The Why Phase

”Are you going to tell her?” My daughter texted me last night when she noticed a funny Facebook post from my cousin, complaining about the constant talking from her toddler.
“It NEVER stops” I posted, which was certainly true for my daughter. Even now, when she comes home it takes me a while to re-adjust to the constant noise. My daughter, being self-aware, told my cousin that the Long Suffering Husband and I coped by blocking it out. My cousin asked for tips on how to do that and I said that it just happens.

My cousin may be lucky. She may not have produced a true talker; someone who will grow up to talk, or write (because writing is only talking on the page) for a living. It might just be the ‘why phase’.

When my daughter was two, we thought it was the ‘why phase’, which didn’t bother me. I am someone who has never quite grown out of this phase. (Why is the North Pole currently warmer than here? Is it the beginning of the end?) When my children were small I didn’t shy away from their questions and was always prepared to look things up. I had a notebook of things to check when I next went to the library. Isn’t it wonderful now that we all have an encyclopaedia in our pockets? I thought of the phase as a privilege. How often do you get to build a brain? Some questions were trickier than others. My son asked mathematical questions that I had to look up while my daughter’s tricky questions were more often to do with people and people are tricky.

Not every parent enjoys this time. My mum says that she used to wish she had a buggy that faced the other way. Some parents use a dummy or pretend to talk into their mobile phone when it’s all getting too much. The LSH’s preferred method was to tune out. Maybe he learnt how to do it with me because it’s a method he still uses. I can spot it when his replies fall into a regular pattern of, “Hmmm”s. The trick is to look like you are listening but not actually hear a single word that is said. I learnt quickly from him once it became clear, at about eight, that my daughter was a ‘true talker’ and didn’t actually need anyone to listen. Alright, I didn’t learn that quickly and I’m still not as skilled as he is. I remember now, that it didn’t just happen. I had to work at it.

The worst thing about the ‘why phase’ is when you are unprepared for it. This phase can make you feel stupid. You ask yourself, “How can I have reached the age of thirty and not no why the sky is blue?” You wonder whether it is best to make up an answer of resort to, “It just is,” or “Because I said so.”

Then there is the problem of time and place. Everyone is time poor, these days and so it must be even harder to meet a two year old’s brain programming phase. They follow you everywhere, asking questions that would be tricky, even if you weren’t on the toilet. I used to love reading the Mrs Large picture book, where the Mummy elephant tries to get a few minutes peace from her toddler in the bath. It was a warning to forget the whole idea. Questions can be embarrassing if they are said in front of people. My mum still cringes at the memory of me wanting to know about a large port-wine birthmark on the face of a man on a train. The temptation to stop them in these situations is huge but they are unstoppable, like a juggernaut with failing breaks about to plough into a line of stationary traffic. Sometimes, you are pleasantly surprised, as a friend of mine once was.
She was on holiday with her daughter in Cape Town. (That’s not relevant but I just wanted you to know that I once had friends who took exotic holidays). They were in the pool, after a long day of questions about elephant sex and why anyone would want a Tiger to come to tea when an extremely large lady got in.
My friend held her breath as she watched her daughter’s eyes widen to the size of saucers and trace the woman’s every step. As the woman got in and waves of swimming pool water splashed over the side, my friend struggled to recall any facts about the Archimedes principal that might deflect from the real question she thought her daughter might ask. Toddlers never ask, “Mummy, why is that lady so fat?” in a quiet voice.
“MUUUUUMMMMMMYYYYY!” her daughter yelled
She braved herself, pulling her shoulders up to her ears, as if that would be some kind of protection.
“WHY....”
“Oh no,” she thought, “this is unavoidable.”
“DOES THAT..”
She considered scooping up her daughter and running as fast as her flip flops would take her.
“LADY HAVE....”
She prayed for the first time in her life, “Please God, a hurricane, earthquake, tidal wave. Anything you’ve got right now would be helpful.”
“SUCH A....”
She was beginning to feel faint. Black spots were floating before her eyes.
“B...”
A small amount of vomit appeared in her throat.
“BEAUTIFUL SWIMMING COSTUME.”
There was a collective sigh as the whole pool breathed again. The lady beamed.

The best advice I could have given my cousin, though, was to enjoy every moment because the ‘why phase’ will be gone soon and she’ll miss it. Even if she has a ‘true talker’ and the chatter doesn’t stop until she leaves home she should make the most of it because soon the house is quiet and she’ll have to have Radio 4 on all day just to hear talking.

Something on your feet

Now the children have left home the Long Suffering Husband and I are going out again.  Before children, we loved to go to the cinema.  The LSH could have been a film critic (if he liked writing) and sometimes dreams of retiring to become a projectionist.  Lately, we've seen loads of films and actually have an opinion on which films should win Oscars.

I was bragging about my new life to a couple of colleagues in the staff room, telling them about Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, which is an amazing study in character and should win all the acting Oscars.
"I'd like to see that one with Imelda Staunton," said one.
"She's an amazing actress," I agreed.
"Oh yes," said the other, "What's it called? I can't remember. Something. Something on your feet."
"Slippers?" I wondered.
"I was thinking dog shit," said my other colleague.
We laughed for a while until the title finally came to mind.
"Finding your feet!" I shouted.
I'd seen the trailer and it looked fun.  One of the clips showed Imelda Staunton and Celia Imrie swimming in Hampstead Heath ladies pond, so maybe the thing on their feet is a verruca.  The Guardian review called it a feelgood comedy with a starry cast but a creaky script.

