Category Archives: Parenting

A Royal Visit: Mae-Mae Style

Posted in ...What did you just say?, Parenting by

Mabel asks:

‘Who is the Queen?’

I explain.

‘What is her name?’

I tell her.

‘Elizabeth! Like your middle name, Mama! What’s her last name?’

I see where this is going.

‘Vagina?’

No.

‘Regina!’

But then

‘…Does the Queen have a fanny or a vagina?’

Which is a good question, really. But I explain, as best as I can, to someone who refuses acknowledge the proper terminology. (‘I JUST HAVE HEAPS OF FANNIES!’ she roars when the subject is anatomically discussed)

‘Yes. I KNOW. But what does the Queen call her one? …I’ll ask her. Where does she live?’

Well…

‘Why doesn’t she live in New Zealand?’

Uh…

‘Can we go to her house?’

Not really…

‘Well I’m going to!’

Dear Mabel Poppy,

When you were 3 years old, you were hell-bent on going to Buckingham Palace to ask Queen Elizabeth how she refers to her bits.
Please, never stop asking the hard questions. Your sense of fearless equality is something this world needs a little more of.

With adoration and allegiance,
Your Mother x

Pre-Party Ritual.

Posted in ...What did you just say?, Parenting by

Mabel: Mama, have you seen my skirt?

Alice: Which skirt, baby?

Mabel: My skirt! The one I like!

Alice: Hmm…what colour is it?

Mabel: Colourful!

Alice: …Colourful?

Mabel: Yes! It’s colourful and it has a top and a bottom!

Alice: Colourful. Has a top and a bottom. Can you tell me anything else about it?

Mabel: It looks like a lily!

Alice: Colourful. Has a top and a bottom. And it looks like a lily? Oh! colourful has a top and a bottom and it looks like a lily!

Mabel: Yes, mama. Why was that so hard for you?

(She doesn’t like photos at the moment – so you’ll have to use your imagination…it’s an old one from Rock Your Baby. They still show up on Ebay sometimes x)

 

 

A Letter to My Daughter: when she found herself lost in the supermarket.

Posted in Heart, Letters, Parenting by

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You’re carrying around a huge pink handbag, embroidered with flowers. Inside it are a small tan Pug dog plush (He’s your new favourite; you’ve named him Pug-Pug) and a Kelly green copy of the Heinemann’s New Zealand Dictionary. It used to belong to my grandmother. Her name is written, in her ever-elegant cursive, inside the front cover. You think this dictionary is best for telling your stories, and you flip open its pages and begin.

You have told me today that when you are older you will live in a windmill. That you will ride a purple motorcycle and you will look after yourself. You told me today, like every day, to remember that we are always in each others hearts, no matter where we are.

I reminded you of this when, yesterday, you found yourself lost, so ever briefly, in between isles in the local supermarket. I saw on your face, that expansion of reality. Saw you feel so lost, so alone. I swept you up; so wanting and willing to take that feeling from you. To keep you from it and have it never bother you again. To stuff you inside my t-shirt, where you lived for so long when you were cooking then new. I held on to you, laid safe in my arms, and kissed the tears from your ears and told you all those truths. All our old truths. Truths as old as ever, as old as you. And some new ones, too. Some new ways to find your way. Because you are, and you will and nothing will hold you back.

Because you’re a girl on a purple motorbike, riding home to her windmill. And in your handbag is your dog, he’s named Pug-Pug. And he’s wearing a helmet and reading aloud his favourite words from the your Kelly green dictionary. A book that’s helped 4 generations before you, find their words, so a part of your story. And you won’t need to remember because you’ll know it forever, we’re together. We’re in each others hearts.

You’re the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart.

Love,
Mama xx

A Snapshot.

Posted in Heart, Parenting by

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You are reading books in a tent in the lounge. You both still have bottles in the afternoon.

Mabel has just come through to the kitchen, where I am sitting at the table writing. She mimed ‘I love you’. Her eyes. Her heart. Her mama. ‘Don’t forget to look after yourself’, she said to me, over her shoulder, as she left the room.

