hadn’t followed my instruction.
I arrived in Madahirat carrying my backpack on my back, my sleeping child in my arms and two daypacks in my one hand … a multi-limbed Indian god. Still wide-eyed and shaking, we were thankfully met at the station by Mithan Das, proprietor of Hotel Relax, a hole-in-the-wall style hotel with roll-up garage door frontage. Pinched between the main thoroughfare to Assam and the railway line, the bug infestation, lack of windowpanes (hence the bug infestation), a toilet filled with someone else’s crap, the basin that drained onto my feet and the general filth of the place left me stunned and sleepless under the mosquito net that resembled a slice of emmenthaler cheese.
I began to plan my exit strategy … but not for long. On instructing Mithan the following morning to book our elephant safari asap and asking him what time the trains would be running the following afternoon, I was shocked into further silence. The strike had not only spread into the mountain regions, it had closed all forms of transportation east of Siliguri and no one was sure whether it would be over in three days or five. I was stuck. Stuck in a village where Mithan was clearly the only person who could speak any English and seemingly the only person who had seen a white woman before. Going out was like that Amsterdam window feeling again … we were like a freak show that attracted people to gather in groups and just stare. I could have got angry but instead we bought up all the cheese and crackers and Cornflakes we could find, stocked up on soda water and chips and stayed in our room playing cards and watching Tom and Jerry once the TV was fixed. I used the rest of my wetwipes and surgical spirits to disinfect the bathroom and I got used to the bugs … even the crickets that found their way into my sleeping bag liner.
“Drivers charging little extra … maybe double … their windows will get smashed maybe,” said Mithan when I queried why it was so much to go on a jaunt to the zoo. I declined, but not because of the cost. It was clear the level of mob violence in the area was increasing and it looked as though we would be stuck. The news that was filtering through in broken English was that the trains were running but they were just late. I was desperate enough to go to the station and just wait it out. But thanks to Rossy, my well-connected friend, the British High Commission was onto it. I was visited by the police commissioner and advised that trains were being stopped by mobs and cars and buses were being stoned. We were going to need to be smuggled out. Mithan knew someone. We just had to wait for his call. A couple more sleepless nights and we were set to leave at dawn the following morning. But then it became too dangerous and we had to wait again. Just as I had resigned myself to missing our train to Kolkata and our plane to Bahrain, Mithan knocked on my door. “You ready in an hour. My friend has car and you leave at 2.” The travel ban had been lifted for three hours to allow people to get out to get food. We had to be quick. It was a 124km drive on bad roads and we couldn’t risk getting stuck anywhere in traffic. I cried. And then I packed really fast. And then I dug in my bag for my emergency supply of Neals Yard frankincense moisturiser … it’s amazing how these little luxuries can rescue one’s soul …
I put Nic’s cap on his head and covered my own with a scarf. That was so we weren’t immediately conspicuous. I had a plan to say Nic needed medical attention … if we were stopped by a mob, Nic was primed to writhe around holding his stomach. It was a tense 3-hour journey. The driver drove like Schumacher … only his suspension wasn’t quite so good. Out of the highly volatile area, we could stop for a welcome (extra sugar please!) chai … but that only made my mood worse as every person within gawking distance turned up for a cuppa to stare at the foreigners. I should have taken commission.
The lumbering hour-long elephant safari through the jungle was worth it I suppose. Had we been anywhere else in the area, the trouble might have been worse. And although Hotel Relax seemed like hell to begin with, it turned out we would not have been helped quite the same had we been anywhere else …we would have got on that 6am train and we might never have made it out of the jungle. I am so grateful to everyone who helped us both physically and spiritually.
We are still in Siliguri after a night in a hovel with the biggest cockroach I have ever seen … which as far as I know is still trapped under the plastic jug next to the squat toilet, unless someone has freed it … since all hotels are still full. Nepal is shut down, the mountain regions are still suffering under the strike and no one knows when the end will come. We have eaten well, making up for the diet of crackers and Cornflakes for the last four days and nights.
We leave on an overnight train to Kolkata tonight. One night there in a beautiful place Mike has booked to help us recuperate … and then Bahrain for further relaxation.
I am looking forward to leaving India now. I am ready. I will be back again, I know. But this time, the end is most welcome.

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If you can’t see them, are they still there?

May 17th, 2010

“We won’t rest until we are fre from West Bengal!” “Ghorkaland” is painted on every doorway, car, shop and available piece of concrete wall. The political unrest is the reason I have always avoided this area. The Ghorka Movement clings to liberation here and the tea bushes cling to the vertical mountain slopes. I cling to Nic as he hangs out the window and waves at the army trucks. Houses are propper precarioulsy on the roadside ridge, the mountain beneath them streaked with garbage and sewerage. “Filling of water tanks strictly prohibited” marks a point where fresh water leaps off the mountain and where a truck is pulling away sloshing water from two over-filled water tanks. “Presbyterian Free Church” – free or free of Presbyterians, I wonder. A lone man single-handedly deconstructs a concrete road barrier with a mallet … it’s hard to tell whether out of employment or frustration. On a 53km stretch of hairpin and s-bends, I can’t help but mourn the loss. “No race, no ralley, enjoy the beauty of the valley” – a great sentiment but hard to comply … our driver answers his phone again as I stare, unblinking, at the oncoming jeep travelling towards us on the wrong side of the road, “Oh my Ganesha” in bold across the windscreen. A brave dog drops one in the middle of the road. We somehow miss both. Oh my Ganesha, indeed. “Rat Killer – to kill rats, not pets” shares a hook with some dried meat at a roadside stall midway between Darjeeling and Kalimpong. We have stoppped where water is being piped off the mountain and where every jeep on this route lines up to use it as a carwash. Nic negotiates the squat toilet. He has no choice … his constitution has finally failed him.
Our 3-hour journey to Kalimpong dropped us 1000m in altitude but the air is still cool and the mountain views are still masked by mist that wraps itself like smoke around the chimneys and drifts aimlessly between the floors of unfinished buildings. The rains have come early or the Lonely Planet lies. Mountain walks are marred by the risk of leeches.
But we have found Holumba Haven, tucked in the mist on an orchid farm, away from town. And a haven it is … not just for us but for hens, guinea pigs, rabbits, guinea fowl, squirrels, honey bees, a rooster and several dogs. The Xhosa people believe that your ancestors come to you in the form of dogs and if this is so, we are being visited again in the form of another tan stray that turned up the day we arrived and stays within inches of us at all times. We are also being followed by snorers and plagued by thin walls.
The town is small, the sites are few, but we are walking the streets and feeling the vibe. Nic is staying on the right side of the law by shaking hands with every army officer he sees and waving at soldiers as they drive by in their big trucks. He has told me in detail how they force people to climb in the back of those trucks and then lock them in cages! “But, Mum,” he says, “I’m just so cute that they would never do that to me. Hey, Mum?” I feel I may have been slack on controlling his TV viewing lately.
Kalimpong is again a whole new experience like everything in India so far. We spent an hour on the balcony of the large Buddhist Monastery at the top of the hill overlooking the town on one side and a huge army barracks on the other. The irony. We spent a morning being driven to all the sites … all two of them … One was closed, the other wasn’t exactly a site but it had Himalayan ponies for Nic to ride – he’s totally hooked. The clouds are like thick smoke that hangs on the view and obscures the only reason for being here. We leave town tomorrow. Patience has not helped us here.
But Nic has loved the down time and has spent hours playing cricket at Holumba and more hours watching T20 and Tom and Jerry. He has run out of fingers on which to count the friends he has made in India … and we have had even more sad farewells since we have been in Kalimpong. Perhaps his journeys with me will encourage him to put down the roots I have never been able to sink into any ground anywhere. But out of everywhere I have been, I am most in my zone here in India. I get asked regularly whether I live here – it might just be because people can’t get their heads around a woman travelling through India on her own with a 4-year-old or maybe I do just look comfortable. Like I belong. I’ve already dropped out of normal life back home so this is not too much of a stretch for me.
But I could do with a washing machine and a big Greek salad about now – Melissa, please note! I am counting the remaining days by the number of buckets of laundry I will still have to do. I’m down to one hand. Since we arrived in the mountains it has felt like I have been washing everything in salt water – nothing will dry. Tomorrow we drop to sea level. Life has slowed even more since I last spoke to you and so I have had time to change plans a hundred times a day … but, for now, it looks like Siliguri tomorrow and on to Mirik – either for a night if we get a booking for Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary (for which we will have to return to Siliguri) or for four nights if we don’t. I like the fact that things are wide open for our final week.
I may well only speak to you again from Bahrain … it looks like we will make it out of the hills and out of Ghorkaland …
Ganesha willing …

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Looking down on the world from Darjeeling

May 7th, 2010

“I know this bridge, but I don’t know where from,” Nic said, suddenly perky in the 45 degree midday heat. We were heading east over the mother river by autorickshaw on our way to the train station, the curtain drawn across the opening next to Nic in an unsuccessful attempt to block out some of the heat and dust. The driver had clearly misunderstood me. I told him we were in no hurry at all. I had allowed four hours to get to the station and find the right platform and have a relaxed meal. Ganesha deserved a bit of time off. But the driver was negotiating the traffic like we were in a getaway car and it’s the first time I felt really afraid in such a small, and usually slow, vehicle … one of the things about travelling with a child, though, is that you have to be strong and brave even when you’re a bundle of nerves and would rather curl up in a ball and wail. Nic was intrigued by the bridge so I pulled back the curtain to reveal the heat-shrouded banks of the ghats, far away now in a haze of pale pinks, yellows and blues … ever-changing as the sun shifted unhurriedly over the concrete. I could just make out a few tiny paper fighting kites fluttering above the buildings. It was like looking at a dream after waking up. Just out of reach. I closed my eyes to make it last. It felt like my chest might cave in on my heart.
I didn’t say goodbye when I left; we turned west out of Sita Guest House, away from the river, back through the black hole and into the labyrinth of smells, noise and dirt. The holy river of hope just faded away and it felt like it never existed.
By the time we got to Mugal Sarai station, 21km outside of the city, I was an overheated nerve ending. The station is huge and crowded and the waiting area was filled with eyes. And the smell of urine. We retreated. People stared at me with my heavy backpack, carrying both mine and Nic’s daypacks, a bottle of water and a pack of biscuits. I felt like a multi-limbed Indian god. We waited in a restaurant, consuming very little in the hopes that we wouldn’t have to use the public toilets – Nic is still terrified to admit he needs the toilet unless we are really close to our hotel – but three hours is a long time to wait in the heat without drinking and there came a time when I had to hover over a toilet afloat with a day’s worth of turds. Nic at least could keep his distance – it didn’t really matter if his aim was off in the circumstances.
I am proud to claim I have travelled rough in India before, taking unreserved and 2nd-class sleeper trains. But that doesn’t mean I would choose to do it again … the sweaty vinyl bunks, the stares, the mealtimes and social visits when several people make themselves comfy on the bunk you just wanted to fall asleep on, and the notification of a station stop being the wafting stench of urine and faeces as the air changed direction on slowing down. No, not this time. I booked 2AC – two-tier airconditioned. It’s still an open carriage but there are only four bunks, instead of six, there is a curtain you can draw to close off the passageway, you get freshly starched sheets and a pillow and there’s a draft of cool air piped into the carriage. There’s even a western toilet – granted, the seat had footprints on it but there is always a jug of water handy and this time I was carrying lots of disinfecting lotions and wipes.
As we slipped through the darkness, we crossed half the country and again passed into a whole new world. On arrival in Siliguri, I changed my mind about the train to Kurseong and asked the rickshaw driver to drop us at the jeep stand … we were heading up to Darjeeling straight away. Yes, I also thought the Jeep option was the posh route into the mountains … until we were squeezed into the back of a Mahindra between two paan-chewing blokes who had no sense of personal space and who spoke to us intermittently between clenched teeth and spitting. I was tired, I was hot and I didn’t understand a word so I ignored them. Nic had climbed onto my lap and fallen asleep anyway so I just closed my eyes, hung on tight and zoned out to the sweat and the blending of DNA.
We climbed the narrow, pot-holed mountain pass road to just over two thousands meters above sea level where the cool air gradually replaced the fug clinging to the bodies inside the vehicle. I had the usual anxiety about leaving the old and moving onto a new place but I knew it would settle in a day or two. And a few days in a quiet hill station seemed like the perfect antidote.
Arrival in Darjeeling was an assault! Buses, jeeps, crowds, smog, concrete high-rise hotels and market stalls … a reminder that despite the changes in climate, culture, the appearance of people and the language, we were still in India. The roads are narrow … the jeeps, trucks and buses are not. So, in a constant attempt to change the proportions, drivers just honk their horns … and they keep honking their horns until someone either gives in or runs out of time and reverses. I paced up a down the road a few times, trying to take it all in and block it all out all at once … and trying to find my bearings and some element of strength to find a place to stay … or stay at all. I considered climbing back in the jeep and fleeing. But instead, laden down with kilograms of luggage, we found a steep pathway and climbed. Nic just clutched his bear and followed – leaning into his stride with his heavy daypack on his back. He had had his sleep and was, once again, loving the adventure.
As we ascended, away from the bus/jeep stand, Darjeeling changed. The noise faded slightly, the sky became more visible and the feeling of being on top of the world became more apparent … I could hardly breathe from the combination of altitude and fifteen kilograms. We found a green hotel and, being Nic’s favourite colour, took it as a sign and checked in … well, there was also the small issue of being drenched from the afternoon thunder shower. With its wood-panelled interior and diamond-pane windows in the cosy lounge areas, the Dekeling Hotel is the type of place I can imagine elderly colonials sipping black tea, and I felt an instant desire to settle in for a month or two. It’s not exactly budget but our windowless room is the cheapest we could go without compromising on warm bedding and a warm shower … it’s a trickle but it works and you can’t have a shower while taking a dump here. The staff tolerate Nic’s need to wrestle in the mornings and towels, toilet paper and breakfast are included in the price.
We have been to the zoo, the tea plantation and passed the rock where Tenzig Norgay trained for Everest. And speaking of Everest, there are so many steps in this precipitous village that a morning out feels like a mountain trek. It has been impossible to get Nic off the Himalayan ponies and we have used them to get to all the sites around the village. “Faster, faster!” he demands. He bounces up and down in the saddle, giggling so much he could cry. He has conquored so many fears and leapt his hurdles with ease. We have been to the gompa on Observatory Hill, descended through the clouds to the magnificent and sacred Bhutia Busty Gompa, been blessed by monks demanding Rupees, hung prayer flags at the stupa and been harassed my monkeys. And I have found myself some treasures. Nic has made friends with a hundred people. The man at the shawl shop buys him chips and chocolate each time we pass – I probably paid too much for that pashmina – and he continues to get photographed and have his cheeks pinched by thousands of adoring locals. He is like a little god here. He is loving the hero worship and has developed an attitude bigger than West Bengal’s highest mountain peak, Kanchenjunga. I doubt he will ever be contained again … and who can blame him. We have walked beyond the noise and the crowds and found a place where we can watch the clouds writhe and twist around the hills below while watching local tourists, used to 40-degree heat, wander by wrapped up in shawls, blankets and woollen headgear. It’s not that cold. We sit at Chowrasta and sip Darjeeling chai brought by tea wallahs, looking beyond the hills in the hopes that Kanchenjunga will reveal herself. But she has been shy, only peeping out for moments before wrapping herself tightly in her white blanket once more. It doesn’t matter. It’s gorgeous, cool, relaxed. It’s a charmed life here. We’re staying an extra day, skipping Kurseong and Mirik completely and moving on to Kalimpong in a couple of days.
If Nic has just got over his hurdles, I seem to have just reached mine. It may be the caffeine I am consuming in Darjeeling’s chai or the quantities of sugar I am ladling on my morning porridge … but I just can’t sleep. The days are dreamy but, as the mist seeps in to mask the setting sun and the thunder resonates off the surrounding peaks adding the base to the bells from the monastery, I become distracted and skittish. At first I thought I was just overtired so I got some rest; I thought I was hungry so I ate. Nothing changed, I just felt melancholy. It is the pressure as we passed the halfway point of the journey; the pressure to pack more life into this time away. I keep changing the itinerary … sticking to one in India goes against the grain anyway … in an attempt to make the most of the final couple of weeks. I have moments of anxiety about leaving and going back to normality … I get a shiver down my spine just typing the word. Normality: what is that? The thing I love most about travelling in India is perhaps the joy of just ‘being’, and in that ‘being’, being able to be whoever I feel like being at the time. Nic narrows the boundaries of identity somewhat but there is a sense of total relaxation about self. I don’t have to own any labels. No branding. When you have no branding, you don’t have to fit any molds. Nothing to live up or down to; no expectations and no disappointments. It’s easier. So, to answer the question: why don’t I put down roots? When you put down roots you are identified by the very place the roots are sunk into the ground … rather than by the places the branches are reaching towards.
It is midday. The clouds have darkened and the sky is grumbling; not yet angry. The air smells sweet and damp.

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In the arms of Mother Ganga

May 2nd, 2010

Nic was totally dumbstruck. He scuttled along beside me … more because he was tethered to me rather than any real need to keep up. “Good security,” the tout kept saying. I smirked. “Where you from?” another tout asked for the third time, to which I snapped back that I had already told him. Keep your distance, keep your cool, you’re almost there … my mantra kept playing in my head. Nic’s eyes doubled in size as I steered him between bikes, rickshaws, people, moving food stalls … and the dreaded touts. I stopped to get him an icecream … to buy time – I didn’t even argue over the inflated price. Nic’s bag was sagging on his back and heavy enough to cause him to walk with a forward tilt. His black bear was tucked into the strap across his chest. Sweat snaked a trail from his temples to his chin and beads of sweat began to form on his nose. His cheeks were rose pink. But he didn’t complain. He was learning to trust me.
A dead puppy lay bleeding a foot away from a food stall, a couple of cows scavenged on scraps nearby, crows filled the air with neck-prickling squawks. And then I saw her. Mother Ganga. Welcoming us with watery arms wearing jewels of midday light. We had successfully run the Varanasi gauntlet and the touts had fallen aside one by one. I had remembered, after 9 years, the way to the river … even through the madness … and just had to turn right and walk a few hundred meters to Sita Guest House.
Stepping onto the ghats is like finding a black hole in space and being transported a million miles away. She opens out in front of you and everything else melts away. You don’t look back, you just slow right down and keep on walking.
The river is low at the moment, waiting for the monsoon rains to replenish her and cleanse her. The locals say you can put anything in her and she will be clean. She is the holy river. I’m not convinced. Once settled into Sita Guest House where the massive ghekos still reside and evidence of the mouse lay around in the form of droppings, Nic ran in from the balcony and asked me if he could go swimming in the Ganges now with all those other children. “No,” I said with a little more force than I intended. When he begged, I did what all mothers do in this situation. “Ask your father,” I said. But when I heard the “Yay” on his end of the phone, I had no more ammo. I had to give in … trying desperately to push aside thoughts of sewerage, dead bodies and general muck. Millions of people swim here, I kept telling myself. It can’t be that bad. I could hardly watch as he waded in through the litter and ooze of the long dry season, clutching his blow-up beach ball and looking so enthusiastic. He was oblivious … or maybe he just didn’t care – he had after all found it hilarious watching the fishermen in Goa washing their bums after their morning constitution on the shoreline, dangerously close to where we were swimming. “Don’t put your face in the water,” I shouted after him. Swimming in the Ganges this far from its source has to come with at least one condition. I don’t care how holy it is.
He lived to watch the cricket tournament on the steps – a daily event. And he lived to watch the string of candles strung along the river like fairy lights floating gently with the current, each one overflowing with hope. We have been on a sunset boat trip and a sunrise boat trip, neither seeing the sun set, nor rise, but trusting that it did anyway. We have seen the washing wallahs beat the crap out of the hotel bed linen on the river’s concrete banks. We have seen bodies burn on the burning ghats and the remaining pieces set afloat on the water, narrowly escaping the scavenging dogs. We have sent our own wishes piggybacking off a candle and a few marigolds down the river. We have seen more prayer rituals than most people see in a lifetime. Yoga happens on mass along the banks. And everyone swims.
It’s magical.
You can’t help but be happy in a place where so many millions of people invest so much in hope.
Travelling with a small child here means you can’t be complacent though. Even the locals tell me to watch him every moment. It doesn’t help to just hope he will be safe. I have him tied to me permanently – dips in the river excluded – and imagine beating certain people to a pulp when they show more than appropriate interest in my child. Yes, holiness does escape me at times. Maternal instincts are on red alert. He got dragged down the alleyways yesterday and out of town to the holy Buddhist temples in Sarnath.
He is tired and overwhelmed and is watching cricket now while I type. We have a room with a TV and airconditioning here and the computers are right outside our room. Sita Guest House is exactly the same as it was 9 years ago and the owner even recognised me and gave me a good price on a room with a balcony. Granted the balcony’s view is obstructed by a lamp post strung with several illegally connected electrical cables … but did I mention the TV and aircon? The TV’s reception is kinda fuzzy. I am beginning to see the real reason for the discount. But the wonderful thing about travelling with a child is that he doesn’t see the flaws. He fell in love with the room instantly – a room where the only thing that brightens the shades of brown and peeling paint is the magnificent polycotton bed linen adorned with bright pink cherry blossom, swans, snow-capped mountains and a periwinkle-blue sky. He also thinks it’s just grand that you can pee, shower, and wash your hands in the basin under a trickle of water that you can’t shut off … all at the same time. He helps to settle me. Just what I need when my instinct is always to run immediately on reaching a place.
“Power cuts” the owner says with a shrug and a shake of his head – not a regular head shake but the sideways one that tends to mean anything and nothing at the same time. But the way the airconditioning unit shudders and jolts before it dies makes me suspect it has more to do with one of the enormous gheckos meeting its fate. I send a virtual candle down the river hoping for its safe passage to better karma in its next life. A brown-headed kingfisher sits on my balcony, an unusual site but one I saw at the ashram too. I can’t help but wonder if it is the same one. I always feel like I am being followed by creatures when I come to India, like I am being visited by old friends … some who have clearly done something bad in a previous life.
Varanasi assaults you on arrival but embraces you immediately afterwards. It is disgusting and holy and beautiful and scary. It steals you away in little pieces and staying here too long would risk total surrender. If my heart belongs to my children in Capricorn then Varanasi has my soul.
We leave tomorrow evening and that is a good thing … any longer and I might never go. I have always believed I am rooted in the air and perhaps I am. I move easily without fuss or any real sense of upheaval. But I hate to stay too long in one place. I have discovered it is because I am terrified of getting attached and sentimental. I don’t want the sad farewells. I don’t want to risk exposure to my soft core.
It is 9am here and time to tether Nic to me and drag him around the old town. I want chai and poori. I want to dodge cows and their shit. I want to be harassed by shop owners. I want to feel the sweat run in rivers between my breasts and settle around my naval where it will drench the Dollar bills tucked discreetly in my money belt. I want to see bright-coloured silks, smell carcasses strung up across hole-in-the-wall butcheries and hear the shouts of wallahs selling their wares as the bells on the ghats ring out for prayers. This isn’t life as I know it. This is sensory overload. And I love it. Hout Bay couldn’t be further away.

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Goa has grown on me …

May 1st, 2010

“My husband’s on his way,” I say. “He’s big.” I demonstrate by flexing one of my own puny biceps, unsure it has the right effect. I posture a little and throw in that we do rock climbing and karate together. I choose not to demonstrate, I might give the game away. They move on, slightly resentful.
I hate the fact that my personal safety is dependent on the presence of a man – fantasy or real – but Goa, like everywhere else in the world, comes with its share of creeps. It’s a man’s world.
Goa comes with so much more though and I’m glad I chose to stay and give it a fair chance. You really do need to stay in a place long enough to allow it to seep beneath your skin … and Goa has done just that. I’ll still be ready to leave on Friday but I am beginning to understand why some people never do.
Here the over-population of Indian deities compete with the Holy Trinity. You can have cream teas and bratwurst. and not only are all the languages of the world spoken here but all the languages and dialects of India converge here. It’s a cultural melting pot.
Look beyond the rows of handicraft emporiums and forex bureaus and the same poverty of the rest of India still lurks: the AIDS orphans and polio stricken, the people living under plastic sheeting and palm leaves. Look behind the fringe of palms at dawn and you still see the traditional fisher folk who still own the kilometers of the best beaches some people have ever seen … but only until the tourists arrive. Before the hawkers and the beggars arrive. While the night-shift staff still float, sleeping in their hammocks strung up in beach shack restaurants … restaurants that are gradually being dismantled ahead of the monsoon. The plants are dusty, the earth is parched. It’s hot! The rains must now come.
My body clock has adjusted to the bread wallah’s hooter and we have settled into a routine. For now. It begins with collecting the previous night’s spider webs in my hair en route to the little concrete bench where I wait for breakfast, followed by the beach where we play in the waves while the fishermen count their day’s wealth and a tan dog watches Nic’s every move as though he is a personal guard. At 9am we return to rehydrate and rest. Life’s tough. Then shopping for provisions, pretend shopping for airconditioning and internet cafe for more airconditioning. Home to the villa for play time, lunch time and rest time (I said life was tough). Then we head to a neighbouring resort (considered posh by locals) to swim until 7pm … when it is time to return for dinner or just eat out. I said it was a man’s world and, apart from the usual evidence here, it is only highlighted by the the fact that even in the resort pool men (and even little boys) are allowed no more than a speedo (Nic’s chafe vest had to be discarded) but women and girls get in fully clothed. Even I go in with baggies on (and a t-shirt too in the sea) and most of you know that modesty is not always my strongest trait.
The exception to our routine was when we hired a taxi for a day out sightseeing. And it was my best day out in India. Ever.
It wasn’t what I expected and I pulled away at first before being pushed up along the large folds of soft, lose, suede-like skin covered in pubescent-male-like stubble which got thicker and coarser towards the top of its head. I sat bareback astride its neck, Nic in front. Its ears gently fanned my legs. The dormant animal rights activist was screaming from somewhere deep inside but I shushed her. I had never before been so intimate with an elephant and I was having too much fun. She wasn’t getting out today. Stern shouting came from the keeper and I felt Nic’s body stiffen. The elephant raised its trunk above and over its head and breathed out, spraying us in cool river water. And then the laughter came. Again and again we were showered. But there comes a point when you can take no more of something, even when that something happens to be the most thrilling something ever. It’s often the case. I slid down to the ground, pickled in adrenalin, and looked up at a caramel-coloured eye. It gazed back. Sad. The enjoyment was clearly all mine. I had sacrificed my animal compassion for the sake of a thrill. “Speed kills but thrills.” I remembered the sign. Yes, thrills do sometimes just trump all else.
Because the next stop is Varanasi, I will end by reminding you about the Varanasi mouse that tried to nest in my hair one night last time I was there. Most of you know the story. Well, last night when I felt something scratching in my hair I sat up and looked for a little furry mouse. What I found was nightmarishly worse: a roach the size of a mouse! I moved rooms.
Goa isn’t the India of my dreams but it’s wonderful none-the-less. Like everything it just takes a little getting used to when your expectations are so way off.
Until next time …
xxxxx
P.S. For those of you who asked about the ashram, it is Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s ashram south of Bangalore. Some ashrams have a philosophy of freedom – they encourage you to walk around half naked and have lots of sex. Guruji’s is nothing like this. I was pleased … but more for Nic’s sake :)

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Slowly does it …

May 1st, 2010

The air is so sticky here, it clings to you like honey and pulling clothes off feels like peeling a banana. We have spent hours under the cool trickle of well water in the shower which falls cold on my head and drips steaming from my fingertips. I have never before wished so hard for airconditioning in a place with fans and only intermittent electrical supply. I wish the rains were closer.
Nightimes bring curried sweat, whining fans, barking dogs, roosters crowing the dawn until they give up when it eventually arrives, and someone trying to extract phlegm on every out breath. But the mornings bring cool air and a silence that is broken only by the hooting of the baker’s horn at 6:30am, when I wrap the sheet around me and run across the clay garden to climb onto the stone bench near the wall. There I wait. Eventually the little bicycle with the large plastic-covered tub on the back squeaks past and the baker stops to take my Rs10. “Rs5, 2 pieces”. The first morning Nic was still asleep when I ran out so I wrapped the rolls in a dishcloth and climbed back into bed with him. He opened his eyes, smiled at me and reached over to touch my arm. I told him about the baker and his rolls. He chuckled. “For real?” he asked. For real! Each morning Nic and I slather butter and Marmite on our large fresh Portuguese rolls and wash them down with Sprite and Soda. Life is simple and slow. You can’t hurry anything here. You can only be still and enjoy the life that drifts past.
We’re staying at a home owned by friends of my parents, Casa Geraldina, tucked away down an alley in Calangute about 5 minutes from the beach. We have only been to the beach once and since Nic was gathered up by the man wanting a photograph with him, he has not wanted to return. Secretly, I am quite pleased. We have spent a day with the villa manager’s family and swimming and playing with other children has helped sustained Nic a while longer. He also got a massive thrill riding on the front of a scooter – I had to remain calm despite my eyes finding every sign about speed and accident-prone zones.
Hot and touristy, there is no great appeal here but staying in a home means space to play, build tents out of bedsheets and laze around reading, drawing, writing and Nic’s favourite: listening to stories read by Mike on his iPod, which induces fits of giggles and occasional singing. Nic has adapted well and is even handling the heat way better than I am.
Besides Citibank deciding to cancel accounts held by non-UK residents and my first knowledge of this being when I tried to draw money to bolster my final Rs10 supply, things are easy, relaxed, fun and stress-free. I’m feeling local. I feel less conspicuous here than I do in Cape Town and I feel comfortable and calm (call to bank excluded!) Nic keeps asking me if I want to live here. Do I? Maybe. We have a long journey ahead of us still and so many more things to do and see.
I’ll keep you posted – Varanasi on Friday and I wish it were sooner. Freedom can get lost in the planning process and the journey can become a little suffocated. I have an urge to immediately leave anywhere I arrive so perhaps this is also just another lesson in patience.
Just know we are healthy and full of joy … loving the experience and sucking the juice out of it.
Nic is chatting to a group of girls – best I go and rescue them from his charms ;)

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Shell-shocked at the beach

May 1st, 2010

Ganesha stares at me from the dashboard. I keep focusing on “Meru, Rely on us”, the taxi company’s logo, lest my eyes search for the time. The airconditioning has just been turned on but it makes no difference. My feet begin to sweat as we hit another traffic jam. I battle to breathe. As the god of removing obstacles it is no wonder Ganesha adorns almost every dashboard in India … but with one main road closed due to construction and the other half blocked with a broken-down cement truck, he was totally incapacitated. Each time I asked the taxi driver, “How long???”, his eyes would drift to the clock, do a quick calculation and give me the exact number of minutes till 11am; the time we had to be at the airport for our flight to Goa. He had done it earlier when I called him from the ashram – he was half an hour late to collect me. He was on his way and would be half an hour he said. I said I had to be at the airport by 11am so he said, ok maybe 10 or 15 minutes. Indians have a habit of telling you what they think you want to hear even if not exactly the truth – kind if not altogether unhelpful. I am learning lessons in patience I would sometimes rather not learn under certain circumstances. “Meru, Rely on us!” But only just!
It was sad saying farewell to our community of new friends at the ashram. Our time there became like Nic’s Indian cricket tour with everyone wanting a turn to play with him.He became like a minor celebrity and people called out his name wherever we went. His shyness has melted away and he looks so proud when he goes back for seconds of roti and rice at mealtimes with his huge stainless steel plate like a little Oliver.
I look over at my child with all his energy and enthusiasm and I wonder sometimes if I am dreaming. He takes everything in his stride and is the perfect travel companion. People seem amazed I am taking him on this journey with me but it just feels so natural. Sure, it would have been peaceful without him but it’s thrilling with him and if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be laughing so much. He is both teaching and learning daily.
We had a good send-off from the ashram. The temple elephant sauntered past our makeshift cricket pitch next to the dining hall where we were passing time waiting for breakfast. It is the moment the fruit stall owner longs for and I tossed him a five Rupee coin and grabbed a banana just ahead of the stampede of people buying up every last piece of fruit to feed to the elephant … who didn’t even stop between shovelling bunches of bananas to give any blessings. Nic was so startled that he grabbed his cricket bat and leapt onto the the top shelf of the shoe locker where he watched in quiet appreciation.
He refused the elephant ride at Bannerghatta National Park where the safari was a rushed route around some tired and depressed looking animals in a bus full of local tourists who leapt away from the windows at the site of anything with claws despite the heavy mesh cage that encased the vehicle … that and the fact that all the animals were followed closely by their keepers, apart from the mangy lions and the tigers who were taking turns outside their cages.
Goa reminds me of Thailand. Furniture markets line the roads – cheap plastic or ornate carved with nothing in between – there are rows of ‘emporiums’ where unsuspecting tourists are dragged by commission-seeking rickshaw drivers, liquor stores and restaurants compete for space with the ever-expanding guest villas, the beaches are lined with palmfrond bars and restaurants serving ‘continental’ and everywhere you look there are foreigners zooting around on scooters. I feel like I’m under attack after the ashram.
“Speed thrill’s, but kill’s” shouts out from several lampposts and made me want to shout at the driver to pull over so I could Tippex out the inappropriate apostrophes. “Driving rash causes crash” was marginally better but, along with the numerous other please to heed the rules of the road, it makes absolutely no difference to the Indian driving style. The hooting and swerving again sent Nic into a deep slumber en route to Casa Geraldina, tucked down a little alley, 5 minutes from the beach and our home for the next week. There is a pool in a guesthouse nearby where we are likely to spend a lot of our time to escape the hawkers on the beach. We’ll get into it, we just need to explore a little. For now, we have ordered takeouts from the restaurant up the road and we need to get home before dark where we can get ready to share the second IPL semi-final with the caretaker’s son.

