#8 On Cherry-Picking Your Child's Genes

                              

                      Looks, personality, the lot...which genes would we choose and what does it say about us...?




Ever tried to imagine what someone's house looks like before you're due to make your first visit? It never really works, does it? The eventual reality always makes the fantasy just that: weird and dreamlike. It's a bit like that when we birth children. Due to genetics, of course, even if we find out the gender beforehand ninety-nine percent of the actual outcome, subject to infinite possible combinations, will always be a surprise. 

That said, I've still enjoyed a bit of timewast-y pondering as much as the next woman, especially with my son (my first). Have I ever got anything right in my musings? Well...

With Son we started this on a physical level. We'd expected a child with my husband's dark Asian genes and sure enough, out popped a little coffee-coloured babe with black hair. So far so good, we thought, until a week later the 'tan' had shown itself to be jaundice, the hair had thinned and receded and he'd developed some pronounced baby acne. In short, a pimply Phil Collins was what stared back at us. Well, for that time at least.

But I'm being so shallow, I thought. Let me turn my musings to his character. How might that turn out? Let's see: if we could cherry pick some genes, we'd see that daddy's skills are largely quite lucrative where mummy's are not; Daddy gets Maths and Science, Mummy...not so much. Mummy can do languages...there, have languages.

In truth, the jury's still out on the academic stuff. He's only two and a half. For now, what I can say is that other traits from both us parents have over time reared their ugly heads emerged.  Our predictions have been mocked once again.

Here's what we found: 

What you hope for	What you get
1. His father's special bond with numbers	An obsession with the number 8. He either delights in pointing it out wherever he sees it, or has it feature in bad dreams where he's unhappily squealing its name (no, really). Odd.
2. A sense of attentiveness and willingness to listen.	Not sure what I was thinking here, since I'm not particularly gifted at this either. At best Son's listening is selective, swung heavily in favour of words concerning nice times and sweet things, obviously. Less nice words from us go totally unheard. Allegedly.  Then, he will happily start repeating back to us stuff we've said months earlier, often not intended for his ears (you know, swear words, insults we've muttered at other drivers when driving, etc). But this gets worse as you will see below.
3. Intelligence, keenness, a love of learning.  Brains, basically.	Smart-arsedness. Yes, he 'gets' consequences after all, though likes to turn it all back on us. Often recently have our angry words and expressions been met with his sing-song 'OK, I time out' whereupon he cheerily pops himself atop The Chair of Absolute Punishment. What a fear factor it clearly has.
4. Compliance	Not on your life, unless bribed. Heavily and on his terms. You’ve seen point #3.
OK then, if he won’t lie down and take orders, maybe it’s due to...  5. Calm Self-Confidence, a sense of Dignity...	Indignance, smart-arsedness (see above) and, er, despotism. In a recent fun game, Son opts for some role-play: ' time out, mummy!' so I awkwardly play along, sitting where told and pretending to cry. Feeling a creeping sense of inappropriateness, I break role and get up to make myself a cup of tea, only to be told 'No! Sit there! I told you sit there!'  A-ha, I think, here again do you show those excellent listening skills, coupled with a talent for observational comedy. See point #2.
OK, none of the above have really gone to plan. Let's at least go for comedy, then: 6. A child who is Amusing and Good Company.	A huge showoff who plays to laughs, especially when it's inappropriate. Not only does he repeat dodgy stuff we've said, he often does it with the gusto of the performer: one friend of ours still has the video footage of Son repeating the word 'MENTAL' over and over, with a delighted eyeballing of each audience member and a volume that matches the increasing laughs.
7. Sensitivity (to others) and empathy	A drama queen - sensitive to himself, at least - with a talent for pathos. This is the boy who likes to cry into the mirror and perfect the delivery of his tears.

So can we ever know what kind of a child we will have, and can we ever prepare for it? Forewarned is forearmed, surely. 

