Candy and strangeness

Never trust a grown-up.

A grown-up is just the sort of person who will come bounding home from the shop with four pumpkins, grinning like a loon.

Smashing pumkins. 

A grown-up may then neglect her responsibilities and devote an entire afternoon to carving giant robot jack-o-lanterns with you.

A grown-up might put on Thriller and dance all over the sofa in a most un-grown-up-like fashion.

Any grown-up worth her salt will then cut holes in an old white bed-sheet so that you can run around the house like Casper, clocking the walls with your forehead because you've got the eye-holes on backwards.

A grown will bring you a cobwebby Halloween witch hat. And when the excitement reaches fever pitch, a grown-up will take you by the hand and lead you out into the gathering Halloween darkness.

For candy.Your one true love in this life. Your first thought upon waking, and your last thought before sleep.

Not a turnip. 

A high quality grown-up will make sure you get plenty of candy. She will then take you home and attempt to thrust your now candy-explosives-fueled self into pajamas. This act will look like a clown trying to squeeze a rabid lion into a jam jar. Sometimes your grown-up is a turnip.

You will break free from your now slightly twitchy grown-up and  run to kiss your  magical giant robot jack-o-lanterns goodnight, sleep tight, don't let the robot bugs bite.

Pacified and straight-jacketed at last, your certified grown-up will hold you tight and sing you a song. She will tell you how much she loves you and plant kisses on each cheek. You will fall into a contented slumber, the memory of kisses warm and velvety on your cheeks, like melting butter over Saturday pancakes.

Fly my pretties!

At this point your formerly grade AAA rated grown-up will softly close the door and tip-toe to the kitchen. Here she will proceed to skin all four of your lovely giant robot jack-o-lanterns and turn them into soup.

This is why you should never trust a grown-up. In spite of the fact that soup is delicious.

As your grown-up stirs a molten vat of giant robot carcasses, she will hum 'Thriller' contentedly to herself. She will think silly thoughts in the quiet of her cozy post-bedtime world. Thoughts like: 'First of all, it was October, a rare month for girls...'

You will eat the soup for lunch tomorrow and never suspect a thing. Which is another reason.

Carnival season

My kingdom for a leaf. 

The first yellow leaf on the sidewalk cannot be denied.

This week summer surrendered to autumn: handed over the keys, signed the paperwork, and washed its hands of climatic control for another year. Now the world is autumn's baby to corrupt.

Of course the process is transitional - a soft launch to underemphasize any major design hiccups.

Leaves turn yellow like hairs turn grey. Dust returns to dust. The eternal feeling of summer is an illusion.

But that's me: I'm over-caffeinated and suffer from a crippling case of sentimentality, for which the prognosis is poor. What does seasonal change mean to you?

Here follows a carnival of the season's best posts. You will notice that these writers exercise greater restraint with their sentimentality than I do.

Ella of Notes From Home warily observes five, er four boys marking that classic harvest right of passage: driving a massive combine.

Penny of the Alexander Residence fondly remembers the summer bilberry grounds of her childhood.

Truffle offers a durian toast to the harvest moon.

Christine, an Expat Mum in Portugal, talks about the promise of September for kids and mamas alike: school, new projects, the return of parental nap-time.

Maggie of Red Ted Art suggests that we gather the season's ephemera and construct a house for the woodland elves, so as they don't freeze their pointed little ears off this winter.

Ellen at In a Bun Dance acknowledges that summer is well and truly over, and bravely sends her oldest baby off to high school.

Kerry at Multiple Mummy focuses on the highlight of the warmer months: escape (with kids in tow).

Emma at Mummy...Mummy...Mum counts the passing time in a birthday wish and suggests a celebratory bottle rocket to mark the occasion with a bang.

Diane at Kids Party Heaven has some perennial ideas for how to avoid revenge party bag syndrome (almost as dangerous as inoperable sentimentality).

This autumn carnival was conceived by Brit Mums. Thank you to all contributors. Next week the carousel stops at Really Kid Friendly.

In the meantime, I'm off to kick yellow leaves, pull out grey hairs, and medicate my sentimentality with another truckload of coffee.

Warriors, turkeys, aliens

Three Novembers ago, this house recieved it's first bald alien vole. On that infamous day two carefree twenty-somethings grew suddenly old, but all three survived the experience. Then one year ago, us two seasoned parents of one drove again through the empty, rain-washed streets of midnight to bring home a second vole from the clutches of the NHS. There followed a blissful few weeks of peace, then a desperately exhausting year. Only recently a sense of calm has returned to this house. But I remain suspicious, because this calm reminds me of a silent toddler who has found mischief in the next room.

