The end of innocence, and other February stories

The first story.

We are all four of us sitting on the floor in the children’s bedroom, reading stories before lights’ out. The book prompts discussion about growing up, and I half-joke to the children, “Never grow up. Always be my babies.” Seven-year-old Scout giggles, and strikes a pose: “I’m already 18 Mummy, I’m about to move out.”

“Oh no!” I mock-wail. “You are breaking my heart!”

Little Ralph, who is six, wriggles onto my lap with a smile. “Don’t worry Mummy, I will never leave you,” he promises, and as I say “Thank goodness!” he throws himself into my arms in a big, hearty bear-hug.

There is a lovely beat of a second or two - Scout and her Dad still laughing, Ralph in my arms - and then I begin to feel him cry. At first I think he is joking but, as the crying melts into sobs and wet tears soak my shoulder, we all realise there is something very wrong.

Ralph can’t find the words for a long time. The sobbing shakes his whole body and I hold him, and kiss him, and smooth his curls back from his wet cheeks.

Later, we realise what it all meant. This was the moment - the exact moment - of his childhood in which he first realised it wouldn’t be the four of us, together forever.

This changes everything. It is the beginning of the end of innocence.

* * * * *

The second story.

I am dead-heading roses before the freshness of the morning gives way to more of this thing we call summer. The little garden is coming back from weeks of severe heat, red rain (rain bringing down red dust from drought-fuelled dust-storms and ongoing bushfires) and heavy winds. The whole garden is somewhat the worse for wear, but beginning to rally.

All four eggs in the blackbird nest have hatched. For weeks, we watch mother and father adjust to new parenthood, racing around the garden seeking food while their babies eat, sleep and cry on steady rotation. The familiarity is not lost on me. We are not so different, the blackbirds and me.

And now as I lop finished blooms from around the deserted nest, I cast an eye over some of the newer roses I planted in spring. They are all-but bare, leaves burned to dust in the intense heat of last week, but Mother Nature never ceases to amaze me. Bending closer, I can see the swellings of green and red buds up and down the branches. Everything begins again.

The air in the garden is thick with happy bees. Forager-bees hurry in and out of flowers that have somehow survived the heat, joyful in the cool of this morning. For breakfast today, nectar of rose, gaura, cosmos, Queen Anne’s lace, clematis, marigold, hydrangea, salvia, valerian, bergamot and stock. 

The choir of their hum forms the exact G-chord of the opening bars of John Denver singing Annie’s Song, so uncanny that I glance around, thinking my childhood guitar teacher must be somewhere nearby, about to tell me to practise more. 

* * * * *

The third story. ⁣

The story begins two years in the past. I am on a coaching call, via Skype, with a lovely Romanian woman called Ana Maria. We are discussing her desire to learn to draw, to find more time for creativity, and her thoughts and fears about the possibility of starting a family. Mid sentence she stops, and I hear her exclaim a delighted “Oh!” across all the oceans that divide us. She announces, “I just found a four-leaf clover!”

(I have never found a four-leaf clover. I used to hunt for them all the time, as a teenager, but never had any success.)

Two years later, last week to be precise, I check my post office box and there, amid bills, bank statements and a 'food ideas' magazine I’m pretty sure I never subscribed to, is a fat envelope, slightly battered and bruised from its journey across continents, covered in Romanian stamps. Inside it is a collection of vintage stationery, pressed leaves, book pages, tea-bags, an old English-Romanian dictionary, antique lace, a sweet letter… and a pressed four-leaf clover.

It is the very four-leaf clover that Ana Maria had found during our conversation, two years earlier. I guess it brought her luck, because that family she talked about starting? Her little boy recently turned one.

---

Slow mornings

Slow mornings are for waking up to birdsong and not getting out of bed straight away. Of lying still and listening to the chorus.

It starts with one plaintive call, a single note. A moment of silence, then an answer. Now a handful (or feather-full) of small trills, like a vocal warm-up, make gentle music for the dawn.