Well maybe, but it's complicated. We need to reconcile ourselves with the levels of denial first. On a simple level, this involves just the relationship with our child. When I discipline Son I often need to suppress how bloody funny and endearing his behaviour often is. What may not be predictable/eradicable can at least be forgivable. And that's OK. In fact, it's good: Mother Nature has ensured Son's survival because I don't throttle him. 

But wait, there's more. Someone I know was recently pulled up at work for not towing the line. He was told he was argumentative, dismissive and unmanageable. Now these are harsh words to hear, but even harsher when drawing an uncomfortable conclusion: 

'Shit, you know what? That's my son.'

For all we now know about genetics, there is no softening to the blow of seeing ourselves in our children and vice-versa. And dammit, the more Husband and I ponder the list above, the more of a mirror it becomes to our attempts to deny or euphemise our own flaws. Our tots' lives play out at times like a satire of our own. In my case, this is no more true than with points #6 and #7 above. Sigh. 

Prediction is possible, then, but it involves some awkward admissions first.

However, maybe more important than this is acceptance, since acceptance of our children really needs an acceptance of ourselves. OK, Nature, I get it, but is this all simply a lesson about the cold light of day? Well, no. As with everything child-related, everything we discover deepens our appreciation of our own parents, and our connection with them (er, Mum, you know that thing I used to do, how did you manage it...?) and, what's more, of course, with various relatives and ancestors. The mirror becomes one between us and generations below, above and beyond, however charming or charmless the common traits may be. 


So, if we can't cherry-pick from this family tree then at least we can connect with many far-flung parts of it through our genes. And perhaps, most importantly, the familiar can be as comforting as it can be uncomfortable. 

That's what I tell myself, anyway.


Erica 

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#7 On Double Mother's Day- An Open Letter To My Children

Don't get my wrong, my two children are not yet literate. Their combined age is not even two-and-a-half. Since it is Mother's Day (or Mothering Sunday- sorry, Olde English sticklers) I write this for a time when they will truly appreciate what a mother is and does; in short, a time when they have become parents themselves. 

What's more, our understanding of what it's like to have extra and subsequent babies will increase our grasp of our parents' own similar experience, as I have my parents'. And what an experience: in such a family efficiency and corner-cutting mean that what was done for the first-born may well be done more shabbily, or not at all, for the next newborn. Even for the firstborn there will now be many compromises that were not there before.

But you know what? I hope that in my case they'll see me not as half a mother to each of them, but a Double Mother who they love not despite but because of these cut corners, as I see my own mum. 

All this stuff will have been character building, kids, do you hear? 

.....Here goes.

Dear Daughter (currently four weeks old), 

I hope you understand that second time around (and, if relevant, subsequent times thereafter), we are basically more relaxed than we were with your brother, as follows:

1) Physically, you see, we treated him like a delicate chick, always held carefully in two hands. However you are more of a chinchilla, often carried floppily in or on one hand. This happens a lot when I need to wipe your baby vom off your and neck and the back of your head (how the hell...)

2) Your brother was attended to at all times; you I often leave lying lost in the middle of my bed, on the sofa, wherever. Only when I eventually remember I left you there do I return, to find you scrabbling about like a little woodlouse on its back. 

3) Breastfeeding is no longer a sedentary, even stationary, activity for me. Oh no. I often feed you in motion when making a cup of tea, trying to dress your wriggling brother, brushing my teeth, even (sigh) nipping for a wee. I like to think of this a homage to more traditional cultures. I also like to think that I have drawn the line at answering the door in this state, though I can't completely remember.

4) Baby massage? You'll be lucky. 

5) Upon re-entering the house, I sometimes leave you asleep in the car seat for a few minutes. And maybe a couple more minutes. You don't seem to mind this as you stay asleep, despite the position of your head being at a curious right angle to your neck and body. This happened with your brother, too, except the guilt and Safety First concerns ate us up much sooner. 

6) Finally, your nappy is not changed with anywhere near the previous frequency. With Huggies and the like, The Thin Blue Line of wetness once signalled mayday. Now: no way! Sometimes you don't get changed until your loincloth has swelled up like a bouyancy aid, usually because I haven't wanted to wake you up.

