Peppermint creams

Sunday at home. Steve and Sam have gone to the Maker Faire to indulge their mutual love of all things sciencey leaving Tom and I free to indulge in the sort of things he likes to do. 

In truth if it were up to Tom we would spend the day on electronic devices playing games and watching endless YouTube videos.  Fortunately it's not up to Tom so he had to come up with other things he likes to do.

So we read. Me to him. Him to me. Each to ourselves.

We drew pictures... of minecraft mobs, but that's okay because the linear nature of minecraft fits in well with my poor artistic ability.  Have ruler, draw minecraft!! (My spider was pretty good I'll have you know).

We made some peppermint creams.  Good lord, the sugar hit in these things! After tea we all had one and within minutes Sam and Tom were both bouncing off the ceiling like they were attached to springs.  I know it's a myth that sugar makes kids hyperactive, but honestly they were buzzing.  So I don't think we will be making those again :)

"If they don't hate you on a regular basis, you're not doing your job right"

It is very hard to understand the ways that your children will break your heart, until they do.  Those comments spat at you, or hissed, after you've fallen out in some way that feels to them to be of epic proportions.

"I hate you"

"I want to kill you"

"I want to kill myself"

Each one cuts to the quick. In the rational part of your brain you know they don't mean it. That they are battling with emotions that are so big and intense and they just don't yet know how to deal with them.  That's part of the parent's job - teaching our children healthy ways of dealing with those big emotions.

Those negative ones.

Anger.  Frustration.

Especially hard when you're not that convinced of your own ability to handle those emotions in a healthy way!  Good god it's so hard to keep your cool, to keep the love in your voice, to keep from over reacting - when that little person, who knows better than anyone else which button to press, looks you in the eye and deliberately pushes that button.

Hoooweee!

I've lost track of how many times I've trotted out that phrase

"I love you so much, but I do not like the way you behaved just there".

It seems so hard when they're first born and you are handed this brand new little person and sent away with no manual, no how-to.  You're just expected to get on with it, and you do, more or less. It's only as they get older that you realise that those baby days were a piece of piss, a magical, golden, walk in the park.  The bit where they're older and it's your job to shape them and mould them into decent, worthwhile members of society - that's the REALLY hard bit.  Where they have ethics, values and morales. Where they pick up after themselves. Where they can manage and appreciate the need for personal hygiene. Where they accept responsibility for their own behaviour and the consequences of that behaviour. All of these endless little things that they need to learn.

To make sure that you love them, and tend them and build them up.  But not overindulge and spoil.  To give them want they need and not what they want (and ha! where do you gain the knowledge to tell you what that is!).  To fight their corner like the mother tiger you are, but also to have the wisdom to know when to allow them to learn how dig themselves out the hole they put themselves in.

Hard, hard work.  

But at the end of a day or week or month where it's just felt relentless and you are wondering if parenthood will ever make you feel like the warmth of the sun and the nourishment of the roots again. 

That's when it happens.

Tonight, whispered against my cheek with soft lips and minty breath

"Mum, even when I say I hate you, I still love you".

Not really a choice

I  have never defined myself by my diabetes.  Not because I am brave or admirable, but because quite frankly, it has never occurred to me to do so.  Sometimes it is a handy excuse to get out of doing something I don't really want to do. Sometimes it is a pain in the arse.  But it is just something that is a part of me, something that I don't love, but that I live with.  Because the other choice is not living, and that choice is not for me.

One Billion Rising

Why am I Rising?

I am Rising because there is no other option.

One in three women on our planet will be raped or beaten in her lifetime – how can this even be possible in our so called civilised world?  This grotesque statistic can only be changed if we (all of us - with a conscience, with love, with humour, with dignity, with honour, with respect) stand up and refuse to accept to accept violence against women and girls as a given.

I am Rising because this statistic exists.  It is not a number made up by rabid feminists, plucked from fantasy to fool you into thinking there is a problem when there isn’t.

 It is real. 

And it is terrible.

So we must Rise Up, Walk Out, Dance and Demand an end to this violence.

I am Rising.

 

Horrors

I had to laugh at myself last night as I was getting ready for bed. 

I had been reading my book late into the night because, well, just because I couldn't stop reading it until it was finished.  It was, as I say, late (for a school night).  I switched off my light, and lay back on my pillow thinking about the book I had just finished (convincing myself that now was not the time to start the next book, no matter how much I wanted to) when I realised that my bedroom door was completely shut.  I like to leave the door slightly ajar during the week when Steve's away, so I feel more connected to the boys and any eventualities, I guess. 

So now I would have to get up to open it. 

And this is where I had to laugh.

I'm still slightly afraid of the monster under my bed.  I KNOW there is no monster under my bed, but still I have to leap out of the bed so that I land far enough away that the monster can't get me.  And then when I get back in, I have to jump (high and far) so that those monstery fingers can't curl themselves around my ankles. 

Ridiculous. 

Completely irrational.  (I'm supposed to be a grown up!!)

But there we go.  Laughing at myself, but still not taking any chances with the under bed monsters.

I remember when I was a teenager reading my way through all the Stephen Kings and Dean R. Koontz books.  Well, I was definitely coming nowhere near the dead, dark space underneath my bed in those days, and in addition, I also had to make sure that the book I was reading was closed - with something heavy resting on it - in order to prevent the horrors that I so loved to read about, from crawling out of the book and into my room.