We spent much of November hovered over flaming birthday cakes. While the kids joyfully tried to set their hair on fire, Papa and I trembled over the year gone and whispered with cautious optimism about the year to come. The business of flaming cakes done, the voles and I went for a day out in London. After accidentally getting caught up in a vicious tourist tangle surrounding the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, we went to kick up fallen leaves in Green Park.

Such a perfect day, drank fruit shoots in the park.

London parks in autumn are pure magic to kids and the childish (me) alike. Lampposts twinkle in the mist, and curiously well-mannered squirrels dart along crooked paths and up ancient knotted trees. There are even enchanted wardrobes and chalk drawings hidden between stacks of kicking-leaves if you look carefully enough.

Post-leafy-running-amok, the girls climbed back into their ponderous double buggy, and I steered our convoy through the streets of Mayfair en route to the Christmas-light-bedecked bedlam of Oxford Street. We were on Berkeley Square, Bentleys to the left of us and art dealers to the right, when we encountered a human obstruction: a huge, volatile Odin look-alike, who was both angrilly and gingerly cradling a steaming hot mug of something. He planted his feet squarely in front of the buggy and extended an accusatory 'ko' finger directly at Ali's head.

Be-suited men on either side of us bristled, then hovered at the ready.  London urban anonymity is a funny thing—strangers would rather jump in front of a bus than look you in the eye, but they will never fail to whip out first aid or judo as required.  'SPACE INVADER!' shouted Steamy Mug Man. Ali took on a guilty, cornered look, like a baby in the headlights, then released an ear-shattering crow. Steamy Mug Man relaxed, nodded, sipped his mug contentedly, and walked on. Ali blinked in confirmation. The suity men and I stood in awkward confusion for a moment, then relaxed back into urban anonymity and moved on. 

When we were nearly to Oxford Street, I realized that Steamy Mug Man must have been referring to Ali's hat (which clearly is a bit Marvin the Martian—see the sinkable Molly Dolly modelling it below*). I wonder if Steamy Mug Man realized the enormous wisdom of his words. Upon reflection, I am convinced he is either a) a prophet, or b) a papa who's own space has been similarly invaded.

All your space are belong to us. 

Speaking of space invasion, I only recently watched the film 'Aliens' for the first time. If you saw 'Aliens' in a more timely manner, back when dinosaurs still roamed freely, I will remind you of the final scene. It features Sigourney Weaver in a massive space-marine-lifter-suit-thingy, defending her adopted little girl in an all-out fight with the big-mama alien. Sigourney says some tough, sweary yo-mama things, then ejects the big nasty alien out into the vacuum of space. That job done, she turns to give her girl a cuddle. In prior scenes, 'Aliens' touches on various unpleasant aspects of early parenthood—childbirth, the feeling of constantly being chased by creatures bent on your destruction specifically and world domination more generally, and an exodus of all fashion sense from the galaxy. But it is this final scene that offers up a wonderful and rare thing in film: a totally awesome maternal super-hero. Watching 'Aliens' reminded me of one of my favourite quotes: 'Becoming a mother' writes Naomi Wolf in Misconceptions 'requires a supreme focus, a profound discipline, and even a kind of warrior spirit.' 

This November marks one year since the arrival of the second space invader. So far, there are still four survivors. I say with cautious optimism that things are looking up, and I am deeply thankful for this. Additionally, I am thankful for the privilege of living in this land of magical parks, be-suited-judo-baby-defenders, and wise sages disguised behind steamy mugs. What I intended to do at the start of this ramble through a yellow wood was to send a holiday toast my fellows and family across the big blue watery space. So if you are still with me, I will do so without further delay.

May your turkeys be gigantic, your cranberries overflowing. May you never lose your cultural inclination towards optimism, your warrior spirit, your belief that tomorrow must be better than today (even when you are feeling as tired and battered as Sigourney after fighting a big nasty alien). May you enjoy your feast, momentarily unencumbered by your worries, and over-eat up to your eyeballs (I always do) till you fall over into a food-induced stupor, flanked all around by the warmth of your beloved space invaders. 

Happy Thanksgiving.

*A&E Mum: no offence intended. As you can see, the hat you gifted us remains a family favourite. 

Voodoo child

My autumn garden is full of spiders. Yesterday I watched a fly go from creature to cadaver in the skip of a heartbeat and the twitch of eight legs. Webs loom everywhere I walk, ghost-like apparitions right at head level. My face has been snared a few times and I suspect it might be me, not the flies, they are after.

Tonight I put on my shoe and felt something soft and leathery squish up against my toe. My brain said mouse, but reaching inside I discovered it was just a shrivelled, slightly fuzzy chunk of green pepper. I recognised the bite marks and the modus operandi. 'Don't mess with me Mama,' the pepper implied in Ana's voice, 'I know where your shoes live.'

