Esme 2.0

Esme 2.0

Esme is one of the most incredible creatures I have ever met: Whip-smart, loyal, graceful, beautiful, passionate: She's the sort of woman that has always made me feel like I just crawled out of a swamp.

Alongside her finer qualities, Esme has also inherited my inability to suffer fools gladly and has the temper of a hungover viper.

All of this is to say that while I love and adore my daughter, I haven't found it easy to be her mama over the last few years.

The fault is mine, running a day late and a dollar short in spotting her shift from child to young woman and the changes that needed to come from me as her parent.

Often it has felt like the house is too small, that we're caged together, frustrated and snarling, speaking carelessly and regretting it afterwards.

Esme didn't have a space to call her own, which is challenging for someone with a serious skincare habit and a passion for content creation: She felt that she was the Cinderella child, that I didn't love her as much as I loved her siblings.

It was heartbreaking for me to have our relationship reach this point: I missed her humour, her softness, her cuddles, and her messages during the week.

As we prepared for our recent trip to Hawaii, a sense of hopelessness overshadowed my thoughts: This was not just a holiday, this was Esme's first senior cheerleading competition, and how was I going to support her through a week of that, when we couldn't even manage a drama free weekend?

For those not versed in the world of "comps", they are not for the faint-hearted. They involve hours of practice, stage makeup, outrageous hair, and an emotional rollercoaster for anyone within a 10-mile radius.

The bar was on the floor, but I decided to show up for this trip 200% armed with a strict no-work policy, zero plans of my own, and a silent promise that I would be a curious observer.

This is not going to be a diary of that week away (nobody needs to read "got an Uber", "walked around a mall", or "watched practice" that many times), but I did keep my promise.

What I saw reframed my daughter for me completely.

It's not news that teenagers need a tribe that extends beyond, and in many ways replaces the family. Anyone who follows Esme on social media will know she has found herself a tribe with a profound connection; one focused on support, passion, hard work and a near-religious love of face goop.

Esme is selective about the moments she shares on social media, often omitting the small, intimate acts that cement her relationships. I have yet to see her post about hours spent chatting shit and eating sweets on hotel beds, the laughs shared untangling each other's hair after a competition and turning trips to the hotel's mini-golf course into impromptu stunting sessions, but these are core memories, so maybe they are too precious to send out into the world for careless eyes to see.

I watched Esme eagerly embrace her newfound sense of independence and felt a surge of nostalgia. I vividly remembered the mix of nervousness and thrill that came with learning to handle the little challenges of flying solo; going without lunch to buy that must-have necklace, or problem-solving how to get home when plans changed.

None of this comes without a toll, however, and spending all that time with her really made me realize something: Being sociable is exhausting and the very last thing she needs when she's trying to refuel her social tank is people getting all up in her grill asking her questions. I spent an unholy amount of time alone as a teenager, but that processing time was what I needed to make sense of the world. In my rush to fill our weekends with meaningful experiences, I had overlooked her need for stillness.

When we stepped off the plane from Hawaii, I had lost my voice, Esme won a Grand Champion ring, and we had doubled our luggage, but the best part of our trip was that we had found a new connection. I've fallen for this version of my daughter in ways I never thought possible and, for the first time in forever, I can't wait to see where our relationship goes.

Monday 17 June 2024 Comments: 0

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Am I a warning or an example?

Am I a warning or an example?

I had nightmares the other night. I don't get them often, but when I do it's because I need to sit with something for a while, maybe make a mental adjustment or remind myself of something I've lost sight of.

This particular nightmare came at the end of a difficult weekend with the offspring. When I say 'difficult', I mean all three were balls deep in some big ass feels: Esme lashed out when she heard I was going to the UK without her. Alfie got mad because I interrupted his gaming to make him come and eat lunch. Olive was having a "fizzy" day - Imma leave that one there because it's a whole ass post in itself - The point is, it was open season on mama bears.

Did I feel like being an attachment parent? Nope.

Did I feel like attachment parenting was working? Also nope.

If I'm being honest, I felt out of control, disrespected, unappreciated and very unloved. 

It's not hard to parent with empathy when you're in that headspace, but it is hard to believe you're making the right choice.

Anyway, back to my nightmare and my overall tearful demeanour thereafter. 

The old me would have worn that self-doubt like a cilice for days. The new me picked up the journal the children bought me for Mother's Day and doodled out all the thoughts and feels I had in my head. After that I cried (again) because it felt good to see the person I have become and because I wanted to be really sure that my face was, in fact, a hot mess.

Satisfied that I had suitably dehydrated myself, I jumped onto my phone for some distraction and was promptly presented with a video from Kerwin Rae that said: 

Every single thing that you're doing in front of your child, I want you to ask yourself this question: Are you OK with them replicating that? Cos they're gonna. And if you're not, what would you change? And if you did want your children to behave in different ways when they're of age, how would you want them to behave? What behaviours would you want them to demonstrate? And start showing those behaviours now. You're either passing down wisdom on how to live a better and healthy life, or you're passing down words and showing people that you're a warning. You're either a warning or an example.

Well damn.

Tuesday 17 May 2022 Comments: 3

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Baking With Not So Small Children

Baking With Not So Small Children

It’s a testament to my optimistic nature, the triumph of imagination over reality, but somehow the stupidity of baking with a two year old became the joy of baking with a ten year old.

The children are in varying stages of COVID recovery at the moment, so before they arrived for the holidays, I stocked the house with Christmas Holiday levels of comfort food, games, and film-based distractions. 

One of the things I had planned was some baking because after three years in La Sombra I am just getting to grips with the oven ... and misery loves company.

In my defence, my oven is gas-powered and had the added spice of being delivered without a single number on the temperature dial: It has all the character traits of a blast furnace.

