Rolling

My favourite people come in two flavours: the ones I miss because I moved, and the ones I miss because they moved.

A&E Mum belongs to the latter, although I moved away from Metroland shortly after she did. We became friends by giggling, passing notes, and otherwise behaving poorly in ante-natal class while heavily pregnant.

In particular we bonded over a surreal labour induction presentation, which rather unusually was demonstrated on a man. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't a successful induction. It escalated into a full-blown cesarean demo, which was also an appalling failure both in medical and demo terms.

I'm pretty sure fake male inductions are a felony in Alabama. But the man in question is now leading a fairly normal life under a new identity.

Innocent when you dream. 

Nothing since, not even childbirth, has been half as scary or bonkers as ante-natal class. So in a strange way it really did prepare A&E Mum and I for having children by increasing our surrealism threshold.

A&E Mum has just reminded me of our early days in suburban babyland, cloistered off from the grown-up world. We ate cake and discussed weaning while our babies scrounged for muddy worms and damsons in the back garden.

This memory has left me alternately giggling and weeping into my Hovis. You see, I suffer from a crippling case of postpartum sentimentality.

Moving on is part of growing up. But I regret that I don't get to watch the A&E family grow up alongside my kids.

There was something wonderfully innocent about our days in deepest, darkest Metroland. It was not so much the babies, but rather us mamas and papas who were innocent. We thought weaning was complicated.

I suspect eventually my children will grow into movers and inherit my burden: they will miss the people they love.

Two years ago I read a piece on being and foreignness that really sums it up: 'It is not the possibility of returning home which feeds nostalgia, but the impossibility.'

To a mover, places cease to exist in geography and instead become points in time. For instance, New Mexico is my childhood. California is my youth. Metroland is when I had my babies.

For that I forgive Metroland its various other faults.

Wonderlust

My daughters are gobsmacked by new discoveries every day. Their gobsmackery is manifested on a sliding scale between pure delight and abject terror.

Grown-ups encounter new things far less frequently than children. But occasional moments of gobsmackery permeate the adult defences too.

Today I discovered these beauties at the farmer's market.

Stargazing.

Aren't they gorgeous? Like constellations of stars marauding as berries.

I've been staring at them all afternoon with a childish grin. They taste good - about how you would expect Cassiopeia to taste if Cassiopeia were made of albino currants and not stars.

Greengages, a fruit I only had the pleasure of meeting in recent years, had a similar initial effect on me. Greengages are such a counter-intuitive plum - they look for all the world like unripe apricots and taste like heaven.

Even more wonderful than greengages is Kid, Ana's imaginary friend who lives in her hand. As with so many wonderful characters in this world, I met Kid on a bus. Not a Greyhound on smoke break in Kansas City at 4am, but rather Ana's first red double-decker through the big smoke.

As we sat at the very top by the window and she told me repeatedly that we were going to London on the bus (we were in fact in London already, but she was impervious to this suggestion). Then, beaming delightedly, she extended her hand out to the window, shaped like a shadow puppet.

A kid's Kid. 

'Look Kid,' she said. 'Look at that! We're going to London, Kid!'

I love Kid. I ask to talk to him all the time, and if Ana is in a good mood she indulges me. She understands that one should respect the hand that feeds. You see, while Kid inhabits her right hand, Kid's Mama inhabits her left.

Today's currants made me recall two of my own favourite moments of adult wonder.

Ana, an abstract free-form scribbler of the Jackson Pollock school, recently sat down of her own accord and - with grown-up-like concentration - drew a discernible person on paper for the first time. 'Look Mama,' she said with authority, 'it's WALL-E.'

And indeed, there was no mistaking WALL-E. I was gobsmacked with delight.

WALL-E (and EVE).

Around the same time, Ali toddled over to the sliding glass door of our old house. She gazed up at the sky and pointed.

'Moon!' she whispered in pure delighted wonder. She'd never said the word before, identified any celestial bodies, or frankly appeared to have much interest in them.

Then she toddled off and began shouting at her blocks in spite of my best efforts to prologue the magic by sitting at the window and shouting 'MOON!' in that silly undignified fashion that only gobsmacked parent would do.

Both moments passed in a blink. The girls have forgotten. Till the currants today, I had forgotten too.

In fact, at this juncture any sensible reader might bang her head against the wall and demand to know why these mundane moments are worth remembering at all.

And my response to all this imaginary head-banging is this: because these were not isolated moments at all. Instead they were ripples from two monumentally wondrous moments. Twice in my life I have hovered over a newborn daughter, gazing in wonder at her perfect sleeping face for the first time.

It doesn't get more wonderful than that.

Of course birth is followed by years in the wilderness. No sooner does the midwife say 'Congratulations, it's a girl!' then you are rushed onto a waiting boat in the Thames and shipped off to years of hard labour with added ketchup in a Tasmanian penal colony.

Which is why savouring these moments of wonder is so important.

Parenthood is the act of jumping from sweet moment to sweet moment like a game of hop-scotch played over a lava field.

In fact life in general is a confusing cocktail of tragedy and wonder. Which is easy to remember on grim news weeks like this one. All that matters is loving the people we love. And making valiant efforts to love everybody else too.

23: Waiting for the miracle

Day 23 is born.

With child.

At my first maternity appointment, the GP actually said 'women have been doing this for thousands of years'. Boy do I hate the assertion that bearing children is trivial because it is common. True: every child born is first carried, and true: this usually involves a bulbous belly, a tired back, the better part of a year, and a rather rude exit. Thousands of years of hard labour, agony, loss, and joy.

Palm of wonder. 

Frequency simply cannot remove the peril or the wonder of the experience. So I don't think it's sappy to say that when a child takes her first breath outside the womb it is miraculous. Even if her plastic manger lies in a noisy ward smelling of disinfectant, staffed by toast and tea-wielding midwives instead of angels, beatifically illuminated by fluorescent strip-lights shining through some horrible hour of night.

Wondrous, even if women have always done just this.

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.