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Permanently drenched in sweat … and loving it

May 1st, 2010

I was meant to go stealth at least until Goa … but Nic had to come and check the IPL scores since there is no TV on the ashram – I got a disapproving shake of the head when I asked. Facebook is also ‘unavailable’. No TV but plenty of cricket. Nic just walks around with his cricket bat and everyone wants to play from small children to grown men. This morning waiting for breakfast we started a game and before long had an audience, a wicket keeper and a couple of fielders – perhaps Nic’s first moments in the spotlight as a cricket champion.
The ashram is not as I expected – not a green oasis of lawns and people meditating under bohdi trees – but it is perfect all the same. Nothing to do apart from while away the time between meals which are served en mass in the dining hall and taken seated in rows on floor mats. Washing up is in the Montessori way, each person washing their own plate in long wash basins. Nic loves eating with his hands but is still on rice and rotis, supplemented by dried mango, almonds, ice-cream and fennel seeds. He did have his first spicy rice this morning which was impressive – perhaps he was just too hungry to complain. He is constantly busy and there was no need to stress about not having many toys for him as he makes do with what’s available – right now he is thrilled to have a broom and a squeegy and has swept two floors of our residence (he calls it our villa), cleaned our bathroom and our little balcony. At the moment he is playing a cricket tornament in the computer room, playing both teams and whispering the conversations between the players. People think that because he won’t wear a shirt that he just doesn’t own one :)
No chance of a meditation or yoga session but I’m fine with that. It’s just a privilege being here. And I have the perfect travel companion – can’t believe I even considered leaving him behind at one stage!
Time for lunch.
Jai Gurudev.

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India update – the first few days

May 1st, 2010

I was standing on one foot as there wasn’t anywhere to put the other one. There was a wave of people crushing me from behind like a brick wall coming down on my back and Nic was clinging to my leg starting to look quite desperate as the surge began to gather us up. I felt a trickle of sweat gather speed down my back and my money belt felt like it was going to stangle me. There was shouting and jostling and people pushing Rupee notes towards the ticket window where a remarkably unhurried gentleman was sitting in front of an ancient machine that was choking out the tickets. It felt like we were fleeing a war zone and there were a limited number of tickets to get out of the country. What we were really doing was buying tickets to get on the toy train that does a 5-minute curcuit of Cubbon Park, past rubbish heaps and mucky canals.
This is India and I love it. It melts and flows and you have no choice but to get caught up in the pace of it. The hooters go 24/7, the cars narrowly miss each other and drivers swear and shout at each other. Yet, it seems so unhurried.
Nic is taking India in his stride. His initiation involved being chased around the airport on arrival by a woman intent on taking his photograph. She lost and in the madness of being mobbed by strangers wanting to meet, greet and shake hands, I fell into the same trap I always do. I was totally aware, I knew where I was going and the cab I needed to get and I was even standing in the right place to get it … but I got conned by a cab driver anyway. Being driven in the dark along unknown roads, I cursed myself for being so naive – I should know better … there was also a moment when I convinced myself there was something more sinister at play and that we were going to be sold to the highest bidder. It was fine though … of course. I know the drill. Hadcore traveller that Nic is, he fell asleep in the swerving hooting madness and an hour later woke up in the centre of the city where we were lost and couldn’t find the guest house. We were dropped on the road, directed to where the driver thought we should be going and I had to summon up all my courage to find Ashley Inn.
Once there, we settled in with take-out rice, dhal and naan in front of the cricket and fell asleep content and peaceful.

A guy at the cricket last night proposed to Katrina with a black marker pen and an A3 sheet of paper. I wonder if he got the TV coverage and I wonder if she said yes. I doubt she knew how many people’s view he blocked trying to get his message to her. The game was delayed by an hour and there was a risk of a riot with news spreading fast that it might be cancelled – perhaps some of you heard, there were some homemade bombs that exploded outside. I mention it only because it was a minor detail compared to the crush of people and guards with sticks we had to fight off to get in. I gathered up my precious cargo and pushed and yelled and squeezed trough a mass of sweaty, smelly bodies crushing one onto the next like a wave. But we got in and the crowds and the cheering and the atmosphere that comes only with 60000 cricket-crazed fans gave me goosebumps and made me want to cry a little. The stand was full by the time we got there but the guy we met in the queue to redeem our e-tickets the day before was there (what are the chances?) and he gave us his seat right near the front. Our team lost but my little cricket fan, dressed in a knee-length Challengers shirt and a Proteas cap, was dancing on the chair, hooting his horn, cheering and clapping and was fully drawn into the hype, lapping up the attention of adoring locals. He was so worked up, he ran the 2kms ‘home’ after the game shouting, ‘Follow me, mum, I know the way!’ Amazingly he did – those are not genes he gets from his mother! Clearly we looked part of the Bangalore vibe because I got asked directions by an Indian couple walking home.
We slept till after 8. Breakfasts have been masala dosa or Idily with coconut chutney – WAY better than continental.
Nic keeps giving me the latest count of how many times his cheeks have been pinched – I think he’s way off as no on lets him by without trying to touch him or take his picture. It’s puzzling at times where to place those boundaries but we are learning together.
Nic keeps asking where all the cows are.
Off to the ashram today. I’m intrigued. All Nic is concerned about is whether they have a TV so he can watch the rest of the IPL games.
My little travel companion may be small but he is huge in wisdom and he is looking out for me as much as I for him. All this talk of him getting lost has made him believe that if we are lost together, it is time to call in the cavalry.
It feels like we have been here forever. Moving on will be hard as he is convinced we are staying with friends of my parents and he was puzzled when I had to pay to stay there – he has been playing cricket and chating incessantly to the women who run the guest house.
He’s playing ball with a local while I type. His laughter is filling this tiny internet cafe and I am smitten. It’s his turn on the computer now – he wants to check out the IPL website to see who’s likely to make it to the semis.
Not sure when the next update will be. Just know that we are doing great and the world here is spinning way slower than it is back home.

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The first day of the rest of my life

April 14th, 2010

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.
~ Isak Dinesen

I sit on the cusp of my story. My story is not, like Isak Dinesen’s, of Africa but it does contain heartbreak and sorrow and promises of new beginnings. There are no happy endings like we were all promised in childhood. Nothing ends happily ever after. There are only ever happy beginnings. And sometimes we have to jump between the two in an attempt to minimise the cataclysmic fallout the ending may have.
My cusp sits somewhere between what my child terms as mum and dad splitting apart and an awfully big adventure. My child and I are going backpacking around India.
Now, everyone has an opinion about this. It’s too dangerous, he’ll get lost or stolen; he’ll get dehydrated or get malaria; he’s too young etc., etc., etc. But say I’m going to leave him behind and the opinions change to I am abandoning him.
As his mother – not the one who yells and says f*ck a lot but the one who loves her child so much it hurts right down to her toes – I decided to take him along for the journey. It wasn’t intentional, it just happened. I was chatting to him at bedtime about all the stuff going on in the house at the time and the options that were open to us … and the India adventure thing just popped out. I regretted it instantly and immediately told him what a bad idea it was because of the disease and the poverty and the filth and the sewerage. It was already too late though … I had him on ‘adventure’ and he wasn’t letting me back out.
The planning process ensued and having so much time to organise meant OCD overload with purchasing and decanting and labelling and packing and printing and unpacking and folding and rolling and changing the itinerary so often, I think it has included almost every part of India at various stages of its lifecycle.
I now have such an awesome first aid arsenal it is more like a pharmacy and it takes up half my backpack with just enough space left for two changes of clothing each. I have been frenetic but I’m not sure the output has quite matched the input as I seem to still not have everything done and I leave today! I believe I would be at the same stage had I given myself a week to get ready for this journey.
During this process I have waited daily for a break in the cold war but it has never come. My seventeen-year cycle has run its course and I look to India now for the beginning of my next new cycle. I feel excitement, fear, happiness, gratefulness, anger, privilege, frustration, pain, joy, sorrow and betrayal … as well as emotions that haven’t yet been named.
There was a grim temptation when packing the pharmacy to calculate if there was enough clout there to obliterate the pain of a broken heart. But I didn’t think I could handle a failed suicide on top of a failed marriage.
Darkness makes way for incense, marigolds and kindred souls. I will eat bravery; I will drink inner peace and I will find strength again to travel towards a new me.
So, farewell until we meet again. I’ll be a totally new person, but you’ll recognise me by the smile on my face.

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Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps …

April 13th, 2010

Is there such a thing as that one perfect soul mate? Our soul mates are those people we teach and who teach us … and once we are done, we move on. Or we try.
We spend so much time and energy finding ‘the one’ – that perfect soul mate to complete us in some way – but do we ever stop to wonder if perhaps we are already complete. Perhaps there is no ‘one’ besides ourselves. Perhaps we make ourselves less complete in order to keep ‘the one’ and fit the mould.
Why do we cling to the stuff that is bad for us and why can’t we leave behind the things that are over? We brood and we analyse when perhaps we should just move forward. I have tried recently, against the odds, to cling to the past, unable to release the hold that the notion of my perfect soul mate has had on me, when that part of my journey is complete. Perhaps there is another soul mate out there for me or perhaps not. Perhaps I have to seek solace in my own soul … at least for now. I need to realise that I am the compete person I was born as and I don’t need to rely on an ‘other’ to make me feel that way.
When you get embroiled in the love triangle that comes with having a child, you change. You can resist it, you can deny it, but it’s there. You just change. For me that change brought growth. And that growth brought courage. And that courage brought inner strength. And that inner strength brought self-confidence. And that self-confidence brought self-love. And before I knew it, I became complete. I no longer fit the mould and there’s nothing I can do but walk away.
Perhaps I will have regrets. I’m sure I will. But those too will bring more growth.

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Dangerous boundaries

April 12th, 2010

I was taken as a child. It wasn’t a traumatic experience and I really cared for the kind man who gave me kisses outside the library and lured me across the street with the promise of a sausage. I remember the tug of war in the middle of a four-lane city street; my mum pulling one arm and the kind man, the other. I remember feeling terribly embarrassed about my mother’s behaviour and I remember trying to reassure her that this man was perfectly ok and meant only to give me a treat. I couldn’t understand how my mother could be so rude when she had taught me such good manners.
We teach our children manners, and that’s just fine. But what happens when these so called manners actually start interfering with their boundaries and they begin to bring these walls down, only to be confronted with the dangers that they are not equipped to deal with waiting on the other side. We, as adults, can gauge … usually … who to greet and who to give a wide berth to; we can say hi and walk on by and we can put up walls as quickly as we can break them down. Our children aren’t equipped to do this. They are encouraged to greet and hug perfect strangers just because they happen to be our friends and they are meant to be nice to the man or the woman at the supermarket or the friendly person who finds them cute on the Promenade … all because mummy and daddy want a child who is friendly and polite.
But what about damage control? Do we tell them that they must be polite as long as we are with them but they mustn’t talk to strangers when we aren’t? And isn’t this just confusing them? Shouldn’t we be teaching them to trust their instincts rather and never force them to acknowledge anyone they are not comfortable greeting. Once they know a person as well as we do, surely that is the only time we can expect a little boundary dropping. Manners can prematurely break down the boundaries that really do need to be there. Perhaps practising manners at home ought to be good enough for now.

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Who’s the best?

April 10th, 2010

They say mum is the best. They say no matter what happens in your relationship, children must be with their mum. They will be fine as long as they are with the mum. I can’t help but wonder, is there ever a time when mum isn’t the best there is? Does mum just get too much credit sometimes because she is the female parent and grew the child from scratch? What if mum was the type to don a wig and tote a plastic gun and hold up convenience stores … would she still be considered the only person who can make her child’s life complete and safe?
Some children get lucky, I suppose. Some children get the type of mum who makes their world safe. Others get the totally fucked up variety that just adds to their baggage and ruins a previously perfectly good package. They come out so pure and full of light and joy. We don’t make them into who they are – that’s born with them – but we meld their perspective. We define their attitudes to life. So is it better to tear apart their reality and say it’s fine because they have their mum with them. Or do we play martyr mum; one who suffers for the sake of their happiness. It seems to me the latter would be the equivalent of taking their true mum away from them. But then I’m no expert.

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Perfectly dysfunctional

April 8th, 2010

I spent the morning yesterday at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens with friends and acquaintances … and offspring … and found there was so much to reflect on. Not the beauty of the perfectly manicured lawns and sculptured edges. Not the music from the songbirds or the singing streams. Not the magnificence of the mountain looming overhead. None of those. Just the perfectly damaged trees. The trees the children chose to climb through, up, over and under – the ones that gave them pure joy and hours of play – were the one that was struck by lightening and the one that had blown over. Both were ancient and both were still growing strong, just in a different direction. They were growing horizontal while sending more branches up towards the sun. They were propped with supports and they were thriving.
I couldn’t help but wonder if that is not exactly what the human condition strives for. But can anyone claim to have truly achieved it? Doesn’t the real human condition lend itself more to the picking up and dusting off; the pretence that we can still grow upwards despite the past … when perhaps what we should really do is take life’s thrashing and just grow in a new direction. Find that perfect balance of coping with what’s been dealt us and find a way to keep growing … with just that little bit of support.

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If you respect someone’s needs …

April 7th, 2010

… you help them figure out if those needs are worth prioritising, or not.

In a relationship you need to be able to state exactly what it is you need. Sometimes it is not even important if those needs are met because sometimes it’s just the fact that someone is willing to listen to your needs and respect your needs. And then you might realise you don’t need it after all. ‘What am I getting at?’ you ask. Let’s say your child asks you to leave the light on at night. You could refuse because you claim he won’t sleep or you could just leave it on. Your child will sleep regardless. If you meet his need, chances are he won’t bother to ask you to leave it on the next night. If you don’t meet his need, it will likely turn into an issue that he will perform about every night before bed. Is this one worth analysing, you ask. Well, hell yeah, for the simple reason that it translates into so many areas in life when it comes to navigating those relationships … and is such a simple thing to remedy.

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Tricky pathways

April 4th, 2010

We spend our lives navigating our way through relationships and all we create is more baggage. We are social animals and the only way we can shun this aspect of ourselves is if we go and live in a cave. Tempting though it is …
We can’t just look after ourselves in life as we are so interconnected with those around us that when we think we are dealing with our issues, chances are we are dealing with those of the people we are sharing our issues with. We go from our childhood families, often straight into sexual relationships, living together and then marriage. And just when we are trying to figure out a route through all these mazes we go and add a new relationship to the mix: our children. And once that happens, the cave isn’t even an option. We are then just propagating the issues because there are the children’s friends, later the children’s partners and … sigh, yes, the dreaded outlaws.

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Perspective

April 3rd, 2010

Talking about dummies and nappies when you have small children can become something of an obsession. When do you toilet train? When should a child throw their dummy away? Is it a problem if your child sucks their thumb beyond the age of three? Shouldn’t my child be walking by a year, talking by two and wiping his own bum at four?

As long as you don’t get sucked into all of that, there will come a time only a few years later that you can’t even remember any of these milestones because your own child – as well as all the children you know – is walking, talking and wiping his own bum. And I have never seen a sixteen year old sucking a dummy. That child who couldn’t walk till one and half or wipe his bum till five or … shock and horror … sucked a dummy until he was six, will turn into a perfectly well balanced teenager, regardless … or a perfectly unbalanced teenager, regardless.

Take that same sixteen year old who has been having sex for a couple of years already. From the perspective of this great generational change, we could say we are becoming too permissive. Jump forward a decade or two and you will see that that teenager who got everything wrong in terms of milestones has turned into a perfectly well balanced thirty year old.

We all end up in nappies again anyway, someone else wiping our bums and washing our bodies, while we suck on our false teeth. I have a feeling the sex dries up though.

Everything evens out eventually and the key is not to stress over the individual milestones but the individual itself.

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All about terry(cloth)

March 23rd, 2010

This is for the benefit of my friend who is about to have six little carbon footprints pit pattering around her house in August. According to estimation, she will be using approximately 10,000 nappies till potty training … that’s a big landfill contribution to have on one’s conscience.

I have a convert: she has decided to go the terry route. Not only will she save the landfills but her children will be potty trained much sooner because the babies will feel when they have wet or soiled their nappies and have a greater tendency to want to use the toilet sooner.

I only began using the terrycloth nappies when my child was about 4 months old but that had more to do with the lack of availability of appropriately sized waterproof liners than it did to do with my desire to use them earlier. I noticed in PEP stores that they have a new great design in small waterproofs – a lot lighter and less bulky too. The fact that so many people are making the change back to cloth has had an impact on the industry making it a lot easier these days to covert.

There are people who claim that the use of chemicals, water and electricity outweighs the environmental benefits of cloth nappies but there is no need to use chemicals (in fact you shouldn’t as this isn’t good for baby’s skin) and there is no need to use hot water to wash them … or for that matter, to use a long washing cycle.

Because there will be three babies, washing will be done more regularly so you can get away with about 10 nappies per baby. Start with a couple of bags of nappy liners – the variety that can be flushed down the toilet – and a couple of bags of bum wipes. You need a nappy bucket – this is a bucket with a small lid within the lid for safety purposes. There is no need to use Steri-nappy, which is chemical, as there is an organic nappy steriliser on the market by Enchantrix. The nappy steriliser goes in the bucket, mixed with water, and the bucket gets tucked under the changing table or out of the way in the bathroom. Nappy liners catch the pooh and get flushed and all nappies just get thrown into the organic solution in the nappy bucket. When the bucket is fill – takes about 10 to 15 nappies – you do a cold, half hour wash in the washing machine with something like Mary-Anne’s concentrated and enviro-friendly washing powder (or the Enchantix or Bloublommetjies equivalent) and hang them to dry in the sun. So simple.

When the babies are very small, you will need to cut the cloth nappies in half but from about 4 months old, they can be whole. For nappy folding instructions, see:

I used the kite fold, which was best for a boy but experiment with the others to see what works for girls.

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Your legacy

March 22nd, 2010

On a finite planet, reproducing is an extravagance, which needs to be offset by going green. We can’t increase our carbon footprint and then not try in even the smallest and easiest ways to reduce that carbon footprint. It’s our responsibility to recycle – go green in whatever way possible – when we have children. My dad once said to me that he doesn’t care much about global warming … after all, he says, he’s not going to be around in 50 years time. That’s his argument? That’s his argument! This is a man with four children and five grandchildren … a man who has started in motion a long line of procreation … a man who has a seriously big carbon footprint … a man who seemingly doesn’t comprehend that in 50 years’ time his offspring’s offspring will be cursing him for his lack of input into a very real crisis.

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Destiny … in three parts

March 18th, 2010

Part 3:
There are no guarantees. You can chose to have or chose to not have but either way these things just take their natural course. I still have no idea how my child managed to find his way into my life when I think how one moment in a then 13-year relationship changed my entire life … and then turned it upside down.

A very old friend of mine shared her story of how she spent years choosing to not have a baby. When she got married she decided to try and their precious baby arrived within the year – something that is almost unheard of these days. After being so lucky the first time around, she and her husband faced the enormous decision of whether to have a second. The answer was a resounding YES (YES, YES … !) That was over three years ago.

You can’t control these things; you just have to live your life as best you can without any regrets. This whole vibe is just some kind of surreal journey that takes us down random routes … and without even a GPS.

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Destiny … in three parts

March 17th, 2010

Part 2:
There are also those of my friends who are so keen on parenting that they are on IVF for their seconds and those who have turned to adoption after trying that option for so many years and it just not working. Then there is my friend who tried everything for eight years and then went travelling. Travelling is my answer for everything … but it didn’t help her fall pregnant. Or perhaps it did. On her return, she and her husband found a surrogate, put two fertilized eggs in her and put a third one back into my friend … as a last ditch effort.

They all took and she’s expecting triplets in August.

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Destiny … in three parts

March 16th, 2010

Part 1:
At the age that most of my remaining single friends are either desperately seeking a man to provide them with a child or considering the option of adopting and single parenting, I have a friend who has a dog. It’s a beautiful sad-eyed retriever who exists on an organic diet of fresh free-range meat and bergie pooh. And it is loved like a child. In fact it is her child … the only child she will consider having. She is at risk of losing her hot Swedish boyfriend because of her decision. And he is at risk of losing his hot Jewish girlfriend because he won’t compromise on having a family.

She takes care of her dog, her sister and her mother – she’s not lacking in the care department – but there is not even one cell in her body that wants a child … there is not even one cell that is curious about it. She just isn’t wired that way.

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Frenemy

March 11th, 2010

Let’s take a break from children and talk about friends …the adult variety. I got all flaky on myself this weekend and threw a copy of Psychologies into my shopping trolley. I read it cover to cover and found it quite disturbing that I have reached the age that I can devour a self-discovery magazine with as much relish as I once poured over Hello. The article that got my attention though, was not the one on saving my relationship but the one on breaking up friendships.

When you have a child, the dynamics of friendship change completely … as does your relationship with your partner and yourself … But that’s not really what I want to talk about here, mainly because I inadvertently brought a child into the article.

I want to talk about a great friend of mine. Well, she used to be a great friend of mine until she discarded me and made me question myself and the reasons she felt I wasn’t ‘good enough’ to be her friend anymore. What I discovered was that it had nothing to do with who I am and everything to do with what I did. I changed the dynamics of our relationship.

Our friendship I thought was based on a strong bond that revolved around common goals, interests and the fact that we had similar aged children (there I go again). We were somehow always there for each other and discussed problems over tea, coffee, sushi, anything going, almost every week. What I only realised once the friendship was over and she claimed she needed to create some space in her life was that all the problems we had discussed were hers.

And the reason the friendship ended? Well, it was my fault entirely. I asked her advice one day about a big problem in my life. I changed the dynamics of the friendship and broke our contract. I made it about me and that wasn’t the deal.

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‘Don’t scratch an itching dog’

March 9th, 2010

An expression I heard used when I investigated having the rust scraped out of my car – because once you start scratching, you have to keep on going.

So what happens when you start to itch? Do you scratch or do you let it lie?

Or do you just sell the damn car?

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Relation-shapes

March 8th, 2010

A relationship is point to point – a three-dimensional line that grows or shrinks according to moods and swings. Add a baby and you add another line. You have a triangle: a love triangle.

There is no greater or more complex love triangle than the one created by having a baby.

Someone is always left out and there is a massive amount of attention grabbing … usually from dad who can’t bear the sight of ‘his’ boobs being used as a dairy, and often from junior who, like the dog, pushes in during an embrace.

No matter how strong the lines are – the individuals who make up the triangle – the points of the triangle are likely to wear over time … and very often they just snap.

But sometimes you have to break the points to notice how the individual lines can be stronger than the shape they make up.

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Rekindling the nappy debate

February 27th, 2010

There are some great innovations going on in the nappy arena:
Nature Babycare, designed by a Swedish mum who can’t even sell them in Sweden; Nature Boy and Girl, based on same; Seventh Generation and gDiaper, to name a few.

These new innovations are all fabulous, trendy and partly nature friendly … Most claim to be compostable although there is a claim by some that the tabs and elastic edges take as long as a regular disposable to biodegrade (500 years!)

But, until you actually try the straight terrycloth variety, you just can’t knock it in terms of cost, fit, comfort, ease of washing and the most important part: recycling. The most green disposable nappy is Nature Babycare and even that is only 60% biodegradable – the best there is but still not perfect and when our landfills are filling up at an alarming rate, we need way closer to perfection than that. And then there is still the issue of wood pulp – all disposables, eco or not, use wood pulp and here lies the obvious issue of sustainability.

The shaped cloth nappies are great for parents who believe folding a terry square is beyond them … but what do you use them for when baby is all grown up? The simple terry squares win the day when baby grows up – they become kitchen rags, DIY clean-up cloths and even gym towels. Now that’s eco savvy, totally waste free and sustainable.

Links for your info:
http://www.naty.com/uk/Products/tabid/55/Main/Nature-Babycare/Sub/Nappies/MainId/3/SubId/21/Default.aspx
http://www.gdiapers.com/gdiapers101/flush-compost-or-toss

http://www.seventhgeneration.com/Diapers

See my link to a previous article for ready-folded terrycloth nappies:

http://www.bhalababy.com/2007/10/14/dispose-or-reuse/

And if you have any questions about how to go about starting down the route of sustainable eco-friendly terrycloth, I am always available to help – the environment means the world to me and my boy.

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Defining benchmarks

February 24th, 2010

I sometimes disagree with my mother-in-law because … well, just because she is my mother-in-law and weren’t they put on this earth to create a bit of conflict in an otherwise happy home environment? But sometimes I disagree with her because – despite her claiming to have been around the block often enough to know better than someone of inferior years – I’m right. Even if sometimes I battle when it comes to giving the reasons.
I got so tired of her using the words silly and stupid in reference to my child’s behaviour but, because I couldn’t give her my argument why I felt so strongly about it, I taught my child to fight back with his words until she began to find more creative ways to describe how he was behaving.
It was only after her most recent visit that the voice from deep within was allowed a hearing and I realised that not only do I resent the negative terms that were used in my own childhood but that I have an exceptionally good reason to try and wean my own child off references of this nature.
It’s simple really – it’s simply about benchmarks. Use the benchmark of stupid when speaking to your child and your child will never feel he is anything better than that i.e. when he acts intelligently, he will believe he is just a stupid child with moments of intelligence. But tell a child he is not being clever rather than he is being stupid and he will realise that he is defined by his intelligence … with moments that do not match up to his capabilities.

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Bible Study?

February 22nd, 2010

The mother of a friend of my child’s told me that her daughter sat down to dinner one evening, held hands around the table and asked everyone if they would like to say gross. A few weeks later my child came home and wanted to discuss God. He is learning about religion at the local Montessori. I am not sure what form it takes and honestly I don’t care, as long as it covers all religions rather than the most popular indoctrination of the time. At dinner this evening he announced that he knows so much now about religion and he even knows the names of God’s two children: Jesus and Picasso.

