Our youngest daughter is about to turn eighteen and I am feeling decidedly old. The problem is not directly related to her age as much as to how I will now have to answer the question ‘Do you have any children?’
It forms one of the many introductory questions that we Brits ask when meeting new people. Others include ‘Do you live locally?’, ‘Where do you work?’, and ‘Are you married?’ What an interesting bunch we are.
They are only beaten by the age old favourite for this island race of ‘What do you think of this weather we are having?’
There was a time when I used to simply answer the ‘Do you have any children?’ question with ‘Yes I have four daughters’ and then continue into details of the fact that there is two years apart between each of them as if this showed some sense of planning on the part of myself and my wife.
Now, however, I have to face up to answering it by replying with ‘I have four grown up daughters’. Grown up daughters! It makes such a statement about ones age.
It is interesting to me how we allow such things to define us.
When we announced to the world about the birth of our first daughter we were both only twenty-four and it marked an important moment in our journey into adulthood. Looking back I know that we were not prepared for all that parenthood was to bring.
All that I can say is that each new stage hopefully brings the necessary skills required to deal with the responsibility of bringing up a whole other person.
There seems to be four distinct phases in the process that should be considered by any prospective, or current, parent.
Firstly, you are faced with the ‘Bundle of Joy’, a misnomer if ever I had heard one. Of course they represent joy for the wider family and, in the initial stages, for the new parents too. They also signal nights of nappies, vomit, sleep deprivation, and marital arguments; Joy is not the word most new parents would ascribe to this experience.
Added to this is the fact that it is pretty much all one way traffic in the relationship stakes with very young babies; you might convince yourself that they have just smiled at you but everyone else knows it was just the result of wind.
The next stage is slightly more interesting when they reach ‘Little Person’ status. Here they engage with the world in an energetic, if not sometimes, slightly annoying way. It is the days of the ‘Why?’ question being asked at the end of every conversation and where parents break there own commitment not to follow the own mum and dad in saying ‘Because I said so’.
Still it remains fun because you get to see the child develop a personality and see the real them.
A short time later they hit the ‘Teen Terror’ stage and your child disappears from view to be replaced by a lodger dropping into the family communal areas to eat, complain, ask for money, arrange lifts, argue loudly, and then disappear to the underworld of their bedroom; it is like a youth version of ‘Eats, Shouts, and Leaves’.
Fortunately for all concerned there comes another stage that draws all the others together, the ‘just about an adult stage’. This is where it starts to dawn on them that, despite all of their previous objections, parents do actually know something.
It is as if your kids have been away on a journey of self discovery and have now returned to listen and share.
So when your kids are ‘Bundles of Joy’ don’t expect much conversation (from children or your partner. When they are ‘Little Persons’ try to keep smiling whilst they ask ‘Why?’, this too will pass. When they become ‘Teen Terrors’ hope and, if it is your way, pray that all the good stuff that you taught them will hold fast.
And when they finally get to be ‘just about adults’ enjoy it because more than likely you will be just about to hit the ‘I am a grandparent’ stage.
My Daughter is 18
Change
I have reached the age when I have the need to utter phrases like ‘Is it Friday again, the weeks come around so quickly!’
This feeling is only beaten by the speed at which Mondays arrive signalling the end of the weekend and the return to work.
It seems that the progression of the years brings about an increase in routine fuelled by a distinct aversion to change.
We have friends who, noticing this development in their own lives, decided to do something about it. They had read a book advising them to add some variety to their lives by changing one thing that they did as part of their normal lives.
So, with full commitment to the cause, they shopped at a different supermarket for their weekly produce. Not exactly cutting edge thinking Anne and John (you know who you are!).
Having been in the new store only a few minutes they undid their new found appreciation of change and decided to go back to their usual retailer the following week. It seems that not all supermarkets fill their shelves in the same order and this can cause a serious amount of inconvenience to the previously happy shopper. How inconvenient that different things should be………different!
