Being Mummy

We woke to a beautiful, sunny morning on Tuesday and the Small Girl was thrilled that Daddy was to have an unprecedented day off work: it was going to be a good day.

I like the idea behind St Patrick’s Day; being English and therefore rather reserved, it’s nice to see people letting their hair down and really having fun. And what better reason to do it than to celebrate Being Irish? There’s no English equivalent to St Patrick’s (the Brits are far too stuffy to celebrate Being British and anyhow, it’s far too un-pc in England these days to actually be proud of your heritage), so it’s all rather a novelty to us.

We dutifully dressed the Small Girl and the Very Small Boy in green and painted the Small Girl’s face with little Irish flags (which resulted in a predictable paint-related tantrum), and set off into town to watch the parade. On the way, DH and I tried our best to clear up a complicated misunderstanding with the Small Girl about just who Patrick was and whether or not he had anything to do with our next-door-neighbour, whose name happens to be Patrick.

The St Patrick’s Day parade in our town consists of a bizarre jumble of floats from local businesses, schools and clubs, thunderous vintage cars and fire-engines, all interspersed with an impressive display of might from the local military base. We found a place by the roadside in amongst the jostling crowd of green-painted, beard-wearing, flag-waving leprechauns (and that was just the grown-ups) and settled down to watch the parade.

As a huge tank rolled slowly past (I was pleased to see the “L” plates had been removed as it passed perilously close to a group of excitable green-faced children), the Small Girl pointed to a fire engine.

“Mummy, is my Daddy a Firefighter?” she asked me. I looked over to DH, who was pulling a silly face and waving Mister Horse (a favourite rattle) for the Very Small Boy.
“No darling, he’s a Software Engineer”, I replied.
“But Mummy, why is he a Software Engineer?” she persisted, in another of her unanswerable “why” questions.

Picking her up as the parade began to wind down and we started to make our way slowly home, I looked down at the Very Small Boy in his buggy, who stared with great concentration at Mister Horse, raised him slowly skyward and then bashed himself firmly on the head. I turned back to the Small Girl and explained:

“Well, that’s his work – when he goes to work every day in Dublin, he works as a Software Engineer and he does Important Things on a computer”.
The Small Girl thought about this. “But Mummy, are you a Software Engineer?”
“No Sausage, I’m not”.
“Why?”

She obviously wasn’t going to let the subject lie, and I had a nagging feeling that I ought to answer her question with caution.

“Daddy and I just do different things for work” I replied, not even knowing where to begin with this one. “Daddy goes to Dublin to work and I stay home with you and Baby Pie. My work is to be a Mummy”.

And we were both momentarily distracted by a grassy bank of bright daffodils, shining optimistically under the cloudless March sky.