Please forgive me love me all the more for all this,

Your Mum xxx

Dear Son (now two years, three months)

You can probably glean from the above the  more focused, one-one-one treatment you received as our firstborn. But since your sister has now come along things have changed a little for you too, haven't they? For example:

1) Your nappies may once merely have flirted with soiled-ness before being whipped away. Now, at night time, desperate not to wake you, we leave you be. In fact, we are reminded only of our laxness when we come back to your room to check on you and are strangled, upon re-entering, by the sweet fog of a petting zoo. You sleep happily, though, so we still think it's for the best.

2) Not remembering your own infancy, you have a new fascination with breastfeeding. You are now of the opinion that should you squeeze your own tiny nipples, they may at some point help to nurse your sister. If, upon reading this in adulthood, you still require me to explain this concept more fully, I will be happy to do so. 

3) We now allow more screen time than the government recommended dose. Have you seen the amount of TV I watched as a kid? You'll be...fine.

So remember, my children, next time you show brilliance or resilience, think of your mother and how she crafted you in this way. On Father's Day, you can pretty much apply any of this to your dear father (except maybe point #3 of the first section). 

And if you can't do that, then at least know that upon having two tots, the fun times for us have definitely not halved. 

Love, Your Mum xxx

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You Have The Right to Remain Silent: # 6 Upon Your Choice of Child Name

Please excuse the delay in getting this blog out; this little character announced her arrival two weeks ago...

I really like my name. I'm pretty sure I always have. Lots of people haven't, however, or didn't around the time of my birth. Interestingly, they felt the need to say this to my mum.

In the early 80s Emily, Charlotte and the usual chart toppers were reigning supreme as much as they still seem to now (less so Anne but then she always was the slightly less awesome Bronte sister). So Mum tried to do what I since have sought to: call her baby a more unusual name. And as so often with all things baby, the various responses to both of our choices came thick and fast; some positive but of course some negative. 

Why negative, though? I remember being struck, even as a kid, by how rude I thought it was that anyone would openly feel the need to disapprove of your choice, whether that same name belonged to some imbecile they once knew or whether it just wasn't their cup of tea. The issue here is not how those people feel; I don't think anyone - me included- can claim that they haven't disliked someone else's baby name idea for either reason (and I'm always utterly convinced of how very right my opinions are). But there is public and private dislike, surely, and to tell someone you didn't like their choice would be like telling them you thought their outfit was ugly.  And for us English, this would be unspeakably rude. 

Or would it? It was during my first pregnancy that I mused over this parallel and considered that the cheek of the comment lay not so much in its openness as in its timing. That is, was it a comment made during the time of choosing (while pregnant / in the changing room) or once the choice was irreversible (some time after the naming / after the purchase)? 

It was here that I remembered fashion guru Gok Wan, no less. His shiny nugget of wisdom is this: when clothes shopping, always do it alone. Seek no-one's opinion because you know what you like and what suits you and, pre-purchase, you don't need friends clogging up the changing room trying to convince you otherwise. Not only that, post-purchase with you wearing said outfit/item, nobody would be a big enough arsehole to tell you that it looked foul upon you, for what good could possibly come of that? Needless to say if they did say this, well, then an arsehole they surely were and where you went from there would be your call.*

Ah Gok, the reach of your advice knows no bounds. 

I was much heartened by this nugget, since once or twice I myself had made the mistake of spilling the name beans when people had asked about my bump. Well, no more. By the end of that first pregnancy, Husband and I had decided to adopt Gok's philosophy and it has been empowering ever since. 

So: 

Don't tell people before the birth: if you like the name then why should you care what they think or, worse, be made to have second thoughts? 

Only tell them after: they have the right to an opinion but they also have the right to remain silent, which they should exercise unless

a) their comments are positive
b) they are an arsehole
c) they are a close friend/confidante/mentor with whom this kind of candidness is acceptable, even desirable (though you both should still double check the criteria for b) before proceeding)
d) they are someone who mistakes themselves for c) when they are in fact b).

