Luncheon Roll

It’s getting light again.

I love you.

……..I just sorta realised I haven’t been listening to music with lyrics for most of the last six weeks. For example, my most recent iTunes plays: Enemies, Alpha Waves, Estel, Angelpie, I Think I Ate Your Face, Explosions In The Sky, All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone.

It’s like I just want stfu.

Fun with the kids happens so naturally once we’re out of doors and pitted as a McTeam, I almost want to take our lives on the road. I like babysitting at their friends – I get to watch them interact and they show off their uber-cool mum. On Wednesday we all celebrated Earth Day with a new Nature group for East Wall and made a 10-feet banner for the school.

I like just hanging out for the deadly banter we get into. I taught them Funnyshows tonight. Clownfight mime, Irish jigs, stand-up comedy, role play, hip-hop dance, tv skits…reclaimed wallpaper poster scene depicting Springtime in the Countryside. Sheep are blobs, cows are square, foxes have feathers and robin eggs are blue. Gargantuan goldfish swim in streams and there’s no such thing as perspective.

Last time I babysat the girls was Lily’s funeral. An elderly childminder, she collapsed and died at their home a few days earlier. We made cakes to take their minds off things but I was most saddened by the lighthearted way they got stuck in. They’re no longer naive about death: they’re hardened. Their best friend’s mother died tragically this week yet none of us are shocked enough. The mortality rate in our sphere seems at a drastic high.

I’ve wrestled a bit about what goes up here, how much to write about my children, our daily situations. I’m under no illusions of succumbing to baby boredom…after nine years of picking up dirty socks I no longer believe in angels. But I do really love being a prent and think it’s my most important role in life. I feel so privileged to connect and bond with two such genuine, affable souls, bright, lively personalities that are a pleasure to be around. And it’s funny because I don’t see my own future ahead as a chain of success in work and love but as a progression of my family unit. The lives we’re spliced, all that awaits – in them, I see good work I want to pass on into the world as a gift.

We need gifts in this world. Happy moments, thoughtfulness, positivity. Independent assurance is a wonderful thing. I feel lucky to find a wealth of small comforts, despite never having any money and hardly going anywhere, to name the only flaws in my immediate parenthood, there’s so much colour and vitality when you have a young set to nurture and chuckle and teach. That vitality means when life beyond the bubble looms to a height, you’re in the safest place.

I’m stressed to bits and sad about so many cruel things this week and yet each day is saved by a joke or a cuddle for no price. It can be hard to not publish the whole truth here – it’s really hard. Part of me wants to wail my heart out about insensiblity and strain exerted by other peoples’ ignorance. The crates of empties, authoritative door-knocks, dislocated knuckles, wood splinters, mirror shards. Car keys. Legal battles. House clearing. It just goes on.

But I have a bubble.