So when my boys tell me that they are scared of something in their room, or that they can't sleep with the light off, I'm okay with that.  I will indulge the need to rid the room of monsters.  I will accept the need to sleep with lights on.  After all, who am I to judge?

My First Time

When I left school I went to Rhodes University in Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape in South Africa.  It is a small university town and I had 3 of the best (and worst) years of my life there.  It was an emotional roller coaster, falling in and out of love, meeting people from all walks of life, trying new things and discovering how huge and, at the same time, how small the world really was.  It was liberating!  My home life was shown to be so narrow, so insular - my world was now peopled with amazing women and men who were passionate about changing the world, about making it a better place. 

And I loved it.

The wonders of Facebook  has meant that I am able to still be in touch with some of those amazing men and women in a way that wasn't even in existence when we left university.  One of those women is Larissa.  I was awed by Larissa when I first met her on that first day in Prince Alfred House residence, she had so many principles, such an ardent conviction in the importance of fighting for the stuff that you believe deeply in.  Oh the common room conversations we used to have!! It is true to say that Larissa made a profound impression on me, she made me think about stuff that had never crossed my (widely read, but not very broad) mind. 

Charlene and Larissa at the mouth of the Tyne

Me, Larissa and Sam copying the Angel of the North

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And she still does today.  I was thrilled to have Larissa and her peachy partner Charlene staying with me for a couple of days in early January, as part of a big tour of Europe they were doing.  First of all it was just stunning to see her and catch up, and second of all she had the effect on me that she always had, of making me think about things in a new way, things I had packed away in a little box never to see the light of day.

She gave me a little book, a collection of short stories called My First Time edited by Jen Thorpe.  The front cover proclaims "stories of sex and sexuality from women like you" and it has tales of a range of different life experiences; first time having sex, first period, first trip to a gynaecologist... some good, some not so good.  But the more I read, the more overwhelmingly sad I became.  So many of the stories were tinged with disillusion, disappointment, betrayal, abuse and fear. Yes there was also strength, dignity and transcendence but it  was the need for these that caused my disquiet.

There are a lot of women who I would describe as friends, but within that group the amount that I would describe as close friends shrinks dramatically.  When I looked at that small group I was appalled to discover that half of us had been the victim of some form of sexual abuse or sexual assault. 

Half of us!!!

It's beyond horrific. 

And I know it is anecdotal and not statistically accurate, but that doesn't do anything to halt my disgust at how many girls and women are still violated, despite this enlightened world that we supposedly live in.  Honestly, is the best that we can do?

While Laris was here we had a disagreement about the importance of talking about things, about the value of psychologists and counsellors.  I had not long finished studying my level 3 in counselling when Dad died.  My GP referred me to a counsellor to help me deal with the ravages of my grief and after that experience I realised I no longer believed in counselling, in the need to talk about our emotions.  I didn't want to talk, to anybody, and especially not a counsellor.  I wanted to hold my grief close to me, and even now, 5 years later, I still hug my grief tight to me.  And I have become much more closed and recalcitrant. 

Talking about things that have happened to me on such a deep, personal level is not what I want, or need to do.

But what I have realised over the past few weeks as I have been thinking about this little book, is that I don't have to talk about me or my own experiences, but that I can talk about all the women who will be sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. 

That I can shout out for them. 

That, damn it, I should have been shouting out all this time.

You said what?

After I had finished reading to Sam the other night, I put the book away and tried to drag him away from his elaborate lego construction without too much protest.  I really can't bear it when one of my boys and I fall out at bedtime, it seems such a long time until morning, for them to simmer and fester and feel hard done by.  I imagine what their subconscious is doing with their unsettled emotions, what dreams are concocted out of their anger and hurt feelings.  I want bedtime to feel like they are enveloped in a soft, gently cloud of my love and deep approval!!  Sadly it is not always possible, but that doesn't stop me trying, every night to achieve that end.  Hence me deploying the old distraction technique as I removed the lego bricks from his hands

"Hey Sam, what happened at school today?"

"How do you know?"

"Umm, I don't know what exactly, I just feel like you have something that you might want to tell me about" (lets keep that all-knowing-mother myth going for a while longer shall we!!)

"Oh, well, it wasn't really anything"

"Go on, tell me! I'm interested in what happens in your life"

"OK, I 'spose, well, it's just that I had an argument with Lily today"

"gosh, you and Lily are you usually on the same page about most things, what did you argue about?"

"We were arguing about whether the world is here because of the big bang theory, or whether God created it"

(Intrigued mother, that wasn't what I was expecting, Minecraft differences - yes, creationism vs evolution - no!)

"Wow, that's a big debate that one - which side did you take?"

"I said it was definitely because of the big bang theory"

"Huh. Why did you take that standpoint?"

"I don't know mum, but it just seems so obvious, evolution and everything"

"Did you and Lily fall out over it?"

"We did a bit, but we made friends again"

"Good.  Friends are more important than scoring points over who is right, and anyway in this particular argument, the debate rages on.  Just make sure that you know what you are talking about, research your facts, and remember that everybody has a right to their opinion" (and as addendum to myself "even when they are wrong!")

Ha ha.  I may not be able to change my own intolerant ways, but I do hope that I can bring my children up to be more tolerant of others beliefs and opinions, and to respect their right to hold them. 

And to know that saying sorry sometimes isn't as hard as it seems.