Girly

I was terrified of having a girl, with a fervour that probably should have alerted me to the decreasing sturdiness of my mental health. Hazel is now 2-and-a-bit, and I’m completely smitten with her; I’m glad she’s a girl, and wouldn’t have it any other way. Having said that: While a lot of my fears have so far not materialised (I’ve had no weird moments where I’ve seen her as a mini-me, for example), some have, in scary, I-really-don’t-know-what-to-do-about-this ways. In my post about these fears back in 2013, I wrote, “How do I let her be whoever she wants to be? What if she’s nothing like me and loves PINK and TUTUS and NAIL POLISH?!”

If you were to take Hazel to a shop and let her pick out anything she wanted, she would almost certainly return to you with tutus and nail polish, both of which would be pink. Tulle makes her gasp with wonder, she’ll immediately sit down and remove her sandals at the sight of shoes in a store because she intends to try on every single pair, and jewellery fascinates her. She touches fabrics as we walk past the clothes section and points out her favourite items: “Oooh, Mummy, I like this one!” 

Very early on, Hazel had an opinion about what she would and would not wear (Mo, on the other hand, still lets me pick his outfits for him; I really need to stop doing this, but I care so much about colour-coordination! It’s a conundrum). I’ve mostly bought Mo’s shoes and clothes for him without him by my side; he’s refused to wear only one thing in his lifetime, and this happened approximately three months ago.* Hazel rejected her first thing when she was approximately 18 months old, and has since continued to regularly say no to clothes she deems not-okay for whatever reason. For the past year or so I’ve been too worried she’ll refuse to wear something I’ve chosen for her to risk shopping without her. On a sandal-finding expedition a few months ago, Hazel made a beeline for all that were shiny, glittery, flowery, or, preferably, all three at once, while I held up plain-coloured options and asked, hopefully, “What about these ones?” We ended up compromising: simple, undecorated, gold.

Hazel’s latest thing is wearing dresses. She loves dresses. She won’t wear shorts, despite the fact that shorts don’t trip you over when you’re walking up stairs or make climbing at the park tricky. “Shorts are awesome!” I tell her. She respectfully disagrees. (I recently pulled out a jumpsuit for her and helped her put it on; when dressed she looked down and cried, horrified, “Mum, these look like shorts!”) I watch all of this with scientific interest. I’m in two minds about her wardrobe decisions: on the one hand (mind?), I love that she chooses what she’ll wear, and I therefore don’t have to. I love that she’s already fighting for her opinion. I love that she strongly believes layers of skirts over dresses or vice versa is a valid fashion call.

On the other hand, my watching has led me to the following observations/hypotheses:

Firstly, Hazel now knows what clothes and accessories “are for” little girls and what “aren’t” (the inverted commas look odd here, but I can’t work out where else to put them and I’m almost 100% certain that some need to go somewhere in that sentence). She’s seen plenty of girls (and no boys) wearing or carrying Frozen paraphernalia, for example, so she points it out when we wander by the t-shirts/lunch boxes/backpacks/whatever other random thing Elsa has been printed onto. If I’d taken her to a shop and let her choose her own backpack for preschool, I’m pretty sure she’d have picked a Frozen backpack, even though she’s never seen the film or developed any kind of feelings – besides familiarity – towards the characters (and this is why the options I presented her were carefully selected to include zero Disney princesses). Does this mean her decisions are probably based on what she thinks little girls like, or “should” like, rather than on her actual taste? And if that were the case, would it be a problem? Don’t we all do that a little bit? What even is “actual taste”? And why haven’t I noticed/cared when Moses has done exactly the same thing? HUH?!

Secondly: Hazel, like every other person I’ve met, rather likes having people admire her, and she has learned that dresses seem to do the trick in this regard. It seems to be impossible for adults to look at a little girl wearing a dress and to not exclaim over how utterly adorable she is. Even on Mo’s cutest days, he never got half the attention in public that Hazel can get merely from wearing a flipping dress. She was given a free cookie this morning just because a shop-owner couldn’t get over how gorgeous she was. People comment on her looks all the time. She’s started twirling for strangers (where did she learn this?!)! TWIRLING, PEOPLE. I feel like there’s some kind of classical conditioning connection here, although I can’t work out whether it’s the strangers who have been trained to bubble over with praise at the sight of girls in dresses, or whether it’s Hazel who’s started salivating at the thought of eliciting said praise and making her wardrobe decisions accordingly. Someone’s the dog here and someone’s the bell, I’m sure of it. It all makes me feel uncomfortable. Also, Hazel’s started complimenting other women on their clothes, because she’s learned that’s what you’re supposed to do! “I love your dress!” she tells our neighbour; “I love this flower on your top!” she tells her grandmother.