And then at the wave of an unseen conductor, the entire ensemble bursts into song, a thousand avian voices turning the valley into a kind of amphitheatre of chirps and dings and trills and gurgles and caws and tweets and shrieks and twitters and songs, mostly songs, that celebrate the dawn.

It is impossible to sleep, but on slow mornings, there’s no need to leap out of bed. Slow mornings are permission to stretch first, twist, yawn, and when you’re ready - only when you’re ready - soft-foot into the kitchen to fill a kettle and boil some water.

Slow mornings begin with steaming cups of tea cradled on laps, in old comfy chairs under light-filled windows, where an entire chapter of a favourite book is read at leisure.

We have rented a little two-bedroom cottage on the edge of a walnut farm and when I make my way into the kitchen, the ghost of last night’s fire haunts the air like a toasty hug.

Ralph hears me and ambles over for a cuddle, his eyes still puffy with sleep and wild curls shooting in every direction. We don shoes and coats over our pyjamas and sneak out for a pre-breakfast walk, just the two of us.

The path at the front of the cottage is thick with onion weeds in bloom (which looks a lot better than that sounds), and we tip-toe through starlike flowers in the dew to the tree lined edge of a dried up creek-bed. Follow that to the edge of the orchard, where I carry Ralph over the cattle-grid, balancing precariously with each step, and set him down among row upon row of walnut trees, just beginning to bud.

Cold air, birdsong, a little hand in mine. In the distance, the Victorian Alps, forest green since the snow melted a month ago.

We walk in silence for a little while, if the ever-enthusiastic chorus of a thousand birds can be considered silence, before Ralph wakes up enough to start telling me stories. Once he does though, then stories don’t stop. Long, convoluted, nonsensical stories about games concocted in the playground involving superheroes and villains and clever inventions and magical powers.

Then he breaks off mid-sentence, and we freeze where we stand. Ahead on the path, a glorious, red-gold fox pauses and stares back at us. Time is suspended: the fox, Ralph and me floating like motes in our own little time-bubble made of golden morning light.

Until somewhere in the distance a cow bellows, and the spell is broken. Released, the fox turns and disappears among the walnut trees but before we can move, another crosses our path at the same place, pauses to watch us, then runs after its mate.

Ralph skips ahead, collecting walnut buds, river pebbles and wildflowers, until he notices something in the grass and calls back at me. “I think I found where the fox sleeps!”

I catch up, and he points to a big, round patch of flattened grass. Bed for a cow, not a fox. There are flattened grass-patches all around us, and a hefty sprinkling of still-steaming cow-pats on the path.

We tread more carefully now, not wanting to step in what the herd left behind, and Ralph invents a new game: “Pat-Man.” We hop sideways and forwards but never diagonally, saying “bleep! bleep!” Walnut flowers are power-ups (without them, we slow down or stop) and the ultimate goal is to reach the next cattle-grid and find our way to the river.

We win. The river is deep and green and still, made for picnics.

On the way back, we finally find the herd. Fat, peaceful cows, grazing under the trees. When they spot us the mothers call anxiously for their babies, who skip over to them, and the whole herd ambles away into the shadows.

It’s a slow, gentle amble, not a race to escape. Cows like slow mornings too.

(There’s a little video below so you can join us among the walnut trees. If you can’t see it, click on the title of this blog post to view it in your browser, and the video will come up).

Stop just a minute

This is all happening too fast.

It's not just the growing, it's the developing, the knowing, the maturing. "Stop growing up, start growing down," I tell them, and they roar with laughter. "Again?" requests Ralph, "Will you tell me to grow down?" ("Grow down," I obligingly order him. "NO!" he yells in evident delight).

