Door

Yesterday, I made my son cry.

My beautiful, perfect, delicate little boy. I scared him, and I made him cry.

“So what?” you may be thinking. “Big deal? Kids cry all the time.”

Yes. They do. My son is no exception to this rule. He cries when I try to clean his face after a meal. He cries when I put him down for a nap. He cries when I get him up from a nap. He cries when I stop him chewing on the business end of a can of athletes foot spray (how dare I?) He cries for seemingly no reason at all.

He is very good at crying when he hurts himself. His mouth goes from its usual wide crescent smile into a downturned trapezium as he emits a primal sound which leaves no doubt as to its meaning: “that thing I just did really, REALLY hurt”.

It was in the process of trying to prevent one of those cries that I managed to make him cry myself. My vicarious fear for him causing himself pain transferred into real fear for him.

I feel lucky, and fortunate, to be able to say that in Cam’s year and a bit on Earth I’ve rarely had to shout at him. Actually, I’ve never HAD to shout at him. I’ve chosen to a couple of times. The times when the dark cloud of frustration comes over me and I wish with all my heart that he would stop doing whatever it is he’s doing. Just for a moment. Please. Stop winding me up.

But those occasions are few. And mercifully so. How easy it is for me to forget that my boy is tiny, and I am large? That he can be loud, but that I can be so much louder? That his actions may frustrate and irritate me, but that mine may terrify him?

Whoever designed folding doors clearly did not have children. Or hated children. Tiny gaps between wooden panels are seemingly irresistible to tiny fingers which are exploring the world for the first time. Cam has recently discovered the tiny gap, which can be peered through for “peepo” purposes. Soon, the peering gives way to pushing a tiny index finger through. At the same time, a barely perceptible shift in his position means the door begins to close.

The tiny gap gets tinier.

The finger remains.

Tinier.

The finger remains.

Tinier still.

I move my foot into the path of the closing door, stopping the immediate danger. But I am trapped. Sat on the opposite side of the door to him and unable to move to his side without removing my foot and  allowing the door to close completely.

I push his finger from the gap.

He immediately replaces it.

I push it away again.

He laughs. It’s a game now.

I wish he could talk. Wish he could understand EVERYTHING I say to him, not just “what noise does a pig make?” He can’t though.

He is in a giggling, ecstatic state. He bounces in excitement. This game is fun!

All I can think of is a tiny, crushed index finger and a frantic drive to hospital. This game is not fun.
I shout, because it is the only weapon I have left: “Cameron! No! DO NOT PUT YOUR FINGER IN THE GAP!”

The laughing stops. The finger remains. The smile is uncertain.

“CAMERON, NO!”

The finger is withdrawn. The bottom lip curls and trembles. The eyes well up. The noise begins its journey from his vocal cords to the atmosphere. His eyes question me: “who are you?”

I leap up and remove him from the vicinity of the door. The bastard, bastard door. I hold him tight and stroke his hair. I whisper comfort into his ear. Tell him I love him. Tell him I am sorry. Tell him I never want to scare him.

Ten minutes later we are playing happily together again. I hope he has forgotten all about it. That I am back to being the person who hugs him, tickles him, reads him bedtime stories in the softest tones I can muster. I hope that he is not afraid of me.

I consider smashing the door from its hinges.

I hope I never make my son cry again.

Garden

Do you recall, not so long ago, all those property programmes on TV banging on about how great decking is?

No, neither do I really, but I assume they must have done, because one day in mid-2008 I realised that every garden I went in seemed to have planks of wood where grass had once been.

When we bought our house in 2010 the decking craze had faded a bit. But, because no-one had any money anymore *shakes fist at Lehman Brothers et al*, all the gardens which had been covered in nice wood were now covered in two year old, neglected wood. Our new home had been treated to a liberal smattering of decking, roughly 70% of the back garden was covered in it.