Someone told me recently that upon using Gok's advice with her own baby's naming, her mother still retorted: 'you've called her that? Well I don't like that name.' 

A note about d) people: they are often relatives. Let's face it, if this sounds familiar then this aspect of your relationship is probably the least of your worries. 

And not even Gok can help you with that one.

Erica

*I added that last sentence myself, though I'm sure it's what Gok himself would conclude in a nice way.

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#5 Seven Gifts and Trinkets for Children...Which Suck

Playdoh: a genius classic, or designed to torture parents? 

I've just realised that writing the title 'gifts and trinkets for children THAT suck' could have been a little more ambiguous. 


Good thing I checked myself before I wrecked myself. 

So enough time has now passed since Christmas for me to draw some strong, lucid conclusions as to which children's gifts are actually more of a curse. 

Now before I go any further, do not mistake this for being a blog about toys that are unsafe for children, or that children do not like. Oh no, these feelings of anguish concern themselves only with The Chief Put-Away-er, or floor scrubber, or whomever. In this case that would mostly be me. Indeed you will see many toys below which Son positively raves about; I just like to think that he only gets to haul them out with my approval.

Except when I'm really tired.

Or it's a really rainy day.

Anyway...

1) Play Doh

Read: Play D'oh. 

Yes, like I said, this list may contain children's 'classics' and this item is no exception. Son loves  to get his box off the shelf and take out all the little tubs of this stuff, squawking in frustration as he needs me to actually squeeze it out of said tubs. Now I have to say, playing with it does occupy him for quite some time which, as we know, is No Small Thing. He has a machine where you put it in one end and it splurges out the other; he has little plastic mould- cases where you shove the playdoh in and, upon reopening, take out a cool dinosaur or superhero shape. I can see the attraction.

This is all well and good but it's just the goddam mess. I know, I know, toddlers make mess, but this is some next-level shit.  Forget the fact that its colour integrity has vanished upon very first use since it soon becomes a murky, hodge-podge ball of primary hues. It's that upon trying to tidy this stuff away, you are faced with one or any combination of the following:


All over the table, or more likely, your floor: the little poos of mice on acid, i.e. tiny roll-y bits of rainbow pastry that defy being picked up by adult fingers. In fact, nimble toddler fingers are ideal for this task yet strangely Son seems to disagree.
Indeed if they are not picked up immediately:  hard old mouse droppings which are of no use ever again, OR
Little flattened discs that have been trodden upon and that you have to scrape off the floor with a knife. Even if you succeed in this part, some dull shape forever remains to mock you where the play doh has been, with the ridges of said knife still in it if you're lucky. OR...
Worse still, wodges that have been trodden into your carpet, flattened forever like chewing gum into your shag.

 This concludes my discussion of playdoh.

2) Most children's fridge magnets. Again, Son delights in faffing about with these animals, numbers, letters. However my issue with them is twofold:

• They often fall off the fridge and end up kicked underneath, gathering fur and grease until the next decade when the fridge gets moved. Now you could say that this happens to ANY fridge magnets, however:
• Kids' magnets are pathetic as magnets. This is my chief complaint. If they're going to sit on the fridge door, they can at least prop up my electrician's phone number, a postcard or, more sweetly, Son's finger paintings. But they cannot hold up jack and fall down if you even try to put a piece of loo paper between them and the metal surface. Thus begins the fate that I mentioned above. Useless.

3) Most noisy children's toys. Particularly ones with tunes. If you have ever bought one of these for a child, it is very likely that you do not have children. Be aware that upon reception of such an item, most parents immediately reach for the miniature phillips screwdriver they got from a cracker and set about removing the batteries. 

** Now I may have misled you slightly into believing that I have never bought any such gifts for children. Logical though this may be, it is untrue. I believe I have bought all of the above on various occasions, I just seem to think how awesome a gift they'd be for the child and forget about the parent. This may be the point of buying children's gifts, I hear you cry, but do not forget that on tricky days when Son is being less than compliant, it is the parents' friendship / tea / wine / tequila I will need. 