Ralph started toilet-training on the weekend. I have always said this wasn't the kind of parenting blog that would share the details of my children's challenges, and I'm not about to change that now, so I'll spare you the details of that particular story (although you can ask me in private if you want to: there is much hilarity for people who can appreciate or relate to that sort of thing). But I didn't need Ralph to keep reminding me "I'm a big boy now!" to reinforce the significance of this time. Nappies = babies. Undies = big kids. Once my last baby is out of nappies, that tender, sweet, all-encompassing stage in my life is gone forever.

Oh, it's such a boring cliché, I am bored even as I write it and you are probably yawning, if you're still here at all. Alert the media: Mother Mourns Passing of Time.

Each little milestone, announced with such pride.

Scout: "Mummy, watch me. I can skip!"

Ralph: "Mummy look at me standing on one leg!"

Scout: "Is this how I write my name Mummy? I am very good at this."

Ralph: "Don't help. I can brush my own teeth."

And Scout (beaming with pride): "Maman, comment ça va?" ("Je vais bien, merci," I reply.) Scout (nodding her head approvingly, like a wise old lady): "Ah, bon."

Here is another cliché that is true: every age is the most wonderful and the best.

Whether they are cloud-gazing or deciphering words, practising new skills or teaching one another, seeing the world through their eyes is a great privilege, a front row seat to the theatre of life as it unfolds, all over again. Just like it was for me when I was their age, I imagine, but I was too busy doing the growing to pay attention to the sheer wonder of it all.

Last night I lay them on the carpet side by side after their bath, to get them dressed. They turned to face each other, giggling and playing, each one using the other one's hand as a pillow, feigning sleep, cuddling, kissing.

Suddenly it all hit me.

I stopped trying (and failing) to get them dressed, and started paying attention, proper attention, to the moment. "Look at them!" I wanted to open a window and shout to the whole world. Why couldn't everyone else see what I was seeing, the absolute miracle of these two human beings?

(A mother's ego that everyone must naturally find her children as fascinating as she does.) (Nobody does.) (Plebs).

Time stopped and it didn't matter any more how big they were getting or how small they still were, the new skills they had mastered or their adorable mistakes, it was just them. These two amazing individuals, and their love for each other. Such a love that I have never seen between two people for each other. Ever.

Later, we three snuggled together and read stories. I read to them from Amazing Babes, a book that celebrates women of courage, of conviction, of creativity, and of compassion. We had conversations about women's rights and war crimes, about equal opportunities, about the law. It wasn't easy to explain these things in ways that a four-year-old and a two-year-old could understand, but I loved them for trying. Those little furrowed brows: concentrating, questioning.

Small fingers tracing over the dark skin of Mum Shirl. All the questions! About prisons and prisoners, about Indigenous people in prison, about the whole history of colonialisation. Those big grey eyes looking up at me, round as little stars. "What did the people from England do to them that was naughty?" I took a deep breath. "Well, they took away their homes, and they hurt them. They tried to be the bosses of them, and they were cruel to them."

Those eyes again. "Why?" Oh sure, let's just solve the entire problem of racism during a cosy bedtime-story chat. "Because they were different," I said at last. "They looked different, and believed different things, and spoke a different language, and lived a different way. Because they were different, the people from England though they were better than them."

Scout stroked the dark-skinned face of Mum Shirl again. "Shohana has dark skin like this," she said, thoughtfully, "and Bella," naming her best friend. I pressed the advantage. "Do you think any of our friends are better than others, because of the way they look or what they believe?" She shook her head solemnly. I could tell she still didn't understand: racism wasn't just wrong, it was genuinely incomprehensible.

"Vaishali looks like that," Ralph piped up all of a sudden. "Yeah and Rajetha!" Scout returned. "It is a little bit like Yulia," Ralph continued (he pronounced it "Loolia," be still my heart). They started naming everyone they knew and loved with skin that was any colour other than their own: friends and teachers from India, Iran, Pakistan, Singapore, Indonesia, China, Peru.

