Results tagged “parenting” from Looking Up

R recently had her friend M over to play. They petitioned hard for me to participate, but I had work to do.
M asked, "Do you do work? What kind of work can you do."
R explained, "He does work on the computer. Everybody works."
M: "Except for burglars."
I joined the conversation. "Well, burglars work. Sort of. It's just a different kind of..."
My voice tailed off. What on earth am I saying? Burglars don't work. They steal stuff from other people's houses. That's not work. Yes, they might call it doing a job, but that's different.

I had the sudden realisation that the isolation that comes from working at home in a solitary pursuit has distorted my view of the world. This effect has been made more severe by spending so much time in the company of five year olds. So much so, that I have begun to imagine life outside as resembling a Richard Scarry book...

Today I succeeded in scaring myself half to death (bad paraplegic joke). Really, seriously scared.

I was rushing around the flat, wrapping presents for Penny's birthday and trying to tidy up at the same time. As I approached the desk to reach for the roll of paper underneath, I reached out to grab the edge in order to help me to bend forward in a controlled way. Unfortuntaely, my hand slipped off the desk, and I fell forward, hitting my face on the edge of the desk (no major damage).

The blow to the face wasn't scary. However, the jarring whiplash effect on my neck and the subsequent pins and needles in my right hand? That was terrifying.

I'm sure that most people may have found the experience a little unnerving, but with my knowledge of spinal cord injury, I found myself reeling and more than a little panicked. 

Suffice to say, the pins and needles abated, and I am left with a sore spot between my shoulder blades which worsens if I tilt my head backwards. I'm sure that too will pass with time.

But the whole experience has made me appreciate even more just how random a spinal cord injury can be. I have met several people who have high level SCI as the result of a fall which resulted ion their chin hitting an obstacle and snapping their neck backwards. But surely no-one has suffered two, completely unrelated spinal cord injuries have they?

The other anxiety rekindled by this experience is that of a concerned parent, struggling not to view every single physical activity undertaken by his beloved daughter as fraught with peril and almost certain death.

If I can't even look after myself during a routine stationary handling incident in the home, what hope do I have of protecting her when she inevitably decides that she wants to join the circus?

The scene:
I am sitting at the computer, attempting to concentrate on work and trying to filter out the contented mumblings of beloved daughter who is sat on the floor with pens and paper, being creative and that...

R: Daddy, can I borrow the scissors?
Me: Of course. What do you want them for?
R: I want to cut out your heart.

I can feel my mind snap back from the screen and into my immediate surroundings, as a chill runs down the bit of my spine that still works.

 Had I heard correctly? Has our daughter become a Goth at 4 years old? Perhaps she is taking the first steps on a career path as a coroner?

I look down. She looks up. Then she raises a piece of paper.

R: Look, Daddy. I've drawn a big heart for you.

Yesterday morning, at about 11a.m. the doorbell rang. Well, more of a buzz, really. One long, persistent buzz.

Assuming it was a delivery, I pressed the door release button, and opened our door to the hall.

The front door opened, and in stepped a well dressed woman in her mid-forties. She had a little too much eye makeup on, and seemed slightly confused, perhaps unsteady on her feet.

"Er, can I help you?" I asked.
"Is ok," she replied in a strong Eastern European accent. "I come to work here." She was clearly expecting me to let her into our flat. Instead, I barred her entrance, and said, quite politely,
"Who are you?"
"No, I come here to work," she replied.
"I'm sorry, but I have no idea who you are, and I'm not going to let you into our house. Can you please leave."

Once I had repeated this statement a couple of times, she left. It was all a bit odd.

Then it got even more odd.

About ten minutes later, the door goes again. This time I opt for the entryphone. Through the handset came the same voice.
"Please, I need to come in. I need to see your children."
"I don't know who you are, and I'm certainly not letting you in to see my children."
"But I must. I need to see them."
"I don't know who you are."
"I am Yelena(?) and I must see your children. Then you will understand."
"I don't even have children." This will surely throw her off. I was beginning to wonder if there was a case of the wrong house, because it's unlikely that she could have confused me with someone else.

Her reply chilled me.
"Yes, you have daughter."

Now I felt like we were being watched, and I was beginning to feel quite angry.

"Now look, I don't know who you are, now will you please go away."

"Ok, ok, sorry."

Another ten minutes go by before the same persistent buzz fill the flat. This time there was a new angle.
"Hello, please I just need to get my handbag, is all Please let me in."
I opened the inner door so that I could see the hall. She certainly had not left her handbag by the door. I went back to the entryphone, resisting the temptation to boom "None shall pass!"
Instead I stuck calmly to the facts.
"Your handbag isn't here."
"Yes. Please, I must get my handbag."
"Well, it's not in the hall," I insisted.
"No, I left it in your house. In one of the rooms. Please can I come and get it."
Now I was beginning to think that she must be a few sandwiches short of a picnic, which made the whole 'daughter' business even more unnerving.
"You haven't been in my house."
"Yes, yes, last night. And I left my handbag. please can I come in and get it. Please, just open the door."
I was starting to wonder if she was going to propose huffing and puffing and blowing my house down, but I felt safe in the knowledge that our house is brick-built, a huff and puff retardant material.
I decided to try a different tack.
"It's clear there's been some kind of misunderstanding, so why don't I just call the Police and get them to send an officer around. Then we can work all of this out."
"Ok, yes." came the reply.
"Great. I'll go and phone them now. Will you just wait there until they come?
"Yes, yes. I wait here."

