GROOVY KIND OF LOVE

Growing people is the best job in the world. I don’t want to be one of those mothers, though. The type, who talk about their children all the time and nothing else. While I could happily do this, I am aware that everyone else isn’t that interested in my kids. But I feel a bit mushy today so let me just get this out and I promise not to mention it again.

I love being a mother. 

I love the way my baby rubs her snotty face all over mine when she is tired.

I love that when my son sneaks into our bed, he thinks we don’t know he’s there.

I love that sometimes I miss my son when he goes back to school after the holidays.

I love remembering the look of absolute wonder and confusion on my kids’ faces when they first did a poo in the toilet.

I love that when I sing out of tune to my babies, they still smile at me like I am the best singer in the world.

I love that my son’s favourite toys are a stick and a pair of kitchen tongs.

I love that my kids are playing with the same Star Wars toys that my brother and I played with over 30 years ago.

I love that my baby girl farts twice as much as her brother did.

I love that my 3-year-old knows more about dinosaurs and sea reptiles than most adults.

I love remembering how my baby son’s smiley face would make complete strangers smile when I carried him around.

I love that when she wakes in the morning, my baby girl smiles at me and has done so every single morning of her little life.

I love that, although my kids are always the loudest wherever we go, they are always the ones having the most fun.

That’s all I wanted to say about that.

TIDBIT:  One day I was at the supermarket in the ‘Ladies Hygiene' section. There was an elderly man standing in front of the sanitary pads. He pulled out a plastic wrapper from his pocket. It was from a pack of pads, and he had brought it from home to make sure he got exactly the right ones for his wife. Forget flowers, chocolates and Facebook declarations. All of that is bullshit. When I think of that elderly man, I think … This is love.

What would Jane say?

Surely one of the most beautiful, powerful speeches ever made by a man in love. And no, Mr Darcy did not say it.

‘You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight and a half years ago. Dare not say that a man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.'