The Boyhood Glossary of Phrases, Instructions and Simple Words

Adults: tall people with the gift of making frequent and unhappy suggestions.  Tend to carry tissues and money (worth knowing).

Biscuits: the first of the three major food groups.  These should be avoided unless they are pink, contain jam or are covered in chocolate.

Brother: a useful ally in the tormenting of parents.  They also help you to hone your fighting skills, although at bed time it is usually best to forget about that in favour of charging up and down laughing raucously together.

Calm: a state of inactivity and quiet achieved during sleep.

Chair: a large object made from wood, plastic or metal.  Used in leapfrogging and climbing, helpful in hide-and-seek situations.  Don't fall into the trap of sitting on one, especially at meal times.  It totally hampers your flow.

Crisps: the second of the three major food groups, notably also providing sensory and aesthetic stimuli when crushed and scattered. Packaging may be used to decorate bedrooms.

Cutlery: useless bits of metal, or worse, plastic, which inhibit the normal pace of eating.  Occasionally useful as a weapon.

Football: one of the main reasons for attending school.

Green trees: broccoli.  Don't be fooled.

Horse: if you keep asking for one of these, you might be lucky and get a hamster.

Hurry up: a meaningless phrase used by stressed out parents.  Origin unknown.  Purpose unknown.  Adds nothing of value to any situation.

Plate: a round, flattish object with frisbee-like qualities. For reasons that are indeterminate, it sits next to your food during a meal. Occasionally it may be used to helpfully collect your crumbs so that they can be shaken onto the carpet in a fit of flamboyance.

Put it away: a phrase used obsessively by mothers and teachers.  Refers to the slinging off of shoes, jumpers and the like.  The best methods of note involve shoving under existing furniture or hurling out of sight.  It may help you to be aware that the phrase is usually delivered with significant irritation.

Sleeve: appendage on jumper and T-shirt, used for chewing, sucking and to mop up spillages and excess mucous.

Soap: best avoided in the exercise of hand washing as it significantly slows down the process.  However, an essential additive to potions.

Ssshhh: used in polite company by adults in charge to dumb down laughter and general happiness.  Easily ignored with little chance of immediate consequence.  Any whispered threats made to your physical person in this scenario should be met with immediate screaming.

Shut up: used at home or in the car during exchanges of opinion.  You are not permitted to repeat it though.  Higher chance of immediate consequence if ignored.

IF YOU DON'T SHUT UP I'M GOING TO BANG YOUR FRIGGIN HEADS TOGETHER: surrender Dorothy.
When the storm passes, time expressions of parental remorse with residual sweet and comic requests.

Sweets: another of the three major food groups.  Used as legal uppers in any situation, favoured by dads more than mums.

Toilet paper: a versatile material used in the blocking of lavatories, the creation of fake bandages, and most interestingly, when combined with water may be used very effectively to decorate walls and ceilings.

Wellie boot: plastic bucket for pond dipping, made easier to transport by wearing on the foot.

Wipe your nose: see 'sleeve'

Wipe your feet: what??

Writing: a tiresome activity which inhibits the process of conversation and stops you playing football.  Best be off then.

Frustration and the Secret Place

I have always believed that frustration is a part of life.  An appendage, if you like, to situations and people that are hard going; the shadow that follows sickness or hardship.  I have always thought, I am frustrated because my baby won’t sleep, my colleague is rude, my husband is ill, my kids are fighting…

Recently, though, I have started to notice frustration in myself more and more.   And I have discovered that if you are inclined to frustration, and somehow three noisy children have failed to draw out this trait in you, then moving house certainly will.  In the middle of a situation I would not choose and cannot change, frustration has been my over-riding experience this week, and it turns out that the fruits of it are fairly unpleasant.  Which got me thinking.  What if my situation is less of the issue, and my response to it is more?  What if, instead of being the unavoidable shadow, frustration is the unwelcome stranger who knocks at your door?  And if you don’t want him to appear all over your Christmas snaps, it would make sense not to invite him in and make him comfortable.

Frustration, at least in me, usually connects to times when I am not in control and I want to be. This ‘need’ to be in control, as oppose to the laudable traits of being intentional and thinking ahead, would appear to be the sickness underlying this symptom in my life.  This sickness occurs in the absence of a sense of being safe and cared for at the deepest level.