I went and called the Police. I told them what had happened, and they sent a car round. Then I phoned R's school and told the head teacher what had happened. I wasn't sure what the purpose of this call was, except to make me feel a little better knowing that nothing untoward was happening at the school.
 
The next time the door went, it was the Police.
"We've been up and down the road a couple of times, and there's no sign of her." The WPC explained. "She was probably just trying to get in for a burglary."

I told them how unsettled I was about the reference to my daughter, and the WPC pointed out that R's very sparkly pink bicycle is in the hall, so the woman would have clocked that when I opened the door on the first occasion.

I felt greatly relieved, especially when the Police said that they had posted a description of the woman, and that they would be looking out for her.

After they had left, I Pieced together what had happened, and reached a few conclusions.

The visitor is scouting out the area for vulnerable people. She sees my platform lift, and tries the door. When I buzz her in, she tries to brazen her way. Many disabled people have carers who visit them regularly. As they will quite often be from an agency, it's possible that the client may not know the carer who visits, and they may just let her in. I didn't.

But because I had opened the outer door, she probably thought that I'd let her in if she persisted. The next time, she had the child/daughter angle, because of the bike she had seen. Perhaps I might take her for a nanny or something?

When this approach didn't work, and seeing as I was still being quite polite, she decided that she'd give it one more go. As soon as I mentioned calling the law, she  made a quick exit.

What annoys me most is that she took me to be vulnerable. At six foot three, I'm not used to people trying to intimidate me on my own doorstep. It also annoys me that she made me worry about R, and start thinking about what I would be able to do to protect her if we were approached in the street on the way back from school. With my increased upper body strength from pushing the chair all day, I reckon I could deliver a pretty hefty blow, should I need to, but if I were to come out of my wheelchair, I'd be useless, short of shouting, "Come back! I'll Bite yer legs off!"

And that makes me feel vulnerable, after all.
 

R had a friend round for a sleep-over earlier this week. The friend is nearly six to R's nearly five. After a bit of whispering in the other room, R rushes into the kitchen and asks me,
"Dad. DO you know what the F-word is?

Her friend looks sheepish and explains, "I was telling her it's a really bad word and I whispered it to her so that she would know that it's a really bad word and not to use it, and..."

R interrupts and announces, "It's fudge."

Friend looks confused and says, "No it isn't, it's..."

Dad interrupts in a loud voice, "Anyone want a biscuit?"

...snow. Wheelchairs aren't really at their best in it. It's better than sand, being a little more sticky, so that it's possible to push through with decent off-road tyres. But it's cold. Very cold. And it makes the pushrims on the wheels very cold. And wet.

This makes finding the right gloves critical, as they have to be reasonably waterproof and still grippy when wet. And you still need to maintain a reasonable level of dexterity. I have tried many variations. Sailing gloves, which are my first choice normally are great for grip but freezing in the snow. Fleece gloves are great for keeping warm (although the seams inevitably leak) but they're lethal when wet. After running out of control on a relatively gentle slope and gliding elegantly into a large shrubbery, I decided the fleece gloves had to go.

I have even tried neoprene gloves which are certainly warm but much too grippy, making 'braking' sudden and very unpleasant and leaving the wheelchair user with whiplash at the bottom of the first hill. But thankfully I have rediscovered some gloves that the missus bought me for cycling in the winter a couple of years before my accident. They have pretty good grip, but not too much, and I can still feel my fingers after five minutes so it is those that will adorn my hands on the way the the Arsenal this evening, if the match isn't snowed off.

Sorry, that's much too much waffle about gloves. The truth is, for all my bravado, off-road tyres and warm gloves, I find the snow very difficult. Not because It's so hard to get around in. OK, that doesn't help much, but that is as nothing compared to the feeling of sadness at not really being able to take R up to the park, build a snowman, go zipping down hills with plastic bags for toboggans, and then carry her home when her feet are too cold to walk anymore.

So instead I glance out of the window facing an internal struggle between the child-like almost instinctive excitement, and the curmudgeonly practical gloom as the snow continues to fall.

I'll be honest, the worst thing about the comparison between the sand of the beach and the snow of the city is when they are separated by a matter of days and about 35 degrees celsius.

See what you think. Which of these two pictures looks more appealing, especially without any cocoa? By the way, it's not raining in the bottom pic, it's a sprinkler I went to sit under because I was overheating.

