Four.
Tomorrow, May 1st, the girls turn 4 and Dave becomes 64 (“Will you still need/feed me? do-be-do”).
How did that happen? 4? Already? I know that it can be explained by the inexorable passage of time, the maturation and multiplication of cells and by the mortal fact(or), but I don’t believe any of it. The forces of nature are having me on, surely. I mean, come on! Only yesterday the girls were 2, and it was just this morning that we were eating cake “decorated” with a farce of a “3!” (I can bake OK but wield an icing-bag like I’m blindfolded, unopposably thumbed and have an inner-ear infection which affects my knowing if I’m the right way up or not. Looking at pictures, now, of the 2! birthday cake, which was chocolate with red (?) icing, it looks like an industrial accident at Hershey’s. It tasted OK which, as my dad would say, is all that matters because it’s all going down the same way, anyway. I have never believed that and I don’t think my girls will go for it either.)
The difference between 3 and 4 is great. Even in these last few months the girls have seemed to grow up much too quickly for my comfort levels, once set at “Fireside Bean Bag” but now feeling more like “Nettle Patch”. Parenthood is zipping past like a cat with his bum on fire and the speed’s about as unsettling.
The most noticeable things that have changed since Christmas are in fluency and complexity of speech and thought. I’ve really gone downhill. But the girls are sounding more grown up every day. This manifests itself in a number of ways:
Insightful Observations: “Ladies can’t take their tops off outside when they’re hot because their bosoms might go on fire in the sun.”
Troubling questions: “Mummy, why have you got stripes on your forehead?” This took me several minutes of mirror-peering at my face which looked … usual. Stripes? Stuh-ripes? Eh?
Then, in a flash, I saw myself as they see me. They were talking about my wrinkles, or the fine lines that Oil of Olay is making no headway on, at all. Now I barely see anything else when I look in the mirror. I would not at the time, however, admit to my children that they were wrinkles, but asked myself, what would a woman, who will never admit to being past 29, say? What would Bette Davis or Mae West say? What would my granny say?
So I told them the stripes were those lines for musical notes. I occasionally still get the odd wee spot from time to time so I told them next time I got a blemish I would tell what note it was from its position relative to the stripes wrinkles lines and compose a great symphony across my forehead by filling in all the other notes with felt-tip pen. This backfired though, and has not resulted in any less talk about the stripes. Neither of the girls has heard of Botox yet but they may soon have to. The idea of having shots of toxins injected into my head is about appealing as having a shot of partially hydrogenated jet-fuel injected into my liver, but would it make me look better? (Biting fingernails). Oh, my children, what have you done to your mother? I never used to be vain and foolish. I never used to be vain.
Heartbreaking questions: Katie, whom I discovered all alone, sobbing her heart out, one afternoon. After a long time hugging and soothing, I finally found out that she was sad and scared because I wouldn’t be her mummy any more when she was 4. This took a bit of thinking to work out but, many questions and tissues later, I twigged it. I had told her I was going to be a Godmother for my friend’s baby when we go to Scotland in May. I had thought I’d explained about what a godmother was and had reminded her that she had two, AND a Godfather. But Kate’s main association with May is her birthday so, with the inimitable logic of small children, she had computed that I was going to be someone else’s mummy in May after she turned 4. She’d thought it meant she was getting too old to have a mummy but she still wanted one.
I should have known – she’d gone all quiet and withdrawn after I’d poorly explained the godmother thing, but several hours passed before she started to cry. I’d thought she just wanted to play quietly by herself for a while so let her sit in the sitting-room with some books while Jane and I played a short way off in the kitchen. After about 20 minutes or so I looked up to see her sitting in the middle of her books with her head in her hands and on her knees, crying as if the world had ended. She had been turning what information she had over and over in her brain, all by herself, and had worried herself to the point of great shoulder-heaving sobs.
Peculiar and particular demands: “Mummy, I want a make-up story about 3 baby owls and a white bus. And Hansel and Gretel are in it too.”
World-weary exclamations: “My teddy is sick, Janie, and I have no time to play Play-Doh and I’m terribly busy and I have to go and phone somebody.” And, from Jane, “I don’t like to pick up my crayons – it’s Spring.”
Calculatedly pitting one parent against the other by bringing up topics of personal hygiene: Jane: “Daddy’s toes smell like bottoms and mummy’s toes smell like flowers and like nice daisies. Ha ha ha!” “Ha ha ha hahahahahaha ha ha!”
I, of course, took this to mean that they clearly loved ME more than Dave! What could be more obvious? I have the more fragrant feet; I am, therefore, indubitably the more admired parent, right? But flowers are boring and bottoms are hilarious and it was the bottoms thing that kept them in gales of laughter right through several new issues of the daily newspapers.
