At twelve
One minute she is galloping
her grown-up body
through long-grassed paddocks
neighing like a horse and laughing
as the dog snaps her heels
or squatting next to the muddy dam
whilst fishing for tadpoles and frog spawn
or digging up worms.
The next minute she is clip-clopping
in high-heeled shoes
straightening her long mane of hair
and thinking about colour
or washing a mud-mask from her face
digging dirt from her fingernails
then polishing and filing them
into an adult shape.
“My patience, resolutions and beliefs are tested to the limits – sometimes daily.”*
Right at this moment one of my challenges is the constant, tuneless whistling from my elder son. When my boys were babies it was getting them to sleep or trying to figure out why they were crying. On any given day now, it might be squabbling, fighting, teasing, screaming, shouting or rudeness. Who’d be a parent? We might well question ourselves after the event, but we can’t very well put them back! Just how we find those inner resources, how we constantly demand more of ourselves, how we keep marching up that hill with a smile on our face and gladness in our heart at the sight of our ‘babies’ is one of life’s mysteries.
* © from Being Mummy by Anne‑marie Taplin published April 2007