Last night I talked politics and race and feminism and creative expression with my two kind and compassionate children. Yes, they are growing up, and it is an honour to witness the growing.

Permit me a proud-Mama moment, cliché or not.

Anticipation

When you are nearly four, anticipation is palpable. Tangible.

It dominates your mealtimes. What will my cake look like? Will all my friends sing Happy Birthday? Can we have hot chocolate?

And your friendships. I am nearly four. Am I older than my other friends? Will my hair be longer than all my friends' hair now? Will my feet be bigger than all my friends'?

Cleaning the house before your party, you don't even mind hiding your toys to make room for the party games. You can put them away now, Mummy, I don't mind. You help your mother decorate the house with the posters and banners and streamers and balloons you chose from Big W; mix up polymer snow-powder; smooth out tiny, handmade, paper snowflakes in your little almost-four hands.

Anticipation permeates your dreams. Quick! I have to get ready for my party! you yell, still fathoms-deep in sleep. (I will come to your party, your brother drowsily replies, before sinking back into his own dreams.)

................................

I didn't want to host yet another party in my house, but Scout begged me to do it. She didn't want to celebrate her birthday anywhere else. It was a lot of work, as parties always are. But in the weeks and days beforehand, as the day grew near and nearer still, I came to understand the joy of anticipation through her eyes. Even the most mundane of tasks: tidying, vacuuming, grocery shopping; became acts of thrilling expectation, and gave her joy before the real joy of the party.

I guess we never stop learning from our children.

Animal etiquette

"No animal, according to the rules of animal-etiquette, is ever expected to do anything strenuous, or heroic, or even moderately active during the off-season of winter." - Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

We are recovering from Scout's fourth birthday party yesterday. As luck would have it, today is a public holiday, so I intend to be unheroic and inactive, all day. Back soon! xo

Scout says, Ralph says

"'If you knew how great is a mother's love,' Wendy told them triumphantly, 'you would have no fear.'" JM Barrie, Peter Pan

Ralph has taken to calling me "Big Mamma," which is not particularly flattering, but relates adorably to "Little Mamma," his sister.

During an argument... Ralph: I put you in the bin, Scout! Scout: Well, you're not my best friend. Ralph: I DO want to be your best friend! Scout: Then say I am not in the bin. Ralph: I put you OUT of the bin! Scout: Alright, what balloon would you like?

And more about misbehaviour... Me, to Ralph: Can you please be a good boy today? Ralph: No! I will be A. Naughty. Boy! Me: Please? Ralph: NOOOOOOO! Me: Oh dear. I feel sad when you are naughty. Ralph (cuddles me around the neck): Alright, I will be a good boy. Scout: I will be naughty!

Ralph: Mummy? Me: Yes? Ralph: I'm lovely to see you, Mummy.

Scout: Mummy, you are a queen and you will look the same when you are a little old lady.

Me: Scout, thank you for doing such a great job tidying up the play-dough. Scout: You might want to give me something for that.

Lunch time. Sandwiches apparently give the children magic powers, and Ralph is determined to do what he calls "naughty magic"... Me: Quick Scout! Eat some magic sandwiches so you can counter Ralph's magic spells! Scout (takes a big bite of her sandwich): One, two, three... (get it? COUNTer?)

Ralph: This is a lovely autumn day for a chocolate milkshake.

Music teacher is handing out maracas to all the children... Me: What do you say, Ralph? Ralph (brandishing maracas): Let's rock!

Scout hands me a fist full of coins... "This is for you because you never have any money. Now put it in your purse so you don't lose it."

Ralph: Do aeroplanes have bladders for their wee?

Kids have been arguing and yelling at each other all morning... Me: Hey guys, can anyone remember that I told you this was a No Fight Day? (long pause) Ralph: No, it IS a fight day! Scout: Yeah it IS a fight day! Both kids: Fight day! Fight day! Fight day! (united at last)

Scout: Mummy, I want to keep you.

