The Boy is learning about biographies at school at the moment. The latest pieces of homework have all been about gathering information, first about a famous person now about himself. I am really not very good at all with dates. Unless an event is associated in my head with something else which happened at the same time I will not remember the date at all. It has its good sides. For example I do not get any sadder around the anniversary of the death of loved ones because I genuinely do not remember when it happened. The flip side is I tend not to link happy events to any particular date either so unless your birthday happens to be at the same time as a generally known to everybody date I won't remember it unless I am reminded many times (for example my nephew, Valentine's day, I can remember that, just don't ask me what year, my niece "sometime in the autumn" is the best you will get from me). It's not that my memory is entirely terrible. I just tend to remember different details to dates (or names). But I digress, the scene: The Boy is on the floor in the living room, a pencil in his hand and a white sheet of paper in front of him. He is building a time-line so he can write an autobiography. "Mummy, how heavy was I when I was born?". Ok that's an easy one 9lbs9oz. "How old was I when I first walked?", easy too 10 months, easy because so much happened at that time it's all gelled into one big memory. "tell me things that happened between 1 and 2", still doing ok, there's moving to the house. Then the questions continue to come thick and fast "what about when I was 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9?" and there things start being hazy because there are no big milestones any more, just months blending into each other with nothing making 1 stand out enough that I could match it with a year. So I pulled out the photo album and as things caught his eye I was looking for clues in the surrounding pictures, counting candles on birthday cakes for example. I powered up the laptop and we looked through folders of photos which have dates added. Mostly, I answered "I don't know". As I did I was kicking myself for not having the time/ patience, attention span, staying power of some of my friends who carefully gather mementoes in pretty boxes to document their children's lives, or date and add notes to photos they put in albums or scrapbooks. I am a hoarder but I never got the collecting bug. I have been doing the mum thing for long enough that my guilt buttons is honed to extra sensitive. By the next morning I had a big fail imprinted on my brain so I couldn't wait to ask if the time-line had been good enough. "Huh huh, I had more stuff than the others". Guilt mode off. "The others didn't have things happen to them like having to move loads of times and change school and going to Casualty 3 times". Guilt mode back on, for about an hour when tried to milk the misery of his life to coax pudding out of me. I am not *that* much of a plum and I have been doing the mum thing long enough to recognise when he tries to play puppet master.
The story of his life
15.11.07 22:55
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amillionpieces / Website (15.11.07 23:36) Oh, come on, give the boy a touch of pudding, for all that time in casualty 
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Chz (16.11.07 05:01) Just vengeance for trying to pull the strings on the pocket money too much, no?
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