I understand their feelings towards change; it seems that it is easy to find comfort in the familiar. Occasionally I vary my route to work but it is normally due to traffic congestion rather than the search for variety.
When I was younger change seemed to be a welcome friend but now it breaks in to my normality as if to steal some of my comfort.
All this resistance seems at odds with the involuntary change that is happening to us all of the time. I would love to be able to slow down the increase in my waistline or the development of lines around my eyes but, this form of change happens without invitation.
I wonder whether the growing suspicion of all things that alter is a direct result of the feeling that we cannot slow down the aging process no matter how much we moisturise, exfoliate, or tone (probably in the wrong order but you get my point).
Perhaps the advice to bring some variety to our usual routine is useful in helping us to feel like we still have some control over our ever evolving lives.
So this week why not buy your fruit and veg from a different store, travel an alternative way to work, eat a new type of cereal for breakfast, or tune your car radio to another station.
As long as you can still get your cherry tomatoes, arrive at work on time, stave of the 11 o-clock hunger pangs, and put up with Radio One all will be fine.
On second thoughts I think I will keep things the same and listen to a Radio Station that plays music. Change is so overrated!
Digital Camera
I gave my wife a digital camera for her birthday just a few weeks ago and it has disrupted our usually precise routine.
She seems determined to record our every waking moment and so now all of our tasks take twice as long. I am not sure whether this new obsession is an age related thing because, as I feel the need to point out, I am three weeks younger than Mrs M.
It is not just the taking of pictures that has added years to every minute but the additional process now required to make use of the images.
There was a time when a 24 frame film was consumed out of a sense of duty, full in the knowledge of the fact that at least 20 shots would be discarded as virtually useless. Only after the full roll has sat on your shelf for several months will you get around to dropping it in for developing.
Now, with the advancement of digital photography, we are faced with the frightening prospect of every shot being placed on view electronically. Needless to say I am somewhat concerned; I don't have the physiology to allow for too many pictures to be taken with any confidence.
In the days of film there was the natural censorship of the cost of developing at the back of your mind. The picture taker would have had the good grace to at least wait for you to smile and breath-in before pressing the button. Now they just take shot after shot without any care, safe in the knowledge that they can, in theory, erase them later.
Once my bride has filled up a storage disk with pics she is ready to download them onto the computer. I say she is ready when what I actually mean is she is waiting to be shown how to do it for the umpteenth time.
Invariable we cannot remember where we have put the connecting wire even though we have a special drawer for such things. Several minutes and many arguments later we sit down to press all the correct buttons in the right order so that our memories can be stored.
Once this part of the process is complete my wife then wishes to 'Facebook' them (she cares nothing about turning nouns into verbs) and so the logging on to the internet and uploading fun begins.
This is probably the area of digital photography that causes me both the most pleasure and the most pain. There are pictures of me on the world wide web in poses that should not be seen: part way through eating a pie on a day out, half asleep on a deck chair, looking petrified on the Manchester Eye, and spilling decent red wine down my shirt on a night out in Saltaire. Added to these are the numerous shots of me mouthing the words 'Don't take another picture!' I am usually caught mid way through the 'O' of another and looking like a slightly disappointed baboon.
The delight comes in laughing at my many friends who have been caught in similar positions by their partners.
At least my wife can take a decently framed photo. I, on the other hand, produce snaps with the edge of my finger appearing like a shadow in the top left hand corner; I like to make my mark.
So digital photography has removed from our language words and phrases like negative, developing, over exposed, and photograph album. And replaced them with ‘where did you put the wire?’, ‘You should have cleared your old pics off the disc by now’, ‘Could no-one be bothered to charge the battery up’ and ‘why did you put that one on Facebook’.
My wife asked me what I wanted for my birthday when I reach the same age in three weeks time and I am pretty sure that I don’t want a digital camera; one pictorial historian in the family is enough I think.
Mrs M doesn’t seem phased that I have named her such, she just points out that if history is written by the victors then all the power lies with those who own a digital camera.