However, in my stupid quest to be a Great Host-Mum at my son's birthday party, I am as likely as anyone to shove the following into party bags that took me about eight hours to prepare:



4) Whistles. Read the above on noisy toys.



5) Tiny tubs of playdoh. Nuff said. OR chalk or crayons for decorating Farrow and Ball walls.



6) Cheap chocolates that make dog chocs taste like Lindt. Well, the e-number high and crash is not something the host will have to deal with, so that's all good. 



7) Large bubble-dips, you know, the long, thin ones with fairy liquid in where the kids blow the bubbles out through the weird oval ring. Except a) Not only does your toddler yelp with anger at not being able to do this and thus force you to do it, b) they insist upon doing this inside and c) upon any hard floor, they manage to spill the solution so that it forms slippery blobs for you to slide about on, like invisible banana skins. 



Ideally, next Christmas / birthday party we would never see any of these things again. But let's face it, perhaps among us parents there is an element of schadenfreude to all gift/trinket-buying and I'll treat the above more like a handy shopping list. 



Erica 


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#4 On Being Overdue: Ughhhh

                                               Overdue and over it: maybe you handle this better than me. Well, I'm going to moan anyway.

I am not overdue. Hell, it's a few weeks until I am even due.

HOW. EVER.

I am still preparing myself for this stage, since last time I seem to remember it getting on my tits somewhat. So that and one or two other reasons have prompted me to write this pre-emptive note, as follows:

1) An overseas friend recently texting me to say 'Overdue. Ugh.' She's actually had the baby by now. That said, being overdue and over it is something I and may other women can relate to, and it's pretty hard to imagine for anyone else.

2) The mental ballache: having a few weeks to go, you already start to focus on the Due Date as a real D-Day. So like any other major date in your diary, your mind almost separates other upcoming plans, thoughts and events into two  distinct zones on a timeline: things happening before and things happening after. OK, this time round I am already trying to be more realistic/  less timeline-y. But the last time, upon hearing that all my mum's babies had been early, I even considered that it might happen two weeks sooner.

Now statistically this is not crazy, but you can guarantee how likely this expectation would be blown out of the water. The actual result? A tedious, painful, three-point-five week wait since Son was actually nine days over. What's more, the podgy little sod was just getting bigger and heavier in there and would be tricky to get out.

And he, er, was.

3) The physical ballache: already I feel all this. Yes, there's the rolling around from one piece of furniture to another like Dame Barbara Cartland / a giant pupa. There is, of course, the turgid ache of a lump stuck on the front of you; the leg cramps that seize and freeze up your calves in the dead of night so that you have to get up and walk around and / or furiously thump the muscle like a butcher tenderising a fillet. Yes, yes, there's all of that.

But what I've also found hard again is the frequent tendency, upon sitting down even for a second, for cement to start chugging through your veins, taking its sweet time circumnavigating the ass area before moving onto anywhere else. And never more so than when you are overdue.  And nobody else will ever truly understand this. Which brings me on to my next point...

2) I need to mentally prepare myself for Other People, i.e. those who have not been through it, who really have no idea how this all feels. So cue my tired seething when well-meaning* folk start prodding me on Facebook going 'Oi, where's this baby then? Ha ha.'

Ha ha.

Ha ha. Last time Old Git here couldn't even bring myself to respond, because what do you actually say? 'No, not yet- soon I hope! "+ smiley / awkward face emoji (Oh I'm so sorry, are you getting impatient too? You poor sausage).

Or better still, 'Oh crap, yes. Shit, so sorry I completely forgot to let anyone know. Our two-week-old is just bouncing and well. Thanks for reminding me!' Come on, Other People, have a think for a mo.

3) The self-image. Yes, yes, Aesop told us that vanity is foolishness. But Aesop didn't grow a bloody baby, did he. Why just the other day, Son was typically bullying me out of bed by tugging at my wrists- 'get up, Mummy.' So I swung my legs around to sit on the edge of the bed and, sadly, face head-on the mirrored wardrobe. 

