Sons, friends and lovers

There is nothing like spending time with an old friend to make you feel reassured and warm inside.

We have had a lovely weekend, with my dear pal from student days and her three gorgeous boys. Babe didn’t know himself and had the time of his life, running around after them. ‘Guys!’ he kept calling, and paddle-paddle-run-trip-splat went his little feet, in hot pursuit. Never before has he had three chums to play with from the crack of dawn. He was overwhelmed, loved every minute and cried his heart out when they left.

Apart from making life feel Great Fun and most holiday-ish for a few days, which is just what we needed, it also gave Other Half and I a useful insight into life with More Than One. Golly! I thought we were running a tight ship, or whatever the expression is, but she is running something of much greater depth and magnitude. Respect! (Generally-speaking, by the way, my use of expressions, similes and the like is down the pan, thanks to Other Half. In his country, you run like a horse where we run like the wind, swim like an otter, and a car in the hand is worth three on the road, or something like that. These days I talk of feathers in my bonnet, bees in my cap and top potatoes instead of top bananas…)

When they arrived and jumped out of the bus outside our house, my first thought was, ‘Three tiggers!’. Gosh, such a lot of bounce. You have to have eyes all the way round your head, not just at the front and back. I found myself wanting to nod in time with some kind of invisible human biorhythm, just to keep up with the life force and energy they exude. And do the hippy hippy shake on the spot, to keep up with their literal, physical, wonderful, being aliveness.

There was a time when I had bounce. Would be the first onto the dance floor and the last off; run home instead of catching the bus, impatient to be doing something else to fill the time between after work and bed, and spend weekends walking up hill and down dale, come wind or shine. These days, I guess it inhabits a different dimension. I bounce back more easily. Smile and laugh and lot and navel gaze a lot less. (Trust me, this blog is nothing by comparison.) But I would like to re-capture some physical sparkle. I am in fact saving up for some swimming lessons that will help motivate me to up the ante in my fitness stakes.

But back to the boys, and their joie de vivre. Such wit! Laughter and intelligence in buckets. (Is that expression right as well? I have a feeling it should be spades, or droves.) And so street-wise. I must do more to keep abreast of trends that will make Babe feel assured of his own street-cred as he gets older. I lost mine some time ago, I fear. If I ever had any - and I don’t want to be a mum he’s embarrassed to be seen with, as his dad is sure to humiliate him publicly all the time. If that sounds a bit mean, just go with me on this one. If he’s jumping over park fences instead of using the gates now, taking potatoes from home for the pigs at the city farm in spite of the notices forbidding this behaviour, and singing ‘I’m a Barbie girl’ as he walks round Tescos, just imagine what babe has lying in store for him, poor thing.

We were entranced and I could see Other Half thinking, ‘This is what I want. A houseful. To feel completely, all-consumingly alive.’ He is one of thirteen siblings and says he’d like us to have a similarly large brood. ‘In your dreams,’ I have replied tartly on the many occasions that he brings this up. But, as one of four, I know what he means. What is life about, if it’s not about family, love and laughter? (Ok, and kicking the living daylights out of one another at times as well.) Living well into the moment, instead of the past or the future.

I was thinking, ‘This could be what I want. But if I never get it, or decide not to go for it, I could be very happy sharing other people’s from time to time.’ This realisation has left me in a very calm and happy place. Taken the pressure off. Left me caring less that all my friends seem to be pregnant again now, just as I’m starting to enjoy life again, and get a little more sleep, and feel in no hurry to further procreate. Que sera, sera, and all that.

Really, it was quite the nicest weekend I’ve had in years.