Just trying to keep my balance…
It was five o'clock Thursday, rush hour in Dublin city centre. One of those beautiful sunny Autumn evenings we get in early October every year - the Indian summer my kids didn't believe existed. I was among throngs of post-work walkers - marchers really, marching towards buses and trains and shops and pubs. Women in trainers, ...
Oh September, I had such plans for you. A fresher start and a newer year than January. A turning of leaf. A chance to get back to work-proper after a summer of juggling kids and deadlines; the smell of new shoes and new pencil cases promising routine and productivity and starting over. Except of course, with ...
An entire decade has passed since you rushed into the world, two and a half weeks before your due date. I hadn't finished work yet, and perhaps it was your way of setting the scene; letting me know that nothing would ever be properly planned again. And indeed, of all the things you've taught me, that's one ...
London. I mean it’s London. It’s hard to capture it in a sentence or a blog post or a photo or even a weekend. And when we were planning our recent trip, that was my only stipulation – let’s not try to capture everything. Small legs can’t handle hours and hours of walking and sightseeing, ...
Do you ever have mornings where everything goes wrong? Where you come downstairs and last night's saucepan is still on the hob and it's not anyone's fault because we were all out late at different events and activities, but still, it's irritating? And the kids are late getting up and late getting down for breakfast, ...
"How was your summer and how does she like the new teacher and how is he settling back in?" The voices change but the questions are the same. "They're tired this week, I'm tired this week, how is it only Monday?" Stopping at the corner for a conversation worth an hour - condensed into ten minutes. Machine gun chat, ...
"It's not fair, everyone in the class got lovely new books and I got one with scribbles all over it." "It's not fair, we all got moved around and we were allowed to be with our friends, but I was too shy to ask." "It's not fair I have to colour this balloon in brown but the brown ...
"The summer holidays are too long" "I took parental leave for August and I'm dreading going back to work" "The kids are up the walls and could do with some structure now in September" "I hate having to get her up to bring her to the childminder every morning when there's no school" "He's too old for the crèche now ...
Colouring outside the lines. Slipping beyond the boundaries. Leaving schedules shivering in the morning chill as the plane takes off for sunnier places. Forgetting the routine that wraps up the day during the rest of the year. That's the theory anyway. But as soon as we arrived in Spain, I realised boundaries were up for discussion at every turn. We needed ...
I read an anecdote on Twitter recently about a little boy who asked a face-painter for a butterfly. His mother wouldn't let him have a butterfly - she wanted something more "boyish". The child really wanted the butterfly, but the dad got involved too, and there was no way they were allowing it. It's a sad ...