With my weary, simpering look at my son, my flaccid frame as my shoulders slouched towards the mirror; it struck me how like a mummy orang-utan I looked. Gaumless and formless: ah, nature is beautiful. Now hurry up, nature, and do your sodding work speeding this birth along. No woman should have to go on like this.

So there's being positive and all that, but that can sod off. For now. Sometimes a good old moan works wonders.

However, on a more positive / productive note, I thought I might do something for women who might need a bit more entertaining, those for whom a mere moan is not enough. So I've included a wee crossword to get your brain cells sizzling (see this pdf and hell, print it off if you're really keen)

Adios,

Erica


*I say this with some irritation, given that I don't think I've ever met a truly evil person who didn't mean well. Therefore for 'well-meaning' please read 'irksome / meddlesome.'

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#3 Nursery Rhymes: WTF?!

#3 Nursery Rhymes: WTF?!

                                      What's a mum to do when dealing with a crying wee one? Are nursery rhymes the answer? Well, maybe not...

English songs and rhymes for children, eh: a trip down a hazy memory lane, where in singing/ reciting them I connect with my son and in doing so connect with my own mother and grandmother before me.  They are often set to sweet and catchy musical notes (many actually being some slight rip-off of Mozart’s ‘Twinkle Twinkle’) and they can excite and unite children in one playful chorus, or be used to lull a little one into gentle sleep. They are magical.

Or, er, not.

So it goes like this. Recently I’m surprising myself by remembering so many of these childhood rhymes by heart (from some untapped part of my brain- weird) in the company of my mum.  For this reason, Mum sends me for Christmas a collection of the old Ladybird Nursery Rhymes from 1965-66, illustrated in glowing colour by Frank Hampson (of Dan Dare fame, no less). Battered and faded as these Ebay finds are, I delight in flicking through them, having all the rhymes throb at me from the pages in their large, unmistakeable, Ladybird font. A nostalgic fuzz comes over me upon revisiting all the old pictures.

Their endless blue skies! 

Their chocolate-box-village scenes!  

I revel in their Enid Blyton purity. 

Only hang on, I then think. Illustrations aside, some of these rhymes are a bit bloody odd, to say the least. For now, we’ll pretend to be adult and accept that word meanings have no doubt changed since the Olden Days, so titles like ‘Wee Willie Winkie’ and ‘I love little pussy’ might once have attained an innocence that they wouldn’t now.

But then take 'Rock-a-Bye Baby'. This is an innocuous title, surely. To soothe my own newborn son, I remember humming the gentle, waltzing melody to him, then dipping into the words. 'Ahh, a baby in a treetop, how fanciful,' I mused while singing them and sniffing my son's sweet, sweaty little head.

And then I found myself at the bit where the bough breaks and the cradle falls and I didn't feel like quite such a soother. That is, unless a bonsai were the tree in question, I'm assuming that any tree strong enough to hold a cradle would be of deadly height should the occupant fall from its top. This un-soothed me a great deal, if not my infant audience.

It's no wonder that this was the tune of choice old Momma Fratelli sang to her own deformed offspring, Sloth, in The Goonies. Remember why he was deformed? She'd taken the lyrics to this lullaby quite literally, though 'I only dropped you once' she tries to reassure him.

Yet these cases could at least be foolish accidents, I think. Tragedies born of poor risk assessment and nothing sinister, even for Momma Fratelli on this occasion. Here also springs to mind the tale of poor Jack and Jill, children whose honest task of fetching water is thwarted by their own accident prone-ness and results in severe head injuries which, forgive the cynic in me, seem unlikely fixed by the materials on offer. Nonetheless, no malice is at play here.