Unplugged (again)

The day was bookended by the feeding of the ducks. Those ducks really love that we have come to stay in this cabin. All seven gazillion of them. My favourite is Stumpy. She was the first to find us, and appears, from the limp, as though she could do with a bit of Cornflake lovin'. My kids give her plenty.

"Over here Mrs Duck!" the children call. "Mrs Duck" is any duck and every duck, except Stumpy. My children do not like to discriminate.

A sunrise walk, a visit to the petting farm, a bumpy hay-bale ride behind a tractor… When we do tourist, we really do Tourist.

Mid-morning, Mr B drives back to Melbourne for a work event he can't escape, while we stay and holiday. And so when the children nap after lunch, the reality of "unplugged" truly sinks in, and I am confronted with… me.

All me.

No Internet, no 'phone, no book to read, no magazine, just me. I can't go for a walk, because my children are sleeping in the room behind me. There is no work to do, no garden to tend, no housework to tackle, no meals to prepare. (We are eating mac 'n cheese out of the box tonight).

I sit, I stand, I gaze outside, I make a cup of tea. This would be a perfect time to write letters, I think to myself, and that's when I realise that in addition to failing to bring a book, I also failed to bring any writing paper. The backs of all our maps and tourist brochures are covered with 'terms and conditions' and, just as I am about to give up, I clap eyes on the cereal boxes.

First, I tear apart the box of Cornflakes we had bought for the ducks. Take my tea outside to the balcony, and start to write. When the Cornflakes box is completely covered, it is time to bust apart the holiday Coco Pops. I am just eyeing the mac 'n cheese box when the kids wake up.

We spend the next three hours playing. I mean, really playing. I have nothing else to do, worry about, look at, think about, but my kids. I had thought that quitting Facebook and Twitter and a life generally free from social media (apart from the odd Instagram photograph) helped me be more present while my kids were playing. But the absence of housework or paid work or emails or text messages or phone calls or book-notes to make or letters to write or books or blogs or magazines or letters to read takes things to a whole other level.

Today, I am Fun Mum. We are explorers, seeking ancient ruins in the sand pit. We are all manner of emergency services, putting out fires and rescuing the injured and attending accidents. I am a burglar, being chased by tiny police in those tiny toddler-cars that you pedal with your feet, like the Flintstones. I am a baby, who simply refuses to behave.

At the end of our games, as we wander hand in hand back to our cabin, Ralph announces "I'm tired Mummy, I want to go to sleep." This is unprecedented. The poor kid is barely upright. At the cabin, he rallies long enough to feed the ducks and consume a barely mouthful of his dinner, and then it is time for bed. Scout is right behind him.

It is 6pm and all's quiet. I am alone with my thoughts again. I turn to the empty mac 'n cheese box and pick up a pen…

Mother's Day

There are two pairs of tiny, mud-covered wellies in the hallway by our front door. And if you are aged two or three, you will know that that is a sign of a day well spent: muddy wellies suggest explorations, rain-soaked adventures, (Ralph's curls gone wild), and, of course, the time-honoured joy of jumping up and down in muddy puddles.

Yesterday was Mother's Day and, do you know what? Call me Hallmark but I felt the love. It started with both children on our bed in the morning, Ralph asking "Can you let the cat in?" and Scout squeezing me around the neck, saying, "Ahh my Mummy. I love you more than me." You could have stopped the day right there and it would have been complete for me.

We had brunch with a friend at Bebida on Smith Street and, alongside the best eggs I've had in a longggg time, they also managed to give me the best Mother's Day brunch that money could buy, being a really great (grown-up!) atmosphere, without any member of staff skipping a beat that we had brought two small children with us. They were super friendly, super helpful, super cool and the food was super good. This, combined with the fact that both children were preternaturally well-behaved, made it a stress free and thoroughly enjoyable meal. We followed up with a scoop each at Gelato Messina, and the kids didn't even make a mess of their clothes. Because, Mother's Day magic!