The Kale we sowed from seed has sprouted on the windowsill. 4 white plastic containers we filled with dirt, and watered and left to sleep in the sun.

You made your own sandwiches for lunch, tearing the crusts off and feeding them to the dog, as we sat here, all together.

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Mabel Makes: Paper Pinecones.

Posted in Parenting, Projects by

Deeply inspired by the newest issue of Mollie Makes, though we hadn’t the materials suggested.
Proudly presenting Mae-Mae’s first guest blog.

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Mabel’s Instructions: ‘Get the little scissors and the piece of paper and cut dem, and then I sticked it together, and then get Mama to help you. I love glitter! I sticked it with glitter. It’s pretty. It’s blue. There was a stick in the photo. I got one from the garden and I put it on’.

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‘I wanted to make them because I did’.

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A love letter to my daughter, when she tripped and fell, and to my son, who cried wolf because of it.

Posted in Heart, Letters, Parenting by

You were running around your room, which we had spent all day tidying. We’d picked up and packed away. We’d reorganised your furniture. You told me what should go where and we moved it together; ‘1, 2, 3 heave!’ your contribution.

You tripped and fell, after spinning in circles on the floor now free for spinning circles. Your pyjama pants half way up your legs, got under foot and down you went with them. Your upper lip, much more made for kisses, took the impact on the frame of your bed.

I knew instantly how badly you had hurt yourself, because of your cry. A blush of purple bruise will tell us tomorrow. Your held your little hand to your face. That feeling of disbelief that something could be so painful; that you were still intact.

I sat cross-legged, where moments before you had been turning, your arms in the air. And I scooped you up and held you to me, your body still fitting in my lap, though these days you spill over the sides. And I said what I say. Sshhhhh. Sshhhhh. You’re okay. I’m here.

I told you I could hear in your voice how much you were hurting.

Your brother, after you had fallen asleep; once you’d calmed down, and I’d turned off the light and sung all our songs; bumped his head on the rail of your bunk beds, and got upset. And I said what I say. Sshhhhh. Sshhhhh. You’re okay. I’m here with you.

And I told him I could hear in his voice that he wasn’t too hurt.

So this is to say, to both of you; as all these letters are, even if they’re are addressed to the other; I have heard all your cries. I have been here. I am here. I am right here with you. And I am listening.

I am always here to listen. No matter what you are feeling; how big or how small. When you can only say one thing, because you mean something else, but the something else won’t come out how, or though, you mean it. Or you haven’t found the words quite yet. Or when, really, all you are looking to hear is that you matter, too, and just as much, and as much as ever. Or because sometimes you can’t believe how painful it is; or that you are still intact.

I will be there. I will be right there with you. I will hear in your voice how much you are hurting, and I will drop everything.

Except you.

I love you,
Mama.

October

Posted in Parenting by

Dear Babies,

It’s been a busy month. Mae’s birthday. My birthday. I’m 29 now. I’d had you both by 25.

I never thought of my self as a particularly young mother. You just came when it was your time to. I had always been the first of my friends to do things; go overseas; have a 9-5; buy a home; start a family. So even though, looking around me, there was no one I knew doing what I was doing, I was used to that. You find your own way. The only thing you are obligated to do, is to find something beautiful in living. To take the chances to find out who you really are. Just do things how they feel best to you. Your Aunty once told me, ‘just find what you can do, and do it how it needs to be done’.  I think that’s good advice.

Your journey is not comparative to anyone else’s, though we all begin and end in the same place. Remember, they say comparison is the thief of joy, because it’s true – nothing will ever feel as good as when you think you’re doing a good job; heading in the right direction; being your best. You have such a talent for happiness. Keep it with you. When you feel sad, which you will, hopefully from time to time and not all the time, though that can happen too, happiness can feel like it takes so much energy. But I have seen you, watched you everyday since you first arrived here, and I can assure you, happiness comes naturally to you.