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A-nother

February 21st, 2010

I realise I have spoken plenty about that desperate need to procreate but then there is that cautious desire to provide your child with a sibling. Should I, shouldn’t I? What if I do, what if I don’t? … and all the other what ifs.
It’s a tough decision that never gets any easier. The only difference between having two and deciding to stick to one is that you can wish you had had another one but, if you do have that other one, you can never say you wish you’d only had one … as that would be diminishing the value of a human life … an extremely important human life since you would have made it from scratch.

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Dirt is ok … even if I have got OCD

February 19th, 2010

My child has just run past me with his mouth smeared with the remains of a strawberry Solero ice cream and I didn’t even flinch.
… and he stayed like that till bath time.
There was a time when I would look at the parents of children with messy faces and recoil. I would wonder why parents chose to be so neglectful of their children and not wipe their faces clean of chocolate, tomato sauce, biscuit crumbs … and the worst of all: snot.
They seemed to just not care.
In the early days I would wipe even a shadow of a crumb from his top lip and he never had hands dirty enough to transfer onto anything cleaner in his reach. Have I become more neglectful? Lazy even? Maybe I just have to admit that dirt it not only ok, but essential for a four-year-old to function properly.

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Living up to expectations

February 18th, 2010

I always believed my husband was shredding my work. He would come home to a tired wife and child. Child whimpers and he backs down. Child asks for something reasonable and his first response is no, child insists and he says yes because it isn’t worth fighting over … reinforcing the idea that a little performance might help his case.

I used to think this was a male vs. female thing until I stayed with a friend who works and whose husband stays home and looks after the kids – this could be many people I know at the moment since it seems to be a common trend right now – and realised that in certain ways the roles are truly reversed.

It is the parent who spends less time with the child who tends to back down as soon as the child whimpers … the parent who goes to work who doesn’t force the child to do what they are perfectly capable of doing. They want to feel needed so they do whatever they can to make up for the space they have left by not being there.

I have pushed my child to live up to my … yes, often unreasonable … expectations, and my husband comes home and shreds my work. In his position though, I’d probably do exactly the same thing.

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Some toys should be locked away

February 15th, 2010

A very long time ago I was embarrassed by a child I once looked after. She was four at the time and I was nineteen and we were playing hairdressers in her room … as one does … when she told me that her daddy was in love with me but he couldn’t marry me because he was married to her mum. Guess who was standing behind me? There was a lot of awkward eye shifting and foot shuffling and mutterings before her dad walked away and the incident was never mentioned again.

My child never embarrassed me … until recently. It was my husband’s birthday party and the house was full of people – mostly the short variety. Adults and children were playing in every room of the house. It was a good day.

There are items in the house that have been forgotten about since having a child … items that I often wish weren’t forgotten but circumstances prevail and … well, these things just get forgotten. But not by the child. He had seen something that, when it came to playing cops and robbers, he knew would be a great asset to the game. He walked proudly into the room swinging the pink fur-coated handcuffs. It could have been worse … but not much, I doubt. I might have even blushed and, for once, I couldn’t blame it on champagne.

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Feeling pensive

February 13th, 2010

I remember walking to school, the park, piano lessons. Walking slowly in the hopes that each slow step would make me another minute late. It didn’t of course – I was way too close to all those places for a slow walk to make much of a difference. Or maybe punctuality was inherited. I would give the storm water drains a wide berth for fear of falling down and joining lives with the sewer rats. I used to get this feeling walking on the jetty at the yacht club too – I thought I would fall through the gaps. I remember those dreadful childhood tails about the boy who had long hair and never cut his nails and the girl who didn’t eat enough and went down the plughole with the bathwater. They terrified me. My parents threatened me – I was not a big eater as a child – I was destined to disappear with the bathwater. That was the reason for the wide berth. I remember being told I was a ‘sweet little thing’ I was. That was when I wasn’t being a ‘two-faced little horror’. I remember the fear of disappearing; the pressure – trying so hard to remain despite gaping holes ready to swallow me up because I didn’t want to eat my peas.
I remember the long walk down to school taking care not to step on the lines between the paving stones. But there were no cracks or gaps. And those dreams – I remember those dreams – of arriving at school without my bag, my shoes or even my entire uniform. Naked dreams; exposed, embarrassed and guilty. I remember the normality.
I remember running away from home. My sisters packed my bag. They said I’d have a great time. I remember not knowing where to go once I got to the bottom of the road. I remember getting home before anyone really missed me.
I remember Jonathan Eacon, the minister’s son. The first boy I ever took a bath with. I always had crushes on minister’s sons. I remember they never had crushes on me.
I remember walking home when my mother forgot to fetch me … I remember she forgot a lot … and I remember hiding behind each tree I passed in case she was driving past to fetch me. I remember she never panicked about not finding me because when she forgot me, she forgot me for the whole day.
I remember the fear of the leather slipper, the wooden spoon or the cane. I remember the defiance as I stood there and took my punishment. I remember the tears that came once I had closed my bedroom door.
I remember being stolen.
I remember good times too.
I remember the surgeons in wellington boots.
I remember the time I didn’t have to try and stop myself from hitting my child. I remember the relief when the need for willpower slipped away. I remember when my child said I love you for the first time. I remember the fear of losing him. I remember that daily. I remember when things began to feel right. I remember the feeling of the tear rolling down my face when I heard his first cry. I remember when I started loving him.
I remember when perspective began to change my world.

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Serendipity

February 12th, 2010

I always fought so hard to be equal to my husband. Yeah, yeah … define equal and all that. From my perspective equality came with an equivalent income and a career choice that ensured future success and status. I had power and I fought to keep it. What I didn’t know – and what whacked me in the face this morning somewhere between kilometre 5 and 6 – was that it was when I relinquished the power that came with equal earnings that I actually gained my power. I found that hiding behind an equal bank balance was what really stripped me of my power.

There is so much more power that comes with the knowledge of who you truly are rather than the person you want others to see you to be.

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Children of friends

February 11th, 2010

I’ve never really found myself bothered to get to know the children of my friends … that is, until I stayed with friends with children without my own child. And I really got to know them.

There is a definite shift when you don’t have your own child around as your entire focus moves from making sure your child is polite, doesn’t wreck anything, hurt anyone, spill anything etc etc …

I was on holiday and that helped – no routine and a stress-free existence of not having to jump as soon as there were tears and it was someone else’s problem when there were cries of “mummy, mummy’ in the night. My friends were worried I couldn’t sleep with the disturbances but, honestly, it was bliss. If only I could feel like that when my own child is around. I’m sure the world would not stop spinning if I just cared a little less about all those ripples when something sets him off.

Let him just be? I could try.

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Impressionable

February 9th, 2010

After speaking with the mother of a friend of my child’s it seems my situation is not unique. One of many daughters; a father who couldn’t deal with weakness, and an intolerant mother. Add them all up and take away any other kind of parenting role models and you have an incredible journey of self discovery that you actually don’t even have a choice but to embark upon immediately when your child is born.

It’s a big enough change not being able to stay out all night, going away on a whim, having sex all over the house and being bound by routine. Not only is it about not being selfish anymore but about changing every single thing you do and think. And that’s besides giving up your perfect boobs, six-pack and smooth thighs.

The first time your child is rude to you and you raise a hand, you have to determine in an instant if that is the way you want to define your relationship. When your child calls for you in the night, are you going to be kind or grumpy? When he falls over and (according to you) over-reacts, are you going to be tolerant and understanding? Fit the mould or break it to pieces?

Of course no journey of self-discovery is a wasted ticket. But with all the learning still to do, I have to wonder why the hell I had a baby so damn late.

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Q & A

February 8th, 2010

I find my child very brainy – very advanced – so I am the same as every parent I suppose. He watches, instead of Cartoon Network, the David Attenborough and Michael Palin DVDs as well as the BBC productions about space. I also recently bought him a book on the human body.

Driving in the car yesterday, he was tired and when he’s tired he asks questions … and lots of them. Questions about the formation of the planet and sky and gravity were followed by questions about the way a human body is designed compared to that of other mammals. I, revelling in his intelligence, answered in detail to the best of my intellectual ability. But while explaining to him the process of digestion my child, with a pensive look, asked, “Mum, why does superman wear his underpants over his trousers?”

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Am I turning into my mother-in-law?

February 5th, 2010

My husband has been diagnosed as being a ‘good boy’, a man who does things to please others regardless of how these things impact on his own life. It took years of conditioning by his mother and needless to say we don’t discuss any of this at family dinners.

Anyway … having broken the cycle of my own dysfunctional family after 20 years of hard graft, I have unwittingly picked up the dysfunction of my husband’s kin. I have single-handedly and systematically been turning my child into a ‘good boy’.

The realisation came at cricket coaching when I noticed he was watching me to gage my reactions to every ball he bowled or hit. It was because I was in a bad mood and he was trying to cheer me up. Sweet, yes. But he took it on as his responsibility, which is way beyond what a four-year-old should be thinking about when engrossed in his passion for sport.

It’s not the first time he has done it but it is the first time I have identified it for what it is and the first time I am totally aware of its dangers and my need to change it (me) as soon as possible.

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Je t’aime

February 3rd, 2010

My little noonoo has a French girlfriend. He will state in the same sentence that he hates girls and can Nao sleep over. After a recent playdate with her he came home practising a few French words like bonjour and au revoir and then asked me what the French word for lovely is. Now that I’ve Googled it I know the right answer but at the time all I could come up with was bon.

It didn’t matter because he instantly threw his arms around me and gave me a tender hug and kiss and said, ‘Mummy, you are wonderful, you are bon.’

I need to cling to that moment next time he calls me farty face.

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Trusting the Prosperity Tart

January 29th, 2010

While working in London, indulging in the fruits from the capitalist tree, there was always a deep feeling that there was more; that I was meant to be doing something more meaningful. I vowed to juice my capitalist fruit, chop down the tree and plant a new kind of seed one day.

That day never came. What did come was a seed that I didn’t want planted – a child that threw my life upside down and several years of believing my dreams were over because my life was no longer in my control.

A friend of mine – and great tart maker – has adapted the term coined by SARK, the author of Prosperity Pie
http://www.planetsark.com/eshop_products_books_feat_01.htm

She makes a list of what she wants at the beginning of each new year and tucks it away somewhere, only revisiting it at what she terms her personal AGM mid year and year end. And she rarely sees a year through without achieving at least 90% of her listed items.

Like trusting the process, this method is meant to free your mind to recognising the immediate opportunities without always focussing on whether they will achieve your ultimate goals.

It’s never been my strong point.

But, having said that, while fighting the process and trying to open all the doors to what I have wanted, I inadvertently left a window wide open and my child climbed in. And with him came everything I ultimately ever wanted. The child I never wanted saved me from the person I wanted to be and made me into the person I am meant to be.

Trust the process and you can have your prosperity pie and eat it too.

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In true Gemini fashion

January 28th, 2010
In true Gemini fashion, I change my mind, my outlook and my opinions on a seemingly daily basis and often when I read over some of the material I have posted, I am shocked to discover that it is 100% original material and it came out of the recesses of my dark and cavernous mind.
So, I’m doing a repost … Margot (of http://joumaseblerrieblog.blogspot.com/ fame) loved it and it’s something that I just may need to remind myself of today.
Speaking of choices …

Something that keeps coming up amongst my peers is the decision to work full time or not. I know what it feels like on the inside – believe me I have been there, desperate to have more of everything good, terrified of giving up anything in case I need it later and paranoid about not being able to provide for the future. But, looking in now from the outside, I have so much faith in the process of a holistic lifestyle. I can’t consume what I don’t have and can’t waste what I don’t have. My choices are more limited but my enjoyment of life totally unrestricted. There is a calmness as though life is slower, more meaningful and less inhibited than before. It seems the more one has, the higher and nearer we place the boundaries … and when you have less, there is no end to the potential you can achieve.
I was chatting to a friend (you know, the ones we non-working mums meet up with for play dates) about ambition and success. Her father-in-law had a simple life and a regular 9-5 job, put all his children through tertiary education and was a respected and loved man. Compared to a man in a powerful executive job who hardly saw his children, apart from annual family holidays, we were weighing up the benchmarks of success. I’m sure if there were a vote the outcome would be more or less equal based on the perspective of the person voting. As for my vote … it’s pretty obvious what it would be – success means nothing unless it has a positive impact on the significant people in that person’s life. What’s the point otherwise? If the choice boils down to a simple education thing, is it better to be able to afford to put your child through ’varsity or is it better to see him and help nurture him before then so he is better able to put himself through ’varsity? My child is still little so I choose to see him – I might, however, change my mind when he becomes a teenager J I see so many parents torn between their need to see their children and their neurosis about their nest egg and recently a lot of people have lost their nest egg despite their choice to grown that instead of their children. Obviously there are people who don’t have the choice and have to be a double-income family. But if no one’s going to die if things are downscaled, then surely the choice is a simple one. This isn’t a judgement of people who want more as I totally get it – I get ambition and the freedom money can buy – I just need to make the point that all choices come with compromise and it’s best to be certain you can live with whatever that compromise may be.
Sure it’s always going to be scary – what important choice is ever not scary? – but it’s a matter of going to the edge and taking the leap of faith to see if flight is possible. There would be no reason to live if it weren’t for the challenges in life – after all, it is the challenges that make life what it is in the first place.
I don’t know anyone so far who hasn’t jumped first and then made the choice to fly.

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Breaking patterns

January 27th, 2010

I haven’t written for a while. I have been on holiday. I am in the fortunate position to be able to down tools and spend carefree summer holidays with my son, running on the beach, rolling on the lawn, eating ice-creams in the sun, building Lego and playing miniature golf. I love every moment of it, relishing his bouts of energy and ecstasy and indulging his every whim as the days of summer tick slowly by.

I noticed, however, as the holidays began to draw to a close, that my focus on him has had both positive and negative effects and it’s the negative that I have been fretting over and obsessing about in the last week. It’s about pressure.

With a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder, I tend to have to do everything as perfectly as possible … but if I fail, the world has a tendency to fall apart beneath my feet. That is what it has felt like recently when my son’s usually exemplary behaviour and good manners have been replaced with a disarming overuse of expressions such as farty face, poopoo bum, old bugger, kick you in the pants etc., etc. … in response to simple questions such as: what is your name?

It didn’t take much analysis of the situation … nor much self-analysis to figure out that I am almost entirely to blame.

My personality was formed on the premise that I was a bad person with the odd virtue. To compensate, I have been, for the last four and a quarter years, telling my child how perfect he is in every way and I have been doing this every night as I hold him in my arms at his bedtime.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, if only it had a way of undoing all the things we so obviously do wrong when shown up in its light. The thing is, it seemed to work so well until it reached a threshold – the pressure began to outweigh the benefit and … I turned him into a monster.

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Flexibility of my job

December 10th, 2009

The problem with ‘working from home’ – i.e. having a ‘home office’ … which, let’s face it is only there to ground me into believing I can actually work from home – is that my work is not really respected as much as if I was at a ‘real’ office being watched over by a beady-eyed boss. If I phone my husband at work and he is busy with something, I get a curt response to my questions or need to converse … basically, I have to respect his space in the work forum and not bother him when he is meant to be spinning his hamster wheel. For me, however, it is impossible to set up any kind of routine at the ‘home office’ since when there is anything to do, besides the regular keeping the house stocked so no one starves, like getting workmen in, making calls, fetching stuff, buying hardware etc., I am expected to drop the relatively unimportant things that I am working on (relatively unimportant because it is, more often that not, unpaid work) and do what is required in my role as … as what?

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Role reversal

December 9th, 2009

It was interesting staying with friends who have reversed roles temporarily – the woman goes to work and the man stays home to look after the children. The interesting part was not, however, the fact that the roles were reversed – this happens often and seems perfectly normal especially when circumstances dictate. What is interesting is the fact that because the man looks after the kids every afternoon during the week, he gets time out from the kids on the weekend. In my world, because I haven’t been to work all week (well, not conventional work anyway – I work for free), I have to give my husband time out and continue looking after my child.

Logically, because I have looked after him all week, it would be a relief to do something different and, because my husband has been sitting at a desk all week, surely he too would need a break from Norm – it seems like a perfect ‘opposites attract’ kind of situation where everyone would win … most of all our child who is often dad deprived.

I think it’s too much to ask, so I have to settle with adamantly insisting on tea in bed every morning of the working week – which in my case is seven days  … but I’ll settle for the five because tea in bed five mornings a week is just fine.

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Here but lost

December 7th, 2009

I realised, during a training session for the KARABO grief-counseling program, that I have always suffered grief for the loss of my mother. This isn’t because my mother died but because I never had a mother – well, not in the sense of my belief of what a mother should be. Too much stuff to actually go into any kind of detail here but the over-riding taint is someone who critisised most and praised little. Add to this the corporal punishment that was so trusted by that generation and the result is inevitably a person with not much faith in her ability. I turned slightly psychotic when I had my own child – I became tearful at the very suggestion that I should discipline with smacking, I went into self-loathing every time I shouted at my child and I screamed at my husband if he didn’t treat our child with total respect.

I had to go back to the basics: praise the good, ignore the bad and dig deep for the love … basic guidance from puppy socializing classes. Fine, I don’t always ignore the bad – I’m flawed! – but, besides putting up boundaries, I reward with stars and tell him every night, as he is going to sleep, all the things I love about him. There has to be a way to confine the wild horses without breaking their spirits.

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Whacko words

November 27th, 2009

I call my child noo-noo, shnoek-poep, Mr Moozle … basically whatever comes out of my mouth. And it puzzles me as it not only makes me sounds slightly ‘challenged’ but it brings out maternal feelings that I never knew existed.

I asked around and I am happy to declare that it is all perfectly normal – these weird terms of endearment are simply a testament to the love we feel for these little distractions that throw our hearts into turmoil.

My dad used to call me cockroach or cockalock – not exactly heart-warming but, said with great tenderness, surely just a bit of the same.  Sadly, I can’t think of any words my mother ever used …

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4 minus 1

November 26th, 2009

Our pool of friends has suffered its first casualty. It’s because of the children. I am sad and relieved all at the same time. Sad because I knew them at the beginning, I was at their awesome wedding and I love them. Relieved because they are the first!

What do people do when their children get in the way? Because they DO get in the way!

I work with children whose parents throw them away when they get in the way … they are dispensable. But what if you’re not a prostitute or a drug addict or you don’t live in dire poverty? An educated and affluent person throws away their partner instead. We feel the burdens of life too strongly to suck it up and live through the pain. We are weak. We haven’t suffered enough to realise that ‘this too will pass’. Or maybe we are just a bunch of cynics and life is too short to get bogged down by small miseries.

I can’t say the thought doesn’t cross my mind – I can’t throw my child away, so why not just get rid of my husband? I suppose the few years you get to grow your children into adults pass so quickly and then they leave you eventually … they never took that vow to stay with you forever – so maybe it’s the relationship with the person who just might stick around once the children have left that should be preserved.

I’ve lived through unbearable but perhaps this is even beyond that; I just cannot say. I don’t support the argument of staying together for the sake of the children but splitting up because of them is just plain tragic.

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Some one once said that the choices you make follow you through life …

November 13th, 2009

This made me think about a friend of mine who, on discovering she was pregnant, went to every clinic in town to hunt down one that would give her the abortion pill. But on finding one, decided there must be a reason it had been so difficult to find it in the first place that she couldn’t go through with it after all. She now has this bright and bubbly child who comes with her fair share of trials and troubles but who fills the house with light and joy. It’s hard to imagine there would ever be regret … and I don’t even ask because it is so unimportant now.

Becoming a mother was the biggest shock of my life and learning to love the child I claimed had ruined my life was a tough journey indeed with many a tortuous mountain peak. I now find that the love I have developed for him over the years has grown like a tumour around my heart and to get rid of that love would mean ripping my entire heart out of my chest.

So, although I feel guilty and wonder if he’ll ever forgive me for not wanting him to start with, there is no cell in my body that would want it any other way. Sure there are times when I hate my role and wish I could be untethered again … but, this child: he is meant to be here for reasons I am, as yet, incapable of explaining.

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The best thing about Gina Ford

November 12th, 2009

Gina Ford is not exactly the Child Whisperer but there is a part of her book that has been invaluable (besides the obvious routine that everyone learns – some too late – that can transform your life if implemented from the start).

Whispering. Such a simple thing. She pushed this in every schedule for baby: never speak in tones above a whisper when it is after bed time or a nighttime feed or when baby has woken too early. My child is now four and when he gets up in the night on those rare (thanks to Gina) occasions or when he wakes up before six, he will walk softly and always whisper. It doesn’t seem like much but, like many little things, makes a big difference.

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Different realities in my parallel life

November 11th, 2009

My journey of self-discovery was also a kind of voyeuristic experience where I lived alongside the life of what my own family’s environment may have been like had I stayed in the UK (notwithstanding the fact that had I stayed, my child would not have found his way in). There are so many differences, from boundaries and control to exposure and experience, and I couldn’t help but compare. The actual comparisons have no bearing here since they have nothing to do with what is better or worse but rather people’s drive to make things the same as everyone else and the pointlessness of this since that is a journey with no real destination.

It brings me back, as most things do at the moment, to the choice I have made to have only the one child. I know what I’m giving up and I am fully aware of what I am depriving my child of … regardless of my views that the pros outweigh the cons. But, the world over, children are growing up with different realities. These different realities identify them in their uniqueness as individuals and no matter how much we conform to social norms, we will never create a normal child. There is just no benchmark.

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It’s about being part of something rather than being in it to win

November 10th, 2009

Every time I am doing well at something, I tend to sabotage my success … but that’s not really a bhalababy post, it’s a therapy session.

I run. I am a runner. And I don’t win. I don’t win because I don’t need to win. And I run because I can be happy with my result, regardless. As it is in life, sometimes it’s just about participating. And, besides, every race can be a personal ‘win’ because I do a great time, I get the t-shirt and the medal … and then there are those endorphins which are as good as those during childbirth but without the intense pain. Sometimes.

I ran the Cape Grape Run … a tough 21.1km off-road race with Klein Constantia wine tasting at the top of the 8km climb … last Sunday. I was fit, I was strong, I had sorted out all my issues with shin splints, I had had a bowl of complex carbs, a cup of regular tea (after eight months without caffeine), my vitamins … I’d done my prep and I was so ready to thrash my PB (personal best). I destroyed the uphill, joked with fellow runners, left Steve and Gav in the dust and belted downhill while chatting to a veteran of long distance. It was kilometer 12 and I hadn’t even broken a sweat. I was set to tear past at least another hundred runners before the finish … Chariots of Fire was being whistled by the trees.

The crack sounded like a gun shot as my foot bent at an unnatural angle on making contact with a pile of lose rocks … and I watched as runners I had passed kilometers back started streaming past me. I already knew I wasn’t going to win this thing and now I knew I wasn’t even going to do a PB … but I ran on (with what I know now to be somewhere between a grade 2 and grade 3 sprain – the worst I could have done) so I could just finish the race. I knocked a few minutes off last year’s time and, best of all, I crossed the line seconds before Steve and Gav … after which I couldn’t even stand on the injured foot.

All the while, my husband and child were running the 5km fun run, a race my husband was planning to push our son in the jogging pram in order to complete the circuit. Turns out, my husband pushed and our son ran … all 5km in 42 minutes!

I didn’t get much sympathy for my alleged self-sabotage but I proved I could finish anything I start as long as my heart is in it … that goes a long way in proving the stamina required to be a parent.

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Your children will hate you no matter what

November 9th, 2009

We fret so much about doing the right thing all the time … at the right time and in the right way. We’re terrified we’ll do something wrong and damage our children so much that they’ll end up hating us. But, you know what, when our children get to 13 or 14 (often even sooner), they are going to hate us anyway. It’s inevitable … like hormones.

Which makes me wonder if perhaps the best thing to do is bring them up in a way that will preserve our own sanity rather than theirs … and that way we will be better equipped to deal with the inevitable.

You may get lucky and have a child that doesn’t ever hate you. And what a bonus for that sanity of yours.

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Obsession with schools

November 5th, 2009

I find myself breaking out in a sweat whenever the school topic comes up at dinner parties. I might actually be forced into home schooling as the very thought of trawling through school grounds and interviewing teachers who really couldn’t care one way or the other whether the child who is my prince attends his school or not makes me want to break the parenting deal that requires me to educate to the best of my ability.

My child is four. He is perfect in every way … like everyone’s child, of course. I wanted to give him away for the first two years of his life and am only really getting to know him now that he has wormed him way into my blood like a parasite I am now loathe to get rid of because I would die without it.

Now, when I watch him sleeping, I realise the significance of what has been entrusted to me and it is enough to make me feel suffocated with the pressure of being the perfect mother to this perfect human child.

He changes every day and it the most incredible human being I have ever met so the thought of leaving him in the care of an institution each day, terrifies me. I don’t have great memories of school – and the ones I do have are tainted by too much booze and Tippex thinners – so I need to know my child so much better before I can feel qualified to pick an appropriate schooling system. Of course, I am fully aware of the fact that he won’t get in anywhere now because most people pick the school for their child while they are in the act of procreation.

So, now what? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know how to chose something so fundamentally important – something that will have such a huge impact on this person who is relying on me so heavily to do good by him.

Which brings me to the next post …

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Giving it all up vs. hanging onto an illusion

November 4th, 2009

I think I know why it is so difficult for woman to give up their careers to look after their children. I wasn’t aware of it until I visited where I used to have the same issues. Before I had a child, and even in the first years of having him, I was extremely critical of anyone who could just give up their life to stay at home with their child/ren. I thought it was a cop-out, the easy option and a weak choice. And now that I’m on the other side, I see more intensely the friction between working and non-working mums as I feel the contempt that comes with my perceived lifestyle of non-contribution and laziness. Sure, it’s not necessarily directed at me … but at people who have made the same choices as I have … Regardless, it’s a tough pill to swallow since I am now on the other side and I have the great perspective of having tried both options. Perspective counts for naught though when you can’t categorically state which is better.

It’s just got to be better for you and not just a better view for others.

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Back to math

November 3rd, 2009

Having just had that experience of crossing over into the life of my parallel dweller, visiting friends in London and Paris, I have also experienced staying with two friends who have chosen to have two children. Although my trip was primarily to run the Paris 20km, a distance I am fast becoming a veteran in, I have recently been making tourette-like declarations of intent to run a full 42km marathon before I am 40.

I’m running out of time.

Watching my friends with their children and gauging the extra workload of adding that extra person to the household, I got to wondering if the decision to go from one child to two children is perhaps something like going from a half marathon to a full marathon: it doesn’t necessarily require you to up the pace … often you can plod along a little slower … but the stamina required is oh so much more.

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In Limbo

October 30th, 2009

I crossed over into the life of my parallel dweller. It was temporary – 10 days – and it was fabulous. I booked to travel to Paris and London to run a race, visit friends and stroll the High Streets of my heyday. I counted down the weeks, days, hours and minutes to my departure, planning everything in minute detail so as to not miss out on anything I had been hankering for.

I have a friend who won’t leave her child for a night and I have friends who will leave happily for three weeks and I have friends who have varying levels of tolerance for staying away from their kids … somewhere between those two extremes. I don’t yet know where I fit.

Leaving my husband and child was filled with mixed feelings of ‘get me out of here’ and ‘I’m a terrible mother for wanting to leave so badly’. It was made worse by the call I got while going through passport control – my child was in a state because he was under the impression that I was leaving forever (perhaps he just knows me well enough to realise what a fine line I was traversing trying to connect with ‘the other side’).

I had pangs of wanting to take my child with me on my mini-adventure and a small amount of separation anxiety – a direct result of his having formed so much a part of my identity for so long now. But, once on that plane, I had shunned my mothering comfort zone and assumed my old identity – I was a free agent, meeting people as a confident, independent woman; a person I thought I had lost. The next ten days, as you can well imagine, were a whirlwind of plugging back into the grid of soul connections and lifestyle adjustments. I rode the rollercoaster of hating every minute and never wanting it to end. I was high on adrenalin and I almost valued my fix enough to call home and say I was staying. Instead … well, I’m back after tearful farewells and aching hellos … and it’s as though I haven’t quite left the fairground, but everyone’s packed up and gone home.

I feel now like I have an overloaded system of unprocessed information and things undone. I have launched myself into a state of limbo between lives; between choices; and I find myself pining again for what might have been. I have one foot in my parallel dweller’s life and it feels like she wants to keep it there – perhaps out of spite for what she sees I have … so much of what she will never have.

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My parallel dweller

October 29th, 2009

In my latest therapy session we discussed all the many ways my life has changed. Could I say I regret having had a child or would it be more accurate to say that he has got me to where I am today and contributed to the person I am right now?

I have always been aware of that sassy chick in my parallel universe who has a great job earning a great salary that allows her to buy the things she wants and enables her to travel to Japan and Brazil on a whim. She is confident because her clothes aren’t always in a state, she can still wear heels and her stomach muscles are still as taut as when she was thirteen.

There’s no doubt I am still aware of her but I now look at her with admiration, not envy. She possesses a lifestyle of different choices and though some may seem so much better from where I’m standing, I am certain my choices show a lifestyle just as enviable to someone on her side.

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Speaking of choices …

October 22nd, 2009

Something that keeps coming up amongst my peers is the decision to work full time or not. I know what it feels like on the inside – believe me I have been there, desperate to have more of everything good, terrified of giving up anything in case I need it later and paranoid about not being able to provide for the future. But, looking in now from the outside, I have so much faith in the process of a holistic lifestyle. I can’t consume what I don’t have and can’t waste what I don’t have. My choices are more limited but my enjoyment of life totally unrestricted. There is a calmness as though life is slower, more meaningful and less inhibited than before. It seems the more one has, the higher and nearer we place the boundaries … and when you have less, there is no end to the potential you can achieve.

