raising boys | Girl in Wellies

Nollaig Na mban (Women’s Little Christmas) is a bit funny when you live in a predominantly male household. What does this Queen Bee of ours want now?! A day to celebrate women? What?

‘Why can’t it be Little Boys day?’

‘That’s every day,’ I mutter.

‘What?’

‘That was last week darling.’

‘What?’

‘It’s just a day to celebrate the Mommies who have been really busy getting the place ready for the real Christmas. So you guys have to mind me, do the housework and while you’re at it, take me out for dinner.’ Hey, it’s once a year! I’m milking this!

So I put on the lippy, heels and got all concerned into the car, besides the husband who can tie himself in now. Today, we drove to Killarney, our resident town for extraordinary beauty in Kerry that has both good food and open spaces.

Outings are measured. They can be fraught; restaurateurs wince at the sight of young boys coming (can’t imagine why) and so eating out is a hurried affair for the time being at least.

From a very tiny age, however, I have taken the boys with me to cafes locally for a Friday morning coffee. For one half of an hour (maximum) on a Friday morning, I have, over the past eight years carried one, two and sometimes three little boys (aka the double espresso days) with me for a Friday morning coffee. So they’re good enough when they’re out in public, I mean there’s a time limit, but they’ve been trained since babyhood to know that sometimes, Mom needs a little treat, that girls need to be treated a bit special on occasion. And just hold those feminist horses ladies, for when you live with these wrestling, soldiering, bundles of energy you have to have your high maintenance moments.

This year’s Nollaig na mban felt a bit different. My littlest has outgrown the family buggy and while the older two are growing up fast; still holding my hand walking down the street, they seem that little bit wiser. It’s beginning to look, dare I say it, a bit easier. After dinner, we strolled around the corner to Killarney’s National Park to let my young dates run off the energy that they had stored up whilst giving their mom a peaceful enough meal. There was twenty minutes left before the park closed and a fog had descended over a darkening National Park as they ran chasing after each other. Myself and my farmer walked on behind arm in arm with one of the Killarney’s Lakes sparkling in the distance.

At five o’clock to get to the closing gates, I shout that Mommy refrain ‘Who comes to me the very first?’ into the quiet of the park to have one, two, three little boys run through the fog into this lucky lady’s arms.

A Nollaig Na mban to remember.

There’s always an older woman around when you need that crucial piece of advise. I’m sure I’m not being ageist or sexist when I say it, I assure you. Maybe it’s coincidence but I think not for there she is, the older lady with nuggets of wisdom to dispense at just the right moment. They are mothers, grandmothers who no doubt wait by phones for sons to call or wave grown up children off of a Sunday evening urging you to enjoy every second of your time with your young children. It is well meaning for that I have no doubt and comes from a place of empathy but happens within earshot of most young mothers normally at the end of their tether, far too frequently. Allow me to illustrate.

Now, rest assured, the following incidents are purely fictional and thereby serving to illustrate my point. I mean at no point yesterday afternoon did I personally find myself at a local library with three young sons you understand. No, no son of mine was emptying the read-it-yourself shelves and upsetting the alphabetical order of things while his brother begged his mother to read another of the Mr Men series. Nor was I drawed upon, ahem, she drawed upon to find Wally at the same time. No, I’m sensible like that. No, this was an altogether different mother. All characters remember are fictional, all but the lady who appeared just when the poor mother at the library was about to throw a tantrum herself and pack three said boys into the people carrier, lo and behold, there from behind the cookbooks appeared the older lady like an appartition ‘Aw’, she said ‘enjoy them now, these years go by in a flash, You’ll miss them.’ The mother almost huddled in the corner trying to realphbetize a row of Horrid Henry‘s while simultaneously trying to hold a trying toddler, smiled and nodded, really appreciating that little nugget of wisdom. I’m sure it was the first time, even that day, she had heard it.

That same sorry mother an hour later in the supermarket encountered another angelic vision who might have popped out at her from the cereal aisle to whisper ‘oh, their problems only get bigger.’ as she cajoled her eldest along who had gotten his finger stuck in the trolley. Is that so? I better get home I thought, I mean she thought, before the third vision appeared telling her that she had her hands full and that indeed boys are a handful and then inevitably there would appear the ‘wouldn’t-it-be-worse-if-he-were-thrown-down-sick’ fairy who somehow finds the perfect time to deliver the most useful line with perfect timing. Is there nothing to be said for awkward silence anymore?

Then today, that same mother found herself watching her three boys tumbling down an outside slide in fits of giggles, watching them standing up in turn to blow her a kiss at the window where she watched on, knowing instinctively, that she will miss the days when they were young, full of fun, carefree and naughty. And funnily, no-one had to tell her that.