Party to a lesson

With a trip down South planned for first thing Sunday morning, today was always going to be a busy one with plenty of packing and prep to be done.

There was also the small matter of one of m’boy’s friends having a birthday party at/in the Treetop Nets at Brockhole.

The morning vanished in a flurry of a clothing clear out combined with some packing – turns out that the majority of clothes owned by my children don’t fit them – whilst the children played nicely together. I took the opportunity to have a further tidy up and, because I apparently think about these things now, seeing that it was a good drying day I got a last minute wash on and out.

We were ready for Brockhole.  I’d intended on lobbing the boy into the nets and then spending a couple of hours with Matty at the park, lobbing stones in the lake before some cake and tea. Turns out that we did most of that, but in good company with one of the mums from school who was pleased to have off-loaded one of her brood of four.

Wandering down to the lake, her second oldest lad and Matty were down to their undies and paddling about within a matter of minutes whilst her daughter tentatively tiptoed in and out of the water.

My sister commented a while back that I made parenting “look easy”, which was a wonderful compliment, but genuinely, I have nothing on this single mum of four who (as I sat on tenterhooks watching the children slipping and sliding around on wet rocks) was totally calm and somehow found time to also breastfeed her youngest, calmly fish her dropped phone from the lakebed (without cursing) all the while holding a conversation with me. I hasten to add that I helped where I could, but there was no way I was going in that freezing cold lake – SOMEONE needed to remain on shore….

Despite Matty’s protestations that she wasn’t cold, the uncontrollable trembling and disturbing shade of blue she had turned betrayed her. We fished the children out and walked up to the café for drinks and cake to warm them up a bit. We spoke some more and she revealed that she’d recently graduated from a course she’d been doing in amongst everything else over lockdown.

I remain completely in awe of her and happily footed the café bill in return for a lovely couple of hours and the valuable lesson I had just received in relaxed parenting on your own terms.

She made it look really easy.