So, I decided to enlist the help of the erstwhile hazard child in perfecting a brand new vegan cake. 

Ironically, looking back at the previous baking post, this cake did contain tinned pears. Long gone are the days of "they're my favourite" but eight years of cooking with Esme has refined her reactions to perfection.

She is the master of understatement, has the nose of a bloodhound and the discernment of a Michelin inspector, and her approval is now measured by a single deadpan nod. 

I live for that nod.

Esme is my favourite kitchen buddy. She's calm, creative and inspirational, and very, very emo.

So when I invented a cake involving chopped pear, cinnamon and nutmeg I wanted Esme's help to perfect the recipe.

Once we had done our chores, as I did eight years ago (and many times since) I laid everything out on the counter, turned on the oven, took a deep cleansing breath and called Esme into the kitchen.

What happened after that moment is a blur. 

My mixture was wrong: I had gone too hard on the nutmeg and not hard enough with the salt. There was milk where there should have been pear juice and not enough floof powder. 

I felt suitably chastised as I spooned the mixture into the cake tin under her disapproving stare.

As I turned around from the oven though, the emo had fallen away from Esme. There instead was the two year old with a passion for unbaked cake batter, violence and pithy banter.

And she was right about the cake. It was the best one yet.

Sunday 24 April 2022 Comments: 2

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To Alec, on his Baptism

To Alec, on his Baptism

My darling Godson Alec,

I have not yet had the privilege of holding you in my arms or seeing your smiling face in person, but I hold you in my heart every day as I see you grow from across this pale blue dot that we all call home.

You won’t recognise that reference yet, the “pale blue dot”, so let me explain. Once, an incredible man called Carl Sagan suggested that a departing spacecraft turn around for one last look at its home planet. The photo that it took shows a vast dark universe and one tiny pale blue dot, caught in a beam of light. That dot is the planet Earth. When Carl Sagan saw that photo, he wrote the following:

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

You have the privilege of joining our pale blue dot at a time of great change. If I were to travel from my home to yours, I would pass great floods, unholy wars and pandemics. I would also witness the human race coming together for each other in ways not seen in either of our lifetimes to fix what has been broken.

I write these things to you today not to scare you about what is happening in the world, but to reassure you. Because when I look at Carl Sagan’s words, it reminds me of the infinite possibilities of the life you have ahead of you in a world that is ready for change.

It is my prayer for you, as your Godmother, that you take the love of God given to you today as you are reborn into our church and hold it close as you begin to discover what this incredible life has in store for you. It is my hope that you take God's love with you on your journey through every day. It is my dream that your life means our pale blue dot will shine a little brighter in the darkness of the universe.

Your loving Godmother

Nat

Saturday 12 March 2022 Comments: 2

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Learning to Sing

Learning to Sing

I live beside a misunderstood community. What is locally known as The Hippy House, is, in reality, a shared house filled with some of the most supportive and creative people I have ever met.

It's rare to visit the house without seeing someone drawing, writing, whittling or playing an instrument, and it's an addictive force to be around.

The first to be swept up was Olive, who disappeared one afternoon while I was chatting in the kitchen, only to be found lying across an armchair on the back porch with one of the guys playing his guitar. He was daydreaming while he played the same set of chords over and over, while Olive's teeny angelic voice sung the words to the chorus of Wagonwheel (her favourite song) over and over again. How he discovered that about her, let along get her to sing along with him is a mystery I never chose to unpack. Instead, I pulled my head back through the sliding doors and silently tiptoed away grinning to myself.

It never occurred to me that a few months later, the same household would weave the same magic on me, and I would find myself singing in front of people for the first time in my life.

I've spent a lot of my life singing in the shower, with my headphones on, and on rare occasions in front of people when I have consumed enough alcohol to be brave. Most of those occasions have resulted in me being told to "SHUUUUUUT UUUUUUUUUP!!!!!!", and so, for a long time, I did.

I stopped singing in the shower because I was just trying to get through it before The Offspring Wars escalated to literal bloodshed. And as a side note, I would like to point out that my going to the shower is never announced. I sneak into the bathroom with the same ninja skills I used to sneak out of my bedroom as a child, but they know, OH THEY KNOW. Even if all three children have been quietly enjoying activities in different time zones, I can guarantee that I won't have finished shampooing my hair before the first screeches are echoing through the house.

I stopped singing with my headphones on because I live in a house with no Wifi and, frankly, I'm bored of the music I have downloaded on my phone these days.

I stopped singing with other people around because, well actually, I didn't, there's just never anyone else around.

The point is, lockdown happened and I was blessed to be in a bubble with the guys across the road. And I'm a strong person, Lord knows I'm stubborn, but after a month of all that support and comradery, they snuck in behind my defences and a few beers into the evening, I started singing. Like singing along to someone playing the guitar. With nobody else singing with me.

Hands down, the most terrifying thing I can remember doing.

Especially when other people turned up. Other people, as in AN AUDIENCE. My brain took one look at the situation and had a full-scale Hulk Smash tantrum. The only saving grace was that we were singing a song that has three verses in it and that I'd listened to it for three days straight while I was in labour with Esme, which is to say, that song is indelibly lodged in my brain until the day I die.

The thing was after I'd told my brain "Sun’s gettin’ real low" a few times (geeky Marvel reference for you there), I actually started to enjoy myself. Okay so I had to stare at lyrics on my phone to avoid making eye contact, and I had to be given the most obvious of cues to start singing in the first place, aaaaaaand yes I fucked up more times than I got it right, but nobody cared, nobody told me to shut up, not once. They were having so much fun they made ME start to have fun too.

Right up until the point someone suggested an open mic.

Thursday 9 July 2020 Comments: 0

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