 By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54490321

Today, we couldn't decide what to see.  We fancied Shape of Water but it was sold out. The LSH wasn't sure about I Tonia.
"We could see Finding your feet. It might be nice to see a nice, fluffy, feelgood movie after all this serious Oscar stuff we've been watching." I suggested.

This is a film, however, that should come with a health warning.

It is a good film, with a brilliant cast of older people.  It is a real treat to see older women on screen being real, and having true conversations that are not just about men. There are some very funny bits too, even if they are a bit predictable.  However, it is a film about death.

Death has been on my mind a lot recently.  I've been thinking about how we are all dying that it's the one thing that we can't avoid but it's also the thing that we least like thinking about. It might be that until someone you love dies you don't really think about your own mortality.  Others might be contemplating their own extinction and I'm only thinking about it now because I've had a grief filled year.  It might be like menopause: I've lost count of the the times I've heard a famous actress or journalist on the radio, who when they hit their late forties say, "The thing is, no one ever talks about menopause."

I'm not a someone who cries but this was a film I sobbed through at least two thirds of and had to sit at the back of the cinema long after the room had gone dark, trying to compose myself.  If you are recently bereaved, have been cheated on by a husband, have a relative with Alzheimer's, know anyone with stage 4 cancer, lost a partner in a car accident or had a partner die during sex then this film should be treated with caution.  It might turn out to be the most painful two hours of your life.

I must remember to tell my daughter, as she cried during Paddington.

Beware! The seats on Clacton Pier are dangerous.

Every other week I take my mum to lunch on Clacton Pier.

When you are regularly doing something that’s horrible and boring you invent euphemisms. We joke that Mum gets cocktails with her lunch, although the truth is that those cocktails make everything taste like cardboard so that she really doesn’t want her M&S Prawn sandwich. The man in the chair opposite answers his phone throughout the day saying loudly, “Yeah, yeah, I’m on Clacton Pier.”

If you’ve never been on a Chemo ward then you will have imagined all sorts of things. I thought there would be sick looking people hooked up to machines, vomiting all over the place. On Clacton Pier, however, hardly anyone looks very sick. They sit in blue chairs that have super-charged reclining facilities and knit (properly, unlike me, who apparently is doing it wrong), read, snooze, eat, do puzzles and barely talk to their companions, who get to sit in a comfortable but upright blue chair. There are two jetties with chairs along each side. Each set of chairs has a drip stand beside it; a chrome giraffe that hovers next to the patient and beeps an ascending triplet when the bag in its mouth should be empty. Most patients have a permanent line through which the drugs are administered but others sit with their hands in a bucket of hot water that is wheeled to them on a specially designed trolley. These are a trip hazard for patients’ glamorous assistants, when they navigate a path through buckets and the nurses’ trollies, to fetch hot drinks when the chemo makes their friend or relative’s throat close up. Some patients are only there for an hour but most for at least half a day or longer and often take some gloop home with them in a blue bag, especially designed by Gucci (I’m not sure I believe the nurse that told us that). The really toxic drugs are hung with a black bag of death around them to stop the sun cheering them up. People laugh and chat.

It is a place that is bursting with hope but I must warn you about the chairs.

Each  patient’s chair has a remote control that hangs from a strap to the side of the right hand arm rest. This is a very special zapper with four buttons: an up and down each for the feet and head. Each patient has their own preferred way of spending the time. Some change positions frequently depending upon the activity, others sit, stiff and bolt upright, as if relaxing isn’t in their DNA while others lounge like they are at home in their pants watching telly. It seems simple enough, doesn’t it?

Except that sometimes they have a life of their own.

Mum was pushing the button. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to go up or down.
“It’s not working!” she panicked.
The chair back was scraping down the wall. Blocked on its travels by solid concrete. Suddenly the force of the chair remote was too strong and with a crash the chair pushed away from the wall slightly and placed itself in a laying position. Mum continued to press the button. The chair putting her further into a supine position, continuing so that her head was pointing towards the floor.
“Help! I don’t know what it’s doing?” she said, fingers locked on the remote.
I noticed that the giraffe’s foot was under the chair.
“Hold on!” I shouted, hoping that she would stop pushing the button, while I pulled it free.
The chair, confused by the signals it was getting leaped into the middle of the room and unplugged itself, leaving her trapped in that undignified position.
“The button’s not working,” Mum laughed.
I plugged the chair back in.
“It’s still not working!” She was confused, scared and hysterically laughing all at the same time. My voice only let me do an impression of Muttley but tears were streaming down my face.
“You need to press the other button. You want to go up not down.” I mouthed and she righted herself.
A nurse walked past, looking concerned.
“Are you alright?”
Mum and I looked at each other, wondering how she hadn’t noticed that the chair was in the middle of the room
“We do have a laugh, don’t we?” Mum said.

That’s what life is about, isn’t it?