Dear Santa, One Small Human Being Please.

It’s a time of year where reminiscing is in vogue – particularly thinking about gifts we’ve received in times gone by. I’ve been gifted some pretty gorgeous stuff in my 23 years. Tiffany bracelets, designer handbags, handwritten poems and letters (which, being the insatiable narcissist that I am, top my list of favourites). And let’s not forget that 12x7x5 inch tub of apple straws that got demolished in 24 hours and turned my toilet green for a week (no regrets). Most memorable, however, was the time we brought home a small human being.

First day together ever ever. He ate one of the flowers on my headband. My first sisterly trial.

When I was 9 years old we adopted my 1.9 year old brother. And it was THE BEST. Let’s be clear - no, I do not condone the chattelisation of children (although I’m pretty sure there were times I a) employed him as slave labour and b) threatened to sell him) and yes, I feel crass ranking a human being alongside expensive phones and bangin’ accessories. I do, however, consider him a gift and recently I’ve been considering why.

Something that’s particularly struck me this week is how having him in my life prepared me for motherhood. Our time together has taught me you can construct an elves’ wonderland out of ladies’ sanitary products, how to roll, wrap and replace a nappy during the ad break for My Parents are Aliens (a world without live pause capability?! How appallingly primitive) with 2 mins left to fix myself a Ribena cocktail and - crucially - how to eat something crazy-delicious without anyone else in the room cottoning on. I’ve mastered the art of not-chundering when a firm stool is upcycled as DIY playdough and of  keeping your cool when your toddler is breakdancing on a supermarket floor because no they can’t have a raw pork sausage to chew on. 

It's fine to use your sibling as a life-size
doll, right?

Most valuably, he has taught me how to make a game out of nothing, that properly paying attention during ‘shows’ put on by a 5 year old leaves you surprised and delighted beyond all expectation and that you should absolutely never ever underestimate the wisdom of the under-10’s. I will never forget being 15 years old and, on a whim, telling him my teenlyf drama. 8 years old, he sat perfectly quietly, patiently waited til I’d finished and then counselled me on how to handle the situation.  I kid you not, his offerings were profound.

Preach it! Further dress-up box atrocities.

So yeah. He is precious to me. And here’s a poem for y’all to read that I done wrote some years ago about the first time we met.

*Background info* It was standard practice at the adoption agency we used for children to be sent a video or scrapbook with photos of their adoptive family weeks before they met for the first time. The child has chance to learn their names, learn their faces, learn their voices  - avoiding a scenario in which they are confronted by total strangers who scoop them up and whisk them off to some alien environment. When we went to pick up my brother, the social worker opened the door to the front room of his foster home and we saw him, in the flesh, for the first time. The look of joy and recognition on his face was unreal. My mum rounded the corner and he called out “mummy!” and ran into her open arms. Those were some serious feels.

Anyway, first stanza = my experience of that event. Second stanza = how I imagine that moment from his perspective.*

Throwing shade. I taught him that.

Meeting

A door opened

and

I felt her hand, cool across my back

She ushered me in.

Arms spread eagle,

from across the room,

you call 'mummy!'.

I observed:

Amber eyes drawn wide in recognition,

pot belly propped on spindled limbs,

mouth stained with juice

flowering purple like a bruise.

Strange how swiftly the heart adapts.

You moved closer

to me,

smiling as if already belonging.

Funny how you were the one

claiming my mother for your own

and yet I felt like the thief.

And yet, I felt like the thief -

claiming your mother for my own.

Funny how you were the one

smiling as if already belonging

to me.

You moved closer.

Strange how swiftly the heart adapts

flowering purple like a bruise.

Mouth stained with juice,

pot belly propped on spindled limbs,

amber eyes drawn wide in recognition,

I observed

you call Mummy

from across the room.

Arms spread eagle,

she ushered me in.

I felt her hand, cool across my back

and

a door opened.

Buddies til the end. 

11 Completely Obnoxious Things People Think it’s Fine to Say

Next time someone throws one of these at you, give them a punch in the appendix from me.


1. “Your face will stay like that if the wind changes!”

Thanks for the heads up, but that’s genuinely just my face…

2. "Cheer up love, it's not that bad!"

Is that so? What if my entire family has just been wiped out in a freak explosion? What if I’ve just been diagnosed with an incurable lymphoma? What if I’ve accidentally just deleted an unwatched episode of Downton Abbey from my SkyPlanner and it’s no longer available on catch-up?! TROT ON PAL.

3. "You're with him? You can do better. You should leave him for me."

Oh my gosh you’re right, I totally sold out marrying a hilarious, 6’4, dark haired, green eyed doctor who loves me unconditionally. Let’s go back to your mould-ridden shared student room and live the dream.