I was chatting to a friend (you know, the ones we non-working mums meet up with for play dates) about ambition and success. Her father-in-law had a simple life and a regular 9-5 job, put all his children through tertiary education and was a respected and loved man. Compared to a man in a powerful executive job who hardly saw his children, apart from annual family holidays, we were weighing up the benchmarks of success. I’m sure if there were a vote the outcome would be more or less equal based on the perspective of the person voting. As for my vote … it’s pretty obvious what it would be – success means nothing unless it has a positive impact on the significant people in that person’s life. What’s the point otherwise? If the choice boils down to a simple education thing, is it better to be able to afford to put your child through ’varsity or is it better to see him and help nurture him before then so he is better able to put himself through ’varsity? My child is still little so I choose to see him – I might, however, change my mind when he becomes a teenager :) I see so many parents torn between their need to see their children and their neurosis about their nest egg and recently a lot of people have lost their nest egg despite their choice to grow that instead of their children. Obviously there are people who don’t have the choice and have to be a double-income family. But if no one’s going to die if things are downscaled, then surely the choice is a simple one. This isn’t a judgement of people who want more as I totally get it – I get ambition and the freedom money can buy – I just need to make the point that all choices come with compromise and it’s best to be certain you can live with whatever that compromise may be.

Sure it’s always going to be scary – what important choice is ever not scary? – but it’s a matter of going to the edge and taking the leap of faith to see if flight is possible. There would be no reason to live if it weren’t for the challenges in life – after all, it is the challenges that make life what it is in the first place.

I don’t know anyone so far who hasn’t jumped first and then made the choice to fly.

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Sibling survival

October 20th, 2009

Everyone likes company from time to time and the easiest way to get it is from a sibling … often yet certainly not always the case. But this is no reason to keep breeding. Survival instincts just change for a child who is destined to be on his own. An only child can play with whomever he likes, wherever he likes, whenever he likes … and doesn’t have to play with anyone when he doesn’t feel like it. He is neither restricted to siblings nor forced into relationships he doesn’t want.

Children with siblings tend to remain in their comfort zone, as there is little need to look beyond that zone. Parents can make this worse by forcing friendships to form between siblings, which are often not the natural relationships, and at the same time not encourage lasting relationships outside of the family unit. I can’t help but wonder what kind of restrictions this places on the child in other areas of life later on.

People ask if my child wants a sibling. Yes, of course he does … but he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s four and people actually think he should be the one who gets to decide. I also get asked regularly why I don’t want to at least try for a little girl … little girls are a mystery; big girls are a mystery … I have three sisters so I don’t even want to go there.

I would hate to place myself as the benchmark on these issues but, having grown up in a big family, I can honestly say that it is far better to have friends scattered around the globe; friends who drift in and out of my life, as well as a potential pool of friends just waiting to be made, than siblings who feel entitled somehow to a pound of flesh for coming from the same womb. Everyone is as dysfunctional as the next person; I just like to be the one to choose which dysfunctional people I want to hang out with.

After all, there are no answers … only choices.

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Privacy issues

October 19th, 2009

I grew up in a household where privacy was incredibly important, as long as it wasn’t my own. I wasn’t allowed in my parents room when they were dressing and to this day I feel intense embarrassment if I happen to walk in on either of my parents in any kind of state of undress. I was, however, never allowed to barricade my own door without threats to withhold stuff I wanted unless I let my parents into my own private space. I felt violated.

My child is only four now but I find myself hitting up against hurdles at various stages of his development … as well as my own personal development. There was a stage around his second birthday that I decided he could no longer bath with me. I realised, relatively quickly, this angst for what it was and we were back having family bath times soon afterwards. Walking around naked; skinny dipping in summer; morning snuggles, even if my husband and I don’t have our pyjamas on … all things that are really perfectly normal.

There are boundaries, of course, as there are in almost everything to do with ‘bringing up baby’, but I am slowly learning to allow my child to take the lead. Instead of closing the door on him to get my privacy, I have taught him how to close his own door when he needs private time. That way, he will hopefully respect the times he is required to knock before entering our bedroom on those occasions when boundaries cannot be crossed and when he’s a teenager he will know that closing his bedroom door is a passport to a little sanctuary of his own.

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BLOG ACTION DAY: Climate Change

October 15th, 2009

I was thinking about this and wondering how to incorporate this topic into a baby blog … until it became totally clear when speaking to my father about recycling and the use of chemical fertilisers. He said that in 2050 he won’t be alive and that he can basically do whatever he likes until he dies because he will not have to live through the consequences. This is a man with four children and five grandchildren.

I have a child and that brings with it tremendous responsibility to the earth as the earth will ultimately sustain my legacy. Not only is having a child a huge carbon footprint I am leaving on this earth but also a huge risk. He is already very environmentally savvy because, no matter how much money I deposit into his bank account every month, he’s not going to be able to buy himself anything if the earth is sick and people are suffering and he has to fight for his survival.

The best thing I can do, this Blog Action Day, is to send you to three separate websites which fully explain the plight of our world. They explain exactly what climate change is and the effects it will have on our future generations of children: things that include malnutrition, susceptibility to heat stroke, increased illness, lung damage and inhibited growth. Millions of children, predominantly in the developing nations, are going to be affected if money isn’t poured into climate change … not forgetting that everyone can do their bit at home rather than waiting for their government to act.

25 Million malnourished children in 2050
Diverting Aid for Climate Change Threatens Children – Oxfam says
American Academy of Pediatrics – Global Climate Change and Children’s Health

I’ll draw your attention again to the Story of Stuff (link on right) – it’s my favourite website and it points out the very basics of how everyone can do something to reduce their carbon footprint and be more aware of the impact they are having on this now fragile earth.

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The apple and the tree

October 14th, 2009

It must have a certain amount of something to do with vanity when you hear your own words come out of your child’s mouth and think how wonderful he is for saying such clever things.

This is until your sweet curly-haired and blue-eyed four-year-old instructs you to tell the cranky neighbour to just f*** off. I’d love to blame those hippy parents of his school friends for not bringing up their children properly … I’d love to but I can’t really, can I …

All I could do was tell him what a rude word it was and that it would be best if he didn’t use it in public. Now he just whispers the word in my ear when he thinks the situation we are in may warrant its use.

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Siblings

October 12th, 2009

It’s fine to have an only dog … but not an only child. No one ever asks, “so, when are you getting another one?” when referring to a family pet. But, when it comes to children, there is a need to enquire relentlessly about a sibling for your only child. My child already understands about periods and pregnancy and started climbing into bed with me in the mornings … the way too and very early mornings! … to enquire about this question he has about getting a baby brother. I tried the argument that I had made a decision to have him only (he claimed to be lonely), then the one about there being no guarantee that I would produce a boy for him (he said he wouldn’t mind a girl either) … and then I offered him a puppy.

As luck would have it, my promiscuous first-born has been shagging the bitch up the valley and it looks like there is a litter of puppies on the way. I’ll even forego the paternity test just to keep my child happy … well, er, actually to keep myself happy … my child who now claims to like puppies just as much as a baby brother or sister. And also a child who has decided a girl dog would be best because then our dog would be able to mate with her all the time and not have to run off to see Bella all the time.

I can tell you, a dog gets a lot lonelier when on its own than a child ever gets.

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Christmas is coming …

October 6th, 2009

You probably think Christmas is a long way off but just a quick browse through any supermarket will prove that it’s time to get prepared. There is a fabulous initiative in South Africa and I’d love you to have a look at their web link below and get involved with filling and decorating a shoebox as a Christmas gift for a disadvantaged child. This not only shares the joy with someone who has little or nothing but it also teaches your child a very important lesson about the true spirit of Christmas. The deadline is quite soon so have a look and see how you can help.

Kidz2Kidz Santa Shoebox Project 2009

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

We have 2 – 3 weeks to go and a very big THANK YOU to everyone who has requested their names off the website and are in the process of preparing their Santa Shoeboxes for drop off! Thank you also for your patience with the few challenges we have had fine tuning the new system.

We are up to 5200 boxes, but still need to go another 7000!! to reach the target of 12 000 Santa Shoeboxes, which relates to 12 000 overjoyed children! Could we please appeal to all our loyal donors to spread the word further and encourage family, friends and colleagues to teach their children and everyone around them, the Joy Of Giving!

This is how we can do it. If everyone of you just gets 3 more people to each make a box – we have made it! As easy as that!

We invite you now to forward www.santashoebox.co.za to many more friends and colleagues and together we make sure not one child out of the 12 000 goes without a Santa Shoebox in 2009!
Kind regards
The Santa Shoebox Team 2009

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Programming

October 5th, 2009

No one likes a crybaby … but I have rejection issues. It has taken me this long to connect the dots and realise that all the joking about my not being the boy my parents wanted after six attempts comes from serious undercurrents of … well … rejection. I suppose this is the part where I confess how I used to tell my baby – the one who looked at me with those big hopeful eyes wondering if he had made the right decision – that he had ruined my life by coming to me and that I wish he hadn’t been born.

So, it’s out, it’s shocking and I am a bad person for saying it. But now that I know where it came from, it makes me think about all those other things we do so casually as though they are perfectly normal when really they are just a product of bad programming. There are the horrific ones like beating your child and the less evils like making your child finish every last crumb on his plate. It’s all a matter of perspective because, to the person doing these things, it all seems perfectly normal … because the programming is there.

I can’t offer a cure only a suggestion to be more aware. I worked through not ever smacking my child when I was still pregnant; I’m almost there with the food thing (he is 4, after all, and fully aware whether his stomach is full or not); and I tell him every night now how glad I am that he was born. Because I am you know.

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Nature/nurture

September 28th, 2009

I’m six. I am sitting in the dentist’s chair and I am that child again who hid in the waiting room, jaws firmly clenching shut, face numb. The dentist has already given me five injections and has only one left to administer before he can extract the tooth … but nothing was getting me back into that chair. My mother called in friends of mine, friends of my older siblings, adults, and even bribed with all my favourite sweets and desserts. But she eventually sighed deeply and dragged me home. That was the beginning of my bad encounters with dentists and I still have a phobia.

… or maybe I am just stubborn. I look at my child and shudder at the thought that he might turn out like me and put me through this kind of hell. And then I realise that perhaps he already is. Could I have made him like that in the short time I have had with him, or is it feasible that I had nothing to do with it apart from the genetic perspective?

Most relevant right now, it seems, is the obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). I have had it since I can remember. I never knew what it was but I remember seeing it come up in all my aptitude tests and I trusted my parents to discuss with me anything that I might need more information on so as to better manage who I am. They never did. I see the same characteristics so clearly in my son and I blame myself for his being like that anyway because, whether it was nature or nurture, he is like that because of me.

One can never tell what really is nature or nurture because you can’t experiment with both simultaneously.

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Cricket

September 15th, 2009

My gorgeous little bundle of cheeks and curls, who still carries his pink-wool-haired doll around shopping centres on occasion, has turned into a sports nut. He has been exposed to sports and nature programmes on TV and as a result has formulated his attitudes around these topics. He has been going to cricket coaching since he was three – not because we are trying to turn him professional by the age of six but because he needed the outlet. He has been imitating sports professionals for as long as I can remember and can throw, bat, catch and bowl like a much older child. He even instructs me on how to hold my tennis racquet while waiting for his serve shot … which is the overhand variety. It seems so early and so crazy and totally age-inappropriate, yet it fits so perfectly with who he is.

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You can’t have your cake and eat it

September 7th, 2009

A new friend is a friend out of our connection over the lack of any real need to have children. I am known to her boyfriend as the evil one as he is determined to have kids (to the point of dumping her if it doesn’t happen). I suppose it is unfair of me to try and dissuade her as there are things that can be done to pre-empt any of the crap that enters your relationship when having a baby. There are practical tricks and tactics that can be deployed.

For example:
discussing expectations of parenthood;
defining a budget for things such as a night nurse;
planning logistics around routine and responsibilities;
looking at the potential need to move in order to accommodate a child;
balancing work and social commitments and sacrifices;
counselling sessions before even trying to fall pregnant.

You can’t have it all. We want it all – I suppose that is normal … what makes us human. But having something always comes at the cost of giving up something else. And perhaps that should be fine. Having a baby costs. We can’t expect to keep everything of what we were before having a baby … and have the baby too.

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Pride vs. Modesty

August 12th, 2009

How do you teach your child about modesty? Yeah, yeah, I know he’s only three … but I’m obsessive compulsive and therefore have to feel great pain over trivial things on a daily basis. My need to be the perfect mother … or is that my need to have the perfect child? Whatever! My need is getting in the way of a happy marriage … according to the other person who is the target of my obsession. Or perhaps it’s because he is not enough of a target anymore now that there is a child to dilute my anal perfectionism. But, since that has absolutely nothing to do with the title, more to the point now.

I have noticed that everything my child has is better than anything any other child has … according to him only, that is. I blame myself … of course (see opening paragraph!) … mainly, I suppose, because I try and teach him to be proud of what he has. And somewhere along the line, the boundaries got blurred. Combine the pride and the blurred boundaries with his confidence and here is a child who will approach anyone and tell them about all the things he has. And, I have to admit, there is a certain smugness there.

Precocious was a swear word when I was growing up … not that I have any problem with swear words or anything, but I feel the need to use this particular one now when referring to my child. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to be now that children can actually be both heard as well as seen. But that still leaves me with a gap where the modesty lesson should follow.

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Long-term memory

August 7th, 2009
Long-term memory
I was speaking to a woman with grown children and she can still remember working and studying while bringing up her youngest … and still not being able to cope with the fact that she had to go to a business dinner with her husband and had no idea what she was going to talk about.
I thought these were the memories that faded with time, but evidently I will always be filled with dread when thinking of those times I felt I couldn’t string a sentence together and my sentences trailed off midway because I was bored with what I was saying and felt so sorry for my audience of one. I would read the Economist to my newborn babe in the hopes that I would absorb just a few sentences of intelligent information … just a snippet that would clear out a bit of mindless nappy and singsong and storybook fug.

I was speaking to a woman with grown children and she can still remember working and studying while bringing up her youngest … and still not being able to cope with the fact that she had to go to a business dinner with her husband and had no idea what she was going to talk about.

I thought these were the memories that faded with time, but evidently I will always be filled with dread when thinking of those times I felt I couldn’t string a sentence together and my sentences trailed off midway because I was bored with what I was saying and felt so sorry for my audience of one. I would read the Economist to my newborn babe in the hopes that I would absorb just a few sentences of intelligent information … just a snippet that would clear out a bit of mindless nappy and singsong and storybook fug.

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Breaking down the baby barrier – Part 2

August 6th, 2009

There’s this thing where people don’t invite childless friends to their children’s birthday parties (one unwittingly excluded while on fertility treatment for the umpteenth time!) and the person who brought this up with me was a childless friend who has never RSVPed to my child’s party invitations. I thought she was rude or just disinterested in children and, therefore, above the need to attend any event where the short people outnumber the tall ones. Turns out she gave her phone away and didn’t get any of the invites. I let it slide because of my own insecurity; the one that has turned into a little voice in my head telling me that I am different now that I have a child; and I kinda understood how she might be averse to attending such events … after all it is only recently that I have given up my need to drink copious amounts of champagne at children’s parties, despite the fact that most are held mid-morning.

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Breaking down the baby barrier

August 3rd, 2009

I know now why all those ex friends and acquaintances kept encouraging me to do the child thing … they just wanted to be able to be my friend again. I used to find it shallow that they couldn’t be friends because I hadn’t given birth … like they were part of some secret club and I didn’t know the password. But I have found myself guilty of a similar thing lately – I have been befriending people I haven’t seen in years because they have since had a child. Once you have had the identity crisis that having a baby brings, it is just so much less intimidating being around people who just may be on the same wavelength as you are.

I find myself trying to play it safe, play down the parent thing, when out with childless couples. I feel boring talking about my child and wonder why it is any less boring than a friend talking about their job … but that’s how it is; it’s my new reality.

The biggest problem … and this is quite huge … is when you don’t like your friends’ children or your friends don’t like yours! There’s also that thing when people become their children. I’m guilty of it … as is every parent I know … you have to get through the invisible shield that holds all the child-related angst and bullterrier-like protectiveness before you can get to and engage with the real me.

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The two Janes

July 31st, 2009

Pseudonym or real name? … not important. These women brought me up unwittingly while paying me to help bring up their own children … when I was barely over being one myself.

Later when I was pondering the huge decision of whether or not to have a child, the first person I asked was one of the Janes. She never tried to convince me one way or the other, merely told me that having a child would allow me access to a different part of life – like studying part time or getting a new job or moving house or country. All these things have the same effect on your life: they make you adjust to something new.

The same Jane gave me some very useful ‘no nonsense’ tips on bringing up baby:

If you need to go to the toilet or have a shower, your child will survive your absence

A child can’t die from crying

A child will not starve itself … i.e. if it hasn’t drunk exactly 300mls of milk, it’s because it doesn’t need it

You can’t look after your child if you don’t look after yourself

Turns out she wasn’t much help once baby was born. Maybe she thought I was all grown up and ready to tackle life on my own finally.

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Facebook Friends

July 28th, 2009

I had friends … you might call them acquaintances … in London, who have moved back to South Africa, had children, and totally dropped under the radar. I know it is normal to change friends when you have a child … after all you have a new identity and you need to be comfortable with that new identity without feeling like a total fraud because you have become a totally different person. Then there are the friends you have that are even better friends for the very same reason.

And then there are the Facebook friends … the people you once knew but who have now become their children – even on Facebook. I battle to get even a glimpse into the lives of people I haven’t seen in years because they have placed themselves behind their new personas as parents. There is the tricky issue of new last names … an argument I won’t get into as I kinda get the deal even though I am totally anti the idea myself … and the fact they use pictures of their children for their profile pictures. And all they ever discuss are things to do with theirs or other’s children and child-related things.

It’s fine to be proud of your children – obviously I realise that – but surely you lose yourself if you never let yourself see the light of virtual day. Somewhere behind the parent lurks the free-spirited singleton … surely!

Perhaps it is my own character that is flawed in thinking that no one could possibly be that attached to parenthood to want to become someone else in order to fulfil a stereotypical role. But is it too much to ask to just have my friends back the way they were even when I know they will never be the same again …?

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Sibling lessons

July 27th, 2009

People place a tremendous amount of pressure on the unborn siblings of their children to teach them how to share, be sociable, play nicely and be well-balanced humans. They don’t seem to realise that these are skills that can only be learned from parents and role models and that siblings tend to teach the complete opposite … like how not to be any of the above.

I am one of four and I learned how to keep to myself and to hang on to my stuff as tightly as possible lest it be wrestled from me or taken in the dead of night. My siblings totally screwed me up. Norman Bates was not an only child … he just killed off his siblings before turning on his mother.

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Ps and Qs

July 24th, 2009

It takes diligence and discipline and it’s boring as hell to implement, but if you keep at it relentlessly, it eventually becomes a part of them.

Of course it’s often the easier option to just do everything for them but, in baby steps, you can keep reminding them to do things like go to the toilet first thing in the morning, blow their noses instead of using their sleeves, greet people they meet and say please and thank you. It eventually becomes second nature and they do it all for themselves. Granted there are parents who don’t want their children too independent because they feel less needed (see post, ‘Procreating out of boredom’) but, like Sasha said, they should just get a puppy.

The most important part of constantly reminding them to say please and thank you – especially to you – is that, if they don’t say please and thank you to the person who does almost everything for them (you!), then they will end up thinking there is no need and will, therefore, start taking you for granted.

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Uno vs Duo

July 23rd, 2009

There are friends who are getting on … sort of 40ish … and think that they might adopt, use a turkey baster … whatever … because they don’t want to miss out on having kids. But they are concerned about being single mothers. Well, there is an argument for that … as there always is.

When you are a single parent, you make sure things are as you want them, you take care of everything and stuff just sort of settles into place because you are in control of the outcome. When you have to rely on a partner, there is a far greater risk of being disappointed, let down and just generally pissed off because if you think you can relax when your partner is around to share the drama, it generally turns out that, as involved or interested as he is, he just doesn’t do it the way it’s meant to be done – he does it the way he thinks it should be done … and no matter how much coaxing and coaching you do, he will always think he knows better than trust your more experience-based knowledge. Just because men are men, it doesn’t make it suck any less … it just makes the alternative slightly easier to deal with.

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Running screaming from motherhood

July 21st, 2009

When I was desperately trying to find paying and/or volunteer work so as to not have to be at home with my child, it had less to do with getting away from him and so much more to do with getting away from the person I was terrified of being. I have always sold myself as a mother who runs screaming from motherhood … and that is exactly who I am. I don’t think I ran away from my baby, I believe I ran away from myself as the person having the baby.

I have identified myself by so many different things in the past. I am and have been a runner, a sister, a photographer, a consultant, an adventurer, an employee, a bulimic, a daughter, a swimmer, a friend, a hiker, a traveller, a shoe lover, a writer, a volunteer, an executive, a drinker, a scholar, a BMX rider, a failure, a girlfriend, a mess, a wife, a party girl, a poet, an employer, a shopper, a patient, an explorer, a lover, a thinker, a designer, a squash player, a rebel, a teacher, a critic, a pragmatist, a success.

So many things and so many changes … yet it was just the one label – mother – that totally flawed me. As I change yet again, I am reminded that I have to accept the role I am in and not necessarily define myself by it.

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So what is it you’re doing now?

July 20th, 2009

It’s happened. That face that I saw in the mirror three years ago, two years ago and even last year was a different face to the one I see today. I saw a mother on the verge of a nervous breakdown and I saw a person stuck in societal traps, and I have been punching my way out of that box for years. I am out. After years of self-doubt, self-flagellation and general self-loathing, I can today look in the mirror and see a different reflection.

I used to hate that question: ‘So what is it that you do?’ I used to stumble and stammer and make a total botch up, not knowing what exactly I did do … I was stuck in a kind of limbo, a time warp between lives or stages. Having a child in your 30s does lend itself to a small amount of confusion when all this happens and you automatically assume it is the proverbial mid-life crisis. I have grown up with a mother who has always tried to force me into the housewife box, a box that is both too small and too regular in shape to fit even my big toe … so it stung when people automatically made that assumption as soon as I gave birth (a lot like the people at my wedding who made the assumption that I would cease to work as soon as the nuptials were complete). I could have claimed to be on maternity leave but that would have prompted more forceful enquiries of, ‘So, what is it you do?’ i.e. what great job is this maternity leave sandwiched between.

After years of trying to find my mojo and getting myself into a tizz over not earning, not achieving, not contributing and making not the blindest bit of difference, I found my space and my place. I made a choice. I’m working on my second book and in-between writing days I do volunteer work in community schools. I suppose I am lucky that I did well for myself before having a baby, and my husband is able to cover the bills. But it is not an easy choice relinquishing power and accepting a dependant role. I have made a lifestyle choice for the whole family, limiting our earnings to a single income and I have to live with the consequences. But, paying or not, I have never enjoyed any job more than the ones I am doing now so that makes it a relatively easy choice after all.

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No degrees for separation

July 17th, 2009

Relationships are based on what you have in common, and you stay together as long as you maintain some element of that. Then, just like that, you suddenly realise that there is something to disagree on … something big, huge in fact … and it was never there before. Not only that, but it is never going away. It’s your own child.

People have babies for many reasons – one of them to glue the relationship back together – when, in fact, there is a greater chance that it might pull it further apart. Since my child was somewhat a surprise to me, I am obviously not referring to myself here. I am sure though that everyone knows at least one couple – at least one – that has split because they thought a child would be the answer and they failed to look at the real reasons their relationship was failing.

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Cape Philharmonic Outreach Program

July 15th, 2009

My meeting with the headmistress at Capricorn Junior School ended early on Wednesday and she suggested we go and listen to some music in the school hall. What a surprise to find the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra playing to the Grade R children … well, not exactly playing, but teaching. The conductor had shed his stiff persona and was telling the children, with great animation … and musical backup, of course … the story of the three pigs. The orchestra used the story to introduce the children to all the different instruments in an effort to expose them to something they would never otherwise learn about. It was engaging and goosebumply and I want to shout out to everyone who has the resources to have a look at their website. It’s not just exposure to music that is needed but everything from vocational to academic career paths presented in a child-friendly way … in a way to show these children that there is so much out there for them. They just need the exposure.

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Transient lives

July 6th, 2009

A friend has left. He has emigrated. He reached a stage of his life … call it the mid-life drama thing … that has forced him to confront priorities in his life. Or maybe he has been stuck for so long thinking he has time to change/shake things up a bit and he now feels he is running out of time. It’s the right decision … except for all those he is leaving behind.

This world is changing so quickly that we have to keep redefining ourselves. This is often tricky as we can, as a result, fall out of synch with those around us, so we have to move fast when the urge takes us. It’s hard to take the path less travelled; it’s hard to have to justify certain decisions to all those around you … so we end up making these decisions – possibly years too late – when we can blame them on something like a mid-life crisis.

I’m going to miss him and his wife and will live with the thought that I probably took them for granted … believing they would always be around: around when we all came out of the early childminding fug; around to pick up where we left off pre being too damn busy to make enough effort; around to be the role model for my child. I didn’t quite grasp the impact his leaving would have until my child ran up to him to say goodbye and hugged him so tightly that I wondered if he would ever let go.

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Don’t go to Deli Delish

July 5th, 2009

Since posting ‘Babychinos’ I took my child there and, besides not being able to finish my revolting chai latte, they charged me R9 for my child’s spoonful of frothed milk. I complained to the owner who looked down her nose at me and told me it was standard. So I don’t go back there because I have already proved the contrary. The most consistently good service I get when out with my child is from the owner and staff at Liquorice and Lime in Tamboerskloof, Cape Town.

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Babychinos

July 3rd, 2009

I found myself sitting in the coffee shop with a chai latte watching my child sip on his spoonful of warm milk topped with another spoonful of frothed milk (what we call a babychino), wondering how I was going to broach the subject of having the piffling amount of five rand taken off the bill. But they didn’t charge and I know I can now go back there often. Call me cheap but, in times like these, you just have to tighten up wherever you can.

This was at the Woolworths café in Cavendish Square, Cape Town. The other great adult spots in Cape Town where you can take your kids when you are in need of a bit of R&R are: Olympia Café, Kalk Bay; NAP and Deli Delish, Hout Bay; Vida Cafés in Greenpoint and Canal Walk (I know the Waterfront one charges the same as an extra coffee shot for a spoonful of froth); Liquorice and Lime, Tamboerskloof.

But if you want real R&R and you can handle the outdoors no matter the weather, pack a flask of your favourite brew, a few fresh-baked croissants from Kwikspar and head down to the playground next to the Greenpoint lighthouse. It’s fun, fresh and totally free … that is if the ice-cream man doesn’t rock up.

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Sleepover – all three and a half years of him

July 1st, 2009

I sent him for his very first sleepover when my husband was also away so I could have a night of total freedom from responsibility. But the following morning, after waking up to meditate and then climbing back into bed with a cup of tea and a meringue-frosted cupcake, I found myself pacing the house with nothing I would rather do but go and fetch him so we could have a bit of fun together. I actually missed him. It was quite a shock.

After all those evenings out and days when I went to work … when I would leave the house, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white and, with racing heart and quickened breath, round the corner out of Hout Bay on two wheels, shrieking and hollering about being free … I’ve reached a point of freedom that doesn’t require being away from my child. Maybe it’s because he became more of a human, or maybe it’s because I did, but I actually love being around him. When I go out, I look forward to getting back home to cuddle his sleeping form and feel his warm breath on my cheek when I kiss him goodnight and, when I go to work, I look forward to the light relief of rolling on the lawn with him when I get home.

Sure, I still enjoy my times away from him, but I am now confident that I will always return.

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Moontides

June 29th, 2009

I spend a lot of time and energy damning the disposable nappy and giving people every conceivable reason to be using terrycloth … and here I am totally oblivious (well, not so oblivious anymore, I suppose) to the harmful effects to my own body, not to mention the damaging effects on the environment caused by a similarly harmful product: the sanitary towel.

I need feedback please. Anyone used a Mooncup or Miacup? This is the little plastic goblet that replaces the need to use tampons and Sanitary towels. It looks easy enough to use … but I don’t actually know anyone who has every tried one out and would love to hear a few ‘reviews’ before I rush out and buy one.

For those who have never heard of these things, look at the following pages:

http://www.miacup.co.za/index.php

http://www.mooncup.com/

http://www.mooncup.co.uk/

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Copper top

June 25th, 2009

The last few years have come with more change than I have been able to deal with, but on Sunday morning I woke up and I decided I needed more. I didn’t realise just how much of a change I was going to get. It seems every time things in my life are unsettled, I either change my hair or get a tattoo. Thankfully I have changed my hair a lot and only have the one tattoo … but, considering the current shade of my hair, I think the tattoo will get my vote next time.

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Procreating out of boredom?

June 23rd, 2009

I thought I had heard it all. Apparently not. I met a woman at the party of a friend of my child’s. She has two children, both boys, and they are at an age that they are playing with each other and therefore no longer need their mum to play with them. She is bored and feels this is a great reason to have another baby: to keep her busy again. I can’t claim to understand the urge to keep procreating, but this just seemed odd.

Some women have babies because they don’t want to work any more, some women have babies to keep their husbands happy, some women have babies to keep their families and friends happy, some have them because they just think it’s the thing to do. There are all sorts of reasons to have but seemingly little reason not to.

Well, here’s your first list: reasons not to have a baby

  1. Do I need to mention the carbon footprint issue again?
  2. Unless you’re single already, there’s a very big chance you will end up that way.
  3. Your childless friends can’t identify with you anymore.
  4. You can’t indentify with you anymore.
  5. You have to go to school events and be nice to everyone.
  6. Certain considerations need to be given to any kind of sexual activity in the house (although I believe this is reversed in the teenage years).
  7. Quiet contemplation has to be done at 4.30 in the morning to beat the wake-up call.
  8. Snot.
  9. Vomit.
  10. Every time your child is away from you it feels like you have allowed your heart to go walkabout and you will never survive if it doesn’t return.

