I met an old friend this week who’s just about to have her first baby and is a bit unsure about what to expect. This is a young lady I went to many a music festival with and had many reckless and hilarious teenage adventures. Together we loved several uber-embarrassing eighties bands with, now looking back, frightening passion.
Over coffee she asked me what it was like having kids. Such a broad-ranging question and the words ‘brilliant but brutal’ didn’t quite sum it up. So I broke it down for her and she ran screaming, arms flailing in a dramatic fashion, from the coffee shop. That last bit was a lie, she might have just looked a bit shocked.
Here’s a bit of what I told her she could expect…
Happiness
Joy and happiness, a depth of which you will never have experienced before. It will pale even the time you won the signed Bros single “When Will I Be Famous’ from their fan club in 1987. No seriously, it will.
When you’ve have the most rubbish of days and feel like the sun will never shine again you will look at your child – his big blue eyes, his flawless, chubby face – and know he is one of life’s truly beautiful miracles. He will giggle, or ask a bizarre and randomly hilarious question and you’ll honestly think you’re the luckiest and happiest person in the world, nay the entire universe.
Tiredness
Remember that time we stayed awake for three days and nights to see every single band who took to the stage at Donnington Monsters of Rock festival? Remember the tiredness, the sleep deprived hallucinations, the mindless babbling and dark circles which no amount of industrial-strength concealer could ever mask? Envisage that exact tiredness, draw on that zombifying lack of energy and multiply it by 10, because that’s the kind of tiredness you should expect to feel every day for the next 10 to 15 years years. Enjoy!
Worry-edness
Is that just a heat rash or is it deadly meningitis? Is that a big tumour up his nose or is it a carefully lodged small ball of orange fluff? Will he play in our garden without accidentally drinking the home heating oil straight from the tank? Will he run away and be abducted if I even so much as loosen my vice grip on his hand? Will I ever be able to relax again, ever?
Be prepared to worry from this day forward until the very day you die, no matter if your kids are five or 75. Yes, yes, enjoy that one too.
Life will never be the same again-edness
Once you have kids your life will never, ever resemble the life which you now lead. That’s not always bad. You will leave behind lazy Sunday lie-ins, holidays that you come back from relaxed as opposed to super-stressed, skipping out of the house with just your handbag, watching intelligent programmes on TV, a tidy house and reading newspapers on the day that you actually buy them. But if you didn’t have kids you could never truly appreciate the serenity of watching a baby slumbering peacefully because you wouldn’t have lived through the ear-splitting racket that they make during the day. Without kids you wouldn’t, with a clear conscience, dance around your kitchen impersonating a crazy chicken either, or know all the words to the Postman Pat themetune. And, truth be told, you haven’t lived until you’ve sat through your 300 viewings of Chipmunks, the Squeakquel in one weekend.
Without kids you wouldn’t know such exhilarating highs and worry-induced lows that pave the path of parenthood. Life is never boring with kids, never dull. They brim with colour, vibrancy and enthusiasm for life, which if you let it, can be utterly infectious.
No comments:
Post a Comment