Monday 29 November 2010

Tidings of comfort and joy

Being a non-parent is so fleeting sometimes.
As a real parent, once you've become it for the first time, you'll always hold that status. When they grow up, move out, get married, even if a child sadly died, it still leaves parents.
I'm a non-parent on weekends and I don't get to be one now for the next three weekends.
Matt's on a boys' weekend in Oslo next week and Isobel is staying with his sister.
Her mother doesn't let her stay with me, which we found out in June half an hour before I was due to set out on the hour and a half journey to pick her up.
Matt texted me from Spain : "She says she comes to see me and if I'm not there then she's not coming."
He doesn't fight with her because that's what she wants.
I have to admit I had been surprised she'd appeared to agree in the first place. But she's not stupid and knows leaving it until the last minute hurts more.
I threw the bag of toys and books I'd bought on my lunchbreak in the boot of my car, went home and cursed them both.

This weekend he and I are holidaying in Prague so I won't complain about that. We miss her, and the Christmas markets with pretty frosted lebkuchen, wooden toys and massive Christmas trees dripping with lights would make her grin so widely she might swallow them. But I don't think it's fair to take babies on aeroplanes just because I want to go on holiday.
At least when they're older you can stick them a Werthers' Original if their ears start to pop.
Another sharp criticism of parents or am I just bitter we wouldn't be allowed to take her away anywhere if we wanted to?

Next weekend I planned to counteract the hole left by Isobel in Prague with a trip to Lincoln Christmas market. 
I booked the hotel. It would be our little family Christmas because we won't get to have her on the day.
Christmas is always going to be tricky.
I've made sure I'm working Christmas day and as much as possible over the period so Matt can go see her without guilt if he wants.
I asked Matt if maybe we could have her both Friday and Saturday night, as a trade for Christmas. He said he forgot to mention it, but coincidently her mother is now taking her away for the weekend.
He doesn't fight, it's easier that way. He says we'll still go, but I don't want to stomp around all day with the hole felt in Prague just getting bigger.

A familiar ache burns in my belly. This selfish control-freak wonders how the hell the two most important parts of her life came to be under complete control of someone else.

Monday 22 November 2010

Parental Privilege

When Isobel was first born, I feared I'd develop an irrational jealousy of her. I have since found that while I have developed this jealousy, it isn't of her. I'm jealous over her.
She's now at a fantastic age. She's seeing everything with new eyes and understands the world a little bit more each time. She grins from ear to ear.
We play all day, while her dad, Matthew, intermittently zones out watching telly. She clings on tight when I pick her up and plays with my hair and necklace, sometimes pulling it impressively hard for someone her size. I wonder if that's something her mother has taught her to do to blonde women.
In public, people smile at me. “How beautiful is your baby!” I'm sad she's not mine.

At the play centre, we find an area called Pre-Walkers for Isobel. We want to go in the ball pool, but despite the 'Under 5s Only' sign, there's a group of big kids and we don't want to get caught up in the crossfire of coloured plastic missiles.
The Pre-Walkers section is secluded and I show Isobel and abacus with numbers, letters, colours and farm animals, which provokes the wide toothy grin.
Some older kids hop into our zone and crowd the space and a skinny little blonde girl sparks up a conversation with Matthew.
A weathered-looking mother or grandmother gazes over. I will her to call her noisy busy-body child away but she just looks at me suspiciously and returns to her group of friends who are sitting in a cluster about ten feet away.
Matthew patiently engages in conversation with the child. She wants to know Isobel's name.
Why does she make me so uncomfortable? I realise that it's because she's an imposter too. Maybe she has a little brother or sister, or maybe she wishes she did. She's in training to be a mother already, ugh.

While I envy certain aspects, as a general collective, I dislike parents. Not my own, they're fantastic, although as human and flawed as all of them are.
Parenthood is an exclusive club. The people in it have done something wonderful for the future of the entire human race. They have evolved a little bit more than all the rest of us, and they have parental instincts, which just make them right.
They are bringing up the future, which isn't a service to themselves, but the world, and this entitles them to “parental privilege”. Parental privilege is what gives parents the right to say “I know best”.
It entitles them to push their buggies in front of cars to halt traffic, it allows them to pull over on corners and junctions without indicating or do whatever they feel they need to do.

As Isobel's non-mother, I don't cross the road unless there's a green light. Matt rolls his eyes from the other side of the road as the lights change again and another channel of traffic passes. There had been plenty of time, but if anything had happened...
I am afraid to lift Isobel above my head, while Matthew throws her in the air and catches her – her favourite game.
I keep rigidly to her diet and schedule, or else it will be my fault she's constipated or doesn't sleep.
He gives her whatever he can find to shut her up and it does the trick.
I watch her with terror tottering on her chubby feet as she holds herself up against the coffee table. On his watch, I hear him pause the games console to pick her up as she screams. “She's fine. She's got to learn these things.”
It's obviously something I'll understand when I have kids of my own, isn't it.

Sunday 21 November 2010

Maybe I just will start a blog

Today I read that personal blogs were over. They remain only for right-wingers and smug yummy mummies, the blogger behind Belle de Jour told The Sunday Times.
I'm neither of the above. I may even be the opposite, or can be characterised by the distinction.
I'm certainly not a yummy mummy.
In that fact I suppose I am a little smug. What a bore it must be to be one of those. I take some kind of self-satisfaction in overindulging in alcohol, cigarettes, swearing, sarcasm and non-organic food.
More than just a stubborn self-centred twenty-something, I put a finer point on it during a recent identity crisis. I'm actually a non-mummy.
I became a non-mummy at the end of last year when my boyfriend's ex-girlfriend gave birth to a little baby girl. But it was only a few weeks ago I realised that that's what I was...

It's Saturday morning and I suggest a children's play centre I've heard of through work.
“This place looks good baby. You know what? You should write a blog about places that are good to take children.”
Why the f*ck would I want to do that?
“Why? Because we have managed to leave the house with her a total of four times now?”
Isobel's ten months old and we have her every weekend. Between the two of us we have finally mastered, with teamwork, to get her (and ourselves) up, fed, bathed and dressed, napped, fed and napped again before 2pm, leaving us a couple of hours to do something with the weekend before she goes home.
“It would be good experience, wouldn't it?”
I glower at him. I'm a journalist on a daily newspaper. It's hardly like I'm a work experience girl after bylines.
“Just a suggestion, baby.”
The insensitive and frankly bad suggestion stays with me, however. Why would I write a blog about child-friendly activities? I don't even have my own children. Talk about unqualified.

I avoid the instinct to scrape my hair into a ponytail and I put on some make up. We appear to be thinking similar thoughts, although with a key difference.
“Maybe we'll meet some new friends, for us and Isobel,” he says chirpily.
In my head I picture three thirty-somethings exchanging stories about the safest car seats, the healthiest foods and the most educational toys. I add something vanilla to try to fit in, which is met with an awkward silence. She'll understand one day, they think.
In the car, Isobel and I chat, in an improvised language we both understand.
“Nga.”
“Babababa.”
“Uhhhhhhhhhh.”
“Lalalalalala.”
“Don't worry she's fine,” he says. I know.
Two minutes into the five minute journey she's asleep. She's soon rudely awakened as I delicately unlock the car seat, secure my hands around her little chest and scoop her out, step on my own foot, wobble backwards and bump her head on the door.
“Be careful of my baby!”
She cries as we cross the car park. So do I.