Eating Sand and Ballooning Heads

I remember being on the beach in Portrush with my three children when my youngest son, under two years old, began eating great fists full of sand.  No remonstration on my part could persuade him to stop.  At one point my mother suggested I was making it worse by drawing attention to it and it would be better by far to ignore the practice.  I tried, and sat as if totally unconcerned while he seemed to spend the entire afternoon enjoying the beach as if it were fish and chips!  Later, his nappies were full of this disgusting grit filled paste, so I suspect most of what he digested went straight through his system.  Nowadays, the chances of animal poo/glass/syringes/heavy metals/pollution in the sand is higher and I would have found it impossible to ignore his determined efforts.  At the time, however, I remember it was the oddity of it that disturbed.  Other people’s children paddled in the sea, dug in the sand, made sandcastles and ran to and fro, while mine focused on eating all the sand within reach.  It was like a judgement call, spot the disturbed child, the mother who obviously has screwed up.  Where had I gone wrong?  How far back had I made fundamental mistakes in my child’s upbringing that he had this emptiness needing to be filled with the nearest dirt he could cram in?

Mothers are filled with such thoughts of ill ease.  There was a baby clinic opposite that I attended with each new born.  We would stand in rows handing over our little ones to be inspected and weighed by trained personal.  I remember with the first one, the woman weighed him and told me he was not putting on enough weight.  I cried all the way home mortified with my failure and apologising to my starving baby.  A month later his weight had improved but his nappy was filled with a liquid coffee-like poo that she told me meant he had diarrhoea and that this was very serious indeed.  More tears followed along with a growing conviction that I was not a fit mother.  It took an experienced friend to point out that the clinic was used to bottle fed babies whose quick weight gain and solid stools bore no similarity to breast fed babies, such as mine, to calm me.  By the time it came to my third baby I could watch mothers retire in tears from the row in front of me, while steeling myself not to be upset by what the nurse would say to me!  Then my turn came and she put a measuring tape around his head and showed me on a graph just how far outside normal his head size was.  There was a lot of discussion about brain development, concerns expressed about what was going on inside his colossal head.  I walked home sobbing in panic and fear as usual, while my baby’s head seemed to inflate like a balloon before my very eyes. 

Which all goes to show that as mothers we can feel we are on an impossible mission and are always ready to believe the worst and then blame ourselves bitterly for it all.  So if you happen to spot a baby stuffing handfuls of sand/dirt into his mouth, please just smile and act as if it is totally normal, you will sooth a troubled soul.

PS this June’s edition of Scientific American (2012) “The Scoop on Eating Dirt” highlights the fact that eating dirt, geophagia, is found in 200 species of animals including baboons, gorillas and chimpanzees.  Humans have been doing it since Hippocrates in 460 BC and the Mesopotamians and ancient Greeks used it to treat ailments, especially of the gut.  Soil contains minerals such as calcium, sodium and iron, an invaluable source especially in times of famine.  Soil’s detoxifying properties are also noted in this article and pregnant women who eat soil may be not only cleansing their system of toxins but also boosting their immune system.  Kaolin, a clay mineral, is used by the pharmaceutical industry to treat nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.  It is found to bind to not only harmful toxins but also pathogens.  So I put forward the hypothesis that my youngest son, he with the enormous brain, was fully aware of the therapeutic benefits of soil/sand eating at the time of his visit to the beach.  As such, he was an early genius, not demonstrating mental instability at all!  Oh, the folly of motherhood!  Is there no end?

PPS (mind you don’t go eating the soil or sand around you as it is likely to also contain bacteria, viruses, parasitic worms, lead and arsenic) – according to same article

Speeches that stir

When the spirits drop it can help to try out listening to some good rants.  I never thought I would recommend Rocky scenes, but this section struck home because it echoes that feeling that all of us sometimes experience where we kind of lose faith in ourselves.  Good to be reminded of what really matters.  (so skip the silly add at the start – and apologies that it is there)

Then there is that false conviction that those who succeed are chosen or are lucky.  I like the way this second video knocks that idea on the head and spells out what really makes the difference.  Michael Jordan is pretty impressive.

If any of you have a favourite please let me know what it is.

Sexual Assault in France

I was always a nervous traveller.  I expected that on a given train there would be a few murderers and rapists, as well as at least a dozen thieves.  So travelling on a train with this mindset posed its own difficulties.  Each carriage was inspected with care.  Four guys in a carriage was just asking for trouble.  Two women of stocky build could overcome me, so their carriage was risky and  should be left as well.  I usually ended up in a compartment with a tiny elderly weak lady as I would tell myself even if she were a killer, given my size and their age, I could probably take her down.  Deciding on which carriage to travel in was a major part of the first half hour of travel and I did not rush into it. 

