Released On 12 June 2018
Dolly's blog: Time.
It was a funny old week. Mr D was working, but the kids and I had a half term staycation. I enjoy these one parent holidays because I’ve realised how much more I interact with the children when Mr D isn’t around, although I still spend too much time buried in newspapers.
It’s an understatement to describe the week as low-key. One day we not only failed to leave the house, we didn’t even get dressed. The kids were in heaven, although the 10 year old (who has higher standards than me) decided to get out of then immediately back into his pyjamas before going to bed, “so it doesn’t feel like I’m sleeping in my clothes”. Gina Ford wouldn’t have approved.
Revision (or the lack of it) was another theme. To nag or not to nag? That was the question. I nibbled around the edges, raising an eyebrow when more TV won out over maths and muttering some cliché about reaping what you sow. But helicopter parenting this was not. A product of my own upbringing, I generally subscribe to the benign neglect approach, reasoning that the motivation has to come from the child at the end of the day. We’ll see how that pans out...
But the overall tenor of the week was a slightly melancholic awareness of the relentless march of time, marked by two family visits.
A rather morbidly billed “last trip” to the UK by much loved and increasingly elderly Australian relatives was a reminder that life is finite, so we’d better make the most of it.
A visit from my two little nieces highlighted how fast my own kids are growing, like it or not. Whilst my nieces waddled around, all pudgy-kneed and big-cheeked, my three invited me to a café they’d created in the garden, proudly passed me a “Menue!” which declared they’d been “Making tea since 2018” and offered me 1 cup of “Erle gray” for 50p. As I sipped my surprisingly good cuppa and pondered whether my 11 year old should be wearing mascara, I had a visceral sense that these happy childhood days are numbered. And that I should have spent more time that holiday helping them with spellings.
Nostalgic by design, my 80s tape collection is stored alphabetically in the kitchen and Now That’s What I Call Music 5 (surely the best one - although 7 comes close) regularly gets played on my Walkman. No surprise then that I don’t relish this passage of childhood and that dispatching the kids’ outgrown clothes to the charity shop sometimes brings a small tear to my eye.
As the great Van Morrison once said, it doesn’t matter to which God you pray, precious time is slipping away. But I’m determined to keep facing forward. After all, the kids can finally make me a cup of tea and what’s not to like about that.
After 19 years of fee earning, Dolly now works in a management role in a London law firm. Working four days a week she has three children aged 11, 10 and 7, a wonderful (though often absent) husband and a charismatic dog who keeps her sane.
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