Conception may be quicker than a trip to the mall to check out the latest offerings by designers but it seems it is treated with less value than adding the latest trend to ones wardrobe. Having a baby is the defining moment to begin a rollercoaster of defining moments for decades to come … how then can having a child be based on a selfish need such as a desire to be kept busy? Normality is as foreign a concept to me as it is to anyone else … but, come on!

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Lists

June 22nd, 2009

I have been told that readers of blogs like lists. Personally I prefer stories or anecdotes to lists but still, I need to ponder what kind of a list a parenting blog would benefit from. I could give you a list of the best parenting websites I have found, the best environmental websites (although these have the same benefit and cover similar values currently as the parenting ones), the best restaurants to take children, the best clothing stores, the most successful meals, TV shows, movies, books.

Are you even remotely interested in all this stuff? Perhaps? I’ll give it a go if you give me some feedback to let me know if I am hitting the right spot.

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Cause and effect

June 10th, 2009

This post started out with the intention to be about the MTN Science Centre – it’s chaos, things are broken a lot of the time … and it involves going to a mall! But it’s fantabulous fun for an incredibly active child.

It could even be about sending my child to a friend and each time having to retrain him back to normality on his return due to his exposure to extraordinary behavioural quirks.

But it’s about something far more pertinent to me right now.

A friend of mine more than implied that I pander to my child. I don’t take criticism (constructive or otherwise) at all lightly as I tend to analyse everything that is said. I was firstly shocked that she said it at all and then I was shocked that I of all people actually pander to my child. The horror of it! I started feeling like a total fraud.

I took it away and thought about it … a lot! And what I came out with is that I don’t pander to him at all. In fact, it’s shocking how little I let him get away with and how he has actually been on the verge of rebelling … at the tender age of 10 years pre-teen. ‘Defiant’, is what his teacher calls it.

I should have known better, having studied developmental psychology … and using it more on my dog than on my child. When someone is constantly abused by someone else, they will eventually reach a point when they have to let some of it go … and it invariably ends up being dumped onto the people they care about most. Something like kicking Pavlov’s dog. It’s sometimes hurtful, it can often be shrugged off … but then there are those rare occurrences when you can use someone else’s rubbish to clean up your own home.

Two days of a little more pandering and his defiance is already on the wane. We’re all dysfunctional; we just have to learn to share it around a little.

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I’ve joined a cult

May 26th, 2009

… but don’t tell anyone. I have been attending classes through the Art of Living Foundation, learning life philosophies and how to breathe and meditate.

It’s not really a cult but I was accused of joining one when I told a friend about how fabulous I was feeling … and why. It happened to be a friend who, in the same conversation, told me that he and his wife were having a baby … their second.

I can’t help but wonder if the two-child family is in fact the biggest cult in the world. My cult involves waking up at 5 a.m. and doing a few yoga stretches followed by a combination of breathing exercises … a low-impact fix. His errs quite considerably on the higher end of the impact spectrum. There is such a need to join this ‘club’ that consenting adults dive into it without giving a thought to the logistics and the impact on everything and everyone around.

Is the need to procreate so great in some people that they just can’t help themselves, or are they just trying to keep up with the proverbial Jones’s who are the epitome of convention? Don’t forget the Jones’s also have a home that’s too big for them and far too many cars and credit cards. Their wardrobe’s pretty hot though.

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Safe baby dumping

May 25th, 2009

Yes, I realise how absurd that sounds but there is a company that has set up a system whereby a mother can deposit her unwanted baby in a box: as she places the baby inside, a message goes out to relevant people and, within five minutes, someone arrives to take care of the baby.

I am involved in a project called the Hero Book Project (look at digitalherobook.org) to get a general idea of what it’s all about) and today I was told by a scared and confused 8-year-old that she had seen police arrive in her community to take photos of a dismembered baby someone had found stuffed into a metal drum. She described it to me in great detail and explained how, when she told her father about it, he had rushed off to check if it was her baby sister.

To put the frequency of this problem into perspective, the same story was told by an adult at the school but told in such a way that it sounded more like a common inconvenience than something that only happens rarely enough to make a big deal out of it. If I am honest, I can compare it to my annoyance at hearing that another person had thrown themselves under the train on the Underground … upsetting only because it meant I would be late for work.

But I digress. For most of you reading this post, the idea is too horrific to confront and think about, but please spread the website … and the word … because no one really knows how desperate a woman can be when faced with the prospect of an unwanted child.

Baby dumping is not an issue that can be ignored. And finally there is an organisation that has taken on the task of really dealing with it by providing mothers with an alternative. The only way any organisation like this can truly work is through input and support so please log onto thebabysafe and see how you can help.

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Egalitarian running

May 23rd, 2009

I’ve just come out of the running season – for me it never extends into the raining winter months because running in gloves, a beanie and three layers of clothing just totally destroys any roadie cred … Capetonians are hardcore judgemental about these things.

When I found out I was pregnant, I was training for the Two Oceans half marathon … yes, a big yawn for everyone who has heard me harping on about that one before … so I was already four or five months pregnant when I stopped running and my biggest stress was how I was ever going to be able to take it up again after the birth. Giving birth in September helped a lot … not that we can plan these things, if any … because I expressed milk first thing in the morning and headed out for my run before hubby had to head off for work. But as the months went by, the best buy ever was the Jeep 3-wheeler which is light, comfy and even has a CD player attachment to calm down any hysterical baby on hair-raising off-road trails.

So I eventually got to take baby out in the pram and there is no denying how damn tough that was – the arms are seriously under-rated running appendages and not having the use of them when struggling to get fit again post-pregnancy was excruciating. It, therefore, wasn’t long before I had recruited the husband and the dog to join the child and me on these post-pregnancy training runs. The decision was who got to pull the dog and who got to push the pram … no surprises there then that the pram was swiftly handed off to the husband. I thought I got the last laugh but it didn’t take long to realise that pulling a very sniffy 50kg dog along a pet-infested Promenade was possibly the least clever of my manipulations.

Having said that though, it turned out sniffy provided good enough strength training to improve on my half marathon time. Out of desperation to race last season and not having anyone to look after my child, I eventually screamed into a pillow, loaded the Jeep into my car and managed a couple of very speedy short races … the Jeep provided me with a very efficient battering ram – I ran down several fellow racers and earned my child his very first silver and bronze medals.

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Separate Lives

May 22nd, 2009

Kahlil Gibran, in The Prophet, wrote that in marriage you should have spaces in your togetherness and that you should not stand too near together.

But what happens when your separateness is more frequent than your togetherness? What happens when your branches and your roots grow so far apart that they forget they belong to the same tree? It is no wonder the divorce rate seems to soar at the age when people have toddlers. It’s sometimes just easier to chop the tree down that navigate your way back to the trunk.

A lot of people are fine with separate lives – it works for them. I don’t see the point. For better or for worse, a relationship should be the thing that binds the family. Without that in place, what is the point … what really is the point in being together?

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Cinderella Sucks

May 21st, 2009

I’m brash, I’m loud, I say anything and everything that comes to mind without first thinking about it … and people often wonder why. Is nothing private any more? I honestly can’t say. What I can say, however, is that when you come out of hospital after a birth – whether that is vaginal or sunroof – and you have had your bits exposed and your guts on the table, nothing can ever be sacred again. I made a pact and I’m sticking to it: if it’s not out there, it’s not real. I’m not a fairy tale kinda gal so if you want happy endings, you need to navigate back to Google and search again.

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Travelling around

May 20th, 2009

If I had to compare my family to a country, it would have to be England: so mild that anything extreme tears it apart. My marriage on the other hand is like India: it simultaneously tugs and pushes away until I am not sure whether I love it or hate it.

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The art of separateness

May 19th, 2009

I have two children … one is a cuddly 3-year-old boy and the other is a 50kg Ridgeback. I feel like a teenager when I want a bit of privacy with my husband because we have to sneak around if we want so much as a private hug. If Nic sees us, he reaches up and demands a group hug and if Jama, sees us he just pushes between our legs and stands there wagging his tail.

A friend of mine asked my advice about training a new puppy and I told her to use her skills she has learned being a mother. I take that back as I obviously did something seriously wrong at puppy school.

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Commando

May 18th, 2009

You have got to be kidding! It’s Monday … that in itself is reason enough to be moody … and my limits have been tested already … and it’s not only 9 a.m. Just when I though I was over the morning’s hurdles, I arrived at my child’s school to find a party invitation to a Boot Camp. I have spent the better part of three years ensuring that my child does not fall into any stereotyping traps and … so far so good. And now this. You can’t be serious! In normal circumstances I would just turf the invite and he would have been none the wiser, but this is his favourite school friend and we’d have a real war on our hands if he couldn’t go.

I believe in the nature argument, I really do, but surely parents can see that they are sticking their children in boxes. Girls ARE good at sports. Boys DO cry. In this metrosexual age, what are we doing to ensure our children grow up to be well balanced? Children are not shut down to anything – they are capable of everything. I just wish we could get past gender.

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Talking is talking …

May 14th, 2009

When all my friends were encouraging their children to speak, I was telling mine to just keep quiet a while so I could think. It’s my own fault that he never shuts up because I was so bored with mothering that I used to talk to him constantly about anything from the colour of the sky to the latest Ponzi scam. It’s no surprise then that he speaks ALL the time … the only consolation of course it that he has a beautiful vocabulary and says things like: “I guarantee I will be asleep in ten minutes” and “Although I don’t like her, I will play with her anyway” and “Stop scaring the hell out of me” and “The government should just bring in the army” and “This Indian bread has so many layers, it is like a book” and “Actually, I would rather have the salmon sashimi with a side of rice and a soda water, please”.

But I just have to start complaining about something for him to let rip with f$£%ing, followed by said item’s name. Would I be just as proud of him if he said, “Look mama, doggie did a poopoo”? Doubt it. So I put up with all the jabbering and reach for the volume control when I can take no more.

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My dad’s bigger than your dad …

May 13th, 2009

I didn’t think it was for real … kids say some odd stuff but they don’t really say this kind of thing. Or do they?

We took our child to play with the son of my husband’s old school friend (someone he played with from around this age), and their lunchtime conversation was entirely about who’s dad was not only bigger … but cooler! It seems the competition had to do with who had the best tools … something I think the mums might have been more qualified to argue. :D

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Moments in time

May 12th, 2009

We are defined by our moments … moments in our life, however small, affect the way we see the rest of our life … meld our perspective. I dwell on certain moments in my childhood that have formed my perspective of my family and I can’t help but wonder if those moments were only small once-off moments that defined the entire way I see myself as part of my family … or the huge catastrophic events that they have become in my mind. I also can’t help but worry every time I have a bad moment with my child whether that will be the moment he dwells on and develops into his overriding perspective of how I was as a mother.

Obviously I can’t let this consume me as no one knows the future and, besides, I am working on how to live in the present … in the now. But I have finally realised that when I am with him, I have to truly be with him … not always thinking of everything else that needs to be done, not always prioritising around him, but just being with him. Perhaps he will dwell on the bad moments anyway, but at least if he does I can have a clear conscience.

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Postscript to Mother’s Day

May 11th, 2009

I hope all you mums had a great day and got to feel appreciated … whether you felt it should come from the child or the child’s father. I have to mention that my child was appropriately prepped and I was presented with the smiling Jolly Jammer with my morning tea. I also got a card with a portrait of me … with an upside down face and about twenty fingers on each hand. With my husband out of commission for the day, I got to spend the whole day playing rugby and football on the beach, followed by cricket at home and my child even left me to read in the sun for an hour while he listened to story CDs and generally entertained himself. As much as I scream about motherhood and mothering, days like these make it all worthwhile.

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More choice?

May 10th, 2009

As I stumble down the stairs with yet another bundle of laundry, I can’t help but ponder my choices … specifically the one that prevents me from chasing down my parallel dweller and demanding my life back so I can go to work and leave all this behind. The child wet his bed, the dog is particularly needy and the husband is being passed over for all the small stuff that seems to never get done without the correct prioritising. It’s a mess. It’s my mess. It scatters me.

What defines you as a failure? Who decides? Do we? Or do we put that decision in the hands of people who care little about us, and possibly don’t even know us at all?

Considering my choices, I realise that value does not come with a paycheque. Too many people are working too hard to prove that they are valuable and getting nothing but grey hair and a redundancy package.

It’s entirely up to you whether you want to feel like a complete failure … or whether you can accept that you are just changing your focus and accept that you have been a success and you can still be a success – just without the paycheque. Having said that, it took me almost three years to realise that I didn’t have to run screaming from motherhood and that equality doesn’t come with that paycheque but rather with a meeting of minds. I do sometimes hanker for my life without a child, for the comaraderie of a job, for the satisfaction of knowing I am going to get paid even if I am not really valued.

I saw a stone statue of a woman at Kirstenbosch. It is a woman carved in stone, sleek and bold, elegant and poised. The plaque read something along the lines of: a woman wants to be beautiful and respected but also wants to retain some of the traditional values. The woman I was there with has a 2-year old daughter and she has decided now to quit work as she’s done the whole corporate thing for so long and she realises she is missing out on the other stuff at a time when the ‘other stuff’ is slowly disappearing (i.e. each day that passes is a day you can’t get back with your children). I also read something in a Steve Biddulph book that goes something like: the work of the old days took physical labour but at least it only took your body; these days you have to give your soul.

We have too many choices as women these days but what we have to realise is that they are still choices. We don’t have to do it all. We actually get to choose. It’s pretty fabulous if only we could deal with our choices and not always want what we have given up.

I work for free now, giving my time in little ways to children who need me. My paycheque is the incredible satisfaction I get from reaching out. And because I now have a job to go to, it doesn’t matter that there is no actual paycheque because I have finally found where I need to be. This makes the work I do at home so much more valuable to me as it no longer scatters me but keeps me grounded. I realise now how easy it is to slip into the dark places.

There’s been a shift. I am finally comfortable in this space as I have accepted it ‘for now’. I am giving my heart but I am not giving my soul.

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Mother’s Day

May 9th, 2009

I’d love to be able to tell my mother how grateful I am about the way she brought me up: she taught me what I need to know about bringing up my own child … everything I need to know about how NOT to bring up my own child. This is positive as it brings with it a fresh awareness of my time with my child and a tool to prevent myself from falling in the same parenting traps. Hallmark, however, does not make a card that says these things.

With mothers day tomorrow, there are so many mums stuck in the middle as both mothers and daughters, wondering how to do the appreciating when all they are longing for is a little bit of appreciation themselves. I have discovered the solution … feed a hungry child. You don’t even need to go looking for one; all you need to do is log onto http://wall.wfp.org/ and make a donation … then follow three incredibly easy steps to write a message, upload a photo and post it on the Wall of Hunger. Your mum receives an email with a link to the wall and feels valued. You could give her a box of chocolates or a bunch of flowers but both will be gone in a few days; $25 lasts a hungry child 6 months of meals!

The only gift I am expecting is a box of Jolly Jammers. I will of course only get the ones with angry faces because that’s the fate of the disciplinarian: “Here, Mum, this one’s for you because you are always angry.” It kinda sucks but I see his point …

Anyway, happy Mothers’ Day to all of you and here’s hoping for just a small amount of appreciation from the kids … if that fails, don’t forget to truly appreciate yourselves as that most definitely counts for a lot.

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Nappies … yes, again

May 8th, 2009

This is for the benefit of a friend of mine who thinks I harp on about the subject just a little too much. I see her point … but that doesn’t prevent me from wanting to keep making mine.

I am puzzled by the claim by Pampers that there is little difference in the environmental impact caused by disposables versus cloth nappies. Perhaps, at a stretch, the old fashioned way of doing the cloth nappies (and I mean decades ago) may have had an equally damaging effect on the environment–the nappies were put in buckets and collected by companies in trucks who would take all the nappies to a central laundry where they would be boiled in all sorts of chemicals and dried in huge industrial machines before being pressed and driven back to the collection point.

Even so, this cannot have contributed as harmfully as the massive landfills created by disposable nappies. In England and America alone, 25 BILLION nappies are thrown away each year so it isn’t surprising that 33% of landfills are made up of disposable nappies. Add to that the fact that they take almost 3 HUNDRED years to decompose, meaning that not one disposable nappy has decomposed yet! This is just the half of it; if you start Googling the harmful effects, you will find out about the trees that are cut down to make the nappies, the forests that are destroyed to make the pulp that is used for the gels, etc. etc. The negatives are endless and there is only one positive: convenience.

There is no argument about environmental damage and which variety of nappy is worse … yet people still allow themselves to be tempted by the perceived convenience of disposables. It’s a no-brainer.

I have used both and can state categorically that, not only are the cloth variety no less convenient, but there are actually so many benefits to using them, which I can enthuse about only because I was an instant convert when I started using them when my child was 5 months old. I could have chosen any number of a variety of pre-shaped cloth nappies that require no folding … but folding a square of terrycloth into a nappy is easier than making a paper plane so it didn’t warrant the extra expense (the point is there is no excuse about the folding as there are options). My child had not a single bout of nappy rash due to the cloth being a natural substance and because there are wonderful things called nappy liners, which keep baby dry and which are flushable. My child knew when he was wet or when he had made a poo, which made it so much easier to get him out of nappies really early (yes, I can boast that he was in proper undies at one year)–so, again, a way more convenient option because I only had to wash nappies for just over 6 months. The only equipment required was a nappy bucket with a safety lid which was kept in the bathroom filled with water and a natural organic nappy sterilizer … this meant that the nappies only had to go into the machine every weekend and they could be washed at an environmentally-friendly forty degrees in thirty-five minutes before being hung up to dry.

They may have tiny feet but bringing a child into this world leaves a massive carbon footprint. The least a parent can do is make choices that this little person will not have to pay for in several decades time. It’s time to take an ethical stand and think about the big picture of having a child and not just the selfish desire to procreate.

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Isn’t it ironic …?

May 8th, 2009

I worked to the point of obsession (me and Gina) to promote independence and a sense of self. I ensured that my child would be in bed every night be 7 p.m. so that my husband and I could have time … adult time. My child slept in his cot from day one and only slept in our bed on occasion during daytime sleeps and very rarely at night if he was too sick and we were too tired to attend to him (up and down the spiral staircase!). It’s not easy following such a strict routine but it pays off when your child responds and never gets between you in bed.

Well, that was the idea.

Despite all efforts, he came between us anyway … not physically but emotionally. He is always there. And there remain so many unspoken conversations about how we both feel in our new identities as parents. Being a parent is a vulnerable and fragile time and it is often not treated with the respect it deserves. I am a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a lover, a writer, a patient, a client, a consultant, an employer, a dog owner, a Beetle driver, a shoe lover, an optimist, a runner, a breather … and so much more, I could risk running out of blog space. But when I added mother to this list, it tipped the scales, and balance is something I have been seeking ever since. I find it so difficult to switch and juggle a multi-faceted personality … but only when I am in the role as mother. My new persona takes so much from the old ones and it’s difficult enough trying to deal with those stats when you’re also playing out a guilt trip about what your new role is draining from your partner’s other personas. You whine and moan about not getting enough space when it’s just the two of you … but when there’s three, space is the one thing you could happily do without.

Does he know he’s getting between us? Of course not. I used to tell him he was ruining my life … and he developed a sense of humour. Now, I giggle with him all day and deal with the other stuff when he’s gone to bed.

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Suicide

May 6th, 2009

I used to have a friend who would call me every night at around 5 p.m. and immediately apologise for calling at–what she termed–suicide hour. It was at a stage when every hour just happened to be suicide hour … I had no preconceptions about any one particular hour, yet she made a point of calling to remind me what I should be thinking about at 5 p.m. when I was preparing dinner, tidying the house, running the bath and expressing breastmilk from a dwindling supply, all at the same time.

No surprises then that she used to be a friend.

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Smacking

May 5th, 2009

My child is a little old soul all wrapped up in a brand new body, full of wise words, a sociable disposition, a clever sense of humour, an awesome vocabulary and many, many lessons.

Just as he has lulled me into a sense of complacency and illusion that I have a very mature child, he will throw himself on the ground, throw anything he has in his hands at the time, tell me that I have a problem and refuse to do anything I ask of him. These are the terrible twos that have taken over a year to get here … and a rattling reminder that he is in fact a perfectly normal 3-year-old.

I made a vow before he was born that I would never smack him–it never worked on me but, instead, broke me … something I always suspected was the intention my parents had in the first place trying to deal with a brood of four and having little idea of how to go about that very tricky task. I have stuck to my vow even though I have to admit that there are moments when he gets so stroppy with me that I am tempted to klap him right across the room. These urges used to be a lot stronger when dealing with my anger at having had him in the first place–those days when I was convinced he had ruined my life and liberated me from my parallel dweller who wears her shopping and travelling fetishes on her sleeve–that I would remove myself from the room where he was performing just in case my anger got the better of me … a time when my stubbornness has served me well–I was, under no circumstances, going to turn into my mother.

If I can connect to my anger for long enough to take a deep breath and realise that it’s my stuff I’m dealing with and it has nothing to do with him–he is, after all, behaving like all 3-year-olds should–I am always amazed at how suddenly he drops his arms, puts a big smile on his face and carries on as though nothing has happened. As mystifying as it is maddening.

Something to ponder then is that perhaps the changed behaviour in children who are smacked has less to do with the smack and more to do with the fact that they are just following an inbuilt chain of events.

There is just no way I can smack him … how else would I be able to teach him that it is best to take out his frustrations on a cushion … or on the very same punch bag I used to defer my feelings of anger for him.

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The simplest things

May 4th, 2009

I bought a footstool. It is a two-step plastic footstool and I bought it as soon as my child could walk. Over two years later, he still uses it all over the house. He can wash up at the sink before meals, he can reach things out the cupboards and, most importantly, he can go downstairs in the mornings to get himself something to eat if his hunger gets him before the desire to get out of bed gets me. It shows his independence and the fact that all kids are capable if given the tools.

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From Slop to Sushi

May 1st, 2009

It happens relatively quickly—a bowl of sloppy greens to a slice of Norwegian salmon served up with spring onions, coriander and ginger. And then there were the prawns at the fish shop he declared he simply loved and would just have to have for dinner sometime as they were his absolute favourite. A family meal out for us doesn’t come with a bucket of chicken or a drive-thru the golden arches … my three-year-old would rather dine on salmon sashimi and rainbow rolls, washed down with a small can of soda water. We have now tried every half-price-sushi joint in Cape Town. Beluga is a hot favourite, followed closely by Salushi and Geisha. Can you imagine what he’s going to be ordering when he’s a teenager? Best we start saving now!

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M-Power

April 30th, 2009

Because I always stick my neck out, I get my head chopped off quite often. I am fair but strict … possibly a little too strict … but I also believe in empowerment through giving all the tools to grow. This includes the ability to speak using proper vocabulary, the ability to argue his case raher than letting him get his own way, and the ability to use numbers logically. There are those who believe that enabling my child in this way is not allowing him to be a child. But I already catch glimpses of the incredible man my little boy is going to be and, as a result, I find it difficult to get my levels of mothering right. When I look at my toddler and see a gorgeous man, I find it tricky treating him like a child.

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Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z

April 29th, 2009

I still have a problem with his sleeping. It’s as though he sleeps more now to make up for my keeping him awake when he was a baby—I followed Gina Ford but I didn’t take into account that her entire formula was based on keeping baby awake for certain hours during the day so baby would sleep at night. I had a baby that would happily sleep all day and then go on and sleep all night too. And I would phone TLC (baby clinic) in tears and ask what I could do to make my baby stay awake—in retrospect, I’m not sure how I escaped being committed.

He now sleeps during the day, goes to bed at night at a decent hour … but wakes me up reaaaaally early. Teaching him his numbers early on has paid off though—when he started wandering through to our room to climb into bed with us close to 5 a.m., I put a digital clock in his room and told him he was not allowed to come through until 6. The first few mornings he came through at 5.06, 5.26, 5.46, 5.16 … until he figured out (with some gentle, hair-pulling persuasion) that the 6 had to be on the left, not the right. We now have a perfect alarm clock…  pre-set until it reaches the teenage years.

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What happened to the village?

April 28th, 2009

I have a friend who believes in this concept – amazingly, just the one. There are those who get really uptight if you so much as reprimand their kids for such indiscretions as smacking, kicking or even biting your own precious offspring. And then there are those who believe that bringing up baby all on your own is a lark and if not for the input from all around, your child would not be quite as balanced as one would wish. Perhaps all the breeding for more and more kids has a lot to do with parents trying to create their own mini-village … who knows. I certainly don’t have a clue what it’s all about and I could spend this lifetime and the next trying to figure it out.

Like any crisis that happens en mass, people tend not to individualise in order to better contain it. This seems to be what happens with parenthood – it happens to everyone who has a child so parents are grouped together into one collective and a rule of generalisation is applied to everyone in the collective. But, behind the scenes, there are people screaming in pain at the stress of it. Broken marriages, non-existent sex lives, grey hair and emotionally screwed up children.

It is not easier being part of the collective … ‘the collective’ is not the same as ‘the village’.

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Dreaming again

April 26th, 2009

I had a dream last night. It involved India … which a lot of my dreams do at the moment. To put this in context, I have always lived in tiny homes and, although content, I would have recurring dreams about discovering one day that there was a secret basement or attic or just a whole lot of extra room. Now that I have a bigger home, I no longer have this dream. Now that I have a child and a dog, I have the freedom dreams – the ones that involve international travel to exotic destinations … the ones I wouldn’t know how to travel in with a child in tow because I only really know backpacker travel to these destinations and doubt I would even enjoy it any other way.

Anyway, about the dream. I was in India (obviously) and there was a cricket game due to start on the weekend after me and husband (note, no child) were due to leave. I was talking to my husband about the possibility of staying on and couldn’t he negotiate it with his boss (I had grown up in this dream and there was employment involved). He sat there looking at me but every time he tried to speak, all he could do was snore. Of course, I woke up moments later to a loudly snoring husband, a child who had climbed into our bed and a dog crying to be let out for the fourth time because he had eaten something dodgy out of the compost heap again.

Freedom? What’s that?

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Have baby, will travel

April 21st, 2009

It’s no wonder I didn’t win the blog awards 2009. I am lazy, my content is scant and inconsistent … and I have a child who, when he was a baby, made other mothers sick with envy. Most of my friends never read my blog … most of my friends don’t even know I have a blog! When I sent them all the link to vote for the finals and received less than a 5% response, my husband told me it is because they were all in shock reading it for the first time … probably because they all found something in there that related to them in some way.
I suppose I sound a little self-righteous at times but I never promised I wouldn’t tell the truth at all times, regardless of who got miffed in the process. If it’s not out there, it’s not real. And now it really is out there and more people will be directed to my blog as a result of being asked to write the following article by the company that put the whole Blog Awards thing together in the first place.
So I maintain my promise to be truthful and I add the promise to get the hell up to date with my blog posts. Better late than forever … which it won’t be as time is running out for a baby blog now that I can no longer claim to have one of those … but rather a very well established parasite who is most definitely growing on me in a big way.

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F-f-f-f-f-floundering

March 30th, 2009

Four mornings out of seven, he’d wake up in a wet bed at 6 a.m. It’s because I wanted to be the best, I wanted to win, I wanted my child who had been out of daytime nappies since the age of 12 months, to be out of night time nappies too because everyone else’s kids were. It was the deal that at three he would ditch nappies completely. So I bought a waterproof mattress liner for the mornings he had ‘accidents’ and I washed his sheets almost every day. So you’re right, Ms Greene, we need help and advice as parents as there is nothing but instinct to access before we launch into something new … but new only for us. After about two weeks, my child started stuttering and I blamed myself (obviously), made a few calls – the paediatrician, TLC mother and baby centre in Hout Bay – searched the wwweb, and came up with various bits of advice. I had to trust my instinct again – I took the advice to put him in Pull-ups at night and never mention that they were anything other than special underpants to sleep in. It took a week before the stuttering started abating. It is still there but so slightly and only when he is very tired or excited. Chances are it might have gone away anyway; I can’t tell; but I have a happy child again and that means only one thing – everyone is happy … still floundering most weeks, but happy.

Useful links

Dr Greene
Pediatrics
IOL

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Those people

March 30th, 2009

We are no longer the cool couple with the throw-away lifestyle, the fabulous wardrobe of designer styles and the list of RSVPs to get through. A weekend away at a designer hotel, strutting onto the plane in killer heels pulling designer luggage is something in my history books. The plane is now a 4×4, the killer heels, hiking boots, designer luggage? – the only luggage is pure essentials as the toys and kids clothes take up all the space and the only thing I pull is my 50kg dog.

I used to book a weekend away every six weeks and those weekends always involved a flight and a lot of room service. Now the only places that will have us (with our child and dog) are those horrid places that have polyester bedding and no heating in winter. Room service? – there is generally not even coffee or tea supplied.

So, I spend an awful lot of time searching the wwweb for pet-friendly holiday accommodation and usually end up not going away due to never being able to find something that is suitable for both pooch and us and I am still more than reluctant to put him in kennels because … well, because he is not so much a pooch as my first born (but you know this already). House/dog-sitters are rare but when found I thought it would be a breeze to book luxury accommodation for two adults and a toddler. Not so! I have been amazed at how much effort I have had to put into a search, only to find on step 12 or 13 that kids are either not allowed or are only accepted after a certain age. That was until I discovered the Portfolio Collection website. They have a specific search for places where children are welcome.

Check out their travel blog too, and look at the Kids of Nature website, where you can browse through other parents’ stories of traveling with their kids and share your own travel tips too.

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Is money really the root of all evil?