Garden-variety Shelob

Ana is an old hand at threats. When she was 18 months old we drove to an old fisherman's cottage on Anglesey for a weekend. In the evening she slept like an angel in her travel cot, while Papa and I watched little fishing boats cast their nets into a peaceful sea. A tentative sense of calm crept back into our lives; we decided that everything was going to be okay and that travelling with kids could even be fun. But it only lasted until the following afternoon. Halfway through nap-time I heard a loud smack from Ana's room, followed by an angry roar. A moment later, vengeful toddler footsteps thundered down the hall. Papa and I were trapped in the sitting room, mugs of tea still in hand as a shrieking, wild-haired toddler came for her revenge like something out of a horror film.

Travelling with Ana was out of the question now that she could shimmy out of a travel cot head-first and pursue us to the ends of a holiday cottage. Naively, we thought she could still be contained behind the trusty wooden jail-bars of her cot at home. Not long after the Anglesey incident, I went to Germany for a weekend, leaving Papa home alone with Ana. My first morning away, he rang to say that Ana escaped the cot and woke him with a very sweet 'Papa thirsty?' and a very cold cup of water in the face. Ana got a proper bed and a gate across her door after that.

We don't get too many Houdini-style escapes these days, except when a very sleep-deprived Mama forgets to shut Ana's gate. Tonight I put the kettle on for peppermint tea and tried to forget about the shoe-pepper threat. I turned around to get a teabag and nearly dropped my mug in fright. There stood Ana in the middle of the kitchen floor, grinning cheekily with her plastic Halloween pumpkin in one hand. 'Hi', she said with menace. Then she turned and slunk silently back up the stairs to her room. I followed and shut the gate tight.

Ana doesn't fully understand Halloween yet, but her prankster instinct has been on override for weeks. This year she will trick-or-treat, rather appropriately, as a crocodile.

It's a trick

My good childhood friend, OneArmGirl, has just reminded me of our childhood candy-missions. A lovely French lady down the street (our neighborhood's sole European representative) used to call us 'the Halloweeners'. The thing I really loved about Halloweening (and can only admit to now as an adult) was that on one trusty October night every year, us big kids got to re-enact the magic of being little. Candy was the excuse for all the dressing up and childish larking about. It was the act itself that was magical--heading out into the wood-smoky darkness, painted faces pressed against the cold car windows, wide-eyes focused on distant candy-beacon porch-lights in the black rural night, bright and remote as the stars.

I find that one side-effect of having kids is that my brain likes to revive dusty childhood memories like this from the mental attic and replay them to a sentimental score on my internal nostalgia-projector. For me, the season of 'pumpkins ripening toward the knife' (Ray Bradbury) has been one of birth, death, upheaval, love and migration. The stuff of life, good and bad. Certainly no shortage of memories to mull over as the light closes in for winter.

Farewell summertime nest

The world outside turned golden this week. The temperature dropped and wind-rustled leaves took on a tell-tale brittle note. Summer is collapsing into autumn. It caught me by surprise again. Every summer seems eternal, even though I'm old enough to know better by now.

Which reminds me of Ray Bradbury, a hero of mine, who turned 90 at the end of August. 'Dandelion Wine' is a book about how kids experience summertime as the great magical forever. There are a thousand perfect summer moments in it, including one about fire balloons in the 1974 introduction he added to original 1957 book.

Grandpa and I walked out on the lawn and lit a small fire and filled the pear-shaped red-and-white-and-blue-striped paper balloon with hot air, and held the flickering bright-angel presence in our hands a final moment in front of a porch lined with uncles and aunts and cousins and mothers and  fathers, and then, very softly, let the thing that was life and light and mystery go out of our fingers up on the summer air and away over the beginning-to-sleep houses, among the stars, as fragile, as wondrous, as vulnerable, as lovely as life itself....My beloved family still sits on the porch in the dark. The fire balloon still drifts and burns in the night sky of an as yet unburied summer. 

Seasonally, 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' follows 'Dandelion Wine'. Although principally concerned with autumnal menace, it also happens to contain one of my favourite passages on motherhood: 'They nest in Time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. They live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. Why speak of Time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments, as they pass, into warmth and action?' 

Warmth passing.

Sunlight is starting to wane. Fun fairs are setting up across England, in all their weird kitschy glory. Just over the horizon, bonfires burn. Soon firecrackers will wake my children at night. 


I've spent the past few golden afternoons knitting together unrelated passages from the books of summer, and searching out pint-sized jumpers that were lightly cast aside by my autumn babies in the innocence and optimism of last spring. These items nest not in time, but usually behind the sofa.