I find myself reluctant to use the ‘s’ word in relation to frustration.   And by that I mean the three letter one, and not the four letter one.  The word ‘sin’ for too long has been hijacked by the religious and used as a stick to beat and a loudspeaker to shame.  Here is a list of everything that you get wrong, sort out your life and while you’re at it, can we have a tenner for the church roof.  But what if the concept of ‘sin’ was never meant to be the like that?  What if it was never intended to be the letter that arrives in the post to inform you of the fine, the points and the exceptional rise in insurance premiums?  What if it was the invitation that arrives instead?  What if it is the pull that tugs like a new piece of music that is so lovely you feel you must have heard it before?

In the New Testament, the Greek word for ‘sin’ is  ‘hamartia’, meaning ‘without form or true portion’ (1).  Which makes it possible that the concept of ‘sin’ is supposed to awaken the alternative possibilities of glorious fullness and abundance, to open your eyes to the five star restaurant you have been sitting in for years and realize that it’s time to stop ordering beans on toast.  To follow the instructions on the invitation to a Secret Place and find that as you arrive, the lights are glowing, there is food in the oven, the sound of laughter and a Host who lavishes the most heartfelt welcome you have ever experienced.  To begin to discover that you can go back there any time you want, whatever you have done or are experiencing, and find that you are doted on, thought about, honoured and held dear.  To notice that in this Place, frustration and fear dare not even darken the door, never mind knock.

What if learning to enter this Place was what the ancient mystic saints meant by ‘Practicing the Presence’?  If so, then ‘practicing’ is certainly what I plan to keep on doing.

(1) Mirror Bible, Francois du Toit, 2012

Man Versus Food

Anyone who regularly caters for a young family will have experienced the challenge of creating food that everyone will eat. When our eldest child was at the weaning phase, I had a copy of an Annabelle Karmel book of recipes for babies and toddlers. Being a first time mum and also something of a perfectionist, I dutifully bought a hand held blender and got peeling carrots. Chatty, as he is referred to in this blog, however, was already cultivating the non-conformism that I have grown to know and usually love, and he had his own ideas about what was going to enter his body. Homemade purees weren't really on the list. His will- power on the subject turned out to be greater than mine so soon I was shovelling jar-food into his mouth and thanking him for it. And so it began. Man versus Food is one thing, but in our house it is more like Woman With Food versus Children.
Over recent months I've become increasingly interested in cooking. I love experimenting with things I've seen TV chefs create, and trying new ingredients out. Cooking for my friends is fabulous. Mostly mums themselves, and chief cooks to their respective households, they just enjoy the fact that they haven't had to make it themselves. They are also pretty tolerant about my Extreme Lack of Presentation. Along with a group of my close friends I have been on a bit of a food journey. It began with 'Let's Stuff Ourselves" and featured piles of bread and cake, and has gradually become "Our Metabolisms Aren't Getting Any Faster". Enter Salad. My fridge and cupboards are now stocked with fennel seeds, aloe Vera drinks, squash soups, corn maize and raw chocolate products. Fascinating as this is for me, it does set the stage for a rather spectacular clash of ideas when it comes to my kids, and frankly my husband for that matter. Whilst tolerating the accumulation if "Weird Food" products in our cupboards, he does regularly feel the need to go out and heavily stock up on processed pork items. Well it takes all sorts of colours to make a rainbow, doesn't it. It is a sad observation, though, that in general, the amount of time and effort I put into a dish is inversely proportional to the number of household members who are prepared to eat it with any sort of gusto. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that pouring affection and time into a dish which ends up decorating the floor, the ceiling, inspiring scowls and strops and which ultimately gets scraped into the bin can be a little depressing. I tend to work on the principle that Macdonalds and ready meals aside, if two out of three kids submit to eating it without complaint and the Husband doesn't drown it in salad cream then it's pretty much as successful as it gets.

I thought you might like to know some of the less usual foods I have tried out and what I thought of them, (you might not, of course, so feel free to skip this and open a bag of crisps) so I will close with this little summary:

Product: Coconut Oil
Good things: Generally organic and fairly traded, delicious for stir frying and baking, said to be great for immune system and lowering Cholesterol, great scalp mask
Bad things: Pricey

Product: Hemp Oil
Good things: Makes you feel like a hippy, well absorbed into skin, packed with omega 3's
Bad things: Makes you smell like a rodent, tastes like a rabbit hutch, can't be heated

Product: corn maize
Good things: lovely in baking, gluten free

Product: date syrup
Good things: handy sugar alternative, slightly treacly
Bad things: Bit pricey, not as sweet as conventional syrup

Product: coconut palm sugar
Good things: So romantic, sugar free
Bad things: as previous product

Product:  molasses
Good things: unrefined so better for you, very treacly!
Bad things: not that sweet Very treacly!

