Categories: uncategorized
Tags: parenthood
Date: 02 December 2006 13:55:00
I'm balanced on a bench in the middle of the assembly hall, which throngs with annoying people. They've crammed in here for their free tea and coffee after negotiating the classrooms and corridors, where groups of pupils and over-zealous parents wait like streetgangs to pounce on anyone who hasn't yet bought a raffle ticket, or had their face painted, or sponsored a fairtrade mongoose. This is the same hall where I come every week to run the Crusaders' kids' group, and it feels pretty small if we get twenty folk at that. Today there are at least two hundred people crammed in here, and I can barely breathe. Charlie is perched on my knee, moving cyclically between bottle, dummy and winding as his screams indicate. I have proved categorically in my time with the kids' group that you CAN'T get more than five kids on one of these benches without an accident resulting, but there are ten adults on this one, and I've the elbows in my neck to prove it.
I attempt a brief conversation with one of my compatriots, a father across the table who's ended up in a similarly ludicrous situation. He's trying to read "BLUE KANGAROO" (if you have to ask you'll never know) to his little girl, who's far more interested in knocking over cups of tea. We commiserate together. This is not how either of us saw our lives panning out. Mine was going to involve a lot more speedboats. It's all very well for Shell to complain that I don't look like Daniel Craig when I take my shirt off, but there's a limit to how much resistance-training I can pursue while agreeing with endless, interchangeable mothers that Charlie is really getting bigger. Of COURSE he's getting bigger, you stupid cow! He was up five times last night to top up his milk reserves!
But of course I say none of these things. I smile and nod and if I get flirted with I no longer have the energy to respond. I just stare dully ahead.
Suddenly with a loud crack the PA system comes to life and a teacher, dressed irritatingly as Santa Claus, begins to read out the raffle results. I hate this woman more than I have ever hated anyone. I have a hard time putting my finger on it, but I'm pretty sure it's because she's dressed as Santa. Eventually I get up and wander off round the school again, which is now eerily empty as everyone flocks to the raffle.
The thing is, Rosie's having a great time. I remember things like this from my own childhoodand I can hardly deny her the genuine thrill of nabbing a ninth-hand Barbie doll for 10p. But I wonder if my own parents had a similarly sour darkness in the pits of their stomachs as they swapped cheery bollocks with the teachers and parents. Did my father grin and laugh as teachers, whose every word meant terror in the classroom, made merry yuletide chat? I want to be in solidarity with my kid: I know that these are teachers. I know that they're the enemy. But it's so hard to remember how it felt to be small. It's so much easier to grin and survive.
Out here there's still a little activity. There are new developments, of course. The Fairtrade stall is manned by the chaplain and local minister, a genuinely effective and well-liked man to whom I really ought to introduce myself, but when will I ever have the energy? I can barely keep it together for my kids some days. Is it always going to be this way? Will I simply never have the reserves of energy needed to pursue ministry? That's what I really want, but I just can't imagine it just now.
I move on and I'm collared by someone who knows Shell from elsewhere. That woman certainly gets around. This time we're invited to go and do decoupage at a special shop. I don't even know what decoupage is but I profess extraordinary levels of interest, because I just want to get away and go home. I seem to spend all my time thinking on my feet these days. I seldom enter any situation feeling ready for it. I never have enough sleep and I'm never prepared.
I think this might just be parenthood. Pouring myself out for the kids' sake. One day, probably long after I've given up on myself, I'll suddenly realise I have got through it again, and the baby is big enough to get on with stuff himself. If it's anything like it was with Rosie, I'll probably be about 34 by then. But there's no other option, really. All I can do is grab desperately at any chance of a conversation that isn't about children. I have just hungrily devoured Orwell's Homage to Catalonia and I continue to read eagerly whenever I get the chance. If I get a chance to actually talk about these things, with those of my friends who actually LISTEN, well, that's like a miracle. But it does happen. Sometimes it really does happen.
So, thanks, guys. Thanks for being there and listening to me when I've contacted you in apparent desperation, and then spent an hour with you doing nothing but lazily mull over trivia. Those are important times for me, you have no idea how important. It seemed like so little till I had kids. And now it feels like the only thing that keeps me sane.