March 30th, 2009

How much does one give and how much does one hold back? Do we promote greed and sloth by giving or by not …? There is always stuff in the gossip mags (I can protest that I don’t actually read them but I do occasionally have to go to the hairdresser and the doctor so they are always first choice to someone as self-deprived as I am) about billionaires withholding inheritances from their kids to instil a work ethic in them. Hmm, thin line I think. If someone is wealthy, they simply can’t pretend they are not and if someone inherits, let them. We get to an age (hopefully) when we start resenting having to work to live and some of us are fortunate to not have to …. some of us can do what we really want to, whether that is through having previously worked to live, hard enough to sustain us, or whether by inheritance or a windfall.

I say this now as a pledge to my child: you will reach an age, having studied and worked and lived to learn values and then whatever I have will be yours too. You will be able to work to be fulfilled knowing that I do not have to die for you to be able to do work that might help change the world.

Because, let’s face it, work that helps change the world doesn’t seem to pay so well. I’m sure parents think they are doing what’s right for their kids making them slog for a living when they are well off enough to enable them rather than disable them in their quest to make a difference.

I save every month for my child just in case I am not in a position to enable him when he is older – he’s got a nest egg even if there is no inheritance as yet.

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Stocking fillers

December 14th, 2008

My book, never go trekking … and other stories, was reviewed in the Sunday Times (South Africa) today and people keep asking me what it feels like. I tell them I can’t answer that because I now can’t remember what it felt like before I was reviewed in the Sunday Times. I suppose for the purposes of this blog I would have to equate the feeling to motherhood.

What I can do is share the review by Paul Ash:
“If you really want to know what it’s like to trek the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal, ride Chinese trains, find a cheap hotel in Varanasi or survive 101 backpacker afflictions, then read this traveller’s diary of a seven- month journey across India, China and Southeast Asia. The best way of finding out what lies on the road ahead is to ask someone who’s been there — first- hand information trumps a travel guide any day. Van Maasdyk’s diary is more than just a one-woman treatise on how to forsake the pleasures of silk, Prada and — at times — running water, and travel lightly; she’s also a funny raconteur. Available from www.justdone.co.za”

More available at: thetimes.co.za

Go buy the book.

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SURVEY 2008

November 7th, 2008

A survey goes around the email circuit annually and it’s intended purely as a bit of fun to pass on to your friends with your own custom-made answers to give a little insight into what’s going on with you in this age of technology when the only way to communicate is through email, Facebook, MySpace, feedalizr and Twitter (etc., etc.). I sent it to everyone and got zero response from any of my friends who I don’t seem to even see any more due to the demands of life and the cost of fuel. Seems like the cost of living has forced the stakes even higher and compounded the problems of social networking technologies.

It could be identity theft, as a family member exclaimed, and it could be resource theft, designed to waste employees’ time and efforts. It may be my longest post ever but I say it’s important to find a bit of space in a busy day to have a bit of fun. It is too easy to try and prove that we are too busy to do these things – wow, what would people think if I sent this to them and they realised I had an hour in my day for total frivolity? Eish, don’t take life so seriously …

  1. What time did you get up this morning?

    2. 7:30! It’s a miracle (not that I believe in those …) that my child woke up so late so, for that, I am thankful.

  2. Diamonds or pearls?

    3. Pearls make me feel old so I guess diamonds will have to do.

  3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?

    4. Wall-E – may have something to do with my environmental posts …

  4. What is your favourite TV show?

    5. Weeds currently but will always go back to Sex and the City and it irks me that they sold out to Hollywood.

  5. What do you usually have for breakfast?

    6. What’s that?

  6. What is your middle name?

    7. Should have been Jan

  7. What food do you dislike?

    8. Well, I was once served a bowl of soup in China – it was filled with an animal’s intestines. I disliked that! But, more generally speaking, brussels sprouts, aubergines, meat.

  8. What is your favourite CD at moment?

    9. Can I have two? David Jordan and Asha

  9. What kind of car do you drive?

    10. Beetle (LHD from Holland) … ten years old – it’s the love of my life and I would only replace it for a Beetle, circa 1970 … or the next fabulous hybrid if I manage to get the thing referred to in 52 below.

  10. Favourite sandwich?

    11. Crayfish and Rocket from Pret is still my favourite and cannot be replaced as such – EVER!

  11. What characteristic do you despise?

    12. Smugness

  12. Favourite item of clothing?

    13. Leopard print faux fur micro mini – with lace up knee-high boots. But when I’m feeling more generic … Earl Jeans and Hello Kitty t-shirt.

  13. If you could go anywhere?

    14. Anywhere!

  14. Favourite brand of clothing?

    15. Local is lekker – Joe Soap et al … but I crave a bit of High Street in the form of H&M, Whistles, Calvin Klein and Karen Millen. Anything else is out of my league and not even worth mentioning.

  15. Where would you retire to?

    16. It depends how old I am when I retire. In an ideal world, somewhere in the Med. but I have a feeling retirement will come with a yacht or a motorhome.

  16. What was your most recent memorable birthday?

    17. Definitely my 30th at the Astoria in St Petersburg, overlooking the dome of St Isaacs Cathedral. An operatic ballet (yes, I was also confused) followed by Beluga and Vodka.

  17. Favourite sport to watch?

    18. International rugby … but only if we win; limited-overs cricket; anything at Olympics time, especially winter Olympics.

  18. Farthermost place you are sending this?

    19. I never was very good at geography …

  19. Person you expect to send it back first?

    20. No one – this is spam to almost everyone I know.

  20. When is your birthday?

    21. I’m a Gemini.

  21. Are you a morning person or a night person?

    22. Mornings are a blur and so are the nights for that matter. I will be a night person again but I will never become a morning person.

  22. What is your shoe size?

    23. As long as the shoe fits … does it really matter?

  23. Pets?

    24. Well, most people think I have a ridgeback … but he’s actually my first-born.

  24. Any new and exciting news you’d like to share?

    25. My ridgeback (aka first-born) is going to be a daddy! My child has asked for a baby now that my husband has had the snip. I’m going on a poetry retreat next weekend. I’m running my first half-marathon in 4 years on 12 October.

  25. What did you want to be when you were little?

    26. I’m still little. And I still don’t know.

  26. How are you today?

    27. Fabulous after a shot of cortisone last night. So good in fact that we went for a picnic on the beach and had front row seats to a display of about a dozen whales no more than 50 meters from shore. Followed by a coffee at Olympia and a nap and now washing down gorgonzola on toast with a glass of my favourite chardonnay … well, the only way to make it better would be to be packing for Cambodia.

  27. What is your favourite candy?

    28. White Rabbit toffees.

  28. What is your favourite flower?

    29. Watsonias – in the garden, not a vase.

  29. What is a day on the calendar you are looking forward to?

    30. 13 October (see 24 above!)

  30. What is your full name?


    31. Lady Penelope

  31. What are you listening to right now?

    32. The fluttering of the gas fire – but only with one ear as the other is full of puss.

  32. What was the last thing you ate?

    33. See 26 above.

  33. Do you wish on stars?

    34. I used to when I lived in London and the stars were rarely seen but in Hout Bay the sky looks like someone has spilt the silver glitter so I wouldn’t know where to begin.

  34. If you were a crayon, what colour would you be?

    35. Red, unless it’s an orange-red crayon – then I would have to choose electric blue.

  35. How is the weather right now?

    36. Tired of caring about the weather – it should be spring and … well, it’s not.

  36. The first person you spoke to on the phone today?

    37. I’m not even sure where the phone is today.

  37. What is you favourite soft drink?

    38. Soft? Does beer count?

  38. Favourite restaurant?

    39. Well, there is a hole-in-the-wall noodle bar in Xi’an, China, opposite the Xi’an Royal Hotel … but that was a lifetime ago. Minatos for sushi – it’s owned by the Japanese guy who did the ‘Where Dougras Gleen?’ advertising campaign. More upmarket: The Showroom for real celebrity chef showmanship. Then, of course, the Davidoff at the St Petersburg Astoria – it’s hard to get that one out of one’s head.

  39. Real hair colour?

    40. Hmm, blonde, bordering on a mousey winter brown.

  40. What was your favourite toy as a child?

    41. Mud.

  41. Summer or winter?

    42. Summer in Cape Town; winter in New York.

  42. Hugs or kisses?

    43. Depends from whom.

  43. Chocolate or Vanilla?

    44. Chocolate usually but then I can’t get out of my head a bowl of ice-cream made with real vanilla which I poured Illy espresso over.

  44. Coffee or tea?

    45. Tea … unless Illy is on offer.

  45. Do you want your friends to email you back?

    46. Duh!

  46. When was the last time you cried?

    47. Depends whether in desperation, sorrow, pain or frustration … I think the last time was when my child told me that I had broken the whole of his heart – it was tears without crying so does that count?

  47. What is under your bed?

    48. A built in storage box containing: snorkels, flippers and goggles from Australian campervan trip (will I ever use them again?), towels, bedlinen, clothes I will never wear again (I hope!), dust, lint.

  48. What are you afraid of?

    49. War and public speaking.

  49. Salty or sweet?

    50. Sweet seems like the obvious answer, but nothing beats a chunk of fresh white bread with a slice of butter and a layer of crystal salt. Oh yes, can’t forget the popcorn cooked in salt and then smothered in it too.

  50. How many keys on your key ring?

    51. One.

  51. How many years at your current job?

    52. Job?

  52. Favourite day of the week?

    53. Wednesday – just the morning – as it is the only time of the week that I can be at home totally alone to write.

  53. How many towns have you lived in?

    54. Depends how you define ‘lived in’ – but, I suppose, only 3 (Durban, Cape Town and London).

  54. Do you make friends easily?

    55. I must do as Mike regularly refers to ‘the strays’.

  55. How many people will you send this to?

    56. Definitely one but perhaps more if I can figure out how to get this past their spam filters.

  56. How many will respond?

    57. I doubt anyone will even read it.

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Breaking down value system

October 31st, 2008

When Annie Leonard (www.storyofstuff.com) looked in the mirror a couple of decades ago, maybe the current Annie Leonard was the furthest thing from her imagination … or wildest dreams. Perhaps she cursed her reflection because she failed an exam or a job interview or didn’t make the grade to compete in the Olympics. I am not saying any of these things happened … but they might have. They might have happened to set her up to a challenge that she had no idea she would have to face, back then. And here she is, trying to save the world by standing on a soapbox (one made of 100% recycled material of course). The Story of Stuff is also a story about how stuff happens … and we’ve all been there.

If Al Gore had become president, he might have been too wrapped up to investigate and discuss climate change – global awareness was key to launching his ideas. I don’t mean to frighten anyone or set anyone up to fail by making them think they have to be that huge to be noticed or recognised as achieving … but, perhaps when things don’t go exactly according to plan, it’s because there is another plan that’s just out of the picture right now and you just need to pan around a bit to find it. There are different paths and we all have to find our own. Flexibility is something that is shut down in most of us because it allows freedom of spirit and in this day and age that is considered a dangerous quality as it means you will be unable to conform …

We’re so trapped by society that even if we know what the problems are, we get stuck anyway.

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Is green ever green enough?

October 30th, 2008

So, where did it all start – my crazed-bear obsession with the environment? Well, it started slow – terry cloth nappies, solar powered boiler, gas heaters, wood fires (using wood from alien trees), recycling … and then I was sent a web address: www.storyofstuff.com and I fell head over heels in total ‘fatal-attraction’ love with the whole concept of sustainable living.

Everyone should watch Annie Leonard’s mini movie and look at her tips to find another way to exist on this finite planet. Sure, it’s hard to be a total convert, but we all have to start somewhere. Dieters who start their diets on Monday can continue to do so as long as their attitude to the environment doesn’t also spell procrastination. Everyone has to start today to do his or her bit and no one is going to mind if it’s just a small bit … as long as it’s something.

To give you a kick in the right direction, try Wiser earth to get involved with the greater good. And speaking of the greater good, have a look at Greater Good. There is a South African equivalent which has less to do with the environment and more to do with … well … the greater good:

Enjoy the march. Besides anything else, marching beats dieting.

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Green is the new black

October 29th, 2008

From the moment my child could talk, he could express himself in a way that it would seem he had been practicing in total silence since birth. The first time he expressed any interest in colour, he declared immediately that his favourite colour was green. Of course this was just an impulse … which has stuck for over a year now … but as a mother full of hopes and dreams for both her child, his future and, therefore for the future of our planet, it sparked a series of impulses in my own brain which, deep down, translate into visions of my child becoming an environmentalist of sorts. There is a part of me that visualises him handcuffed to a tree in a forest that is being chopped down even faster than we are slowly getting way too accustomed to, or missioning off an another escapade for Green Peace. And that would also be fine – not everyone needs a career … there are some people who need only a calling, and these people seem to be the ones who make a bigger difference in life.

But this is the week for sharing web links so I will focus in on a South African green (and gold), one of the champions of the planet. She’s not a banker, a broker, an economist or a tout for driving the economy while tens of millions starve. She is a new kid on the block starting out with huge heart and soul to change our mindsets to convert our offices, gardens and even the film industry to eco. Her website is www.greenshift.com and it has all her details if you want help making your future sustainable. By supporting her, you too become one of the pioneers.

After all, our kids are our future so we have a responsibility to ensure they get one.

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Fear factor

October 28th, 2008

Then there are a couple of websites that are not remotely funny:
http://www.safemilk.org/
http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/
http://www.notjustaprettyface.org/

The long and short is that even when we are doing our best – breastfeeding, buying best quality products and using what are advertised as baby-safe products – we are poisoning our children from day one. Our breast milk is toxic because of all the toxins we unwittingly put into our own bodies; the bottles we then use, once the breast milk has dried up, are made of plastics that leach chemicals into the formula milk; and the wonderful top-quality baby products seem to be a marketing scam as they too are hazardous to both baby and the environment. You just have to do a search on the cosmetics database (see above) to see that even kid’s toothpastes are more hazardous than the adult variety. And it seems that the harmful effect of the sun on our children’s skin is way less when weighed up against the toxins that are put into the sun creams we slather all over our children’s faces and bodies before we let them out of the house.

A woman once told me that if I use a certain brand of shampoo, I should only use the same brand conditioner as they have been specifically designed to work together. This might have been something she learned at beauty school or just plain common sense, but the implications are only now becoming clear. If you use two different brands and each brand has a toxic chemical in it, there is no telling how those chemicals will react together. Scary stuff, huh?

Call me paranoid, but I’m beginning to feel surrounded by poisons. I even read about a court case lodged by an employee at L’Oreal accusing the brand of using carcinogenic chemicals in products they slap that pink ribbon on. They almost got away with it too!

I revert to an earlier post where I wrote about massaging my baby with organic sesame oil from head to toe for the first months of his life instead of bathing him and exposing him to harsh bath products. I didn’t know it then, but my maternal instinct (the one I thought had totally escaped me) was already seeping into me. I use an organic product on his skin and I use the same brand of household cleaners to avoid the chemicals in the home, which find their way into our bodies. The product name is Enchantrix – it is a South African product but there is an equivalent in Europe called Ecover. There are good products out there but you have to be vigilant and not accept what you’re told until you do the research. Just when we thought the tough part was over … we need to work harder. We just do.

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An environmental soapbox … for a week

October 27th, 2008

I have an urge to share some websites with you – websites that are both scary and funny (in a scary kind of way). We blindly do our best each day, caught in a buzz of consumerism and social lust and we rarely stop to consider the consequences of our actions.

With Halloween just around the corner, the first link to post would have to be the one that claims: A green Halloween is very eek-o chic.

Look at … and read (obviously) the article in the Seattle Times. It’s full of handy tips to reduce your ghoulish impact on the environment.

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Wenkidu

October 24th, 2008

I look at his painting, which captures a favourite theme of mine – an open window looking outward at a scene – the structured geometric interior starkly contrasted with the flowing freedom of the yacht on the ocean. It sums it up for me: it is me. My bio should read: Penelope van Maasdyk is a structured human force, always organised yet constantly gazing at the horizon, seeking freedom.

Before I was married – ‘When God was a child’, a friend of mine would quip – and, therefore, before the baby; who stoked the insanity that created this blog; was even a tick on my biological clock, I bought this painting. It has followed me from Observatory to Chiswick to Barnes to Vredehoek to Hout Bay where it is the first thing I see each morning and the last thing I see at night: it hangs on a patch of pink I painted on my bedroom wall for it.

The artist, Wenkidu, sold it to me at cut price; much to the furious mutterings of his no doubt more financially savvy wife; and I am so grateful to him that, each time I look at his artwork, I imagine that he has made it big and is living it large on the islands.

I am beginning only now to realise why he did it … practically gave his art to me. He wanted to know that his art was out there rather than stacked against his studio wall imploding on its own creative energy. He wanted to release it and know that it was being admired, appreciated … and, even if hated, having an impact on the universe.

And this is a lesson on how we all should be. The world only learns from those who are willing to put themselves and their stuff ‘out there’. Sure, you’re likely to get the crap kicked out of your ego every once in a while … but that’s the price of ego, I suppose.

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I’m a little teapot

October 23rd, 2008

Just when you think you have the motherhood thing waxed – and you can’t remember when you lasted chanted ‘this too will pass’ while your child wailed in his time-out corner of the bathroom – another challenge rears its head and dares you to become complacent.

The school concert!

My child, when asked what he would like to be in the school concert, has chosen to be a teapot. This would be fine – he, after all, knows the little teapot song and dance – if it weren’t for the (for me) massive hurdle preparing a convincing costume for his act.

Bring on drug counselling and sex education … they’ve got to be easier than this.

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Balance

October 22nd, 2008

Possibly the two most important things I have taught my son: the one is that he has every right to stand up to me when I am angry with him and he feels he is being judged unfairly and the other is that no matter how angry I get with him that I still think he is the most awesome human being and I love him more than anything.

He gives me a hug and a kiss and asks me if I am happy. This is after telling me not to shout and reassuring me that he knows that I love him even though I am cross.

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The little things can count for a lot

October 15th, 2008

I have taken on the task of writing something for Blog Action Day on poverty. The more I consider this, the more difficult the task seems … this is, after all, a baby blog about a child who knows nothing yet about the concept of poverty.

Or does he?

As I sit here in my grand home letting the cleaner clean and the gardener garden, I am more than aware that my small attempts to alleviate poverty are nothing of the sort. But an attempt is an attempt and I can only speak from the perspective that is my own.

When I fell pregnant I vowed to give up Christmas … well, not totally give it up but give it up in the sense that it is all about overindulging and overconsuming – polluting the environment, our bodies and our karma. From that very first Christmas, my husband and I calculated what a regular Christmas with food and gifts would cost, we took that money and went on a shopping spree at Makro (for those outside South Africa, this is a big ‘buy-bulk-and-save’ superstore) for party hats, crackers, snacks, sweets, cigarettes and liquor. We packed up 120 parcels of goods and early on Christmas morning drove around Cape Town handing out parcels to the homeless. This Christmas will be our 5th … and the 4th with our child.

Although children are young, they are impressionable and they take in everything in their environment (I know this mainly because of bugger being my child’s first word, followed by something along the lines of edible … and more recently a word that would prevent most people being able to launch this site at work) so I hope that this small act will have a huge impact on my child’s dealings with poverty in the future. We maintain the ‘lesson’ by buying footballs every month and he drives around with us while we hand them out to underprivileged children.

Everyone has a right to celebrate Christmas and every kid should have a ball.

If you want to teach your child the art of giving but you don’t have the time or inclination to do the above … because, let’s face it, not many people do (and that comes with no judgement) then there is a fabulous NPO I have just found out about called Kidz2Kidz. Getting involved requires a small effort and a lot of heart so please check out the website www.kidz2kidz.co.za pack your santa box and pass the info on to everyone you know who may have a little giving left over at Christmas time.

Email Irenè Pieters for further info.


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The perspective of knowledge

October 13th, 2008

I was accused recently of not knowing anything about bringing up kids … by my mother-in-law no less. I think this has less to do with my lack of knowledge than my lack of enthusiastically asking advice from her on a regular basis. I have had an affinity with children since I was one myself, I have worked with children and I have studied developmental psychology. Where there have been any gaps in my knowledge … and I freely admit there have been plenty … I have filled a lot at my child’s clinic – TLC in Hout Bay to be exact – where I have sponged up as much knowledge as possible while keeping my head down and pretending not to be a mum. The rest have been filled by the ubiquitous books on childcare as well as the wonderful world of the web which is, if not holistic, an informed substitute for the village all children – and parents – need to grow up healthy. My favourite website is Dr Greene the best book I have found is Steve Biddulph’s Raising Boys.

With the gift of all this access to information, you have the choice to read as little or as much into the advice given. You have to pick what suits you and stick to it because consistency is the master challenge. Gina Ford was invaluable when I had a baby but I am glad to be rid of her – she just proved to be too severe for an obsessive compulsive personality … but then that was my doing, not hers.

It’s got nothing to do with how much you know really – you can never know enough when it comes to raising kids – but how willing and able you are to look beyond the normal available channels for information and insight into this common yet mysterious dilemma we all face of how best to bring up baby.

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If it’s not out there, it’s not real

October 11th, 2008

My therapist once told me not to make my stuff anyone else’s problem. I might want to put it out there but that doesn’t mean anyone else wants to listen to it … and they definitely don’t want to deal with it. It apparently makes them feel awkward and uncomfortable. I do it anyway.

My glee is a product of having always been asked about the second child. If people want to procreate that’s their choice, but when they project that need onto me, I buy myself time with some hard truth: No more for me, my husband’s had the snip.

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The silent scream

October 8th, 2008

She tried to prove she could do it all while trying to be happy doing nothing at all.

During one of the postnatal depression periods following the birth … and close to a couple of years after the birth … I had a moment (perhaps several, if I am totally honest) of considering having another child. This was once I had quit my job to write, was still in therapy and felt – generally – rather useless. I felt that if I had one more and made my life pure hell, I would be busy enough to justify the existence I had chosen. I was feeling irrational at the time and had it not been for the fact that my coil (a.k.a. extreme body piercing) was dislodged and causing too much pain to have anything near to the kind of passionate encounter that might lead to more offspring, there might have been another ‘whoopsy’.

I like to think I graduated from therapy feeling like I can stand by my choices no matter how much I am trying to prove. I’ve done it all and had it all and I have tasted success, money, travel and more than my share of indulgence and extravagance. Life is short with so many pressures. I am ready to cut a small wedge out of my existence to dedicate this part of this life to love, nurture, respect, support and teach a boy who is destined for greatness.

I’m going to play my trump card – my card of excellence. Can there be any greater achievement?

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If only all men could lift the seat

October 7th, 2008

Ok, so we all know my child was toilet trained by his first birthday … the whole of Cape Town seems to know and it has become urban legend. I was not trying to prove anything but purely exercising my need for self-preservation. I wanted to go the terry-cloth route but couldn’t cope with washing them (despite the Marigolds) … so I had to devise a plan. By ensuring all ‘pushing’ was done out of the nappy (something that took a fair amount of vigilance), poo nappies were practically eliminated by the time he was six months old. The rest came easy. He didn’t know any different – the toilet was always the place to do the business and there was no struggle associated with having to get him used to the toilet after years of feeling comfortable sitting in his own faeces (which, let’s face it, is just not right).

When I was pregnant I used to tease that I had a parasite … until I my ‘parasite’ actually got a parasite. He was nine months old and the culprit was Giardia. This karmic payback not only caused the filling of terry cloth and waterproof liner but also the spreading of said parasite-infested faeces down child’s trousers, out past the ankles, down my jeans, onto the car seat and baby seat … all while lifting my child out of the shopping trolley and into the car to go home. Eco or not, there was no salvaging that one – the child was stripped and hosed down in winter frost on the front lawn and the terrycloth nappy and liner were promptly disposed of.

The point that is becoming so hard to make here is that all those things usually associated with potty training that no one thinks has anything to do with anything else because everyone is brainwashed into believing that the only time one can potty train is after two and only once the child has indicated certain personality changes … have more to do with things that are going to happen anyway. Around the time that traditional potty training takes place, my child went through the hand washing, the need to watch the poo flush away, holding the poo in until it hurt etc. … yet he had already been out of nappies for over a year.

So does it not stand to reason that all the pressure parents put on themselves to look for cues and then try and get their kids trained is totally unnecessary as this is just part of the normal developmental stages?

Which leads me to the obvious conclusion that I am now confident that I did it the right way after all … despite all the critisicm and warnings that it just wasn’t normal and that I would find out later on when he regressed. He didn’t regress and happily uses the toilet by himself, even lifting the seat when he does so … and he is not yet three.

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Give me the drugs

October 1st, 2008

I used to have to be on death’s door before taking so much as a Panado. Now, at the slightest inkling of a sniffle and I’m reaching for the Cold and Flu remedy. Having a baby has turned me into a man.

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Competing or merely participating?

September 27th, 2008

I’m writing an article for a competition and while writing it I get stuck on answering my own question: Why am I actually participating when there is a greater chance of me winning a half marathon?

In going through the process I can’t help but realize that perhaps as parents we are always competing … but perhaps we are competing purely to participate rather than competing to win. After all, I don’t enter half marathons to win but just to be part of the experience … to be granted access to a part of life that I would otherwise not be part of. But if I don’t think of the – even remote – possibilty of winning, I wouldn’t bother entering. You can’t be part of parenting unless you participate but you won’t ever win … it’s the kind of race where you can win a heat but never the whole race. I’m going to get a medal anyway because it’s not a race I intend quitting before the finish.

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Luck Chance Accident – exploring the meaning

September 18th, 2008

Luck is like God. It isn’t real but we believe in it anyway. We pray to the god of chance. Waiting for things to happen albeit pure accident. Was he an accident or a stroke of luck? Do I write by chance? Am I lucky to have a craft? Give me Morgan Stanley’s share option rules to decipher. Hand me that clipboard. Prove there is a God. Show me probabilities and percentages. Accidental drifting across the sea. Across thresholds. Chance encounters. Destiny. Decided. There would be no love without luck, chance or accident. The need to believe is all-consuming … unless it is belief in oneself. Take God out of the equation: I have a better chance of believing in myself without her. Are there any accidents in life or do we make them in order to go forward? He pushed me out of my inertia. He is my luck. My little god. My noo-noo. My boy. My child.

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CONTROL

September 16th, 2008

I challenge anyone to prove to me that smacking your child shows more control that not.

The reason I don’t smack my child because I was beaten as a child … so perhaps I can’t be totally rational about this. This is, it was my parents’ attempt at gaining an element of control when they thought all was lost. They used this as their way of showing that they had the control. I believe not. I believe that the point a parent crosses that line is a point where all control is lost – by the parent – as well as a fair amount of trust and respect by the child. Parents think (well, mine did) that using the wooden spoon, leather slipper and cane remove them from the pain inflicted and thereby absolves them of their guilt.

Having said that though, I can’t help but wonder whether, in holding back that anger that produces the lashing, the anger finds a less resistant route and finds a way to hurt in even deeper ways.

Something to ponder. But in the meantime I cannot slide that slippery slope. I cannot bear to lose my child’s trust and most of all, I cannot even comprehend hurting that perfect being no matter how much abuse he throws at me. How do they learn so quickly, not only where all the buttons are but how and when to push them to maximum effect?

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Discomfort Zone

September 11th, 2008

Remember the first time you farted in front of your partner? Remember when it became quite normal to sit on the toilet with the door open? Remember when things just got way too comfortable? It all happened slowly, with years of time to adjust.

And then you have a baby together and you will never see each other in the same light … ever again. There’s, oh so much more dignity in performing your daily ablutions in front of your partner than there is caring for a baby.

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Off Limits …

September 4th, 2008

So simple yet seemingly unique, these are two words I started using as soon as my inquisitive and tactile child began to crawl. I’m not entirely sure where I got the idea so can only guess at the fact that I probably used it when training my ridgeback puppy (who, by the way, only ever chewed one item not intended for him). It is only now, when entertaining mothers of infants, that I realize how this should have been the one piece of advice I imparted months ago. The use of ‘NO’ is more an over-  use and no child ever takes it seriously when repeated so many times with no follow through consequences. My child still understands ‘off limits’ but now it is not used frequently at all and he understands the actual meaning rather than just holding back on hearing the words. I’ve regressed with the dog and find uh-uh works just as well.

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I am … therefore I am the one

September 2nd, 2008

I’m only having the one child … as you by now know. There are many reasons but I have come to realise that by far the most important one is the fact that every parent has their favourite child. By having only the one I am assuring my child of never feeling like he is not the golden one.

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Welcome to my Flower Chamber

August 19th, 2008

There is a matriarchal tribe in China called the Masuo. They don’t believe in marriage and having babies in a relationship. They believe in flower chambers and love and desire. These women choose who gets invited to their flower chambers and who will give them their baby seed. They raise their children with the males in their immediate families and there is no need to either settle or settle down with anyone for any indefinite amount of time.

If I wasn’t before, I am now totally into cultural diversity. What a healthy outlook. Why limit yourself and stunt your spiritual growth by having to constantly work around the needs of another. Selfish, perhaps, but definitely healthy. Simple rules, simple pleasures and realistic expectations.

I have waited a long time for things in our relationship to get back to normal post baby. But, when normal has shifted, how long does one have to wait to find it again. When everything has changed, how does one ever go back to being the same?

Perhaps our individual priorities have shifted in such a way that we will never be the same individually and, therefore, never the same together.

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Love on the merry-go-round

August 12th, 2008

“I’d have more children if I didn’t have a husband”, says a mother of four.

This may be because there is just not enough love to go around … after all, when you run out of love … Who do you love more? The man you have been with—seemingly for an eternity—who has ‘gotten used to you’ or the child who has just rocked up in your life and ‘needs you more than you will ever know’.

This tiny little human who has stolen its mother’s every waking moment, and every last drop of effort and energy usurps your husband’s position and deprives him of a little bit of your love.

