I sat up in the middle of the night last night with an urgent desire to go downstairs and rummage in the garage to find an old diary. I didn’t want to look what was inside or be reminded of what I had written, I just wanted to destroy it.
Given that one of my big regrets is burning my teenage diaries in a moody angst fuelled fire (I literally set fire to them), this makes no sense. After all I don’t actively try and create more regrets for myself.
“I’ll have to wait 11 years before I have a kid free New Year’s Eve again” I overheard a wistful sounding mother say the other day. I felt one of those sentimental pangs you get when your child is no longer a toddler and you’ve embraced that smug “older and wiser” satisfaction you probably don’t deserve.
“Hang on to it while you can” I wanted to say to her which would have been very odd and possibly a bit creepy because (I hope) she wasn’t even aware I was eavesdropping on her conversation. It would also have been awful because I am not a fan of the smug, know-it-all kind who tell you how to nurture/care for/raise your kids. My worst is people telling you how you should feel. Especially about your own kids. [Read more…]
I must warn you that this is not a post for people who do not get this meme.
There was a time my sister and her family wouldn’t have nodded sagely like they should have when they read that. They would now, because they understand.
They understand because they have Spencer, a gorgeous Groodle who has turned my sister, her husband and their two kids into the type of people who smile every time they walk into the door because there is a dog in their lives. They are also the type of people who now celebrate dog birthdays.
I was listening to a podcast by Wil Anderson the other day in which he was chatting to Charlie Pickering. Anderson starts the conversation with a rather direct and tricky question.
“Who are you? “ he asks.
Charlie replies very hesitantly with lots of pauses and ums and ahs “I’m Charlie Pickering, I’m a comedian from Australia. How about that is that a good start.” And then immediately he adds “Did you sit there quiet just seeing how uncomfortable I got and what other things I kept added … I’m a dog lover, I ride bikes, I think Picasso’s good and I really like the Doobie brothers.”
It’s the question that Anderson asks because he likes to see what people will say. He says most people on the show tend to qualify themselves by their career or by their profession but he admits that clearly not the whole world defines themselves by what they do.
I always thought that this house we live in now would be our forever home, I love this place and the thought of ever moving again fills me with panic and dread. But there have been a couple of days over the last week where I have thought that if something happened to my dog we’d have to move. I don’t know if I could live here without him.
It was the two days that Henry was not home. The two days that he has spent at the vet.
Yesterday he had surgery to remove an anal sac tumour. It’s as bad as it sounds. The type of tumour and the general prognosis is worse but thankfully not for Henry. Last week an ultrasound and x-ray showed that it hasn’t spread. Its subsequent removal and removal of the tissue around it will ensure that it doesn’t.
He is going to be okay but I have been a mess. [Read more…]
I’ve been watching my Twitter and Facebook feeds with interest and increasing agitation over the last week or so. And as we get closer to Mother’s Day it gets worse.
So much grief about a day dedicated to Mother’s. Or Hallmark.
There are the people who make it absolutely clear that, whatever happens, they don’t want to spend any time with their children on Mother’s Day, likewise the people who are adamant that they are not spending Mother’s Day with their own mothers. [Read more…]
Worry is part of being a parent. When our children are babies we worry when they don’t sleep, when they are asleep we worry that they are sleeping too much, when they eat we worry about what they are eating when they don’t eat we worry even more.
As they grow up we worry about all the decisions that we make, we worry that we are doing the whole parenting thing wrong, we worry that they will end up angry or spoilt or in therapy or all three.
As they get older we worry about alcohol and drugs and peer pressure and not getting home. We worry about social media and sexual partners and not working hard enough to get the job they want.
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I am feeling a little overwhelmed by the impending Bar Mitzvah this weekend. Testimony to this is the fact that I have fallen asleep twice day and as I write this it is only 4pm.
I fell asleep at the beautician having an omnilux treatment and then I managed to fall asleep while having synthetic eyelashes adhered to my natural eyelashes. I think that falling asleep with someone’s fingers in your eyes is quite a feat. Waking oneself up with a loud snore is also quite a mean feat but one I was slightly more ashamed about today.
But it’s been a big week. Family have been converging from one corner of the world (South Africa) and preparations for the Bar Mitzvah are at warp speed. My son has learned the portion that he has to sing in synagogue so well that last night when we watched the full dress rehearsal the parts of me that weren’t leaking out through my tear ducts were bursting with pride. Quite a surreal feeling actually which may have left me with such a tense neck that I cannot turn to either the left or the right (actually that tension may have been caused by my being over controlling, slightly neurotic and bad at being with people for an extended period of time.)
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This is our 789th practice session for the Synagogue part
Next week is my son’s Bar Mitzvah.
According to Jewish faith Bar Mitzvah happens when a boy comes of age at 13-years-old and is recognised, by Jewish tradition, as having the same rights as a full grown man. A boy who has become Bar Mitzvah is morally and ethically responsible for his decisions and actions.
The term “bar mitzvah” also refers to the religious ceremony that accompanies a boy becoming Bar Mitzvah. This is basically a religious ceremony at Synagogue where the boy is called to read from the Torah in Hebrew and deliver his learnings – ie what he has learned from that Torah portion he is reading.
It’s definitely one of the most important days in a Jewish man’s life and possibly one of the most nachas-filled for his parents (nachas is a Yiddish term for pride).
And now that I have been all earnest and politically correct I will tell you a few home truths about what the Bar Mitzvah is also about according to Jewish tradition rather than Jewish faith [Read more…]