You’re so good at happiness, I was initially just happy simply by association with you. And though there’s been such cause for sadness, your faces, our time together, your loveliness, your liveliness, has been the light that I have set sail for until I reached the shore. You have made me sure of so much; my self, my decisions, my ability to sustain my own contentment. You personified my happiness, gave it a face and a name and brought it to me everyday. You remind me what happiness is. Now I’d recognise it anywhere.

This month:

You woke me up before dawn:-
Mabel: ‘Happy New Year! You are a dog! Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome a brand new Otto! This is great! You are so much fun, Mama!’
&
Theo: ‘Mama, why can’t cows walk down stairs?’

I discovered you, both in the butter at the bench; Theo wiping it off Mae’s shirt with a cloth, and Mae thanking him.

I found you arguing; M: You can’t share my birthday, Theo! It’s my choice!

You yelled at me:-
Theo: ‘Did you say QUIET?’
&
Mabel: ‘YOU’RE MY HAPPY PLACE!’

You broke my heart:-
Mabel: ‘I’m sad because I’m not somebody. I’m just me.’

You made me laugh:-
Mabel: ‘My dreams are so much fun! My hot dog is so much fun! I’m so much fun!’

You asked:-
Theo: ‘Is this a home sweet home?’
Theo: ‘Who is Bonnie Prince Billy and did he die?’

You advised me:-
Theo: ‘Just breathe, Mama!’

You made my heart swell:-
Mabel: ‘I look beautiful in the mirror’.
Theo: ‘Mama! I couldn’t wait to tell you! I had a crazy dream about noodles!

Aside from everything you utter, one of my favourite passages came to me, tucked up in bed, always reading. It’s from Camus.

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”

Remember your invincible summer.
Remember you’re my invincible summer.

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stele,
Mama xx

January / February / March / April / May / June / July / August / September

A Love Letter to My Daughter on Her 3rd Birthday.

Posted in Letters, Parenting by

Happy Birthday Darling.

You are a constant reminder of how good things can be. You’re a shining example of happiness.
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I gave birth to you at the foot of my bed. Kneeling on the floor with your Grandmother in a headlock. At both of your births, the strength of her presence has been what assured me I could do it. She cut your cord and your Aunty came in. ‘Look! I did it!’ I told her, a sister I chose some 7 years earlier, when she hung over the fence separating our houses and tapped a bottle of Tequila on my window, at 8am, while I was eating my breakfast. This time we celebrated with a cup of tea.

Everyone went out soon after, I remember. The midwife packed and left. Your brother bundled off with your daddy, sent in search of pastries. Your Aunty doing the washing. Your Grandmother hurried home to tell your Pappous, in Greece, that you were finally here. I sat with you on the couch, in the sun, and remember feeling as if the house had never been so full. The room was you. It always is.

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You told me recently, as we were sitting on the same couch in the same sun, that I was your best hero ever. That I was like something off the television. And it was about the best compliment of my life. But then, that’s how I feel about you. That you are my daughter is one of the best things about me. And I don’t know exactly how these things work; if you chose me or I chose you, or if it’s all simply chance, but I do know, whatever it was, it got things exactly right with you and me.

I don’t know if I could ever tell you completely, how sweet you are. How you arrived in my life and completed something in me. Some search I had been on, without map or compass. You arrived and, set in my arms, came stillness. And from that stillness a quiet strength has at last had chance to make a home in me, to take a hold in me.

And I don’t know exactly if that strength that we find, comes from other people; a love that they show us, or that someone like them could believe in someone like you. Or if it just comes at certain times in your life, when you find the right light, and everything is revealed to you as simply greater than it was before. I just know that it happens.

It’s how I came to know, what people mean when they say, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me.

You’re my best hero ever.

Love,
Mama x

September.

Posted in Heart, Parenting by

Dear Babies,

You’re not really babies anymore, you know. And you do know. You tell me often. “I’m big!” you say. Though sometimes you’ll concede “I’m little”. I kiss you to sleep, as I always have done. And you wake me by making a racket, as you have always done. Though times they are a changin’. Though the song remains the same.