So. My precious two-year-old appears to have already been sucked into a system I’m a huge anti-fan of. I try to balance this out at home by pointing out and commending things like her persistence and her kindness, and by not making any kind of deal about what she’s wearing or how ridiculously gorgeous she is. I can’t ask random people to start complimenting her on her non-appearance-related strengths, but I could ask that of the gushy people we see fairly regularly, such as her preschool teachers. Should I? Or should I make changes at this end, by, for example, pretending her dresses are suddenly not options for a while (Hazel in four years’ time: “Mum, remember that time it took you years to wash all of my dresses, and then none of them fit me anymore?!”) and forcing her to wear shorts, so that people may feel less compelled to comment on her looks (and – bonus! – so that she can climb unhindered). Or would that be stifling a valid part of her which needs to be expressed, just for the sake of making me feel less icky?

These are not rhetorical questions! If you have any answers, advice, sympathy, feedback, or reproaches, I’d dearly love to hear them. Well, maybe I wouldn’t dearly love all of it.  Things I’d particularly love to hear: “Didn’t you have a pink bedroom when you were younger? Then what are you fretting about, you turned out great!” (To which I’d reply, “Why thank you, lovely reader! It was apricot, actually, not pink, and it’s kinda weird that you know that about my childhood, but that’s sweet of you to say!”). Things I may need to hear but wouldn’t dearly love hearing: “You need to relax and just let it all be, you crazy, over-analytical control freak.” Things I don’t want to hear: “You suck. Just generally. I hate you.” Those are your guidelines.

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* Mo refused to wear something because it was purple-ish, and “purple is for girls.” What’s happening to my children?! WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?! *tears at hair*

2015/2016

For an odd-numbered year, 2015 turned out very well, and actually came close to being exactly what I wished for it at the end of 2014. Except for the naming part; early on I named it my Year of Action, which I remember being code for my decision to EXERCISE and EAT WELL and SLEEP ALL THE TIME and basically kick depression’s butt with all my effort-making. That didn’t work, so I finally gave up and let antidepressants do the arse-kicking instead, which was a liberating move. When I saw my psychiatrist in December I told him I couldn’t remember what I felt like before medication and he flicked back through his notes and told me, “Let’s see… When you first came to see me, you felt a lot of guilt about how you were doing as a mother… You felt like you were letting your children down… Hmmm… [flick, flick] … Yep, it was mostly guilt around mothering.” I don’t worry quite so much about ruining my kids’ lives anymore, which is really nice.

2015 was the year we decided not to move to Adelaide. 

2015 was the year I lost the urge to apologise for the things I believed, and for the things I didn’t believe anymore.

2015 was the year Alan made family-life easier for me and more fun for the kids first by working four days per week rather than five, and next by successfully launching his own business from our bedroom. 

2015 was the year I attended my school reunion and realised my classmates and ex-boyfriends were gracious and lovely and had not, as I’d (strangely?) expected, been waiting for an opportunity to tell me how much of a cow I was to them at some point during my teenage years.

2015 was the year that took Hazel from the squidgy to the confident-and-articulate end of toddlerdom, and the year that turned Moses into a lanky ready-for-school-er.

2015 was the year I finally faced the insurmountable-feeling challenge of studying Psychology and surprised myself by surmounting it. (Well, six subjects of it; I still have four left to be surmounted.)

I have hopes rather than resolutions for 2016. I hope to finish the remainder of my Graduate Diploma with marks that give me the best chance of being accepted by a university nearby to study honours next year. The thought of tackling the next four subjects fills me with both anxiety and determination (slightly more of the former than the latter; I’m starting with another statistics class). It’s a similar feeling to approaching the birth of your second child, where you’re fully aware that what lies ahead will almost certainly involve yelling and sweat, but you’re also able to reassure yourself that you’ve been through it before and therefore know you’ll probably survive. 

