As a mother of a two year old who hungrily absorbs and repeats most of what she hears around her, I have been reflecting further on something that bothered me many years ago - the content of stories and songs for children. When I pause and listen to the words of nursery rhymes that are passed on almost unconsciously from generation to generation and across cultures, I wonder at how they have endured so steadfastly. Sometimes political, often nonsensical, and frequently just plain bizarre, they are a bemusing part of our cultural heritage. But the thing I notice most is that these nursery rhymes simply don’t have much ‘substance’; there is rarely a message that is meaningful for a small person. I remember Michael Macintyre’s joke that the only advice we can glean from Humpty Dumpty is ‘don’t sit on a wall if you’re an egg’. No doubt it’s the rhythm and accompanying movements that seem to appeal most to adults and children alike, but it made me wonder why a good tune and a good message can’t go hand in hand.
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This is my humble sequel to ‘A Perfectly-Far-From-Perfect Birth Story’ - a piece I wrote two years ago after my first child was born - and is rather more a collection of postnatal reflections than a birth story per se. Narratives have their place, but sometimes it is the thoughts that come afterwards that are most helpful to the mind and heart. To start with, as I tap away with my baby girl clamped to my front like a koala, I have been struggling to find the right adjectives for this birth. ‘Beautiful’ is used liberally nowadays, it seems, for anything raw, truthful, impressive - even when not aesthetically pleasing to the senses or mind. So maybe I can use ‘beautiful’. A few others that spring to mind but also don’t quite fit are ‘surreal’, ‘poignant’, ‘clinical’, and - dare I admit it - ‘traumatic’. This birth was certainly intense, but I must be honest to both myself and others in admitting that the circumstances were spectacularly undesirable. |
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