 

Penny's attending a course all this week, so I'm on the a.m. and p.m. school run, all with the aid of my powertrike, which has really come into it's own for this purpose.

The tough bit is the post school appetite and tiredness combination. R comes home hungry and tired, but still in need of some entertainment. It's tempting to hit the TV, but with a little effort this part of the day can be a wonderful time. I have found that it's all about saying "Why not?" to yourself.

Today, three cardboard boxes became a pirate ship, complete with sails, a crow's nest, cannon, and places for treasure. The trouble is, my 'why not' enthusiasm once released can get the better of me, and when I went hunting for empty toilet rolls more cannon, I leaned forward to pick something up off the floor, forgetting that I had a large pair of scissors on my lap...

I sat up to find a two inch gash in my trousers. Luckily, they were lined, and thankfully the blade didn't make it through the inner fabric, so I ended up with a four inch long angry graze rather than a femoral artery bleed.

I always try to learn the lessons from experiences such as these, but sometimes it's better not to think about them too much. I'm shivering just writing about it.

Still, it was a good opportunity to further educate R on the concept of paralysis. Of course she just wanted to take the opportunity to cover me head to foot in sticking plasters.

After a nasty bout of gastro for R on Saturday night, things are starting to return to normal. Spent most of yesterday with mops and buckets and numerous trips to the laundrette, the house suffused with the whiff of disinfectant.

And all the time trying to suppress the sense of unease at wondering if it's a delayed action waiting to strike us down next. So far, so good, but I'm still a little nervous. It's certainly not the best time to think back on what a Saturday night involved ten years ago. But then, that's generally the case with most comparisons as far as parenting is concerned. 'twas ever thus, I'm sure.

If you go back a little further, it's even fair to say that our generation have had an even longer period of carefree indulgence to reflect on than those who went before. There various reasons why this period of life has become so truncated compared to the previous experience.

a) Employment is less secure, so people take longer to settle on a career.

b) We are having kids later, in part because of a)

c) Essentially adolescent behaviour and consumerist habits are aggressively marketed to the twenty/thirty somethings in order to keep them spending money on computer games/alcopops/high fashion/new methods of communicating for longer.

And in the usual incoherent babbling style I am so fond of, it is the communication methods bit that I turn, particularly as it offers the most startling comparison.

Now, I have to be careful here, seeing as this is a blog after all, but with the advent of twitter, mobile e-mail/blackberry devices, Facebook walls and countless other methods of broadcasting our thoughts (yes, like this blog), have we actually got anything more to say than we had twenty years ago? OK, maybe we have, but is it actually worth saying?

Sure, Twitter supposedly instills a haiku-esque (how great is that piece of linguistic bastardisation?) economy of thought by restricting communication to 140 characters.

Also, it is true to say that modern communication technology has enabled news from different parts of the world to get past the usual mechanisms of information suppression.

But isn't the overwhelming majority of the information being communicated actually really rather trivial and unnecessary? Couldn't we do with a little more reflection? Are we evolving or regressing as far as our ability to communicate meaningfully with each other is concerned?

This is all leading up to the fabulous newspaper ad below. Could scheming ahead obviate much of our communication today? Should we, could we abandon careless use of the telephone? 

Rosalie's first day at school...

I'm rightly proud of her, but perhaps equally proud of myself. I did not spend the day choking back tears and wondering where all the time went.

"Ah, they grow up so fast."

But they really do. Or rather, it's not that they grow up fast, as that they grow up at all that seems to cause the lament. Just when one gets used to one phase of the life of a child, they come out the other side and rush headlong for the next episode.

As a parent, much of the time is devoted to looking forward to their first words, first steps, first picture, first paycheck, etc. The problem is, the last time they do something passes before you realise.

Now, obviously I'm not talking last steps, last words, etc. That'd be too dark even for me. What I am referring to is the time when they crawled and gargled and grinned a toothless grin as they rubbed baby rice into the sofa. You fall in love with their funny noises and cute smiles, and then they introduce a whole new package of functions to familiarise yourself with. Offspring 2.0 or somesuch.

That the day passed off more peacefully than I expected was probably largely due to my having to be anywhere at eight forty-five in the morning, which meant that I was in some kind of a daze until after the school gate farewell.

Needless to say, she cruised through the day, and answered our eager requests for information with either:

a) "fine."

or

b) "I can't remember."


Not so some of the other children. One of whom was weeping first thing this morning, and weeping at 3.20 when he came out. I can only assume that the staff had him on some kind of saline drip all day to stop him drying out and leaving the school looking like Mother Theresa. It breaks yer heart. F'sure.

I am convinced this was a false start, and day 2 will be the challenge, or day 3, day 4, etc.

I must also confess to having spent most of the day hovering by the phone, secretly hoping that the school would call to say the our best beloved was inconsolable, and unable to live without our company for a whole day. Be careful what you wish for, I suppose...