I hope that our family finds a sustainable new groove with Hazel at preschool two days a week, and Moses starting school.

I also hope to be healthier (as well as less of a cliché). I’ve realised I rely a little too heavily on my antidepressants to do the job of helping me feel relatively content and also sleepy at bedtime, and I really should make some effort to lend a hand (I know! I’ll name 2016 The Year of ACTION!). I lost weight in 2015 and started to feel like me again for the first time in a long time (except for my belly, which feels less like me and more like a weird, fleshy, six-week-old-balloon adornment on my front. I’m not sure how long it’ll take for me to accept that my belly is also ‘me’; maybe 2016 will be the year I finally make peace with it), but the more I’ve felt like me the less motivation I’ve had to continue working towards feeling like me, because, you know, I’m right here! So. I want to exercise, at least semi-regularly. I also plan to try (for the seventeenth time) to drastically reduce the amount of sugar I eat. I actually started this low-sugar plan on the first day of this year, not realising there were still lollies in the house; upon discovering them this afternoon I helpfully ate the entire lot so that I can quit sugar properly tomorrow.

I hope very good things for you, too, this year. Here’s a song to kick us off...

(It’s One Wild Life by Gungor.)

Greythorne by L. M. Merrington | Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Greythorne by L. M. Merrington

I read most of Greythorne on two train trips, one into the city and one back home, and in both directions I found myself wishing my destination was further away so that I could remain seated and continue to read. It’s vividly-written and gripping but it’s also short, which means that the anxiety you feel about how it’s all going to end doesn’t go on for long enough to cause any serious health concerns (I’m not big on thrillers, but this was a level of thrill my poor heart could cope with). Greythorne tells the tale of Nell Featherstone, a governess who starts working at the mysterious Greythorne Manor with little Sophie, whose father is the mysterious Nathaniel Greythorne and whose mother mysteriously died not too long ago (is ‘mysterious’ even a word? It’s starting to look weird). The book starts off rather Jane Eyre-y, with a sinisterness woven into it that reminded me of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (I should mention I haven’t read either of these for years, so it may be the vibe I’m remembering rather than the actual stories…), but, despite these similarities, it was completely unpredictable and overall an absolute cracker of a read.*

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

I seem to be drawn to memoirs, even though many annoy me. The question I have about everything I read – Why are you telling me this?! – particularly bothers me while reading memoirs, yet I still find myself attracted to them more than any other genre of writing.** In the last few months I’ve read The Anti-Cool Girl by Rosie Waterland, which I liked, and Flesh Wounds by Richard Glover, which I really liked, and then Wild by Cheryl Strayed, which I flipping LOVED. In all my memoir-reading, I’ve realised that it doesn’t take a dramatic childhood to make an excellent memoir, it takes a good writer and a single theme tying everything together; Cheryl Strayed’s writing is GOOD, and reading about her hike made me want to shove everything into a backpack and find my nearest bush track more than anything anywhere ever. Wild is beautiful and painful and brilliantly-crafted and I found it movingly relate-able despite the fact that I have almost nothing at all in common with Strayed. I think it’s the best memoir I’ve ever read.

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* I was tossing up for a while whether or not to include this footnote... A few years ago I met L. M. Merrington, the author of Greythorne, through this blog, so it took me a little while after starting to read her book to shut up the voice in my brain that kept shrieking “OH MY GOODNESS, LOU WROTE THIS!!!!” and to simply enjoy the story. I already knew she was a gifted writer with an enviable vocabulary (both of which Greythorne demonstrates well), but it takes an extra special sort of amazingness to not only write a complete novel but to then have it published, and it was very exciting for me to order, receive, read, and then thoroughly enjoy the fruit of her labour.

** Is this hypocritical coming from a blogger? Most often my answers to the Why are you writing this?! question are, “Because I think someone may relate to it,” “Because I think someone else will find it funny, too” or “Because I want to remember it later when I read back over my blog.” I have cut out many a paragraph which doesn’t pass the Why?! test. You’re welcome.