Product: raw chocolate ingredients: cacao butter and powder
Good things: easy to make delicious fair-trade and organic chocolates
Bad things: pricey

Product: cacao nibs
Good things: makes a delicious tea,  can be used in cakes etc.
Bad things: need to use food processor as do not melt!!

Product: Gogi berries
Good things: superfood, exotic, good for fruit cakes, Himalayan monks, blah blah blah
Bad things: bit gross, don't buy 1kg like I did!

Groundhog Day and Beyond

My experience so far of having and raising children has been packed full of both joys and challenges. There are moments where I feel I could reach the moon I am so proud of them.  It is also terrifying, frustrating, heart breaking and can reduce me to my most primitive states of anger and despair.  The strangest thing is that on the one hand I raise them knowing that I am sowing into the lives of these amazing, powerful little people for whom I am privileged enough to catch little forward- glimpses of what they carry and what they will be, but on the other hand I live with a fear that what I sow may not be good enough.  The fear that they will come to be defined by either their own mistakes, or worse, mine, is magnified during times of particular social struggle, specifically, the School Holidays.  I'm not sure what the dictionary definition is of School Holidays, but here is mine.

A " school holiday" is a period of extended exposure to one's offspring, identified specifically by prolonged whinging and extreme sibling rivalry on the part of the offspring, marked pressure to accomplish great feats of expensive entertainment on the part of the adult, extreme guilt for not providing enough social interaction/ physical and intellectual exertion/ interesting culinary experiences, also on the part of the adult, and most notably, Extreme Weather Conditions.

I have found that whatever I plan into the holiday timetable, the aforementioned Holiday Traits of dreadful weather, in-fighting and a huge sense of personal defeat attack me with the regularity of the repeating events portrayed in the film  "Groundhog Day". During these times, I feel as if I could actually still be the "me" of five years ago, dealing with the same recurrent scraps, the same issues of "if-we-stay-in-the-natives-get-restless" and "if-we-go-out-there-will-be-public-humiliation".  In the rest of my term-time existence I feel we have all made serious and significant leaps forward in our personal development, but apparently  we all regress the moment the school gates shut for a week or two.

In trying to unpick all of this I suppose what I am trying to reach is the Bottom Line of what I believe.  Is it that I may only measure the wealth of what I pour into my children by how well it appears that I'm doing at a given moment in time?  If so, then selecting a moment where I read a bedtime story with my arm around the youngest one, stopping occasionally to kiss his little head, will make me feel like I'm winning.  And selecting a moment where the three of them are running completely wild in a place where you are meant to form an orderly queue will definitely lead me to feel like I'm losing.  If I am hoping entirely in either my performance or theirs then I might be putting all my money on the wrong horse.
So I guess what is left is to invest it in Hope itself.  That way there will still be hope going spare when it all goes belly up, and a little bit of grace to see beyond the squabbles of Groundhog Day and into the Great Beyond.

(Please feel free to remind me of this if I am looking glum over the next fortnight.)

Strategies for Small Creatures

Every household experiences it's challenges.  In ours, probably the most notable is Leaving the House, and most particularly, Leaving it in Time for School.  On account of our, or at least my, failure in this area, we are constantly beta-testing new devices or trialling new techniques to help us to improve on this.
In spite of the apparent simplicity of this task, making it happen is akin to reorganising nature so that only the laziest and most inept amongst every species survive.  Or expecting that the longer you leave your garden, the neater the lawn will look and the more organised the borders will be.  In short, getting children out if the house on time is virtually as simple as reversing the laws of natural selection or thermodynamics.