As I carried Ralph back along Smith Street, I whispered into his curls, "I love you." "Can you say it louder?" he asked. "I love you!" I announced, in my big voice. "I love you Mummy," said Ralph. "I love you I love you I LOVE YOU!" A lump formed in my throat. (And then he continued, "I love that red car, I love that light, I love that wall." But I will take my wins where I find them).

Scout woke first from her afternoon nap, so she and I went out together to CERES (more jumping up and down in muddy puddles) to buy some plants for our garden, as well as a particularly lovely monstera deliciosa for inside the house. Because apparently, on Mother's Day you actually TURN INTO your mother. I swear I could feel my mother approving of my choice of Mother's Day present, even all the way from Poland, where she and my father are adventuring right now. (I miss my mum! Happy Mother's Day, Mum!) Scout carefully selected a fair-trade Bolga Basket woven out of elephant grass by mothers in Ghana, which will serve as a 'pot' for the monstera in my bedroom.

When we got home, the children and I spent an hour playing "babies." This is a great game to play when you're tired because, as a baby, you get to lie down on the floor and not do particularly much. In this iteration of the game, both Ralph and I were the babies, and Scout was our mother. It was bedtime, and she gave us toys to cuddle in bed. But we were (upon instruction) 'naughty,' and insisted on playing instead of sleeping. If you are a particularly wily mother (ahem), you can learn to work the system of this game. For example, crying "Wah, wah! Mummy this baby can't sleep because she needs a foot massage!"

Let's just say that Scout is a very attentive mummy.

At dinner Mr B and I decanted a lovely bottle of red wine and lit candles in the dining room, with a bad/hilarious/great record from the 1960s on the old Blaupunkt, featuring popular classical pieces from Mozart and Beethoven and other similar composers, set alongside some wonderfully tacky drum beats and guitar 'fillers'.

And that brings us up to my right now (your last night). I am sitting on the couch, watching some renovation show or other on the TV. Both children and Mr B are upstairs, probably snoring. Our cat Ruby is beside me on the couch, purring and also keeping my feet warm. Soon she and I will join everyone else in the family in slumber. Mother's Day 2016, over and out.

ps. Me and my mum, a very long time ago...

Image credit: Sarah Boyle, licensed for unlimited use under Creative Commons

Scout says Ralph says

Scout (rubbing her belly): These pancakes are delicious. My tummy says yum-my.

Ralph (rubbing his belly): My yellow t-shirt says YUMMY too.

At bed time...

Scout: I love you to the aliens' planet, and a million.

Ralph: I love you to my rocket ship and I also love the aliens' planet.

At another bedtime, when their father was overseas...

"I love you past the aliens' planet and all the way to Daddy!"

During a book photoshoot...

Me: This photo is supposed to tell a story. It is cold and rainy outside. But inside, the person is all cosy and warm, snuggled into blankets on the couch, drinking tea and reading a letter from a friend. Maybe they have just gotten up to make some toast...

Scout: Can I be that person? (pause) And can you make me some toast?

Scout (cuddling her dolly): Do you wish you were as good at Mummying as me?

Me: Yes!

Scout: It's ok, don't cry. You did TEACH me how to do it.

Scout: Ring ring! Hello moon? Moon? Can you come down please?

At bed time...

Me: Thank you for a really good day.

Scout: Thank you for being a really good Mummy.

Ralph: Can I bounce a ball on your head?

And so this was Christmas

So this was our Christmas. I hope yours was beautiful. And now it's time to say, see you next year! Can you even believe that?

Love, Naomi xo

ps. I've been on an unexpected blog-and-Internet break due to the sad demise of my modem (which I didn't discover for two days until I was suddenly out of data on my phone - grr!). All things considered, it was the perfect time of year to take time off. I'll be back in the New Year feeling refreshed, and very much looking forward to all the year will bring for us.