 But less innocent than any of these cases is 'There was an old woman who lived in a shoe’ who, we are told, 'had so many children she didn’t know what to do'. Now I have myself just one child and another imminent. I can sympathise with the old girl, to say the least. Worse, in her case there is actually a multitude of dependants all cramped together with her in a very, very bizarre living space. Stressful times must abound. Indeed, feeding them all must be a nightmare, so sure enough she gives them 'some broth without any bread'. Possibly, I ponder, she could also be trying to curb their gluten intake, or perhaps some of the poor souls have some allergies I don’t know about. However, right after this we are told she then 'whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed'.  While I can understand wanting to unleash such mediaeval whoop-ass on a child at times, I can't help but think she's taking this all a bit far.  Poor social services and government housing may be partly to blame, but the malice in her conduct is pretty brutal nonetheless.

And it's not as if the illustrator, born in more modern times, hasn't picked up on all this. In his jolly images, poor old Frank Hampson in the 1960s does his best to soften the blow; in ‘Rock- a- Bye Baby’ we see two little girls - presumably the baby's underaged carers- standing beneath the tree holding up a sheet between them to catch the wee plummeteer. With the old woman, the children lining up for a whipping are actually meeting a more depersonalised sanction since it is an ingenious wooden whipping machine,  and not their ancient carer herself, that is about to unleash the fury. What's more, they are wearing cushions on their behinds to absorb the wallop. Genius! I think. Nobody gets hurt! The baby is caught and the line of waiting whippees will feel but a light whump.

Attachment parenting it is not, but in Frank's world everyone goes home tickety-boo.

Yet there's still a slightly sour taste in my mouth. This is because, memorable though Hampson's art has become in its own right – and the recent, ironic use of his images in adult greeting cards and Ladybird-parody books is testament to this - it is still the songs and their dodgy lyrics which are remembered most and trotted out in nurseries around the world. And they no doubt jar with many others besides me.

So what is the meaning of all this, then? Why take sweet, catchy little ditties intended for infants and taint them with fatal injury, corporal punishment, hapless attempts to save a smashed skull with glaringly ineffectual materials?

Well, I’m a massive nerd (read: English Lit graduate and now English teacher) so what nerds tend to do at these times is start researching all this stuff as they want answers.

On one level, as a teacher I’m vaguely aware that many fairy tales, intended for slightly older children, are cautionary and contain moral messages, though to avoid being too rambly I might leave this one for another post. On a less-informed level, from what I can guess at this point nursery rhymes often feature royals and noblefolk (‘Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary’, ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’, ‘Humpty Dumpty’, etc) and the childlikeness of the rhyming/ rhythm (ahem, sorry – metre) /tune combo –  if there is a tune -  is in fact deceptive. That is, in the times when nursery rhymes came about, not only was speaking out against the authorities considered treason, the rather huge lack of democracy meant that such complaints were actually far more angry and rife than they are now. 

No, really.

So, having your life ruined by an unelected power? Bad. Having your head removed? Perhaps worse. 

Thus the solution: bitch about it, but disguise it well; hide the incriminating stuff in the most unlikely place (think Walter White stashing his ill-gotten gains behind the loose panel in the nursery).

This makes sense to a point, since these rhymes do poke fun at some sort of idiocy, at least as far as we can see Humpty’s ‘great fall’ and York’s military direction of his soldiers so fumbled as to leave them ‘neither up nor down.’ Maybe this could even be a cautionary tale of what happens if you let power simply be handed down, to be inherited by idiots.

However, to return to ‘Rock a Bye Baby’ and ‘the old woman’ it’s a lot less clear what the bloody hell could be going on. There’s no obvious reference to a named, famous figure as such. Worse, though: can children in either rhyme really be seen as deserving of the accidents or punishments that befall them? You’ll notice it’s much harder to jump to the defence of stupid dukes or clumsy eggs.

