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.
1 Comment
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. I realised, after my friends started having children, that our conversations were different. They had all the zeal of intention from before - to share, to discuss, to analyse - but somehow they didn’t seem to bloom in the same way. I’m not referring to the content, but more to the lifespan and completion of a conversation. After my own daughter began to move and demand a little more of my attention than nursing or gurgling as I chatted away, I began to understand. Interruptions from little ones are sometimes sweet and lispy like the first patterings of rain at a picnic, and sometimes boisterous and unsettling like a thunderclap. But they are all a little frustrating because they interrupt the flow of something else which, at that moment, holds your focus more. Of course, my friends and I all accepted that it was simply more difficult now to have meaningful or prolonged conversations when the children were there. We began to ‘postpone’ them to evening phone calls and visits, when we were often tired but longing for some stretches of listening and talking in adult proportions. This is no revelation to anyone with young children, or to anyone trying to have a conversation with someone with young children. It’s fine, it’s a phase, and even a privilege. The revelation to me was that this pattern of interruption was possibly the most exhausting thing about motherhood.
Pregnancy with my second child has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s all relative, of course, and some may read this and wonder at how easy life must have been for me if this was hard. Some others may automatically want to remind me that this is ‘nothing’ compared to having two small children, or having three or four or five. But the fact is, it has been extremely challenging for me, and I’m sure in no small part due to having moved countries immediately before and to experiencing pregnancy through the hottest months of a Mediterranean summer. I have a lot more awareness now of respecting each person’s journey with motherhood, and not trying to compare or rank levels of intensity. For some, one child pushes them to their ‘full capacity’; for others, having ten or more children isn’t massively stressful. The thing is, we don’t need to remind each other that someone else has it harder or that your own situation is very ‘doable’ - we each have our own strengths and limitations. Motherhood will simply bear it’s own unique fruit for each person.
Princesses are an interesting subject. I have come to realise that there are apparently two distinct camps in real life and not just in fairytales: the adoring subjects and the hostile opponents. In the first camp are the parents and their little girls who relish the stories, the images, the songs, the dresses - indeed any kind of product stamped with a princess - and are attracted to them like magpies to jewels. They are loyal adherents to princesses, and certainly see nothing harmful in them. And in the second are the parents who battle this imagery on a daily basis and cultivate a strong contempt for all things ‘princess’. These are the parents who wince at princesses on cereal boxes and at birthday parties, and believe that these sylph-like figures stand for all the wrong things.
I’ve learned a lot from a friend of mine, and I wanted to share some of the thoughts and inspiration that have grown out of conversations with her. She is one of the most conscious, truth-seeking mothers I’ve encountered. She thinks about everything from the impact of her words on her child every day, to the benefits of magnesium salts in his bath. She has made some very difficult decisions concerning the health and education of her child, and all of them have been weighed carefully - according to spiritual principles and in consultation with others. And yet, despite this heightened consciousness, she is the least judgmental person I know. She once told me that she will never judge another mother’s choices because she knows from experience that almost every single thing she herself ‘thought she would do’ she has had to reevaluate/not do - and do some of those things she thought she never would. Motherhood has been a profoundly humbling experience for her, and as a result, she genuinely feels she has no right to judge another parent’s decisions.
|
|