All of this is plain weird, I know, and will seem even stranger when I tell you that I studied martial arts for years and even attended self defence classes too.  For a whole year I attended a full contact dojo on the Isle of Wight and ended up each week covered in bruises and bumps from being kicked and punched.  I can tell you there was a world of difference between someone punching at you but stopping at the skin and another kicking you from the front as if he wanted to dislocate your spine.  I learned many things, that bigger people kick you harder, thin lean men can be incredibly strong, being kicked is much worse than being punched and why women are so often badly hurt in attacks.  Our trainer told us that women are usually in placating mode when they are attacked.  They hope that by doing so their attacker will stop hurting them.  This, they continue to do even when the attacker continues to hurt them badly.  He was full of instructions about poking out eyeballs and other   gruesome techniques. 

I didn’t like any of it and decided on my own approach – that was pre attack preparation.  My carriage checking was a way of avoiding any conflict, and I felt that it made sense to put the odds in your favour.  Another pre attack policy was never to look as if you don’t know where you are going.  Vulnerability is sensed by the predator.  For years I was amazed that the world changed when I went on walks with my sister in law.  She is terrified by dogs and on spotting one almost half a mile away would begin to dance nervously behind me arms shaking, crying her distress.  It was like an irresistible invitation for any dog in the vicinity and I was constantly amazed how dogs would come from everywhere zoning in on her distress signals.  So too, in strange cities wandering around with maps and looking lost brings upon you all sorts of weirdoes.  Instead, I developed the practice of walking purposefully, as if you know where you are going even when you are lost.  Indeed, there are several major cities where I have found myself wandering lost in areas that I can remember vaguely being lost before in! 

I remember years ago going across France and my cousin decided hitch hiking was the way to speed things up, against my heated arguments.  A tiny French car stopped with a huge fat French man squeezed in behind the front steering wheel and his seat.  His stomach made a huge indent to allow for the steering wheel to fit.  His hair was positioned carefully over a bald head and kept in place by a liberal supply of sweat glistening everywhere.  We had gone only a mile or so before he pulled into a lay-by and started kissing my cousin on the mouth despite her protests.  I thought about hitting him on the back of the head with a swift chop, from the back seat, and then worried that he might stop kissing her and pull a knife or a gun.  So I opened the back door and threw both our rucksacks out onto the road instead.  My cousin extracted herself out the front door and the French fat guy took off at full speed.  We stood there, on an empty dusty road, my cousin spitting furiously on the road to clear all taste of his assault, both of us traumatised by what had happened.  Mind you to put things in perspective, I might not have unleashed a well trained karate chop on his neck (despite years of training) but my pre attack preparation served me well.  Why do you think my cousin ended up in the front seat and not me?

 Having past the half century age I no longer worry so much about train carriages and weirdoes.  Now, I concentrate on not putting my clothes on inside out and find I have become the possibly weirdest person I am ever likely to meet.  I certainly would not choose to share a train carriage or car with someone like me and that is strangely comforting in a sad odd way.

Mum

Your temperament is even

not raging hot then bitter cold

Your good nature is soothing

Ever pleasant and industrious

You have a peace within you

That others search a lifetime for

A kindness that is not ruffled

By the injustices of life

When in doubt or troubled

You apply spurs to yourself

And get going, sorting, cleaning

Making the changes without

To sort out the balance within

You want to solve the problems

Get to the core – yours or others

A good mind, a good friend

But your beauty has always left me breathless

An inner glow of goodness that the years cannot dispel

Shining clearly through the years undimmed

Enjoying life, frothy coffee

Walnuts and ice-cream, peanuts and your walk

Pacing your steps to match the daydream in your head

Seeing the beauty all around

And nourishing the beauty within

freezing white plump middle aged

Greetings dear Friend

You have been my companion through half a century.

Through anorak holidays in the rain, excitedly pumping big pennies into slot machines

And a fellow traveller in exploring Europe for the first time in our heady student days

Wherever I’ve been in good times and bad

You’ve been there, travelling across the globe to keep the link alive

Making the effort to call or write

Using every means to bridge the distance

You’ve been generous and kind

I remember my fiftieth birthday and you took me to my first spa

Soaking up the novelty of being pampered head to toe

I remember all the laughter and time together and grin

I hate how every year in April you come to the north coast and insist we enter the sea at the White Rocks in bathing suits, freezing white Plump middle aged women screaming with the pain

Why did that become a tradition I want to know! 