Techniques we have tried include:

Setting alarm clocks in their rooms
Making delicious and time-consuming food for breakfast to lure them downstairs
Making threats (of both the feasible and the unlikely sort)
Offering them money

The reality is something like the following:
One child takes on the qualities of a very annoyed fly trapped in a conservatory.  Suggesting to the Fly that it might like to channel its frenetic activity into getting dressed and cleaning teeth pretty much falls on deaf ears.  When you do finally achieve the dressed and fed state, you then have to direct the Fly out to the car, into the car, and then back out again and in the general direction of the school, preferably without it whizzing around bashing into people and generally whipping up a storm.
Meanwhile the other child avoids the Fly-Like State until later in the day.  Instead he becomes more of a Garden Snail.  The Snail goes at exactly the same, less than lethargic,  you-are-going-to-go-grey-while-u-wait speed, and he does not deviate from that speed whatever you do.  You can smile at him, cajole him, tease him, help him, offer him rewards, threaten him or yell at him, run around naked, burst a blood vessel or dismember the whole of downstairs, but he will not move any faster than his predetermined pace allows.  Added into this delightful morning dynamic is the fact that the Fly enjoys irritating the Snail, and his propensity to irritate increases exponentially the later we are and the more tantalisingly close the school gates are.  The Threenager of the house causes surprisingly little added stress by this stage of the proceedings, unless it is raining.  In this case there is usually some kind of drama about not wearing a coat.

And so we are pretty much always late.  And whilst I am tempted to, and often succumb to the 'yelling technique', it virtually never has any worthwhile effect and it doesn't lesson the sense of pressure. I am increasingly aware that even if raising my voice worked as a means of scaring the kids into submission, it won't help me to be the mother I want to be, and it won't release my children to grow up making free-thinking, positive choices.  Maybe if they keep choosing to be slow in spite of my best efforts, they just have to experience being late until the penny finally drops.  In the mean time, I plan to keep trying out exciting breakfast recipes!

Hummingbirds on Alcatraz

In our family, the last ten days have been pretty significant.  In landscape terms, it's been the equivalent of erecting a skyscraper after walking along several miles of terraced houses.  My husband and I left our three boys in the capable hands of his parents and flew to the United States for just over a week of exploring and visiting.  For me this was the furthest west I've ventured, and it has been an incredible experience.  Here are a few observations, and some of our stories as experienced in The Big Country.

I thought I would begin by sharing a few Useful Tips For Fellow Non-Americans:

1. When ordering food, choose the smallest possible option (unless you are taking steroids, pregnant or specifically hoping to gain a dress size)
2. 'Cilantro' on a menu refers to what the English call 'coriander'
3. If you are perched on a public lavatory, beware of leaning forward for any length of time to consider life or the universe.  You may find that you are surprised by the full bidet experience during the automatic flush.
4. Again, in public conveniences, or 'restrooms', it is apparently pretty normal that there are significant gaps between the cubicle wall and door.  Not that I spotted anyone taking unnecessary amounts of interest, and frankly if they did, good luck to them.  I wouldn't wish that view on anyone.
5. If a waitress in a diner asks you how you would like your eggs, don't make the same mistake as me.  I smiled and confidently said, 'Runny', to which she paused for a nano-second and scribbled something down.  After she had gone, my husband, who had been to that exact diner before and remained completely silent during the whole exchange, said, 'Well who knows what you're going to get now.'  It turns out that the required response was either 'sunny side up', which is a basic fried egg, or 'over-easy' which is a fried egg that looks like a poached egg.
6. If you are British, double what you would usually tip.
7. If you are Scottish, quadruple it.
8. At harvest time, or Hallowe'en, pumpkins are to Americans are what carrots are to Rudolf.  You get  pretend stuffed ones to decorate hallways, pumpkin flavour tea, pumpkin cake (a slice of which is known as a 'bar' in Minnesota), pumpkin pie, pumpkin turnovers, and good old Maccy D even do pumpkin milkshakes. 
9. If you like good coffee, you're in for a treat.  It virtually comes out of the tap.
10.  If you like decent tea, order beer instead (there are some great local beers and I am FUSSY about tea).
11. If you like pancakes, you are entering paradise.

This leads me to the next part, which I think I will continue in bullet point style.  I would hate you to feel like I had you cornered with my 350 holiday snaps.  This section includes the moments which were especially memorable, touched me the most, left me in awe or broke my heart a bit.  They aren't in any particular order.