Toenail curlingly, eyebrow wiltingly loud public remarks: “I need to go to the toilet but I don’t want to go past that hairy lady.”
And, “What’s wrong with his head?”
And (singing), “I need a poo, a poo, a poo! A big, big poo, a poo, a poo!”
Their humour, as they approch 4, is very British seaside and scatalogical. I think they get it from their father, as he approaches 64.
The mathematically sharper of you will be able to deduce that Dave must have turned 60 on the day the girls were born and you are right to think this, for it is true. I had been laid up with complications for several weeks and hadn’t had a chance to get him so much as a card. On his landmark birthday, therefore, it was just a question of slapping a note on my enormous tum and telling him to imagine that there was a bow on there too. Since then his birthday has been overshadowed by a riot of pink and giggles. This year, to make sure he’s afforded all the dignity of his position as father and grown-up, he’s getting a new coffee-maker and he will probably not have to wear a Strawberry Shortcake party hat, but if he does, I have promised him that he’ll at least get to take it off for photos.
May Day is also the day when, as a child, I washed my face in the morning dew on my granny’s assurance that that would keep me forever young and beautiful. I should have maybe rubbed a little harder on the forehead area, back then, it turns out. Our lawn is alive with rabbits in the mornings and evenings and so I hesitate to encourage my children to wash their faces in what I’m sure is a diluted solution of rabbit leavings. Besides, by the time they’re old enough to have stripey foreheads, L’Oreal or somebody will surely have some up with something that does actually work and everyone will be fresh-faced and blooming right into their 80s. Blee! That is the creep-me-outest thought I have had in quite a while.
So then, much of tonight has been spent in clandestine baking and present-wrapping and wondering about where the time has gone. Not only is it speeding by, it seems to be accelerating too.
4!
Man.
May 1st, 2006 at 9:13 am
Uncle Gorilla Bananas wishes his wee cousin-apettes a happy fourth and looks forward to the day when they will go to their first circus. Got any pictures of the hairy lady who was blocking the entrance to the ladies’ lav?
May 1st, 2006 at 1:31 pm
Congrats all around. The official middle son turned 10 yesterday. BTW, time only speeds up as they get older. In my office, I have a photo of the daughter in dirndl at age 4. In three months she’ll get her driver’s learning permit. I’m not ready for this. I’d rather deal with poo remarks in public, I think.
Cheers
May 1st, 2006 at 4:19 pm
Ah, they sound delightful and I hope you all have a lovely day. My niece was like that at 4 too, She came into town with me one day on the bus. We sat down and suddenly she said, ‘Auntie cat? why is that little big person so small?’ In a very very loud vopice while pointing at a dwarf lady seated across from us.
Suususushshshhshsh’ I said, mortified.
‘But why is she?’
‘Some people are just small.’
‘Some big people?’
‘Yessssssuuuusshhshhsh.’
‘Oh. Why?’
I don’t know. God made them that way.’
‘Why?’
And so on…I’m sure you can guess the rest, a long day of whys and whats.
May 1st, 2006 at 7:36 pm
Happy Birthday to Katie and Jane and of course Dave. Have/hope you had a good one!
My heart was breaking when I read about Katie’s interpretation of what turning 4 for her meant. Bless their little illogical-yet-scarily-logical brains!
At least we don’t keep on saying embarrrassing things in public when we’re adults. If only. I once told a guy (we were for some reason talking about names we liked) that I hated a particular name. I said I really didn’t like it in Gaelic but that it wasn’t much better in English. Just before I announced my disdain for this name my mind had a little blank (this happens often) and I couldn’t remember his own name (I knew him very well too. Shame). Of course, as soon as it tumbled out I remembered his name was of course the one I was totally insulting in front of him and a few friends. Now if my mother had been there….red-faces all around. Except for my friend’s – his was just a bit ashen and droopy looking all of a sudden. If he had had antennae they would have been touching the floor. Oh, and still I cringe and mentally flog myself. Poor guy.
But Sam, I have two words to say to you. Pregnant Cavewoman.
May 1st, 2006 at 7:51 pm
And as for wrinkles. I just got my passport renewed (for which you don’t need your photos counter-signed if “there is no dramatic difference in your appearance”). The two ladies in the post office sent me away as they both thought that my original passport photo of 18 year old me looked like (and I quote) “a completely different person” (!!) to the 32 year old me. Pah!
I have a friend whose ten year old son said to her the other week.
“Oh, mum, it’s such a shame what happened to you”
“What do you mean, a’ ghraidh” (touched by his concern)
“well, you used to be so beautiful, and now….(sigh)”
She should have expected that though considering he had previously asked her why she had “furrows” on her forehead. Aah, the awful Calling-a-Spade-a-Spadeness of kids, nothing like it for the ego.
I loved your Symphony explanation to your ’stripes’ Brilliant.
