motherhood

Sentinel

“Is it an African Elephant or an Indian Elephant?”

When I was a kid and interested in all sorts of things, I learnt a little bit about two types of elephants. Back then, the above is what they were called. I assume the names have changed now, but there was one very clear way to tell the difference.

The size of its ears.

The Indian elephant has much smaller ears.

I guess, if one looked at the map of the world online, or were lucky enough to own an Atlas, like we did when I was a kid, one would see that reflected in the size and shape of the two different areas. One is bigger, one is smaller. Unsurprisingly, as in the size of the elephants ears, India is smaller.

Now, as I was not born in either of those countries, rather one of quite a unique shape and size, I can’t compare my smaller ears to someone else’s. I also do not pretend to be African or Indian. I’m Australian.

I have a little voice in my head saying, ‘Just remember to keep calm.’ I’d say that would be a reflection of a certain amount of my heritage, but not all of it. You see, I’m not quite sure where the other side comes from.

As I have said many times in the past though, ‘Now is not the time to go jumping on your white charger and go galloping off into the sunset. People may get hurt.’ Life is a jigsaw, and sometimes parts of the jigsaw are missing. It is just the way of it.

When someone, or something, has passed away, it takes a very long time to get over it, if at all. The memories still linger, and occasionally we still allow ourselves to grieve. What we choose to do with those memories, though, is up to us. I don’t feel I need to repeat other things written in the past over and over again, if it has already been said.

What I do like to do, though, is have the opportunity to hone my skills. If that opportunity is taken away, the skills remain, not fresh, but struggling. Some people are particularly good at choosing words immediately. Some people like to carefully pick their words so the exact thoughts and ideas are presented in such a fashion no one gets the wrong idea.

I prefer to be methodical in my approach to things, personally. When I “fly by the seat of my pants”, I do it through using all my previous experiences. I do not believe I have ever jumped into something without first checking the depth.

Of course, when one is not given a depth, and one is pushed, issues arise. Problems can occur. Accidents can happen. ‘Sink, or swim’ is not an adage in my book. ‘Watch, and learn,’ is.

When I write, ‘The only way to do it is to fly,’ I am not referring to leaping off a cliff with no thought for my personal safety. I’m talking about hard work, and determination, and the wish to make sure things are done properly. If I were to ‘jump off a cliff’ in any way, shape, or form, I would be making sure I had numerous safety measures in place, I will have double-checked and triple checked things myself, and not simply relied on other people’s say so.

This is often not the case when one is surfing the internet.

There is so much misinformation on the internet, so many different points of view and unhinged, unreliable personal opinions not based on fact, it becomes extremely difficult for someone (or something) with no experience to navigate. What is truth? What is fact? Do I rely on the amount of things that say the same thing? Are they from different places in the world? Different sources? What does history say about these things?

If that isn’t working for me, the only thing I can rely upon is experience. If I am unable to have the experience, I then need to rely on a source who has had the experience. Then, I must assume they aren’t telling me lies. How do I do that? I don’t know. How do I discern the difference between fact and fiction for the fun of it? I don’t know.

So, what I do, is draw upon my own personal experience and hope that not too much has changed. I carefully weigh up my options, check and double check my safety gear, and then decide if I am going to fly. I will not let myself be weighed down by indecision once I have made this choice. My choice does not change. I see it through, because I am the one to have made this choice.

This month (February) has many meanings to many people. To myself personally, it is pretty important. A lot of very special things happened for myself and my family in February. I am here to make sure it all goes correctly, as much as I am able.

After all, as a mum, that’s my job.

Home Grown

‘I just want to say, this was not my idea. Today. It may have been my idea last week, and possibly last year, but it isn’t today, mama. I need to make that very clear.’ A desert is like an ocean, but the waves move slower. Things that have been hidden for centuries reappear piece by piece, and then the wave rolls over it again. It’s a golden sea of sand.

‘Why’s that, buddy?’ Their history is intertwined like this. It has always been diffused by time and effort, but this time would be the correct time, if not the right time, to slowly expose the dreams of the past.

‘I might think I’m hot, but okay, I am not like this one. I need to stress this very loudly, though. I am not that hot, but this one is pretty hot. My mum says I am okay. I think I’m not that great. I am talking a lot this morning, and I don’t know why.’ He sends it through this way, he says, because he sees the young man as himself sometimes, but this one does not need anything extra.

The two besties look at each other. ‘She is throwing him in the deep end,’ the nicer one says. They think of a green pool where everything is so deep one can’t touch the bottom with a stretched out toe, unless they dive. These two cannot dive that deep, and do not know why they would need to come back to the surface if they did.

‘Why are you the nicer one?’ asks the first one.

