Do you remember the very last nappy you changed?
The final desperate late night jedi-jam into a neighbours bin because yours was a lava infested cesspit of semi digested apple puree and asphalt.
What about the last manual rock to sleep?
Where it was somewhere between a melodic hip swish and an emotionally unstable teen at a Limp Bizkit concert.
The backseat screaming, swaddles, the lack of neck control and all the absurd abberations we were waiting to cease so they could function as ‘normal human beings’. It would be easier, we thought.
It’s a well known fact that a large part of a parents sorcery is blocking out certain traumas.
I personally am completely clean of any memory of my daughter age 0-3 and rightly so considering I had an 18 month old and a newborn.
I had left my soul and sanity at the maternity ward.
So once they could confidently navigate stairs, speak in full sentences, were safe to leave alone with tree bark and small dogs I was ready to take control back and make beautiful, long lasting memories.
Yet here I am, five years later and standing in the hallway with my face resting against the cold wall.
My eyes shift to the right where I can now see the shoes they assured me were brought inside, outside and now saturated and 2 laminated school awards I had used to remove last nights house spiders.
In the millisecond it took me to collect all items, they’ve fought to the death over an empty toilet roll one wanted as a megaphone and the other for an abstract art sculpture.
The night before this, I likened the 2 hours of coaxing them to sleep like putting 2 sparking electrical chords to sleep.
He fell asleep with a football medal in his mouth while she had crawled back into my womb.
That was after 6 books, a conversation about death and the dangers of electronic smoking devises, a brawl about who fluffed and a silent rave to the ocean sounds on the meditation night light.
He requires the fan directly on his face at 115,000 volts while she needs 7 quilts to shield the hurricane above, one of which is a wighted blanket that she demands but drags her, her dolls, her bottom sheet and the bearing wall onto the ground 3 times a night.
After 4 attempts at shutting the door only for the running of the bulls 15 seconds , I pin them down with my forearms as I fake a deep sleep standing upright. I open my eyes 2 years later and one is cutting shapes in the spec of moonlight peeking through and the other is staring directly at me with a baseball cap on.
I make 5 different breakfasts. I use the 3 first offerings to make the second two offerings but if the banana is even half an hour too ripe they’ll hold it out in disgust claiming that I had ‘used the stale bananas again’.
The final offering is a croissant from Sainsbury’s I make them eat in one bite before it’s witnessed by anyone who has seen me sign off their healthy passport with ‘exceeded expectations’.
They’ll only wear 2 of the 7 white shirts they have for school. They know them by touch. To me they are exactly the same as their 5 other brothers and sisters. If the 2 chosen ones are in the wash, they’ll wear them dripping with detergent.
The 2 chosen ones are more grey than white and are stained with texta, nail polish, 3 to 5 brown streaks and something suspiciously oily.
If I try and brush her hair she will negotiate it from my hand, confiscate it and use it as a threatening weapon for the rest of the morning. Ten minutes later she’s brushed it so hard, I can see most of her scalp and then emotionally blackmails me to straighten it because she hates her curls, they’re not ‘fashuun’.
If you survive the morning, you make it to school drop off which is like a free range zoo. By the time we get to the gate I’ve talked one off an electric fence, the other out of a dark crack between 2 houses that they assure me is a happier option and have negotiated the next 7 years of birthday and Christmas presents, a pet pony upon pick up and a discussion about the meaning of life and how phonics fits into that.
Once I have lovingly but forcibly pushed them over the finish line, I walk off 7 kilos physically lighter but 22 kilos heavier with emotion. It takes me 3 English breakfast teas with limited milk, my bare feet on some soil, a TED talk, Matthew McConaughey telling me to breath on the Calm app and a few heavy handed drops of lavender on my temple, wrists and entire bottom half of my body to function again.
Pick up is a roll coaster. The false sense of security you’ve felt from 9.15 to 3.05 is shaved off you like a peeled carrot once they remind you they’ve held in a poo since 9.15am and that they’re 3 weeks behind in homework they told me they didn’t have.
I tread more carefully around my children than I do after a smashed glass. You can fuck up their whole day by handing them something they asked for 2 minutes earlier and/or by aiding them out of an uncomfortable situation.
The weekend is no different.
Roman won’t wear underwear and is upside down on the lounge, a little willy dangling freely while Rumer is trying to putt it with her recorder.
He has football, she has ballet but he’s saying he’d rather die than go and she’s wearing her tutu as a fascinator!
Most days they fight me on every damn thing! We baked cupcakes as a distraction but his slanted to the right and hers didn’t so she stabbed him with it.
In the middle of the busy street he apparently called her a loser so she launched an assault with curb side pebbals before falling to the ground in front of a very confused pensioner in a Toyota Camry.
She spotted a month old chocolate digestive between the lounge so they strangled each other for the better half of 12 minutes on who was going to eat it! He sneezed & she took it personally!
She looked at him ‘funny’ so he threw a used wet wipe at her that apparently felt like a brick because she slumped into the lounge like she’d just taken a bullet!
I’ve played dead so many times that they still ask for snacks and to be dressed when I’m semi unconscious on the floor and the whiteboard I bought to keep a track of good behaviour is now covered in marmite and slurs about each other such as ‘Rumer smells like poo’ and ‘Roman is so roode’.
It is said none of us get out of this alive which of course is true but if you survive parenting, I’m fairly sure you’re rewarded with a reincarnation as an animal that eats its young.
Spot on! Love it.