May 2nd, 2006 at 7:24 pm
No, sorry, we need pics of the Strawberry Shortcake hat birthday guy.
May 2nd, 2006 at 7:51 pm
I walked past a bookshop the other day and was interested in the title of one particular book. It was called ‘Why life speeds up as you get older’ by some chap from Holland. It explores the nature of autobiographical memory, drawing on experiences such as deja vu, traumatic memories, memories of smell etc. Might just buy it.
Wait a minute, did I say the other day? Shit, it must have been six months ago.
May 3rd, 2006 at 9:11 pm
Godz, you make me want to rush home and get Sammy out of her preschool and go to the park.
I love seeing the world through their little eyes. (Course, my Sam has monstrous huge eyes that suck you in. Or me in. Whatever)
I have another one due in August. I can’t wait to go through it all again, and await Samantha’s Kindergarten year with much trepidition. (she’ll be five (5!!!) in June)
May 3rd, 2006 at 9:12 pm
Time dilation, my two theories:
1 – Each day is a proportionally smaller slice of your total life experience and therefore seems shorter in comparison
2 – your brain is hardening, and experience skips off of it like stones on the pond, and this makes it all seem quicker because we absorb less
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:06 pm
Your Grandmother wa absolutely right of course. We always are.
May 3rd, 2006 at 11:55 pm
I really like kids’ directness like your daughter saying she doesn’t want to walk past that hairy woman. My older one has asked me quite a few times, “Mummy, when are you going to die? Is it going to be next week or in a long long time?” If only one could give equally direct answers. I would love to be able to reply, “April third, 2044, after tripping down some icy steps.” Instead I have to go on about, “I’ll be here for a long long time and I’ll always be your Mummy” etc. etc.
May 4th, 2006 at 8:24 am
I think I want to be 4 again.
May 4th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
You are the moomin mama.
May 4th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
Sami, you have a blog!!!!!!! Kathleen told me all about it so I thought I’d better check it out. Much, much more interesting than the usual guff. Good stuff, blone. Oh, and congratulations on all the milestones. Katie xxx
May 4th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
Congrats on the wee ones’ 4th – it does seem like only the other day we were dunking them in St Peters, blimey oreilly – speaking of things that are long past, did you know there’s a picture of you in 1986 with Mavis laing’s group of some little ballet dancers in the Gazette the other week? Coundn’t miss that smile anywhere….hahahahaahhaha, lovely!
May 5th, 2006 at 7:40 am
GB, Randall and fmc. Thanks for the good wishes. We had a blast! – It was a great day all round.
Fluffag: Pregnant cavewoman will go down as one of the most soul-sucking, excruciatingly fist in mouth experiences of my life. What were we at the time though? Ribena berries? Was that the same party?
Joe, Strawberry Shortcake hat guy says “Never!”
Dr Joe, I’m just guessing, but the Dutch experience of why life speeds up, at any time, might be to do with their liberal substance laws.
SafeT, great theories, but I worry my own brain is becoming softer.
Pat, welcome! And you’re right, grannies are rarely wrong. I think it’s the cumulative effect of cups of tea on the wisdom glands over the years. That’s my theory and I’m on a tea regimen now that will, with luck, cause me to be wise at about 45. I’m approaching it in the same way as one of these afast-track-to-retirement schemes.
Emma, how was New York? April 3rd eh? Well it is the cruellest month, Your comment reminded me of that Nicholas Cage film, “The Weather Man” when his father, Michael Caine knows he is dying and has his funeral while he’s still around to enjoy it. Great fun! That was a good film, but was billed as more of a whacky comedy than a dark comedy so I don’t think it got the audiences it might have. So they say anyway.
Gordon, sadly, we all have to reach a great age before we can start regressing to 4 again. But I, for one, am looking forward to going bananas in my dotage.
Mr Furry, I’m busted. You’re right, I moom in the morning, I moom in the evening. I especially moom at airports.
Katie Scoop! How now, old friend? Thanks for coming by to say hello. I’m a Southern Californian housewife so it’s either this or I become an Avon lady. I only blog to try and keep from developing a glassy stare. What’s the craic then? Where are you these days? It’s nice to hear from you.
Kathwoffs, thank you, but I really deserve no congratulations. The girls are growing all by themselves, despite my being their mother. It’s the most baffling thing,Ican’t figure it out- I thought I’d have misplaced at least one by now. Dumb luck, I guess. That, or the luck of the dumb. What was the picture for? Is Mavis giving up dancing class? Malina’s babbie Beth is getting dunked in St Peter’s at the end of May too.
May 8th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Yep, Ribena berries we were on that fateful night. We were damn good ribena berries too! Not everyone can carry off a stuffed bin-liner and purple face paint like that. Takes a certain sophistication I think.