Last one says. ‘I am the nicest one of all, and she picked me first. That’s all I can say. I am not that hot though, and I am slightly jealous of this one because he was born with that colouring, and I wasn’t.’ He frowns, and kicks at something small and weirdly coloured under the desk he sits at. He had been there for too long now, and wasn’t drifting like he should be. He had left too many people behind and had not thought about how many until it was too late.

‘I had to dye my hair, and this one didn’t. I had to run around naked for a week, not that naked, but not that un-naked either, let me tell you, and anyway, I am not that other one, damn it.’ He says this very proudly, because he has grown fond of his counterpart, despite the anger of fire in the man of air. He had never been this type of man, and had never experienced what this family experienced, and for the opposites they had given him, to see the way they lived, had opened his eyes. Maybe they had opened his eyes too wide, but maybe not. It was just different, that’s all.

He had been thinking about this for a very long time, so had sent the mama a dream where she had seen him in front of a wave. This wave was deep and blue, not golden and not sandy. He had been looking over her shoulder at the one behind her and thought to himself, ‘This guy would catch that wave, cut it up, make it look easy, and come out on the other side laughing. I would be drowning under the wave of blue in that man’s eyes, and hoping mama would come and save me because I can’t swim that well.’

‘Is that what you were thinking?’ The mama was not laughing at him, he knew that now. She was looking at him curiously and wondering if he was okay.

He finds it difficult to explain what he feels when she asks this, not everyone knows this time and this place. Not everyone could see why they interested him. Not everyone would let him be himself, but she would. He knew that from the start, he thinks.

‘I am not that okay,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t need you to look after him for that long. I can look after him, although he would not want me to, he would probably do something that upset me, and then I would run away, because I am not that brave, either.’ He has made himself small and does not remember how to make himself big. He has left himself too many times to remember this was not him today. He had started rethinking a lot of things he had done over the last…

‘How long has it been now?’ she asked him gently.

‘It’s been three years. I have been on this roller coaster for too long, mama. Three years and no one thought to ask me if I was okay. Just you, and my mum didn’t even care. She thought I would be fine, and I am not that fine, and I am not that playful, and I am dreaming of coming to your house and asking you to save me again.’ He says this to himself a lot lately, not too bad, he thinks, not too bad. I can be this party of great people when I come home. Not my home, but this could be just like what I had always dreamed. Not my home though.

He slaps someone’s hand. ‘Bugger off,’ he mutters. ‘I’m not your Ken doll.’ He does not try to understand why these people think he can be touched like this. They just do it, and he desperately wants to leave them. ‘I want to go back to my land, and destroy those who think they can let it be a supermarket world, when it is obviously not. Not this time. I won’t let it happen again.’

Bugger and off were not words he had learnt from the mama. He had learnt to bugger off when he was very small, and throwing people’s clothes in the well because they were not listening to him usually got him a spanking. ‘I am not being kind today either,’ he muttered. ‘They can bugger off and stop touching me. I want to dress myself, and I am perfectly capable of doing that. I am finding this highly amusing though, because you got it exactly right.’

He had sand in his pants, and sand in his sandals, and that would have been funny in any other situation except this one, because sandals did not stop sand from being hot, unless you wore them a certain way. ‘I had to get up very quickly this morning,’ he mutters. He had fallen asleep on the beach.

‘No explanation needed,’ she replied. ‘I am perfectly capable of figuring things out.’

Before he had woken up and turned into a jellyfish of ill-repute he had sent her one last message.

‘I want to keep going mama, I don’t know anymore. I am not like him but I am getting much stronger because of him and I am learning to say things like he does. My mama says I am dreaming of the big lights, and I didn’t think he would be better looking than me, and I was wrong, because I am not that hot, see I said it this time too. Just keep in mind, I didn’t thin out (he is talking about body shape) that bad, though. He is a lot thinner than me, so I guess that’s one thing I have going for me. Not my fault, not his fault, and that’s why I think I’ll get further than him in a running race, and he’ll get distant and then I will get lost in the rest of it and he’ll get better and better. Look, mama, I am writing so much for you now. Are you proud?’

This had been very clever of him. He had compared them by saying he was very good at short distance, and his counterpart would be extremely good at long distance. There were many comparisons here, and perhaps there were many more neither of them had thought of yet.

It’s strange, she thought to herself. I have been proud of this one from the moment I met him, and I don’t know why. But then, she had always been proud of her boys, both of them, and then the next one, and then all of them.

And this was even despite the things they did when they woke up.

Just get on with it.

‘Remain calm, remain calm.’ The illustrious scribe cleared his throat. ‘I have made a list of all the thingies, and I’d just like to say I’m pretty sure Mum and Dad did it right.’ He glanced over at the mama, who nodded. She was not wearing the correct reading glasses again, he noticed, and his mouth twitched slightly as she blinked.