4. "You're with him? You've done alright for yourself haven't you!"

+5 points for appreciating my husband’s awesomeness. -5 points for implying he’s out of my league.

5. "I'm not ordering any food, I'll just have some of yours."

We are no longer friends.

6. "You putting a face on before you go out?"

Honey, I could go out wearing a mask of raw turkey giblets and I would still be the most fabulous piece in the place.

7. "Your kids were born so close together. Was the second one planned?"

Seriously, what am I supposed to say to this? “No ‘the second one’ was an awful surprise. Ideally we would have terminated, but by the time we found out I was pregnant he’d passed his abort-by date’? Mind yo business.

8."You be careful with that baby!"

So glad you said something. I totes forgot that holding my son by the ankle and swinging him lassoo-style round my head is frowned upon as a burping technique.

9. "You look so skinny! Well done you!"

No doubt this is completely well intentioned, but was my post-pregnancy size 12 physique really so repellent? Yikes.

10. "We both know the only reason you won't go on a date with me is because you're afraid of how attracted you are to me."

Wow. That’s me busted. I think it’s your humility and concrete grasp of reality that I find most irresistible.

11. "Bet you're a real dirty bunny. I can tell."

Oh you. Nothing charms a lady quite like telling her she gives off a major skank vibe.

Any to add? Share with the class and we'll seethe together.

Scrambled Eggs

If spending time around old people has taught me anything, it’s that the best way to make friends is to publicise unpleasant medical anecdotes about yourself. In the spirit of that philosophy, here are two things that happened to me this week:

1. My ovary decided to make like Chubby Checker on a rockin’ summer’s eve and do the twist like it’s never done before. If we’re going to get technical about things, it was more of a rip than a twist - but either way, it left me becoming overly acquainted with our living room carpet and contemplating how appalling my doctor husband is for refusing to sly off shots of morphine for our personal pharameutical stash (something about being “professional” and “not a criminal”). 

As I lay in my hospital robo-bed, I found myself considering the increasingly tenuous likelihood of us having additional children. I’m already firing on two slightly dodgy cylinders (due to a longstanding medical thingy) and so the hours I spent sandwiched between a chronic vomiter and a shower-shy gastric patient were also spent disappearing into thoughts about the circumstances surrounding our production-line baby-making of the past two years. And yus, I appreciate that sounds like I spent 36 hours thinking about sex with my husband.

Am I misguided in thinking that most people in their late teens/early twenties feel an innate need to rebel? I’ll admit, this was a driver for me. The enduring obstacle for this generation, however, is this: how do you rebel in a society which actively encourages their youth to get wrecked, sleep around, play around with any chemical going and drop off the planet for months on a time? I’ll tell you how. You find a respectable husband with a decent job, you postpone your graduation to have babies and you get yourself a mortgage in a quiet countryside town. You go full 1950’s on those suckers. Getting married at 21 was my (admittedly polite) two fingers up at societal expectations. In the life I’ve chosen, the only spontaneous ‘sleeping around’ I’m doing is dropping off on the journey home from church. The only line I’ve ever cut is the one for the toilet at Tesco's.

Having established that innate brattishness was key to my decision to start a family at 21, there’s also no getting around the whole ‘I did it because God told me to do it’ thing. I know that for those of you who consign the notion of God to the same ‘file of asinine’ as the Tooth Fairy and Tory manifesto promises, ‘the voice in my head(heart?) told me to do it’ is a ludicrous premise for bringing children into the world. But I’m cool with that. All I know is that when I prioritise what I feel I should do over what I impulsively desire to do, things work out. Whether that’s deciding to have children early on, or that time I felt to drag my backside out of bed and turn on the light before taking a swig of my bedside water (allowing me to discover the dead Aragog lapping gently against the rim). 

I don’t know how this recent ovarian incident will affect the landscape of our future family. What I do know, is that I’m glad we followed that ‘prompting’ to not hang around. Both of our boys were freaky anomalies (our youngest's existence being in the zero point something per cents of likelihood). I’ll have the whole of the rest of my life to travel the world, to have a kickass career, to party until 5 am - but perhaps just this small window in which to experience having a biological child. Honestly, I seriously believe there is an intelligence greater than mine with a perspective than dwarves my own. If I can tap into that, then why wouldn’t I?

So yuh. All in all, this has not been a horrendous week. My toddler drew on my Mulberry shoulderbag and thanks to my recent ponderings I didn’t even cry. Plus I got to take home this nifty little number.

Visit my youtube page for an easy craft tutorial on how you can waterproof your own stylish bedpan trilby using three nappy bags and a pack of chewed up Hubba Bubba!

P.S Anecdote 2 to follow later. I know you can’t wait to hear more about my exploding ovaries.