1. The clearest night sky I have ever seen, travelling north of San Francisco, positively misty with stars and including a few shooters.  Fabulous.
2. Early evening looking out over Lake Superior, the furthest parts looking like a pool of milk.
3. The most exuberant homeless guy I have ever met: tucked up in a brown blanket in the doorway of a shop in Union Square, San Francisco, yelling 'thank you' for a hot chocolate in his beautiful Californian accent.
4. Hundreds of little children in fancy dress at Duluth Vineyard Church's community harvest party, getting their faces painted, leaping in enormous bouncy castles and cuddling some very brave rabbits at the pet corner.
5. Being present as Yancy Strickler gave a lecture about Kickstarter at the Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis.  Ethical, exciting, inspiring and out of the box.
6. A tiny green hummingbird tucking into some fuchsia on the island of Alcatraz.
7. The sense of Heaven breaking out as we worshipped at Bethel Church in Redding, California.
8. The hundreds of homeless people moving around the streets of San Francisco, pulling carts or wheelchairs containing their belongings, in stark contrast to the opulence of the tower blocks, hotels and designer stores.  Does the scale of poverty have any connection to the city's namesake, who was so moved by the needs of the poor that he gave up his lifestyle to become one if them?  Just a thought.
9. Wild rice burgers at 'Grandma's' in Duluth.  I think I am a bit obsessed by wild rice.
10.  Miles and miles of wild wild woods and Minnesotan lakes (Minnesota is named after the Dakota Indian word for 'sky-tinted water').
11. The general level of friendliness.
12. The scale and variety: America is HUGE and so varied.  So are the cars, and so are portions and so is the architecture and actually so are the ideas and creativity in general.
13. Oh my giddy aunt, the omelettes.  I had one with salad, guacamole and chilli beans. For breakfast.

And finally, the funniest moments:

1. Surrendering my admiration of my husband's superior grasp of the American Civil War once I realised that the source of it was exclusively from watching 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' on the flight over.
2. My husband on portion size: 'Wow. Most people would be happy with just two of these.  I mean, I've had two.  And I'm happy.'
3. Purchasing food from the amusingly named 'Fast Weiners' (hot dogs to the uninitiated). Ironically, it was the slowest dish to appear the whole trip.
4. Developing a new currency after my unfortunate and somewhat accidental purchase of some tea towels at $24.50 each (steep even by airport standards). After a brief exchange with my more practical half, the tea towels were returned, and we now refer to items as being worth 'half a tea towel' or usually less.
5. The pinnacle: a piece of art in the esteemed Walker Arts Centre, tucked in with some quite incredible and moving pieces which covered topics such as racial tension and abortion, created by a German sculptor and comprising a wooden stool under which dangled two potatoes.  It was entitled: 'Apparatus by Which one Potato can Orbit Another'.

In the immortal words of Arnie, but spoken in a higher pitch, "I'll be back".

Pink and More Pink

Weekends are always much yearned for in our house, in a way that makes me wonder whether my husband and I suffer from some kind of temporary amnesia that lasts 7 days and recurs just as often.  Along with their delight, they do have a unique brand of insanity.

The children, who during term time weeks are un-rousable before eight o'clock, suddenly find themselves brimming with energy well before this hour.  Thus begins the challenge of achieving the following, in order of priority:

Survival
Avoidance of police stations or A&E
Quality time with each other and three little nippers
Rest.  Hahahahaha!!!!!

In the spirit of number 3, I took Chatty to the shops for a bit of Chatty-time.  He purchased some spray cans containing pink and purple temporary hair colour, which after generous application is causing him unfettered amounts of happiness.  However he was a bit baffled that his sixty-something-year-old tutor did not express any desire to have hers the same.

Monkey has just gone to a football match with Daddy, who is no doubt getting his ears talked off.  Meanwhile Tiddler is expressing himself through the medium of poster paint.  The main attraction of this seems to be squirting it around and then discovering what happens when you tip water on top.  In the midst of his expressive activities I ventured upstairs to find Chatty relaxing upstairs drinking a cup of beef oxo, made with warm tap water, through a straw.  I heard myself suggesting that if he was going to insist on drinking stock, at least could he let me make him some of the decent stuff.  On my way back down to the kitchen, I found Tiddler painting the ride-on aeroplane in fluorescent pink.  Deep breath, explain that if really wants to paint the ride-on it had better go outside again, along with the small artist.  Another deep breath, take the next load of washing out.  Look at the towels that Husband kindly hung out earlier.  Briefly wonder if there is any correlation between arrangement of said towels and mental state.  Dismiss notion: that would make him seriously unhinged.  Move on to the next thing: break up a fight.  Change a dirty nappy.  Pile fighting children into car to collect Husband and Monkey.  Have some little thoughts about Valium.  Pray (the 'oh God help me' prayer, not the detailed liturgical sort).  Advance into the rest of the madness!