Johnny was off school on Friday - earache. He's a little prone to it and having suffered a couple of bouts as a child I am most sympathetic - it's such an intrusive kind of pain. But actually, dosed up to the eyeballs with Paracetamol, he was actually very perky and good company. And I realized how different the rhythm of our days used to be when he and I had big chunks of time together at home. Not that I'm wishing myself back to babe-in-the-house-hood. Oh no.
I bumped into an old friend in the supermarket the other day. Her eldest is in double digits now. Two housemoves later and our lives have diverged somewhat and so I hadn't seen her for about a year. She had a newborn in a sling. My jaw just about hit the floor, right after I asked her whose baby she'd borrowed. Oops. I was so very happy for her (and so utterly relieved that I didn't have to do it again myself).
But in the midst of all that intensity of the hands-on child rearing years, there are the moments of sweetness that keep you sane. It's so different as they grow. Not sure if it's just that I have boys and not terribly communicative ones, at that. But so much of their lives becomes hidden from you. The intensity of their emotions blunted in the re-telling. I find myself, like a forensic scientist, trying to re-create their days from the snippets of evidence in the bookbags and their incomplete testimony, interspersed with requests for food. So just sometimes, it's good to have an unexpected quiet day at home. And to re-connect.
Can you tell we've got a birthday coming up? I'm such a sap, but it always makes me feel so wistful. For them it's a marker of new things, of growing up. But for us Mamas, it's a sign of time passing and all that means we have left behind.
In the midst of my nostalgia-fuelled wallowing, I came across this:
Celebrate the boy is a month dedicated to boy related sewing and crafts. I will be keeping a close eye on it. And celebrating mine - big boys or not!
** and thank you so much for your sweet replies to the last post - I had to close the comments because I was getting all embarrassed. Your friendship make me feel very Special indeed. **