It transpires that something’s gotta give when there just ain’t enough love to go around. In my case, the fairground attraction ended when my husband, used to a high dose of merry-go-round, had to make do with the swings. Back and forth didn’t do it for him; he went tummy-butterfly cold turkey and ditched the fair completely.

Aaaaanyway, fair or not, he suffered without his full dose, dished out a fair amount of rejection and lost a fair amount of passion in the deal. The baby ended up getting all the love for a while … and the husband is only just managing to function on his reduced dosage.

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Kick the dog

August 11th, 2008

Almost three years later I still haven’t gotten used to being pulled in so many directions. I like to think that mothers of more than one child treat all their children as one collective rather than separate people pulling her in different directions … mainly, I think, because I can’t even imagine having to deal with another human being wanting my attention.

And then the dog starts whining because he wants a walk and all I can think of doing is kicking the damn animal over the garden fence.

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Life comes with no guarantees

August 7th, 2008

The eternal debate about whether or not to have a second is almost over. I sit and wait and look at my husband’s cute fluffy bottom peeking out of the hospital gown that only has three small bows at the back. He is embarrassed but that’s to be expected; he doesn’t, after all, have need to wear a dress all that often … especially not one that reveals his bottom.

Yes, he is having the snip. My extreme body piercing has been removed to open up the energy flow and allow my body to function ‘how it should’ … although, after 20 years of hormones and IUDs, I have little idea how that should be. I will no longer be responsible for pregnancy prevention. Wow, that feels good! Seven months have slipped by so stealthily since this discussion hit our radar … seven months of no intimacy compounded on top of all the months prior when my cervical body piercing was threatening to pierce my uterine walls as well and the pain was … hmm … it just was. But it was seven months ago when sterilization was considered as an alternative and I was determined it should be me to go this route since I was 36 at the time which means my use-by date is almost up and my husband is capable of procreating well into his 60s – he swears this is not his wish but I don’t want to be the one to stand in the way when my shelf life expires. So he has cryogenically frozen his sperm in the event that the procedure is not reversible and he now has a back-up plan for when he meets his second wife.

It’s perhaps less the liberal and more the new cynical me at play here … or maybe just the pragmatist in me.

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Person to person

August 6th, 2008

In case my last post caused people to wonder about my ability to actually be a parent, I am surprisingly a really good one. Perhaps not from a traditionally maternal perspective but definitely from the
perspective of perfectionism. Everything by the book … and then some. I love my child to the point of obsession and that may not make me the perfect mother but it’s a good start. I nurture him just enough,
discipline him, and ensure that he has all the tools to help him grow into an intelligent, pragmatic (well, the fact that he’s a Virgo may help there), well-balanced man. He is not mine. He is a perfect little person who has chosen to come to me and I am going to do my best to ensure he gets everything he needs … from an adult perspective.

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Scathing sceptic

August 5th, 2008

I always believed I was the proverbial optimist … one of those rare breed that believe everything is wonderful unless proven otherwise. I have proven myself horribly wrong. It seems I cannot believe that anyone would actually enjoy … I mean enjoy to the point of elation … this terribly common thing called parenting. When told by a woman I met through one of those dreadful classes that I am loathe to call ‘moms and tots’, that having a second has been absolutely wonderful and that she is loving it so much … well, I balked. Honestly, she must surely be hiding something … a dark secret that involves all those awful things I imagined doing to my child when he was such a tiny baby.

I can’t help but wonder how people can be so overtly happy about being a mother. Happy fathers I can understand to a point – they are, after all, relatively removed from the drama and mayhem (and I mean this from a purely emotional perspective).

I’m not convinced.

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never underestimate those Little Differences

August 4th, 2008

You read all the books and you are warned that you shouldn’t take everything to heart because every child is different. What they fail to tell you, however, is that every parent is different too. You shouldn’t just be monitoring those little differences in your child but also your own very different responses to every need your child may have.

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Relationships left adrift

August 1st, 2008

Call it the self-righteous attitude … and I have no doubt it has a little something to do with it … but just when you think things are settling back to normal, you realise that the friendship dynamics have gone all screwy. People’s need to procreate excludes them almost completely from regular social contact. And I don’t mean only the actual act of procreation which, in itself, takes that time and effort which no one (in their right mind) is (or ever should be) loathe to give when the circumstances are right (be it fruit-bearing or not … if you know what I mean). I mean the 2.4 children syndrome—yes, syndrome!—that causes families to retreat into their … well, families … and leave little room for friendships. I have most likely mentioned this before because it has a huge effect on me and mine. I am one of four children and never did that prevent my parents from interacting with numerous other families on a regular basis so we could interact and socialise. They didn’t have so many children as an excuse not to do this … what I mean is that they didn’t have subsequent children to provide playmates for previous offspring. (Eish, this is called talking myself into ever decreasing spirals.) More to the point, and what I am really trying to say, is that, as the mother of an only child, I wish people would be happier letting their kids out to play with friends than procreating siblings as a way of creating an insular family that has no need for others. Perhaps knowing my child would always be an only has prompted me to promote in him an independence when it comes to heading off to play with whoever he chooses. I can’t, obviously, speak for others and their reasons for all these quirks that come out of such a natural human condition … but I’m pretty sure whoever came up with 2.4 should be audited.

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From Self-loathing to Self-righteous

June 11th, 2008

Sure, I don’t know it all … but what I do know I feel should be shouted from the rooftops and spray-painted on the sides of buses. As women in the work place, we are confident to give our opinion, even wallow in our knowledge – after all, our work is something we are very close to and we can, therefore, tell everyone that we are good at what we do and best they trust and take our advice. The Suffragettes paved a very significant way for us, only for us to be paralysed by fear of judgment when we speak of things we (yes, I am going to say it), as women, are most qualified to know. I’ve put my theories (and a few hand-picked from other qualified parties) into practice, I have got the results I knew I’d get, I have already done a fabulous job and even my son knows this … yet I am gagged. It’s unjust that, in this forum, I am not allowed to gloat a little about my abilities. Self-righteous … perhaps. But when you weigh up the options, why the hell not?

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Babbling Blues to Rasping Reds

June 7th, 2008

No sooner had we started school (and I say we because this is most definitely a family experience), than possibly my biggest test of motherhood yet (motherhood, because this is way above the radar of any self-respecting father) presented itself at the local Montessori. I had to rescue my ‘baby’ from the nappy brigade! In the throes of building works, it was difficult to notice anything other than my own primal screams and shocking bad mood at anything that crossed my path … and, of course, a mother always blames herself first when her child is unhappy.

Every parent believes that his or her child is advanced, so it is not surprising when I say that mine is. A two-and-a-half year old who has never used a potty, was out of daytime nappies before he had a conscious memory and who says things like actually, rather and prefer in his regular sentences is not your average two year old (and even less so when you consider the fact that this is a male child I refer to). He was lumped in a classroom (and I use the term classroom in the loosest sense of the word) with snotty-nosed, nappy-wearing, dummy-sucking, screeching, incoherent babies who used two-word sentences usually comprising little more than uppie or doggie (note: not words in my child’s vocabulary … of course not). Not even one term into the year and I noticed the regression. When he was forced to use a potty in the playground because the teachers don’t take kids indoors to use the toilet at playtime … I had to stage an intervention!

Many mountains have been climbed in my life but, at this stage, it felt like I was climbing the Himalayas … and then some. In one week I conquered the building peak, my book-publishing peak and the preschool peak. I steamrolled them, flattened them, made sure they knew that I was there and best I’m not ignored. The building work is far from perfect, my book print-run had me in tears, but my child … well, he is now with the 3 to 6 year olds and begs me to take him to school every day, including weekends. I did good by him and that makes everything else in my life pale into insignificance in comparison. These tests are meant purely as a mother’s coming of age. My first test came early enough for me to start getting used to the fact that this is a relentless life-long commitment with no shortcuts, cheating or easy outs.

My coming-of-age party is scheduled for sometime in 2030s.

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Pre-school blues

May 4th, 2008

“I’ll be back at about 2 p.m. The routine is on the fridge, his lunch is in the freezer … and, oh, don’t forget to read the sleep schedule … and, whatever happens, don’t pick him up if he cries when he is meant to be sleeping,” I shouted as I rushed out the door in my suit and boots, gathering my phone, wallet and laptop bag and almost forgetting the car keys in my haste to get the hell out of my prison for the previous eight months.

I had looked for a job until I was five months pregnant and showing too much belly to disguise my desperation to work and I had started looking for a job again as soon as I was off the painkillers from the birth. The interview that got me the job was the one that marked the moment of giving up hope of ever escaping the house in a way that would require me to use my brain … which is why I probably got the job. It was a case of: well, there’s my CV, you either like it or you don’t–give me the job, don’t give me the job, I’m not really bothered either way.

Eighteen months, a fall out with the boss, a few freelance jobs and a near breakdown later, I find myself at the school gates, my two-and-a-few-months-old boy by my side, feeling like I want to vomit. He cries, I’m upbeat. He wails, I’m upbeat. He tears at my clothes, I’m upbeat. I get to the car and I break down and cry. I’m weepy all week and I can’t figure out why–after all, I have waited over two years to get rid of him and now I don’t want to leave him.

I may have figured it out now. I still need to take a moment after the heart-wrenching way he has to be peeled off me in the mornings but I need to give us time … mainly I need to give me time. I know he is fine once the moment of separation is over and I know he will have fun, learn to socialise and learn a host of things I can’t teach him at home (mainly due to lack of patience than lack of ability). But I’m a whole different basket case. I need to give myself time to learn that relinquishing control three mornings a week does not have to send me back to therapy.

Perhaps sending him to school will teach me more than it will teach him. When is school ever out?

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From mouths of babes…

April 14th, 2008

I was beginning to think my child saw me as a screeching psycho. Loopy, animated, vocal, loud, but never serene. Then one day at age 21 months when he was paging through the Elle fashion supplement (his
creative flair coming through), he alighted on a statuesque model in over-sized sunglasses. He instantly beamed up at his dad, pointed to the pouting babe and said, ‘Mummy!’

My first instinct is to think cynically of the genetic coding in males to be sycophants. But I had only to look at that shimmering smile and cherubic locks and think how beautiful it must be to perceive things
from such naiveté. To double-check my first instincts were indeed incorrect, I allowed a further thumbing of the glossy rag only to discover the identical reaction on reaching the page with, who is now termed, ‘my twin’.

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Touching the surface

April 12th, 2008

Beloved,
I long to be the one
beloved, I yearn to be
special
to be the only
one with you, unhindered, untethered,
unleashed passion
oh you are mine,
beloved,
walk on the sand, the rocks,
the beach is ours to wallow in
sun and shadows
I flow to you
I am a stretching body
of water,
a flowing river towards a sea.

Hope,
longing for destiny
hope, desire to be where love is
magnetised
force fields in energy,
circles dancing in the ripples of light
drowning shafts
in water, we play, we live,
we are
sinking below the surface
look up and gaze upon my face
for I look upon yours
dreaming of you
playing in your glow
dancing, dreaming, drowning
desire, swallow me.

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Know-it-all-mum

February 29th, 2008

People don’t see what you’re doing well as what you’re doing well … they see it as what they aren’t doing well enough

Having studied Developmental Psychology, I always had wonderful (so I thought) snippets of useful (so I thought) theoretical information for those friends in maternal crisis. Not being a mum though, I was always knocked back by the just-wait-until-you-have-a-baby-of-your-own-then-you-will-understand! retort to all of my good (so I thought) advice. So, being a veteran of withstanding this comment, it stands to reason that, having had a baby of my own, I would have the practical back-up experience to offer up advice when a friend-in-maternal-need is having a crisis.

With other mums, there is no reason, no logic and no rational thinking in general. You cease to be the know-it-all and become the know-it-all-mum.

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Shopping device/alarm

February 28th, 2008

I have an idea. I could probably patent it but it’s easier to write about it and let someone else do the hard work.

I had given up so many things to be a mum … shopping wasn’t one of them. But what to do when you have fabrics to stroke and shoes to ogle? With all that ‘ooh’ing and ‘ah’ing, who has a broad enough attention span to fondle a satin pump and make sure their child isn’t going walkabout in the traffic. The ultimate multitasker, I don’t even have that much scope.

The person who invented those mini-alarms attached to every item of clothing is a genius. The person who thought of putting an oversized t-shirt on her child, even more so – when the alarm goes off, the shop assistant gets to deal with the shoplifter … er … child and – ker-ching, ker-ching, a shoe sale is made shortly afterwards.

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Lifestyle Choice

February 27th, 2008

Never believe you can have it all ever again. From the moment you have a baby, there will be oh so many more choices to make and none of them involve choosing the best of everything.

Friends are the first to go … the non-parent friends, that is … and then the holidays … the ones that involve a ticket and a backpack and not much else … and the shopping trips that don’t include formula, toys and Steri-nappi.

I chose to keep the heels. Shopping one day for shoes, with a sleeping baby in a pouch on my chest, I tried on a wicked pair of heels and a pair of flats, trying to decide between the two. A ‘sister’ trying on shoes (out of my zone) caught my attention to offer a very unwelcome piece of advice: “You’ve got a small baby now; you’ll break your neck if you wear those heels.” I had deliberated long enough. “I’ll take them,” I said to the shop assistant … “actually I’ll take both, and I’ll wear this pair now”, I said defiantly pointing at the heels. I shot the turncoat a smug look as I strutted out of there, baby still deep asleep on my chest.

I now wear heels more often than I ever did before. There are some things I just can’t compromise on and there are some things that I just need to make a point about.

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Humiliation vs. humility?

February 26th, 2008

I have dealt with people stepping over me as I trip on my new Jesus Lopez heels, tumbling into the gutter and spilling my piping hot coffee on my Hermes scarf. I have dealt with people glancing at me over the latest Marian Keyes novel as I hurl my guts out on the London Underground. That’s easy!

But when I am crouching to attend to my child, my general appearance in a state of disarray from lack of sleep … or effort … I falter when the woman, fresh from the SPA flashes a haughty look as she struts on down the road to her next appointment.

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L-O-V-E

February 25th, 2008

I remember falling in love with my husband. I fell slowly and with little awareness of what was happening, and for a long time I denied that I was in fact falling for this man who I had first despised for so long and then shared my bed as a friend for many months after that. But I fell and it was beautiful.

I can’t remember when exactly it happened with my baby, that moment of falling. It could only be that it was the same gradual experience. The falling part takes a long time but the love; well, the love, it lasts forever.

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Metamorphosis

February 22nd, 2008

Money has always provided me with a perfectly good reason to live. So, although I had a very meagre pay cheque, I now had my reason. Perhaps surprisingly, it was when I had finally rediscovered my reason to live that I realised I actually had two reasons to live.

I blinked and missed the moment that made everything change from surviving to enjoying. I had been waiting for this blob to transition into a real person and cannot even pinpoint the exact time when it felt like I had a purpose in being there for him.

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For love or money

February 21st, 2008

I sat in the interview and my eyes glazed over. I had so much caffeine coursing through my veins there was hardly any room for blood, but there was no way to kick-start a brain that was overflowing with nappies, routine, food, milk and the desperate need for sleep. I had forgotten how to think of anything else, let alone string a sentence together in a coherent business-like manner.

After the third interview, I began to think that perhaps it was self-sabotage … perhaps I actually really wanted to stay home with my baby, on some deep subconscious level I hadn’t quite accessed yet. But then I interviewed for a job I really wanted, was totally stunned when I was offered it and started two weeks later.

The love was lacking and I needed the money.

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Galleries in Paris

February 18th, 2008

If you have a baby and you don’t want that to get in the way of a good holiday, go to Europe where they are tolerated in even the trendiest restaurants and even woken up by friendly restaurant staff and fellow patrons … usually when you have just got them to sleep in their prams … people want them around. And if you are into a cultural trip to see great art, Paris is the place to be on even the busiest long weekend with the most popular masterpieces on show.

It seemed too easy – taking a 7-month-old baby on holiday to London and Paris had images of crying in queues, restaurants, planes and trains. People still claim I’m just one of those lucky mums with an easy child. I can’t claim to not have had luck, as I can’t claim to know what it would be like any other way. What I can claim is that, even if there had been an element of luck involved, it also had a lot to do with dedication, perseverance and tenacity (and that’s baby and me).

To digress slightly, there was an issue with dummy sucking as opposed to thumb sucking. My baby started sucking his thumb as soon as he could get it to his mouth (around 6 weeks) and I switched his thumb for a dummy every time due to the nattering of concerned friends and relatives. Once I realised that dummy sucking involved getting up in the night to replace the dummy every time it fell out (spiral staircase one unfortunate obstacle), I withheld the dummy until my baby learnt to either go to sleep without it or use his thumb or blanket (this involved only two sleep times worth of crying to sort out). But, back to the story …

I booked a flight to coincide as closely as possible with my baby’s sleep routine. Because he had a blanket (several actually but all pretty similar) that he was attached to at sleep time and because he sucked his thumb, he knew it was sleep time as soon as I gave him his blanket and promptly started sucking his thumb … to coincide with take off (and middle ear neutralising!) He then slept all night until the lights went on in the cabin, by which time he (as well as all passengers in close proximity) was well rested.

To digress again, we ordered a TwinArc Travel Cot by LittleLife online, which we had posted to where we were staying in London. This is the most lightweight travel cot you can buy and, therefore, does not reduce your luggage allowance by too much. And, while I’m on the topic of luggage, the pram does not get counted towards your allowance because you push your baby in it all the way to the plane where it gets put in the hold last minute (and not weighed in).

Because baby was following The Routine, there was no issue with putting the cot in our room as he was used to going to sleep at certain times and was not even unsettled by the different environment because we prepared him (never underestimate how much a non-speaking baby can understand) and never made a fuss about putting him in his travel cot to sleep. This gave us free reign to go out when we wanted to and because we were shopping and sightseeing every day, all we had to do was put the pram in recline mode, throw a blanket over the top to block out some light and, hey presto, baby would fall asleep effortlessly … because he was used to The Routine. There are certainly pros and cons to The Routine and I would never be able to convince someone to follow one unless they were that way inclined from the start … but being free to wander the streets of London and Paris with a perfectly rested baby is certainly one of the pros.

Where the luck came in was visiting galleries and exhibitions in Paris where the queues wrapped around buildings and stretched down streets for what seemed like miles. There was always a kindly guard wandering around, ushering all parents with small children to a special queue, which was immensely shorter. At the Picasso museum we even got a personal guide to show us the easiest route and help us into the private elevators.

If you are more geared for rave holidays in Goa and Ibiza, The Routine probably isn’t for you because what parent wants their baby to go to sleep at 7 p.m. and wake up at 7 a.m. when they only get to bed around 7 a.m. themselves?

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Plus one

February 15th, 2008

So, there I am, sitting in semi-darkness, with my baby attached to my left breast. Again! I had tried using this time to do breathing exercises. I had tried using this time to rest. I had tried using this time to make up fantasy stories for him. I had tried using this time to sing. The problems with the above were: (a) it’s hard to meditate or rest when you are obsessed with knowing the exact time your baby is feeding from each breast; (b) without the rest, I could only think up one story before I hit the bottom of the barrel; and (c) I can’t sing.

I’ve always been good at math though and that part of my brain was still remarkably in tact. From three weeks old, my baby had the entire times table recited to him four times a day.

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Baby OM, The Economist and Pavlov

February 14th, 2008

My child now asks for Om Pady Hom … which, in case you still have post-baby jelly brain … is really Om Mani Padme Hom and is a Buddhist chant. To calm him through his crying fits – whether from the reflux, the sleep training, or my total lack of ability to be anywhere near him – I would either play the CD of chants (the very ones that calmed my nerves on many death-defying bus journeys through India) or chant to him in my very own off-key tone. It is a coincidence that he was trained like Pavlov’s dog but he now has his own chant and it is a relief to everyone that there is something that calms him instantly.

I chose reading to him, above the ubiquitous kid-friendly DVDs, which I couldn’t bring myself to watch let alone inflict them on my child. I only had one children’s book in the house at the time – Mr Happy (a gift I had bought my husband when we were in London and he was miserable) – so, when I was thoroughly sick of reading that, I turned to my subscription of the Economist and let him drift to sleep over the latest news of global economies and banking scandal. Turns out, it usually sent me into a deep, much-needed slumber too. Another Pavlov victory: he loves listening to me read to him and can sit still for hours while I read anything I have with me at the time.

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Slop

February 13th, 2008

You unfortunately can’t give your child fillet steak and truffle sauce from day one. You also can’t be sure of the flavours your baby will enjoy … you have to get all the flavours and food groups in and everything comes in the form of slop. When you are giving the baby something that looks so frightful, you can feel free to experiment with all kinds of disgusting sounding combinations because, chances are, you will stumble upon something that baby truly likes while getting all the nutrients in. My baby liked the following combinations:

Mashed banana and avocado
Mashed chickpeas and banana
Mashed lentils and sieved pears
Cooked apples and chickpeas
Pureed rice with potato flour cheese sauce

They sound dreadful and who knows how I came up with them, but they worked and I managed in this way to keep him off meat, wheat and sugar for an entire year.

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Murder One

February 12th, 2008

Add to The Rules, a baby monitor and a spiral staircase between parents and baby … The parents can hear every murmur, cry and scream in stereo, but the staircase and The Rules keep them in bed … it can just be too much effort getting up and down those stairs each time the baby cries when The Rules forbid any comfort or feeding – if you can’t touch the baby, why bother. So, the parents just lie in bed, stiff and helpless … not getting any sleep anyway.

The baby soon gets The Routine but the parents get so sleep deprived that a jury could quite possibly acquit them of murder.

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Sleep Deprived

February 11th, 2008

A term always used when referring to new parents … but almost never when referring to the new baby. It is usually common for the baby to get all the sleep it requires. Unless, that is, you think Gina is the Rabbi and you are prepared to do whatever it takes for your baby to fall into The Routine.

You don’t let the new baby sleep in your room, let alone in your bed; you never allow the baby to sleep when the Fridge Rules clearly state it is playtime, and you never rock the baby to sleep … ever.

The Rules are very clear on the need to keep the baby awake for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon for playtime. What they are not clear on is that the Rules are specifically in place to help parents with babies who don’t like to sleep. And what they should be especially clear on is that the parent should not distress if baby would rather sleep for 24 hours a day than lie on its play mat and look interested.

I woke him when he was sleeping. I tried to play with him while he was sleeping. I talked and sang at the top of my voice to try and prevent him from sleeping. I tried everything in my power to keep him awake when The Rules dictated. I deprived my baby of sleep. And then I complained of being sleep deprived myself.

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A Message in a Bottle

February 6th, 2008

Or rather, a message about a bottle … a bottle of cold pressed sesame seed oil.

I was too stubborn to do the baby-bathing test before I left the hospital. I was totally unprepared for how minuscule baby would be and the thought of trying to wash him in a bath of water while supporting him from head to toe was more than I could comprehend (on top of all the other stuff I couldn’t quite comprehend).

There’s a solution: a sturdy changing table with a comfy changing mat; a plastic bowl; a few facecloths; a baby massage book and a bottle of cold pressed organic sesame oil (there are other oils that can be used but this was the most lightweight I could find). At bath time, the naked baby is wrapped in a towel on the changing mat while you work on each part of the body separately, massaging the oil into baby’s skin (and even the head). Once complete, you use a facecloth and a basin of perfectly warm water to wipe baby down before drying gently and dressing.

This is not only a way around the cumbersome process of bathing, it is also better for baby’s skin – sorting out skin rashes and cradle cap, amongst other things – the massage is great for baby’s body, and it is an incredible bonding experience. While I hate to differentiate between the functions of mum and dad (mainly because it is usually a gross generalisation more than anything else and my husband proved to be a better mother than I was at times), it is a fact that there are men out there terrified of caring for their babies. This massage method brings an easy caring experience to dads as well, and at the right time of day too.

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An addendum to a tree

February 6th, 2008

I planted a tree. I thought I was offsetting my carbon footprint in a helpful way. I have subsequently read, however, that unless you plant a tree where a tree really belongs – the Rainforests – you can actually be at risk of contributing to the Inconvenient Truth.

I am no expert on global warming but if you have already planted that tree, it is probably even more harmful to cut it down.

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Naked

November 15th, 2007

The volume on bhalababy has been muted for too long so I have decided to turn it up with a sample of freewriting from baby’s first photograph.

‘Please wipe my cheek’, she asks as another tear rolls down, dragged in the wake of the one that has gone before. Her husband leans in and, as he does so, a tear of his own drops down to meet those he is wiping away. These are not sad tears but tears of relief and joy and love. The mound on her belly has been slit open to release the yell of a tiny baby; and not only that but it has released the anticipation and apprehension that has been mounting for the six months since they had discovered their lives were going to change forever. The theatre, a usually sterile, white, odourless and lifeless place is transformed. Her joy bubbles into laughter; her head flicking from side to side attempting to make eye contact with someone; anyone she can focus on; anyone she can share another anecdote with to disperse these overwhelming emotions. The doctors and theatre nurses squelch in their wellington boots through the river of blood and amniotic fluid which is turning the floor her favourite colour. She takes the swaddled baby and smiles. Her nose wrinkles but the tears no longer flow.

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The Fridge Rules

November 12th, 2007

They are there, the only rules of the house, stuck on the fridge where no one could miss them. What draws your attention to look closer is the old birthday card stuck with the same magnet: the picture is of a twin-set-clad 50s housewife with a sugar-coated smile and the caption reads ‘I tried to be kind but it was easier to be cruel’. A coincidence? Yes. Fitting? You bet!

But, I digress. There were rules in place; rules that would keep the home and family together; seemingly the only thing I could cling to with that claim. And it seems I was the only one who could cling to The Rules. Granted, I am a process person and my husband, he is not … but, hey, is that any reason to come home every evening and criticize the rules … criticize my job?

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On a wing and a prayer

October 23rd, 2007

No matter how good you are at your job … and I was good at my job … there’s no preparing you for doing a job that no one feels there is any need to get any significant training in. This is an unknown field. Yes, there are plenty of theories and everyone thinks they can do it better than the next person. But, let’s face it, most people are just winging in and hoping that they don’t totally fuck it up.

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Join the Collective

October 22nd, 2007

Every parent likes to believe that their child is unique and that what works for someone else’s child won’t work for theirs. This has nothing to do with individuality and everything to do with pride. Parents don’t like to admit that they are doing anything wrong or that there is anything that can be improved on using another parent’s advice or experience.

But most children are exactly the same. They all need sleep, milk, love and a clean nappy. They all crawl then walk, chatter then talk, eat mush and then solids, and they all get a full head of teeth as some stage before they are classified as toddlers. The only thing that differs (and ever so slightly) is when exactly they do all this … and whether or not the parent can make it through the first year.

And most mothers are exactly the same. They all enthuse about their children, talk about how wonderful the latest childcare manual is and how well they are coping with their method of childrearing. You can join in, discuss the joys of motherhood and exchange baby food recipes (smile and nod; smile and nod), or you can bitch and moan about the horror of it all and weed out the imposters.

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Dispose or reuse

October 14th, 2007

You can recycle, grow your own vegetables, and cook on gas pumped from the septic tank. But you have to face the fact that when you have a baby, you stamp your greatest carbon footprint on this earth and you have to be industrious to offset your emissions.A third of landfills in developing countries consist of disposable nappies.

This is an alarming statistic by anyone’s standards. But you still have a choice – you can either contribute to this stat or you can trust in terrycloth.

My reaction to this stat was a carbon-emitting shopping spree at an inappropriate environmentally harmful shopping mall. The quest, however, was a virtuous one – terrycloth nappies, nappy liners, Enchantrix (organic) nappy sterilizer and a functional and baby-safe nappy bucket. All in the name of fighting the stats and doing my bit about global warming.

People not only took me as hormonal (a.k.a. slightly nuts), but also tried to convince me that all that soap and water undid all the perceived good. What they didn’t count on was the fact that because I had a big issue with washing crappy nappies, I started putting my baby on the toilet every time I saw him pushing. This not only meant my job was much easier but the washing machine only saw nappies once a week and, since the organic sterilizer had only to work on urine, the nappies required nothing more than a quick cold wash and a bit of sunshine to get them back on the nappy shelf.

Thus, toilet training was easy and my child has been in underpants since he was eleven months old. Sure, there was the occasional ‘accident’ but no more so than any newly toilet-trained child … and the added advantage (yes, another one) was that my child felt so much more comfortable never having to sit in a dirty nappy – come on, is this even forgivable?

I chose to use the old-fashioned terrycloth squares and had to search the web for folding instructions. This site shows you all the different ways you can fold a terrycloth square – try them out on baby to get the best fit and the least leaks (and, by the way, a disposable is just as likely to leak):

Kitty Kins – Terrycloth folding instructions

You can use the excuse that it’s just too much sweat to use this method but, with the new range of shaped nappies, there is no excuse to keep using disposables. You can find a few of the options on the following sites:

Stegi
Cuddlebabes
Natures child

… or you can just plant a tree!

Bloggers Unite - Blog Action Day

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The Nazi and The Rabbi

October 9th, 2007

Deepak Chopra and Gina Ford – you figure out who’s who … All I can say is that when you are truly out to lunch emotionally and you don’t know which way to swing, you buy both the books and hope to find middle ground.

But hoping to find middle ground between these two is … er … hopeful. There is no middle ground. And I like Deepak, I really do, and I like his principles, I really do. But when you are forced to do whatever you have to in order to cope … there’s no question but to go with Gina … and stick with her through thick and thin. ‘To the point of Obsession?’ I hear you ask. Yes, to the point of Obsession.

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Bugger

September 20th, 2007

A baby’s brain is growing at an alarming rate. I’m not speaking from medical knowledge, but it stands to reason that while the brain is growing, and despite the fact that there is no sensible uttering from the mouth of your babe, one should talk to the baby. And I mean actually talk … sense. It puzzled me that most parents believe their babies will understand cooey, gooey crap until I realized that it was the cooey, gooey crap they wanted as their children’s first words. Most parents think it’s cute for their kids to say ‘ta ta’ instead of goodbye. I find it annoying.