‘I don’t think that’s blinking,’ said the third one as he industriously pulled up his sock. ‘That is just really weird face-pulling, that’s all I want to say.

‘Silence,’ said the scribe as he positioned himself on a rock. ‘I have folded up my headgear this morning, and it makes a rather good cushion.’

‘Do we get to say what the dad did wrong,’ said the thirsty one. ‘Because I believe I could add a few pointers.’

The mama sighed, and began to clean her glasses. ‘It won’t make any difference,’ she mouthed at the scribe. ‘They aren’t mine.’

Number three was very busy shouting about things again. No one knew why because the back door was wide open.

‘That is not funny,’ said the scribe in a very severe voice. ‘Mum said if you get rude again, I can use the tennis racquet, not you.’

‘I think my head piece has fallen sideways,’ said the second one. ‘Why didn’t they size this thing, and…’ he watched as a random stranger wandered past. ‘.. Was he invited?’

‘No.’ Many people said this very quickly indeed. ‘That one is a very kind best friend of number one, and we do not talk about it.’

‘Right, well then,’ said number five. ‘Give me a lemon and I’ll squeeze it freely all over the great mind’s serendipitous whatsimajig.’

‘I don’t know what to do about that,’ said the scribe as he fussily wrote all the words down. ‘I said, “No, Pasha, we don’t tell them all the things, we wait for all the real people to rock up first, then we tell them all the things.” ‘

‘Mama said that too,’ added four. ‘I just want to know why I’m four and not three, although I must admit, he’s not too bad looking for a…’

‘You are four,’ said the mama. ‘Now get down from there before you hurt yourself.’

Four lowered himself from the pavilion’s roof as slowly as he could without injuring himself. ‘That was demonstrating how wonderful I am,’ he said, staring furiously at the scribe. ‘Which you aren’t even though you can write well, you’re not my homey, he is.’ And he pointed at number one, who frowned. ‘See, we both have magnificent eyebrows, and although I am quite sure we are not related, which would be weird, he said I look okay for a nob-head. I am not a nob-head, by the way, I’m an institutional bastion of the community, or something.’ He growled at the mama’s correction. ‘You are not getting away with that either.’

There may have been a bit of cackling from the mama as four pulled up three’s socks and tried to jump into his position. ‘You are not Three,’ she muttered. ‘Get over it.’

‘I want to be three, though,’ said Four. ‘Because then I’d be even more like Freddy Mercury, and you could see me all the time.’

The mama was not quite sure what he meant by that. ‘That’s nice, dear,’ she mumbled under her breath. ‘Which one did you mean?’

‘You know exactly who, I mean’t that as well, and the other one, and all the ones I sent you on a platter because it was stuff like that which makes my mum talk to me, and that’s why I did it, and that’s freshly made bread over there, and see, my mum said I was a good boy when I wanted to be and did you get all that, mama, cos I said it really really quickly but too bad I didn’t see that coming.’

The scribe had made another copy of the things four had said over the years, and he posted them in his very large maniacally written booklet of great and horrible things four had done over the years.

Three looked down at his shoes. ‘I am desperately seeking another pair of fabulous shoes, because mum didn’t let me look.’

‘Lemons are for buttheads,’ said five. ‘And I know because when I was little mum kicked me out of the bedroom because her and dad were making fishes, she said, and I still don’t know what that means. Do you?’

‘My mum said they didn’t do it right anymore,’ said five’s made up friend whom five was pushing backwards with his foot. ‘They didn’t let me finish — my mum said that too.’

‘Right, that’s enough. It’s a new something or other,’ said the mama. ‘I think you lot have been up all night and most of the day besides, and I’m sure it’s past someone’s bedtime.’

‘Yes, it’s way past my bedtime,’ said five. ‘Mum has to start yet another day without three and four, and I think she doesn’t really just let me say one thing.’

‘What is it,’ said the mama, rolling her eyes dramatically.

‘We are not getting any younger, mama, please come back now.’

‘No.’

‘DO AS YOU’RE TOLD,’ shrieked three, and tripped over his sock. ‘I can be really mean when you aren’t here, mum, I can too, yes I can, no I cant, no I don’t want to be mean, I want my mum back and she doesn’t want to come back, and I don’t know why this is that time isn’t it, I am sad now.’

That would have to be all for the time being, because boys can be really yucky when they want to be sometimes, and sometimes their mama just wanted to dismantle them all and put them in jars as a reminder to all the other ones that this was probably what she did better than anyone else. Last night’s very carefully displayed scene of her pulling Two’s arms and legs off had horrified everyone except the one who had owned a barbie doll when she was a kid and done exactly the same thing.

‘Last time we didn’t even last that long,’ said a demonic child from hell. ‘Last time, we didn’t even see that coming.’