Now I’m nearly 32 weeks pregnant so in two months or so I’m going to need an arsenal of strategies to once again calm a crying newborn. What’s a mum to do? The solution, you could argue, could be not to worry about the nursery rhymes with no tunes for now, so we needn’t even worry about the old woman in the shoe. And ‘Rock-a-Bye Baby?’ Why not just sing the tune and leave out the words if I find them too much? Well, the thing is I tried that but this felt wronger still: stripped of its lyrics, the quietly hummed melody felt far too reminiscent of a Stephen King film for my liking, not to mention the hummer herself cutting quite a menacing figure, bouncing her tot in the pitch darkness with a desperate rhythm and mad, wide-eyed glare.

 I wonder if there is any way this rhyme can be saved.

Well, my work is now cut out for me and I’ve got plenty of reading to do. Trust me to ruin things for myself in areas where other people would just surrender to the silliness, accept the inexplicable if they even cared about it. One thing’s for sure, though; one of my favourite rhymes to this day looks like it might entail a lot less work. In fact, if we want to decode it it already contains both a (potentially important) person’s name and some sense of finger-wagging moral message: against the cad and womaniser. I give you:

Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie

What an introduction. I love him already.

                Kissed the girls and made them cry;

Lock up your daughters! A heartbreaker is on the loose. He’s a git, for sure, but our love of gits like 007 and Don Draper sadly flies in the face of attempts to be feminist or sensible (sigh). Well, it does for me, anyway. I can’t help it; I’d often rather invite a git round to dinner as he’s the one who’d make a game of Cards Against Humanity more memorable. There, I’ve said it.

OK, maybe I can content myself with the fact GP could be a huge coward:

When the boys came out to play,                                                                          

Georgie Porgie ran away.

Or at least only interested in saving his own skin. Whatever.

The fact is I need to go away and research the meaning behind many of these rhymes and it’s a self-imposed task. But I confess I’m looking forward to learning about Georgie Porgie the most.

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Twitter:  @ericajbarlow
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#1 Day Off, Schmay Off

Bit jealous of Husband swanning off to work? Never. 

Working part-time, eh? Your 'time off' not the relaxing, takeaway-coffee-swilling break they said it was going to be, is it?

Now don’t get me wrong; Son, two-and-a-half, is a strong day-napper, which enables me to do s**t like this. That’s great; it just means I can only plan to get anything done - with militarily crisp efficiency - while he’s asleep. Once he’s up, of course, the flat (yep, flat; no garden) becomes more like a giant pinball machine as he furiously pings about. What's more, not only does he upset any recently-achieved tidiness but insists I come and watch whatever it is he’s doing or upsetting. 

But enough of prose this week; it just does not seem to do justice to this repeated scenario, so I thought I’d honour it with a bit of verse.

Son, this one's for you, you sticky little bugger. Consider it your first shout-out.

Here goes.

I’d hoped that you’d fall back to sleep this morn,

In fact every day this week,

Your father and I, hopeful fools that we are,

Dicking round on our iphones til far too late,

Were ignoring the fact we were tempting fate,

While the crackling monitor lay in wait

‘Til dawn, when you cut short our sleep.

You bounce in to see me, all smiles and snot,

Bash me cheerfully with a hard toy,

Jump up on the bed, land right near me, lay waste

With your milk to my sheets and fart right by my face,

Then hug me so hard as to cut off all trace

Of blood to my cheek, mad, mad boy.

You father hugs me, dressing gown warm and stinky,
He's sad-and-yet sprightly ‘bout what is to come,

For he is about to escape to the shower,
Then slink off to work, kicking off the eight hours

Of boy-on-mum time where you test out the power

Of words like ‘please stop’ and ‘please listen to mum.'

When I’m cleaning, it’s fair to say you are the ‘un’:

Un-smoother of duvet on newly-made bed,

Un-arranger of cushions, so artfully arranged

With a neatness that you clearly find very strange,

Un-cleaner of floors, of an entire range

Of objects, how you do toy with poor mother’s head.

And yet how I oddly look forward to this,

These days when it’s just me and you, son of mine,

Maybe all the cleaning was boring me too,

The mirrors and glass missing pawmarks from you,

Though these ideas seem much more rosy, it’s true,

When drinking my daily, compulsory wine.

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Twitter:  @ericajbarlow
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