I used to live in hope that my child’s first words would be something along the lines of dada, cat or woof. But based on his later exposure to the spoken word, there became a higher likelihood that the first coherent uttering would be more along the lines of fuck or bloody hell. His first real word turned out to be ‘bugger’, repeated several times in quick succession. With his first swear word under his belt, the rest was easy.

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Am I old enough for this?

September 11th, 2007

I’m 35 … ish … but am I really old enough for this. Anyone is old enough to soothe a baby back to sleep, bath a baby and feed it, read storybooks and sing songs. But what of the future child, teenager and adult I have brought into the world. As I coo in my son’s ear and tell him all will be OK, all I can hear is my child inside; the voice that tells me that I am too young to have this kind of responsibility, to be the guardian of such purity.

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Too Posh to Push? (Part 2)

August 29th, 2007

But, having said that, there are things you aren’t told when schedules are being done and options are being narrowed down and made, and I will have to list them to distance myself as much as possible from these admissions:

  • It’s a totally freaky experience being fully awake and knowing that your insides are spilling all over the operating table and there is blood and fluid flowing like a fountain from your belly – the gynae and theatre nurses have to wear wellies (enough said). Don’t ever look at the overhead light, as you will be terrified by the reflection.
  • You are given your baby at about the same time as a shot of morphine in your thigh – the effect of the drug is not conducive with (a) safety and (b) bonding.
  • It’s fucking sore when the drugs wear off.
  • It’s fucking sore when you have to get up to go to the toilet for the first time after they take the catheter out.
  • You get a suppository – this is supposedly for the alleviation of the pain but, when you are crapping your guts out, it is revealed that it is all a cover and it is really to prevent you clogging up, getting constipated and having to push so hard that your stitches pop out.
  • You are incapable of coping with a tiny baby at home when your husband only has three days of paternity leave (RSA Labour Law sucks … believe me, I know).
  • You are incapable of coping without your parents or in-laws around.
  • You are incapable of coping WITH your parents or in-laws around.
  • It is perfectly normal to have permanent nerve damage in your coccyx – my feeling in that area disappeared totally for over a year and now the pain is making up for the long-term loss.
  • The entry point of the spinal block needle comes back to haunt you by causing the most excruciating pain – this when you are constantly having to pick up a 13kg bundle.

Perhaps the NHS should change their propaganda slogan. Or perhaps they tried … but, admittedly, the above list doesn’t make for a particularly catchy slogan.

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Too Posh to Push? (Part 1)

August 29th, 2007

One of the reasons I left the UK was because I could no longer deal with the NHS propaganda that made women feel like they were either failures as women or just weren’t particularly interested in breaking
a sweat during the birthing process. The former touches a nerve in even the most non-maternal woman and the latter conjures up images of a woman who hands her baby to a wet nurse as soon as it emerges from the bloody wound.

Not particularly into the whole maternal, mother nature thing (which, one has to admit, is not so much mother nature as total fad these days), I knew I would have a c-section – it’s unnatural to try and get
something that big out of such a small exit. Whether the gynae was looking after his schedule or my continence is irrelevant. When he told me the head of my foetus was too large to exit ‘naturally’, I was relieved to have the medical back-up for my instinctual beliefs – after all who said a small slice across the lower abdomen to extract a living being isn’t natural.

There are revelations that follow. I do, however, have to pre-empt them with a disclaimer: I still believe in the advances of medical science enough to believe that a c-section is the only way and I would never go back and change a thing.

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The Anti-Mum

August 29th, 2007

An avid campaigner against the need to have a child has reached a stage of her biology that she is battling to hold at bay. As the last of her peers to be childless, she feels her life is lacking something and that this indicates that she needs a baby.

Nobody needs a baby; most people just want one. It’s immaterial what your motives are for either wanting one or not but you have to be very clear on what you actually need.

Wanting a baby requires you to want it badly enough to compensate for the loss of freedom, mobility, travel, late-night parties and the halving of your relationships.

But when you choose the alternative, you have to be strong enough in the face of the social pressures, the emotional guilt and the need to know if it will ever be enough to not have one.

Having a baby is like upgrading or downgrading your neighbourhood … whichever way you choose to look at it. It’s a lifestyle choice. Take it or leave it but never feel it is so integral to life that you will feel incomplete without it.

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‘So, are you having a second?’

August 20th, 2007

Since the moment I went public with my pregnancy, people have been asking about the ‘next one’. I endured the baby question through nine years of marriage and genuinely hoped that, through falling pregnant, people would consider my duty done and let me be. It’s just not that simple. People feel a sense of duty around the need to procreate to the point that one person’s advice was, ‘Just don’t think about it, just do it.’ Helpful? I think not. Perfect strangers will ask how old my son is and immediately offer advice on how far apart I should have my children to birth methods for the next.

I feel a great sense of relief when I chance upon someone who is stopping at one.  A kindred spirit for no other reason than that their desire to have only one translates into a willingness to expand their social boundaries. People who have a second, third (and sometimes fourth), because they feel their first needs a friend or because their first is becoming too spoilt, are not only delusional (because there are no guarantees of either being resolved), but are also saying, ‘I’m not bothered with looking outside of my family unit for companionship for my offspring as they are better off getting it all from within the ‘unit’.’

I am slowly beginning to realise that this question is not meant as an affront about my abilities as a non-mother but is perhaps the only question mumsy mums can muster – the only thing they feel they have in common with me now that I have joined the ranks.

As a reader of my outwardly expressed inner thoughts, don’t take it personally if you have/want more than one … and I’ll try not to take it personally that I am expected to have/want more than one.

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‘He’s not my first, he’s my only’.

August 14th, 2007

I’ve got two words for you. Norman Bates. A product of Hollywood, he has become the quintessential only child, a benchmark upon which to base the desperate need of couples to have more children.

Is it really so terribly sad and lonely being an only child? With the world as big as it is and the pool of children out there to play with, can anyone really believe that all only children will grow up bored, depressed and likely to murder their parents. The way I see it; the more children you have, the greater your chances are of producing a psychopath.

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Baby Reds

August 12th, 2007

I missed three birthdays in one week. It’s not that I forgot about the birthdays, it’s that I forgot what week I was in. This was the point when I realised I might have post-natal depression.

This was not the baby blues – I wasn’t blue, I was red. I didn’t feel like crying, I felt like screaming; I didn’t feel like curling up in a ball under the covers, I felt like bolting and never looking back; I didn’t feel like driving fast, I felt like driving fast over a cliff. You get the picture – blue is too passive to be my colour. This is the reason so much red has found its way into my child’s wardrobe – it’s a matter of projecting.

My gynae became a colour victim too – I see red when I’m not getting my greens – for making all of this possible. I had tried blaming the baby, my husband, my hormones, my motherhood. It wasn’t working. The gynae, conditioned to field hormonal abuse, suggested I phone the PND (post-natal depression) Hotline. This hotline evidently mirrors its SLAs on the 911 switchboard – I left a desperate message but no one ever returned my call.

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More shocking honesty

August 8th, 2007

It’s a sex thing

The few post-child-sex stories you hear revolve around a man’s rejection; his needs not being satisfied by the new woman in his life … the woman with engorged breasts that cannot be fondled, the woman who doesn’t put his needs first, the woman who is ratty, hormonal and with whom he is now expected to share his bed. I sympathise with this man, I really do.

But what about the man who uses this sympathy to convince himself that it’s OK to not want his wife. He wanted the child so desperately that there was bound to be an anti-climax … he sure didn’t buy into any of this. I actually sympathise with this man too.

There is so much at play here. But the bottom line is that the sex thing gets in the way of unraveling all the expectations and disappointments. I felt that all I wanted was sex and all my husband wanted was sex with someone else. The thing is, we both just wanted sex. The only difference was that my problem with sex was physical: my husband’s purely emotional.

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Back in the saddle

August 8th, 2007

99.9% immune to another bout of pregnancy, I was back in the saddle.

Or so I thought …

You’re advised to hold off on sex until the six-week check-up. This is no short period when your sleep is constantly disturbed and weeks feel like months. And when you think you will never again be the owner of your breasts, let alone your body, you need your partner to flip you over and take you before you and your baby merge to become part of the same collective.

But things need to heal before you can ride again.

And so I waited. I waited until my gynae told me I was good to go. And once I was good to go, every spare moment was used to the max to wax and clip and preen and sheen. Leaving nothing to chance, I even pre-selected the perfect condom for my much-anticipated night of sordid sexcapades.

Nothing could have prepared me for what ensued. It was a complete non-event; only the tip of the condom got any action that night. I wanted to believe it was nerves or even the onset of frigidity … but the thing is, if you’re breast-feeding (and this is not meant to be an advert for formula-feeding), your hormones are the only things getting screwed and your ‘koek’ is as tight and dry as an 80-year-old’s.

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Schoolyard bully

August 3rd, 2007

Not one for schoolyard scraps in my day, I have found myself making up for this childhood void at my local ‘Moms and Tots’ group. Allergic as I was to the concept of embarking on the ‘moms and tots’ journey, the mother in me wanted to do ‘what’s best for my child’. I took this to new levels when wrestling from minors, toys they themselves had ‘stolen’ from my child.

It feels good to have a cause.

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Reaching out on the Radio

August 1st, 2007

What I should have said on Cape Talk was, ‘Yes, I do agree with you that a baby should be put into a routine. But perhaps you shouldn’t make it sound so easy. You are telling all your listeners that your method is the only solution and that they should never allow their kids to be in the driving seat. But perhaps you need to express to them that although they will need to give up the relative ease of demand, demand, demand, it will be easier only after a very long period of extraordinarily hard work. Any new mother will tell you that when trying to get on with life while coping with this new little person in their life it’s as easy being in the driving seat as it is being in the pilot’s seat of a Boeing without a licence to fly. Putting a baby in a routine requires commitment, dedication and vigilance … not to mention a strong will and a tolerance for methods such as controlled crying.’

I should have. But I didn’t.

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Back in the stirrups

June 20th, 2007

Permanent sterilisation seemed a little extreme. I am speaking solely from personal opinion as I never dared speak of it to my husband. Although the simpler procedure, it seems it is emasculating for a man to get ‘the snip’. A woman looks after contraception from approximately the age of 15, endures pregnancy and childbirth and, once that is over, has to repeat the cycle. For a woman, sterilisation is a more complex procedure, one that carries with it serious issues of violation to one’s femininity. Would I feel as much of a sexual being if I no longer had my reproductive organs?

So I opted for extreme body piercing.

As soon as it was medically viable, I replaced my ability to fall pregnant with a state-of-the-art Mirena cervical coil.

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Walk the Line

June 19th, 2007

So, you’re feeling evil about having bad thoughts about your newborn. Everyone around you is offering you words of encouragement, but you never let on how you’re really feeling. You’re terrified of being judged a bad mother. You feel inadequate because everyone around you behaves like they were born to motherhood. It looks effortless … or is it just a sham?

There is a thin line you have to walk, a veritable balancing act. You do everything possible to do all the right things for your child so you can be seen in a good light. But it’s a trap! You must do your best up to the point that you don’t surpass any of your peers in your apparent parenting ability. You should never be seen as one of those self-satisfied mums with a perfect life and a perfect child. Cope enough to be seen as a good mother, yet battle just enough to still get the sympathy of your peers.

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Step away from the baby.

June 18th, 2007

As long as you don’t actually throw the baby against the wall, there is no reason you should feel ashamed for wanting to. Just make sure there is always a pillow close by. This is good for screaming into, hitting or launching at the wall.

And if all else fails and the frustration levels get to boiling point, don’t find yourself in a situation of being home alone without first investing in a punch bag. This might also save other family members from grievous bodily harm.

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Stepford and Star Trek

June 15th, 2007

You remember the claims made by the Stepford Wives.

To recap:
‘Your life becomes so amazing when you have a child.’
‘You’ll fall in love with your child as soon as you see him.’
‘Your bond with your husband becomes so much stronger.’

You add Borg to the list of insults … You have a baby and you become a mother. Just that. A Mother. It’s like your slate is wiped clean and any identity you had prior to this event is immaterial. You are suddenly morphed into the collective. Unique no longer features on your DNA. As for the Stepford Wives, none of those feelings kicked in. My life did not become amazing. I was up to my elbows in sour vomit, crappy nappies and washing. I did not fall in love with my child. Quite the contrary, I felt like throwing him against the wall. My bond with my husband didn’t become stronger. In fact, I often wanted to throw him against the wall too.

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What doesn’t kill you makes you want to die

June 13th, 2007

The last time I had this thought was when I was cycling the Argus (109km around the Cape Peninsula i.e. many, many hills), the day after arriving in Cape Town on holiday – with a hangover. I am not a cyclist so the 7+ hours it took me to complete the course felt like an eternity. This is like motherhood, except motherhood is an eternity.

A new mother should never be let out of hospital so soon. Unless there is a support team, a few cheerleaders and several spare bicycles, no one would embark on a race of such epic proportions. You leave the support behind when you walk out of the hospital, armed with nothing more than a tiny baby and a bottle of painkillers.

The rush was so intense, the painkillers were sure to push me over the edge. So I endured the pain and let the exhaustion get me instead. This is a race with no finishing line.

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XY

June 10th, 2007

A prerequisite for all new mothers before they leave the hospital is to take a baby-bathing test to prove to the nurses that they are capable of (if nothing else) bathing their newborns. But, besides feeling that I had endured as many tests of my ability as I could in any four-day period, when someone says to me that I can’t do X until I
have done Y, I tend to try my hardest not to do X. As it was I had no intention of doing X until my baby was at least six weeks old. I had a bottle of cold-pressed sesame oil, a purpose-bought shiny white kitchen bowl and a soft flannel. The plan – massage oil into baby’s skin, dip soft flannel into warm water on wipe baby’s body before gently drying and dressing.

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The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth

June 8th, 2007

There I lay, veiled in a drug-induced mist, recovering from the trauma of surgery. I hadn’t learnt anything from my hospital ‘trial-run’ the weekend before and found it almost impossible to ring the bell for help. Friends came and went, my husband was there almost permanently and, even when I didn’t ask for it, I had nursing staff buzzing about checking this and that, taking my temperature, giving me sponge baths … and an unwanted suppository at some point.

Not the type for broodiness and maternal instincts, I none-the-less recollect an almost immediate instinct to nurture. Regardless of all the activity, the exhaustion and the drugs, I insisted that the nurses bring me my baby every four hours through the night … whether he was sleeping or not … so I could nourish him. I returned him to the nursery immediately afterwards so I could get my rest and, come morning, I had him by my side where I could gaze at him sleeping, lift him to feed him and lay him against my skin so he could feel my warmth and feel safe. It doesn’t take any form of maternal instinct to realize the trauma a baby must go through being ripped from the warmth and quiet of a watery womb and into the foul smells, noise and bright lights of the physical world. From a miniscule part of each parent, a body is formed, through which a soul can reach the world. I was intensely aware of the fragility of the situation. And he clung to me, somehow realizing that I was his life-support.

We co-existed like this for 4 days.

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In-patient

June 7th, 2007

My R14, 000 childbirth budget was burning a hole in my pocket. And no, this was not the hormones dictating the need to go on a pre-baby spending spree; this was a legitimate amount of ‘spare cash’ earmarked for the hospital bill, which Liberty Life had so graciously agreed to settle.

There I was, post-op drugged on morphine, (f)lying in a bed in a general ward, hooked up with needles and trying to suckle a newborn. Surrounded by smiling faces, a few tear-mixed congratulations and the noises of 7 other exuberant families … all in the same room … was more than any ripped open, stitched up, new mother can be expected to deal with. Through the haze of the drugs and adrenalin, I managed to slur a demand to my husband. Ten minutes later I was being wheeled out of purgatory and into a private room-with-a-view.

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No surprises?

June 7th, 2007

I knew the due date and I knew I was having a boy … so no surprises there. But everything else … Let me just say that you can buy a cot, decorate the nursery, book your foetus into high school, but you can never be prepared for what follows after that first cry when that tiny baby is ripped from your belly. They may as well rip your heart out too because from there on out, you wear your heart outside your body.

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No surprises

June 6th, 2007

There are some very good things to be said about booking a caesarian, especially for a control freak like me. There is so much in life that you just can’t plan and I wasn’t going to have potentially the most
significant event in my life taking me by surprise. I had bought 6 month’s worth of baby supplies and clothes, tested out the breast pump, washed and cleaned everything in the house and made up the cot with white percale fitted sheet and cellular blanket.

Once the last of the furniture was in it’s place, I could soak in the bath, sip a cocktail of champagne and Rescue Remedy and fully prepare for the imminent arrival at approximately 8am the following morning.

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Making Changes

June 5th, 2007

If you’re pregnant, put your home on the market.

I’m not alone here so this could be one of the Borg-like qualities we acquire as part of the collectively pregnant when our bodies are flooded with hormones and our minds are filled with fear.

It’s not important where you live, it’s that your house is just not big enough, good enough, safe enough, close enough to the right schools … It’s just not right. Could pregnancy be the female equivalent of a male’s mid-life crisis? Going through some changes … better make them good. It’s no surprise that I found myself packing boxes 5 weeks away from my due date. Packing boxes and training a new Ridgeback puppy. Packing boxes, training a puppy … and on the phone 24/7 trying to arrange finance for our new home when our existing home didn’t sell in time. We cut it fine. I got us into our new home, and our furniture arrived the night before my planned date.

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He’s coming out the sunroof

June 4th, 2007

I had always been under the impression that gynaes were gung ho about natural childbirth. Gynaes and midwives. On my trial run to the hospital I discovered the latter to be untrue when each of the four midwives advised against ‘pushing it out’, citing incontinence at age 80 as the reason. Now my gynae was trying to convince me that surgery was the best route.

‘I don’t want to disappoint you but it is unlikely that your child will come out naturally. Have you considered having a Caesarian?’

A few things went through my head on hearing these words. He either really thought that my small frame and the large head of my unborn child would pose a space problem or, being close to retirement date, he didn’t want to leave anything up to chance with his final deliveries.

And, hey, I needed no convincing. With all the advances of medical science, would someone with a heart problem ponder their dying wishes when they could have a triple bypass or a pacemaker installed?

Again to quote my gynae, ‘you don’t have to be a hero.’ Being a parent is good enough (that part is mine). It’s got nothing to do with posh and a hell of a lot to do with practical.

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Bed rest

May 29th, 2007

I didn’t want to bother my gynae. I thought it was bratty and spoilt to complain about night sweats and prickly skin when I was having a relatively pampered pregnancy. After all, I was almost full term and I knew weird things were supposed to be going on. A lot of weird stuff happens to your body. A lot of weird stuff happens to your mind. You feel like you are living in an alien form and your brain is being chomped away by space bugs. Night sweats were the least of my worries. Until, that is, I realized I had a full blown bladder infection, started having contractions and had to be hooked up to machines for monitoring lest the baby had to be extracted a week early due to the fever. That was the bad part. The good part was that the medical aid had kicked in the day before. I also got a trial run to the hospital, a tour of the maternity floor and three days with my feet up.

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Proud to be Pregnant

May 25th, 2007

You think 9 months take forever to get through, and they do. But it’s only 9 months! This is because you are not only experiencing your change of girth, change of mental state and change of … pretty much everything. But you are experiencing it through your own self and filtering it through everyone else’s perception of what you are experiencing. You are experiencing something deeply personal yet you may as well go out every day with your face painted blue because your pregnancy will not go unnoticed by anybody. And I can guarantee that no one who sees your pregnant form will be indifferent to it. Just as a blue-painted face will elicit some sort of response so too will that protruding belly. You gain weight, you don’t gain weight, you try to disguise your potbelly, you wear it out there, you ask someone to help you with your parcels, you don’t … whatever you do, people around you will form an opinion knowing nothing more about you than the fact that you have chosen to bear a child (whether intentionally or not).

I chose to wear my pregnancy proudly. This had less to do with a desire to show it off and more to do with the fact that I opted out of the dire selection of pregnancy clothes on offer and, instead, chose a few elasticised items that could be pulled lower and lower as my breadth dictated. If judgement from immediate family is anything to go by, you can be sure of judgement from perfect strangers.

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Bedside Manner

May 24th, 2007

I changed vets. It’s one thing a vet being forward enough to ask what my birthing choice is, but quite another to comment on that choice … especially when that comment supported a NHS propaganda slogan, ‘Too Posh to Push’. This is a man who, in the same 10-minute appointment, suggested I lob my dog’s knackers off.

I have a perfect little scar just below my pubic hairline. My dog doesn’t.

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The Luxury of Health Care

May 22nd, 2007

Often you will have the luxury of deciding you want to have a baby before actually falling pregnant. In many cases, the luxury of deciding pre-empts many months, sometimes years, of fertility treatments. And in possibly even more instances there is no luxury of deciding at all. In my case, the lethal combination of love, lust and unemployment resulted in a rather surprising discovery that I was pregnant when I was already three months in. This meant I had to swiftly take on a new role and start project managing my life. I had been actively looking for work since returning from the UK a few months previously and now figured that I was probably out of the running for any job once my pregnancy was showing. So I called and brought forward all job interviews. There was the last of the unpacking to be done to allow for an adequate amount of nesting time, and several essential purchases to be made, namely appliances and a mattress. And there were hospitals to be called, prices to get and medical aid to buy. I also had to scour the papers for a pedigree dog.

With skills and experience, I managed the process well. The packing was completed and the home decorated and equipped. The interviews were conducted while I could still fit into my pinstriped pants (self-sabotage, rather than lack of planning, can be blamed for not actually landing a job in time). A 10-week old pedigree Rhodesian Ridgeback was purchased and puppy school begun. But everyone knows to never be caught out with a pre-existing condition when purchasing medical aid. I knew this. I didn’t, however, make the connection between pregnancy and a ‘condition’, let alone a pre-existing one. If not for a very fortuitous collision of my shrewd broker with a policy change, I would have been returning the appliances, sleeping on the floor and flogging the puppy (by flogging, I mean selling, not beating).

The point I am trying to make here is when you have that luxury, do your homework before you climb in the sack.

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Me, me, me

May 21st, 2007

When you’re used to having it all, having a baby just isn’t enough.

I had left a city of consumerism where it was unconstitutional to not be selfish. I had left an apartment in one of the best London suburbs and a smoulderingly sexy SMEG fridge. I had left behind Paris for the weekend and Rome the next. And most importantly, I had left a job that allowed a year off for maternity leave; half of that paid. I had left my zone. How could this have happened? How could my life have changed so dramatically in one moment of passion … a totally cliché-free moment of passion, I might add, that didn’t involve a romantic hut on a beach on an exotic island. Not even close.

I wasn’t meant to be pregnant. What I was meant to be was gainfully employed, living it up on champagne and oysters in my new chi-chi townhouse on Table Mountain with a shiny new coupe in the garage.

Somewhere in a parallel universe there was a chick with my life. And I hated her.

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Congratulations … or Not

May 20th, 2007

The feelings I experienced during my pregnancy had me hanging over a precipice, looking down on a pit of psychoses I was at severe risk of falling into. People call it hormonal, depressed, overwhelmed, etc., etc., but I believe it is the product of your parents’ attitudes, the egos of the folk you hang out with and the support you get from the people you love.

It dawned on me about six months into my pregnancy that I needed to analyse and reassess all of the above. The catalyst: an old friend I bumped into at a party who, in response to the news of my pregnancy, glanced and my fading hourglass and said, ‘Shame!’

How refreshing.

To be honest I had, by this stage, allowed a little excitement to mingle with the apprehension and cynicism, but my false smiles for people more excited than I was about my pregnancy were beginning to wear thin. No one would listen to me … I mean really listen. The thought of not only having a baby but also becoming a mother (yes, one implies the other but each induce their own unique feelings of fear and insecurity) completely terrified me. The friendly reassurance smacked of Stepford Wives.

‘Your life becomes so amazing when you have a child.’
You’ll fall in love with your child as soon as you see him.’
‘Your bond with your husband becomes so much stronger.’
Well, good for them. But all I needed was a little sympathy.

If you don’t get congratulated next time you tell someone you’re pregnant, perhaps that person has read this blog.

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Walkabout

May 19th, 2007

Not only were my muscles taking a vacation, my brain was too.

Postnatal depression is something all women are advised to watch out for and prepare for. Prenatal depression is just as real.

When your head goes walkabout and you can’t seem to focus; when enjoyment of your friends seems to dwindle; when sleep is unnaturally high on your list of priorities – basically when life sucks – you may very well have prenatal depression. Obviously, you should only get yourself screened for prenatal depression if not only the above applies to you, but you are also pregnant.

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Another excuse not to run

May 18th, 2007

Usually when sick or incapacitated, it is a relief to climb into a hot bubble bath and feel guilt-free about lack of exercise for a few days. But what if you don’t have the choice? I was training for the Two Oceans half marathon and had climbed to 40km per week off-road running. Granted, it had been getting difficult to run, but that was during the phase of suspected malaria, so I kept pushing myself.

When I discovered I was pregnant, I was even more determined to run the race. I was not going to be one of those women who fell pregnant, put their feet up and expected to be treated like an invalid. Or so I thought.

At 4 months pregnant and a few weeks still to go to race day, I began to feel as though my insides were falling out each time I took a downhill plod … and when those insides hold a delicate, and rapidly growing, bunch of cells, I had to call it quits.

Pregnancy is as common as the common cold and you are treated as though there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. But then you fail at your exercise routine and life and limb become so much more cumbersome. So which is it? Are you delicate and worthy of giving yourself a break or should you attempt to continue as if all is the same?

That little bean on the ultrasound photo seems so insignificant at first but your child impacts your entire life from the moment it is around one inch tall. I succumbed and climbed into many hot bubble baths, primarily to chant and work through the resentment I was feeling towards my unborn child.

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Beans for Lunch

May 17th, 2007

If your partner sheds the only tear on seeing the first ultrasound scan, don’t panic! This does not mean you are not bonding with the bean-sized bunch of cells in your belly. Yes, sure you want to, but … it’s a bean-sized bunch of cells in your belly.

And further to that, this bean-sized bunch of cells is, by no stretch of the imagination, capable of eating a full fry-up for breakfast, a lunch of bangers and mash, a roast dinner with all the trimmings and a midnight snack of a tub of ice-cream. So try not to eat for two. You will only look like a fool if you try and convince the person at the buffet table that the bean-sized bunch of cells in your belly needs its own plate of food. And if you gain too much weight during pregnancy, you will only be depressed after the birth – you’re kidding yourself if you think you’ll have time to go for a 10km run any time soon. Hey, you’re kidding yourself if you think you’ll be able to walk to the front gate without breaking a sweat. As it is, I only gained 12kg and I still looked five months pregnant for several weeks after the birth. And I’m one of the lucky ones.

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Aim and Shoot

May 16th, 2007

As if peeing on a stick isn’t bad enough, you go to your (male) gynae, only to be expected to aim and hit the opening of a thimble-sized bottle. Anyone knows a vagina isn’t capable of such accuracy – anyone knows a penis isn’t capable of accurately aiming and hitting the opening of a toilet bowl from more than, er, 9 inches, and a penis has been designed with aim in mind. Which is how we got into this mess in the first place.

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Double Positive

May 15th, 2007

Denial was a comfortable place to be. It lasted a week and a trip to Durban for my father’s 70th birthday, where I sat at the table with a pregnancy test in my bag, fielding questions from relatives wanting to know how much longer we were going to wait until we started a family. I fobbed them off, and then rushed home to take my test.

Thankfully, pregnancy tests require no puncture wounds because I had to take two. After careful aim, we watched to see how I’d performed. But because the instructions stated that it would take four minutes to show a result, I read the instant double-blue line as an indication that the stick was faulty. I took another test in the morning.

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M is for Malaria and Motherhood

May 14th, 2007

I always imagined I’d be able to pinpoint the exact moment … the moment of earth-shattering bliss that would signal the successful exchange of DNA and the beginning of cell division …

Not feeling sure I even wanted a baby, there’d be those moments when I would lie in post-coital bliss thinking, “Hmm, now if I was to fall pregnant, THAT would be a good way to do it.” I even started planning holidays to Fiji, Bora Bora and Hawaii at the mere hint that perhaps we might be ready to have a baby. After all, conception is as important to the parents as birth is to the baby. But the actual planning for the baby never reached fruition. So, at the onset of nausea, headaches and exhaustion, my first thought was to pull out the unused self-test malaria kits I had lugged half way across the malaria-infested Indian subcontinent several months earlier. The lack of pictorial instructions proved too complex and, after puncturing two fingers on my left hand, and one on my right, I drowned both test kits in my blood before figuring out that my stupidity must surely be indicative of the onset of a far more dangerous ailment … Motherhood.

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On the Couch

May 13th, 2007

Everywhere around the world, women are secretly beating up their husbands and screaming into pillows. The reason? Childbirth!

Now, if only they would come out of the proverbial closet and admit that they are terrified of being complete failures, then everything would be OK. Yes, sure there are those mothers who are the true mother-nature types, but this isn’t a given just because they gasp in horror when you tell them of the times you have imagined throwing your crying baby against the wall (with just a hint of a satisfied smile on your face). I know I am not an isolated case and I will tell my story
to as many people as possible until one, just one, other mother decides to come clean.

Not that I need a reason to start a blog – there are, after all, over a million of them floating in the, er, blogosphere – but, if there needed to be a reason, it would be to flush out all those pseudo-maternal types. As you will see, my blog is a working document – a kind of therapy session that will change with time, my moods and how much of the truth I want to reveal at any given moment. If you keep up-to-date with my blogging, you will notice additions and changes along the way until I reach the goal of a completed, comprehensive, er, blog.

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