Life's A Beach

I read in some book or other recently that a good technique for remaining calm in a stressful situation is to close your eyes and visualise a favourite tranquil scene. Having a particular interest in remaining calm in the midst of chaos, I decided to try thinking of my favourite beach in Goa when feeling stressed to see if it helped me to calm down.

It’s been a busy few weeks. For a while, any time I’ve find myself with a spare ten minutes, it’s been all I could do to haul myself onto the sofa with a cup of tea and close my eyes. After the news at his last developmental check that the Very Small Boy was “following his centiles nicely” (whatever the hell that means), I was surprised to be summoned back to the Health Centre less than a month later for yet another check-up. But I thought I’d go along anyhow, thinking I would ask about starting him on solids in an attempt to help him sleep better.

Feeling predictably tense after the obligatory hour-long wait, I stood patiently whilst the nurse (who I noted, was considerably younger than I am), stared into Baby Pie’s eyes and repeated “and how are you Baby? And how are you?”

“Um, I don’t think he’s going to answer…” I offered. She ignored me and I thought of gently rolling waves, sand so soft it crunches like powdered snow underfoot.

She lay him on his tummy, turned him onto his back, then crouched down in a stoop, held his hands and pulled him up to a sitting position on the bench so that their eyes were level and repeated “how are you, Baby?” It was no use; the beach disappeared as I mentally reached out a hand and gave the nurse a shove that sent her gently somersaulting to the floor.

She reeled off such a textbook answer to my question about starting solids that I actually looked around to see if she had a baby manual cleverly hidden somewhere within reading distance. And, reminding myself that I’ve had at least two more babies than she has, I ignored her advice to postpone real food for a month, and we set off home to give the Very Small Boy his first taste of banana.

Sunning myself in the garden later that afternoon while the Very Small Boy slept, full and content, in his pushchair, I was interrupted from a particularly pleasant daydream about my lovely Goan beach by the Small Girl. She came dashing across the lawn, hands cupped together before her, shouting “Mum! Mum!”

“What is it darling?” I asked
“Mum! You’ve got to see – it’s a Wildebeest! A Wildebeest!” And she tenderly opened her hands to reveal a Woodlouse, lying small and stunned in the palm of her hand.