Rites of Passage

“Mummy?” asked The Very Small Boy, looking up earnestly from where he was sitting at the breakfast bar and cramming a handful of Smarties into his mouth.
“Yes Baby Pie?” I replied.
“You can call me a smashing fellow if you want to!”
“Oh good!” I laughed, kissing his chocolatey cheek “because you know what? I was just thinking to myself what an absolutely smashing fellow you are!”

We had spent a happy afternoon baking a cake and decorating it: the Very Small Boy is Very Nearly Three, and I had promised to send him in to playschool on Thursday with something celebratory to share with his friends. The Small People were having a marvellous time, wielding icing-laden spatulas and squabbling over bowls of sweets and sprinkles, the Small Girl busily trying to convince herself that she had a wobbly tooth (something she had been wanting for some months since a friend’s tooth “like actually fell out” at school).

“It really is wobbly!” she declared crossly, one hand to her mouth, the other curled protectively around a small bowl of jelly snakes.
“I know Darling, I’m sure it will be wobbly very soon” I replied soothingly, pushing the cake out of her brother’s reach as he attempted lick the icing off.

I find it hard to believe that the Very Small Boy is no longer a baby. With each passing milestone - from solids to first steps to outgrowing his cot and finally his nappies – he has grown into a complicated, interesting little fellow able to hold his own in a conversation and share his views (of which he really does have many but which mostly involve the "baddies" from the movie Home Alone).

I met with the Small Girl’s teacher today to discuss her progress at school, which so far has been very good. She is able to read pretty well and can figure out new words by sounding them out. She’s good at maths and is popular and sociable, quiet and thoughtful but gaining the confidence to speak out in class and hold her own against the other children. And I was desperately touched to hear that her teacher has pinned up a note at home on her fridge that my lovely girl gave her in class which reads “teacher is byootiful”.

“Mummy, my tooth really is wobbly!” insisted the Small Girl once more, after we had arrived home from the parent-teacher meeting. “feel it!”.
I sighed and gently put my finger on the little tooth. It moved perceptibly back and forth.
“Oh my goodness!” I cried “I felt it! It really is wobbly, I can’t believe it!”. Thrilled for her, I dashed off to text DH the happy news.

Half an hour later, I sat down next to her on the sofa, sobbing quietly.
“Mummy, are you crying?” asked the Small Girl with concern.
“Yes” I said, sniffing “I just realised that your wobbly tooth was the very first tooth to come through when you were a baby… I was so excited when I realised you had a tooth, I couldn’t wait to show Daddy, and we felt its sharp little edge in your baby gums, and it was so amazing… and now it’s going to fall out!” I sobbed, and burst out crying again.

“Don’t worry Mummy!” she said, smiling and shaking her head. “I only just realised it was wobbly today. It probably won’t even fall out for ages!” And with that, my very grown-up daughter put her arm around my shoulders to comfort me, wiping away my tears as she did so with her sleeve.

Conversations With My Family

“Mummy, when my children are grown up, will now be the olden days?” asked the Small Girl thoughtfully as we drove to her dancing class yesterday.
“What a great question, Sausage!” I said. “Yes, I suppose your children will think that it was the olden days when you were five”
“But it’s not really the olden days is it Mummy?” she continued
“Well no, not really I suppose”
“The real olden days was when you were little!”
I had to agree with her: “yes, when your children are grown up, they’ll think that when Granny was small it really was a long time ago!"

The Small Girl thought about this for a moment, then:

“Mummy?”
“Yes darling?”
“Were the dinosaurs alive when you were little?”
“No darling” I laughed, “I am old… but I’m not that old!”

Whilst she was dancing, the Very Small Boy and I walked into town to while away the time.
“Want a coffee, Mister?” I asked him
“Yaay!” he cried “can I have a Babycino?”

As we sat in the café, he looked thoughtfully at my figure-hugging animal-print dress and commented

“Mummy, you look like a leopard!”
“I know darling… it’s probably a bit much isn’t it?” I said, looking down self-consciously
“Yeah…” he agreed, nodding sympathetically as he sipped the chocolatey froth from his milk.

Later in the evening, after the children were in bed, DH and I lounged on the sofa in the breakfast room, aimlessly watching television.
“Have you seen anyone next door recently?” he asked, referring to the fact that one of our neighbours, in his sixties, had spent some time in hospital undergoing tests.
“Yeah” I said “I bumped into their daughter today actually”
“Is he OK? Do they have a diagnosis yet?” asked DH
“Yes”. I told him the diagnosis.
“Jesus…” he murmured quietly “that’s not good”
“No” I replied, standing up and taking a deep breath, feeling I might cry again “but he wants everyone to carry on as normal apparently, so that’s what we’ll do”.

And I gathered the empty dinner plates from the table, carried them to the kitchen and started to load the dishwasher so no one would see my tears.

Autumn

Collecting the Small Girl from school on the last day before the mid-term break, the Very Small Boy was stunned by the fascinating assembly of witches, skeletons and superheroes who had accompanied his big sister on the annual school Halloween Fancy Dress Walk. The Small Girl herself, dressed adorably as a witch’s cat, came skipping out of class behind a small, disgruntled Buzz Lightyear; helmet askew, satchel trailing solemnly behind him.

“How was your Fancy Walk darling?” I asked, lifting her pink-sequinned cat mask to give her a kiss before we set off to walk home.
“Great!” she replied, swishing her tail “all the mummies and daddies dressed up too!”
“Really?” I asked, wishing I’d been free to go along myself “and what did your friends’ mums go as?”
“Evangelina’s mummy was dressed as a crayon!”
“A Crayon!” I cried, dissolving into fits of laughter “that’s… weird!”

I don’t usually go in for Halloween, having grown up in England (where it’s less popular) and being possessed of typical English reserve when it comes to the whole business of encouraging my children to knock on the doors of complete strangers and make unreasonable demands. But this year I decided to give it a go. And despite starting off nervously, after half an hour I was happily propelling my children up the neighbours garden paths, making them hold their loot bags up endearingly and snapping at them to ring the doorbell again if there was no answer (because all the lights might be off but that was definitely the flicker of a television I spied between the gap at the edge of the curtains, and in any case, what kind of person goes to the trouble of decorating their house for Halloween and then pretends to be out on the actual night?).

The day after Halloween, we had some bad news - one of our tropical fish was discovered floating alarmingly at the top of the tank: belly-up, eyes glazed, he was very definitely deceased. It was a Saturday morning and I was enjoying a rare lie-in.

“Mummy! Mummy!” two shrieking voices, accompanied by thunderous footsteps, flew down the corridor outside my bedroom, before the door was flung open and the Small Girl and her brother leapt onto the bed shouting “There’s a dead fish!”

I glanced at the clock: 7.14am, not bad for a weekend lie-in, and although I would have preferred to be woken a little more sedately, DH had followed the Small People upstairs with a welcome cup of tea so I wasn’t about to complain.

“Oh no, I’m sorry to hear that” I said, letting the Small Girl into bed for a cuddle and gently wiping away her tears.
“But why did he die?” she cried
“He was probably just old sweetheart, and got to the end of his life. You shouldn’t be sad, we rescued him from the pet shop and gave him a great home!”
“But it’s not fay-ur!” she wailed.

“I know darling. Sometimes life isn’t fair I’m afraid… it’s a tough old world out there you know”. I yawned and reaching for my tea, gazed out of the window at the beautiful clear blue sky and the bare autumn tree-tops, holding on precariously to the last of their crinkly golden-red leaves in the crisp morning light.