Aesthetically speaking, the decking was okay. It did have a thin film of incredibly slippery green stuff on it, as a result of the previous owners never cleaning it, but as long as all you wanted to do was look at the garden from inside, it was okay. Cutting the lawn took moments, as there was only roughly four square feet of it.

Structurally, the decking was not so good. It was flagged up by the surveyor, as it had been built too high, which meant a risk of damp creeping up past the damp proof course of the house itself. It also had a bit of a rickety "DIY" feel to it.

One day, soon after we moved in, water started coming through the kitchen floor, which put something of a dampener (sorry) on our moods. We didn't know where the water was coming from, and the decking didn't have an access panel to the drain we assumed would be underneath it. If that drain was blocked, causing our kitchen to do an impression of a paddling pool, it needed sorting. The decking had to go.

The occasions where I feel like a manly man are few and far between.  The day that I started taking up the decking was one of them. A hammer, a saw, not one but TWO crowbars were my weapons of choice.

The decking didn't go without a fight. Despite it's less than sturdy appearance, I soon discovered that whoever had built it was a firm believer in not using one nail if there was the option to use six. Reinforcements were drafted in: Mrs L, my younger brother, my mum and dad, all pitching in to purge the garden of the wooden blight.

Slowly but surely, we were winning. At the very end of the day, I let my guard down. I lost my respect for our adversary and trod on a six inch nail. I didn't have any body piercings before that day, and I had never suspected that my first one would be right through my foot.

One tetanus jab later and the last few pieces of wood were transported to the tip. Hooray.

Sadly, the state of our garden beneath the decking looked like an homage to London during the blitz. Which is pretty much how it remained until last Tuesday, when a nice man came and rotovated it, turfed it, and gave us a nice, Cam friendly garden.

The house I grew up in had a big garden at the front, a small garden at the rear, and a disused quarry which me and my siblings used as our personal adventure playground. I can't imagine I'll ever be able to offer Cam a similar facility, but we do now have some usable outside space for him to run around in and get muddy. This pleases me enormously. I love the outdoors, and the availability of green space for Cam to use is important to me.

We already have the obligatory Little Tikes Coupe, what other garden essentials do we need? Over to you for your suggestions…

Helmets

Firstly, a thank you to @SAHDandproud for blogging about this and tempting me to join in. I've wanted an excuse to post about cycling for ages, cos I loves it.

About six years ago I entered a race. It was a race down a hill on a bike. This particular hill was, at the time of the race, extremely muddy due to an overnight storm. It had lots of big, pointy rocks sticking out of the ground, it had tangled networks of slippery tree roots. It had twists and turns, jumps and drops.

My first attempt at riding down the hill wasn’t the best. I slid on a root, parted company with the bike, flew through the air and was brought to an abrupt halt when my head hit a tree. My chest, arms and legs also hit the tree. I slumped to the ground and thought “ouch”.

Because I was riding down a muddy, rocky, slippery, rooty hill I was wearing a helmet. I was also wearing knee and shin pads, elbow and forearm pads. Here’s a picture of me on that very day:



Me and my big shiny helmet (sorry)

I look a bit like a Power Ranger, no?

When I lost control of my bike that day I was extremely glad I was wearing a helmet. The rules of the race meant I had to be wearing one, but I would have been anyway. Call me crazy, but if I think there’s a chance I’ll be getting into a fight with a tree, I want to have as much protection on me as I can. Trees are hard as fuck. Headbutting them is not wise if you are a squishy-bonced human.

But here’s the thing. I don’t always wear a helmet.

When I go mountain biking (rocks, roots, trees, peril) I wear one. Always.

When I go out for a long spin on the road bike (hard tarmac, wet drain covers, high speed, lots of crazy drivers, peril) I wear one. Always.

When I hop on my silly little “going to the pub or shops” bike and make a journey of just a few minutes, on the quiet roads of the town I live in (hard tarmac, minimal speed, few drivers, somewhat less peril) I don’t always bother.

Pub bike, it's silly but I love it.

This position, I suspect, is not going to win me many friends, or glean positive comments.

