Magpies

I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I'm superstitious about magpies.

(I'm superstitious about ladders, too, but that's always seemed to me to be plain common sense. People carry things up ladders at a time when they can't even use both hands.)

But for now, I want to think about the magpie thing.

I'm trying to work out when it started and I'm really not sure, because my mum's not particularly superstitious about them. I remember seeing it in a play once, but surely that wouldn't be enough to cause me to catch my breath and whisper "Aye aye, sir." at the merest glimpse of a lone magpie?

I have done it for years, now, without the slightest shred of evidence that single magpies lead to any kind of misery, or that multiple magpies lead to joy, a girl, a boy, silver, gold or a secret never to be told.

In fact, I saw two magpies the morning of the most miserable day of my working life. I saw two magpies the day of breaking up with a long term partner.

Actually, in retrospect, maybe I shouldn't have expected immediate joy. Both of those things did, eventually, cause me to be much happier, but saying goodbye is always hard, even if it's to a miserable job or a miserable relationship.

More recently, during the welcome service for new pupils in the Chapel at J's school, I'd had to take my little girl out because she was being too noisy. We played outside in the wind and rain a little and then roamed the corridors of the main building.

On our way back to see whether the service had finished I saw it: one magpie, all alone, on the Chapel steps.

That can only mean one thing: I was packaging my lovely boy off to a life of sorrow.

We were not the only ones there, though. There were plenty of others, pupils and parents, bursary recipients, fee payers, teachers and matrons. Surely that one magpie couldn't possible spell sorrow for all of them?

Or maybe it could, the sorrow could come from the quiet of an empty house, from saying goodbye to something you love. Parents may feel that first, but presently, so will the matrons and the teachers.

Or maybe the magpies are just reminders that sometimes the cup is half full and sometimes half empty. Life is never about just being happy or just being sad. They come in cycles and balance each other out.

Sometimes the thing you think will make you happy makes you sad and sometimes the thing you think will make you sad makes you very happy indeed. To the effect of believing you are able to plan, anticipate what should happen and how you should feel. Only later do you realise that no such thing exists and life always throws you a confusing loop which you just have to incorporate and deal with, happy or sad.

Magpies are little more than reminders that life is as it is.

Closing the gaps

We always try to give our kids the things we didn’t have.

For some time it has struck me that the aim of parenting as far as my friends are concerned, is to give their children the things in which they feel their own childhood was lacking.

My friend was the second eldest, the dependable one, of four children. Her family was not wealthy, often struggling financially during her formative years. Looking back, it’s the ‘stuff’ that sticks out most in her mind. The new clothes which she didn’t have, the shiny car her parents didn’t drive.

When she had her own daughter, she became a single parent. After living on a tiny budget for two years, she began paid employment. At the time, despite her intelligence, she was young and not well qualified. She didn’t have the pick of the job centre but set her mind that her daughter was going to have the things she missed during her own childhood.

That was eight years ago, and her daughter is no spoilt princess, but she has lovely clothes, shiny, hi-tech toys. Her mum drives a shiny car which is updated yearly and she lives in a comfortable home. For this, my friend holds down three jobs.

The one thing her daughter doesn’t have is time.

My childhood, on the other hand, was a world apart from hers. Both my parents had full time careers, which ate into time at home as well as during the working day. We lived in a big house with a large and intriguing garden in which I was largely unsupervised. My grandmother lived with us and I was rarely entirely alone but most of the time neither of my parents were around.

I had everything most children would want. My bedroom housed ever expanding libraries of books and toys and I kept up expensive hobbies without worrying that the money wouldn’t be there to pay for them. My parents had new cars every year and I went to a private school.

The one thing I didn’t have was their time. From the age of 7 months I was farmed out to a
childminder and put into school early.

And now I have two children of my own: one large, one small. I am a single parent living on a tiny income, trying to find ways to squeeze some earning around my daughter’s waking patterns. We have very little in material terms. A few of the nicer things we have were left from my separation and are getting tatty. The possibility of replacing them is always just out of sight.

This is the only job I have and I take it just as seriously as any other. I do my best to give my children my time and my presence. Maybe they’ll grow up and work non stop to provide their kids with everything they could desire, but to my mind, parental time is missing from so many children’s lives that without it, the stable childhood that is needed for people to grow into stable adults is disappearing fast.

At once I have the same and opposite view to my friend. We’re both trying to fill the gaps from our own childhoods, but they are different gaps and so the method of filling them remains individual.