Right now I am sitting on our blue couch. There’s an orange cat pressing his tickle whiskers to my arm, making it hard to type. I’m listening to all the different versions of ‘Dream a Little Dream’ I can find. Everyone that hears me type says I hit my keys too hard. I’m really writing this, you know? I am really here, in this little wooden house as you sleep across the hall in your little bunked beds. There are flowers on your sheets and there are cars on your sheets and there’s Dora on your pyjamas and there’s Thomas on yours. And in the morning it will be Mabel’s birthday. There’s a grey cat on the coffee table, and she has little silver feet. There are cherry blossoms on the mantelpiece.

My love for flowers is something you know about me. You tell other people ‘Mama loves flowers! And dancing! And her favourite colour is yellow’, all of which are true. You’re my biographers. You are telling my story to me and my fingers are flying trying to take it all down. Bang on the space bar. Smashing the full stop. There are notes of our lives over everything. On calendars. Throughout my phone. On receipts in my purse. Marked on my body. Scrawled on walls in crayon I can’t bring myself to wash off, because it’s you telling your story. So there’s nail polish on the doors and paint on the floor and pen on the paint work. Because, even now, I can’t believe you’re here. That you’re mine. And this is the place we do our living. You’re telling your own stories here, too.

I walked an enormous coffee table, another roadside find, several blocks home today. It’s the perfect height and the perfect length and it has tiny carved flowers on the legs. And I want to love it. Really. I’ve spent all evening looking at it, thinking how I will make it work. The possibilities. The purpose. Because it seems like it should fit right in. I can see you drawing on it and building on it and it being strewn with cake plates and tea cups and climbed all over. But I’m not feeling it. Because a lesson I have learnt in learning the lessons I’ve learnt to learn is, less really is more. I used to feel like, the more I had, the more real I was, somehow. As if owning things connected me in some way. Identified me as a person. With things. And, sure it is easy to say, over here or out there or after, that what I was trying to do was to fill some void; to find what was missing. When really, nothing was.

And that’ll bowl you over sometimes, that nothing is missing. That you have everything you need. And you do. Right now. Even though you mightn’t believe it, or though you might be working so hard to convince yourself otherwise. Because just you is enough.

Just you is enough.

Theo: you lost your smile for a little while there. Somewhere along the line that 4 has walked us. Things got hard again, as they do in times of change. And you don’t want to say ‘oh, that’s just 4!’ because, how reductive. And I’ve been 4 and 10 and 13 and 18 and in the last weeks of 28, and you could say ‘oh, that’s just!” to any of those and be right and wrong. But it’s back now, your smile. And it’s not an ear to ear. No, I wouldn’t say that. It’s a chin to eyebrow. Your face lights up.
You talk with your hands and when you’re asking me a question, in conversation, you extend your right hand. And it’s as if I can see the words walk off your palm and out into the world. Your questioning strengthens you, darling. Don’t stop asking. You are so brave. I hope I’m half as brave as you, when I grow up.

Mabel: you sing to everything. Songs you make up. The ones you hear. From Bonnie Prince Billie to theme songs on the movies we watch and watch. You walked into the lounge the last week, ‘right’ you said, clapping your hands, as I always begin, ‘you’re gonna play the drums and you’re gonna play the pianey and I’m gonna do this!’ this, of course, being your beloved harmonica. It’s only vexation being that you can’t sing and play it at the same time. We had friends over the week before, and as they left, you came slowly inside after waving them off. ‘What’s wrong, little love?’ I asked your small down turned face. ‘Alex and Hazel have gone home.’ You sighed. ‘And we were making a band!’. You stroke my cheek when I tuck you in at night ‘sing the songs when I was a little baby’ you ask me, and I do. The same as my mother sung me. As her father sung her. When I sing ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ you yell ‘I’m not going!’. When I sing ‘This Little Light of Mine’ you sing ‘I’m gonna let it shine!’. And you mean it. And you do.

Let it shine, baby loves.

And make sure you really love the coffee table, before you walk it all the way home.

I love you. I love you. I love you.
Mama xx

January / February / March / April / May / June / July / August