I am pro-helmet wearing in most instances. I’d quite like my brain to remain inside my head, rather than leaking out through a hole. I’m quite partial to all the things which having an intact brain allows me to do. I’m just not wholly convinced that cycle helmets are necessarily all that effective in keeping it there.

Even if they are good at keeping it there, they’re not necessarily good at protecting its ability to function (which, I guess, is what most people actually care about). Brain injuries are complicated, they’re not as simple as just preserving the physical form of the organ.

You probably know this, but cycle helmets aren’t like motorbike helmets. They’re not designed to withstand the sort of forces you may encounter when hit by a car.

Nevertheless, I usually wear one.

But I don’t want it to be made compulsory.

I don’t want to have the choice taken away from me.

Maybe that seems silly to you. I dunno. Maybe it is silly. I think I’m broadly in the camp that would like to make sensible decisions based on perception of risk, rather than have a one size fits all policy.

Part of me thinks this is an indefensible position. Why wouldn’t I wear a helmet all the time? What possible reason is there? Certainly not helmet hair, I don’t have enough hair for that to be a concern. It’s not because I worry about looking cool, because I never do that (also, I quite like the look of my bike helmet, it’s certainly no worse than my hair).

Of course, like an epic hypocrite, I’ll definitely want Cam to wear a helmet. Can we make it compulsory for kids? I think I’ll always wear one once he’s old enough to notice.

So, in summary, I don’t always wear one, I don’t want someone to make it law that I have to, but I’m not really sure why. How wonderfully inconclusive.

Regardless of how I feel about bike helmets, there are other things I’d rather see happening to make cycling safer. Driver education to improve roadcraft and decision making, as well as promoting empathy with cyclists would be good. Cyclist education for all the same reasons.

Cycle safety is a far more than just convincing people to wear helmets.

What do you reckon? Am I an epic twat for not always wearing one? Do you think we should also wear helmets to cross roads?

Falling Apart

Young people bounce.  They have a spring in their step.  Toddlers don't run, they gambol.  Today a little lad ran past me, his mum trailing behind: "I'm a fast runner, look!"  He was talking to her, not me, taunting her with his supple musculature and flexible connective tissues.  He seemed genuinely happy, running along, leaving the previous iteration of his genetic code struggling to animate her leaden, time worn limbs to chase after him.

I felt jealous.  I can remember running around a park when I was about his age, my dad ambling along behind in a similar fashion.  I was a fast runner then.  Now I wake up each morning and have to re-teach my limbs the same action they've been doing most of my life.

I turn thirty in a couple of months.  Thirty's not old is it?  Not even a little bit really.  So why do I already find myself thinking back to years gone by, a wistful expression on my face, to times when my body felt indestructible?

Drawn on by a surgeon, to make sure they operate on the correct leg.  A real confidence booster.

There is a reason.  I broke myself quite effectively a few years back.  Tore my Anterior Cruciate Ligament playing basketball.  Oh, there was some choice language in the air that day.  Fiddlesticks and fuckeroo.  Some advice: warm up and stretch out before you exercise.  Tearing the major ligament in your knee is not clever. 

Bizarrely, the first (non-sweary) thought I had after I did it and realised I couldn't walk on it was "I hope this doesn't mean I can't play with any kids I might have in the future".  Kids weren't on the agenda any time soon, but that really was the driver behind working really hard at the rehab.

I'm glad I did, because all is well in the knee department these days.  But my shoulder has been hurting for the last couple of weeks, my wrist aches (don't say it...) and every day there seems to be a new part of me crying out for the dawn of the cyborg era.  I'd totally take a cybernetic arm or two.  

So, what's the deal, does it just get worse and worse?  When can I expect my limbs to start parting company with my body?  What are the woes you deal with every time your children escape your grasp and display their youthful athleticism?

Is it too much to ask of my body to not fall apart before my sprog wants to beat me at a running race?

*leaves to put frozen peas on shoulder*