Bullies getting their just deserts!

In the early hours of sleepless mornings I find myself surfing the net.  Weird and wonderful things are found and then so too horrible scarring ones.  For some reason watching bullies get their just deserts is a particular favourite on mine.  As if justice being dispensed in these individual cases rights the wrongs done down through the years to all of us in some shape or other.  So here are a few of my heroes taking a stand.

The first is a bully on the subway targeting a woman passenger, a bystander finds an unusual way to bring things to an humiliating end for the bully.

The next is where a long suffering neighbour who puts up with a lot of verbal and physical abuse finally deals out justice to a thug.  By the time he actually responds you are cheering with the neighbours watching.

The last is a boxer walking with his girlfriend in a park.  Two men decide to cause trouble punching the girlfriend for no reason.  Big mistake as the boxer demonstrates his skills.

Yes, I know it is all a bit violent but in the early hours of the morning it is strange what entertains. 

Torturing flies, cruelty and making sense of it all

When my eldest son was around seven we had a visitor who dropped off her son to play with him.  As we had a large garden and an old caravan in its middle, with a forest to one side it seemed an idyllic place for children.  I could look out the kitchen window and watch my sons playing in the fields opposite.  It felt as if we were providing our three sons with freedom childhood used to allow decades ago.  It didn’t turn out exactly like that.

This boy was two years older than my eldest and had an odd world weary look about him.  As if he had already seen too much in his nine years.  But for my eldest son, who had been hounded by two inquisitive younger brothers, it must have seemed something of relief to have an older playmate at last.   They both disappeared into the caravan and seemed totally immersed in playing together.  After a couple of hours, my visitor returned and picked up our young guest.  My eldest son seemed quieter than normal and after some questioning he revealed that they had spent most of the time pulling the wings off flies!  When bored with this, flies had been pierced with drawing pins, gassed under glasses with air freshener and others drowned slowly.  I was horrified and asked him how he could do such things?  He claimed he had been a passive observer watching as his older playmate invented more gruesome methods of killing his prey.  I found myself livid beyond reason, after all they were only flies but it felt as if into an idyllic setting corruption and cruelty had crept unseen.  My son was upset at my reaction and his claim to be a passive participant was greeted with me likening him to SS guards who stood by watching others gassed the Jews.  Now, I have to confess that comparing his fly killing activities to genocide was hardly fair.  But I was disappointed in him and was overreacting as is my want at times.  Poor little chap stood listening gravely, eyes huge, as he took my comments on board.  How children suffer from parents’ stupidity!  He swore he would never be involved in such activities again and his shock at my reaction was obvious.  I do fear at times that my children may need, in the future, to invest in expensive counselling and therapy as a result of my poor parenting skills.

It was all rather unfair as after all, he was a rather kind hearted little chap who took great care of his younger brothers.  He’d appointed himself their guard and protector, probably realizing I was rather flawed in that area.  On an earlier trip to London by train he had acted as a railway platform edge monitor.  I found him, aged six, with both arms outstretched, his back to the railway lines, desperate to ensure his active younger brothers would not throw themselves off the platform into the path of an oncoming train.  On another occasion when he was four I managed to lose him and his brothers in a huge shopping mall.  After a frantic search, the crowd cleared from an area before me and I spotted him standing bravely alone, with both arms wrapped around his crying younger brothers.  Combined with this rather stoic dependable nature was an insatiable hunger for input.  He read anything and everything he could get his hands on and asked ceaseless questions of everyone.  A dear friend, Pari, re-christened  him “Whyman” after she took care of him for an afternoon and returned later exhausted by the never ending  interrogation he put her under.  He seemed to observe the world avidly around him trying to work things out and make sense of it all.  Sometimes it just didn’t make sense.

The only other children in our neighbourhood were the bin man’s two boys.  These lads were rather wild with a tendency to steal toys, slit our garden hammocks from end to end, throw stones, push small children out of trees and a perverse liking for putting dead animals on our kitchen windowsill!  As the years went by, they progressed to scratching the cars with stones, braking neighbour’s windows, intimidating the elderly in the street and then ultimately to drugs and real crime.  My eldest son observed their growing cruelty with alarm, after all, he had two vulnerable younger brothers to look out for.  But, I like to think that on some level, he managed to make some sense of it all, my poor parenting skills, unexpected cruelty in others and our own vulnerability to it all.  That, what we do, on a small tiny moral level, has consequences for who we become.  Like tiny unsure steps taken in a chosen direction, our kindness or our cruelty will shape not just our destination but our very communities.