Bird sick sandwich
2002-07-31 || 9:50 a.m.

Yesterday I gave two pieces of advice to someone who is pregnant.

Number one: Always eat dinner at the table.

Number two: Don't, under any circumstances, potty train.

I'm not in the business of giving out advice, knowing nothing about anything really, but I think (sometimes) that I have been a passable parent.

However, when I was lying in bed last night I was thinking about the stupidity of what I had said.

For christsakes 'eat dinner round the table'!!

Like a sacrament, that's just the outward sign of something inward. Its not the main event.

This is what I should have said:

DON'T let your partner hit you in front of your child.

DON'T let your partner call you abusive names in front of your child or other assorted people.

DON'T let your partner take drugs in front of your child so that when your child is 8/9 years old they see what they are because they show drugs on the news and they say to you, 'but that's what daddy has on top of the cupboard'.

How fucking frightening for them.

DON'T let your partner hit your child once they are old enough to have an opinion that they don't want to hear.

DON'T live with someone who looks at child/animal porn on the internet. Standard porn, fair enough if you like that kind of thing, but this is just NASTY.

DON'T let your child hear rascist comments, such as, 'they're only a paki'. or sexist stuff either.

So you can see the only way I qualify to give advice is through a process of having heaps of experience of what you should NOT do.

Not exactly a shining example of motherhood am I?

Thankfully the person to whom I was speaking would not need any of the above advice. And so dinner, potty training and a few baby food recipes are probably just the thing. And thank goodness for that. Its nice to know that there is love, care, kindness and partnerships somewhere in the world.

They are also not stupid, young, naive and oblivious to all around them.

REALITY: You've missed two periods.
Me: Oooh, I must be ill.

REALITY: You can't fit in your clothes.
Me: I'm getting fat, I need to go on a diet.

REALITY: You're chucking up for England in the morning.
Me: Help, I must have a bug or something.

What a wanker I really am.

Anyway, no-one is all bad and so for the sake of balance I would just like to state that I was (and am) a fucking patient parent, very kind. I love my daughter very much. It's the only love I've ever experienced and therefore the only I can definitely say exists. I try to protect her as best I can in the circumstances and I am not in any way trying to defend my inability to keep her from knowledge she should not have had. I know I have failed big time. She can talk to me about anything, I am totally unshockable, I will never put pressure on her to be or do anything.

Yesterday we were talking about the games we used to play when she was little. One was when I would pretend her pushchair was a racing car and I would run her really fast and then screech to a halt to go round corners. She loved it! We also used to play dumb language games when I took her places in her pushchair. Like I would mishear what she had said. She might say 'mum' and I would reply 'dumb, I'm not dumb and I think that's very rude of you!' She would then say (with a laugh) 'mum' and I would say, 'thumb, yes I do have a thumb and its very well, thank you'. She would then say, 'MUM' and I would finally say, 'mum, well why didn't you say so!'

Silly really, but three year olds like it.

We used to play the horrid sandwich filling game too. Who could think of the most revolting filling. Good for the imagination.

We played it yesterday for old times sake and Rebecca said smegma on crackers, I said crackers were not allowed, we never had crackers in the old days! Then she said Cream of Jock soup. Jock is a VERY smelly man.

Do these moments make up for the others?

Of course not.