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| A jelly. Of Sorts |
Jelly.
Jelly wobbles. I can remember
looking at it as a child, shaking the bowl to see it shiver. Great stuff altogether. Tasty too.
Wibbly Wobbly Wonder ice-pops. One of my favourite ice-cream treats. They
have a great taste as well. The taste
of childhood. I don’t eat them so much
anymore though. Maybe tomorrow. Oh, wait.
It’s October. Maybe next
summer. Yes. Definitely next summer.
Lower lips. They wobble too. Nothing can stop me in my tracks faster than
one of my boys with a lower lip wobble.
The most recent one was when he almost knocked the bowl of cereal out of
my hand. I got crossed and yelled. His lip wobbled. Then I almost wobbled. We made up after a moment. It was all good.
There was a further wobble that evening
with another boy. Crossed wires, I got
cross and yelled again. After a fashion
I got another hold of myself and asked him to remind me of what I am always
saying to them; “It doesn’t matter. It’s
not important. No-one got hurt.” That wobble wasn’t so nice. I must remember to keep my cool in the
future. Over silly stupid things. Things that are not important.
There were lots of wobbles when the
boys were babies. Lots of them. The boys may have been small but the wobbles
weren’t. Second guessing myself all the
time. Wondering, waiting and wailing in
between. Wobbles at 2am in the kitchen
by myself. I had many in the
shower. Once I almost mortified myself
in a shop! I shouldn’t have been let out half the
time.
Loads of drunken wobbles. Oh, yessir, too many to mention in this blog
post. Ones where I couldn’t get the
bathroom door open. Others where I fell
asleep. Once even standing up. Another time on a plane. Once I cornered a lovely friend and demanded
to know why she couldn’t feed the homeless with the leftover food from her fast
food outlet job. Yes! Drunken wobbles. Who knew there could be so
many? I’ll say goodbye to that one now.
There were a few wobbles at some of my
works. I hated those ones. I’m not a big fan of confrontation but
looking back I am so glad, proud and happy with myself for throwing those
wobbles. I was standing up for myself
and shaking in my boots (Doc Martins for one of them) at the same time. Now I tell my boys to do the same.
I have lots of body wobbles now. I remind myself I have been through four
back to back pregnancies and I am not exactly in the first flush of youth
anymore. I also tell myself I’d have less
wobbles if I could lay off the Walnut Whips, the almonds I like to munch and
the chocolate I love with my coffee. I
think my wobbles are here to stay. I
will continue to fight them when instead maybe I should “love the body I’m in.”
The wheel of the car wobbled not so
long ago. For a horrible moment I
thought I was going to hit the car in front but the brakes worked just in
time. On further inspection – by
someone else. You don’t want me
checking out your car - it turned out the front wheel on the passenger side was
a moment away from falling off. Now
that was a wobble I didn’t dwell too much on.
Wobbles are a fact of life. Big and small. Apparently it’s not the wobble that’s
important but how you handle it. Or
maybe that’s something else.
It’s good advice all the same.
However, there’s a new wobble in
town. It was discovered almost two weeks
ago and it’s gotten worse. And this one
by all accounts, is earlier than the others.
It’s a wobbly tooth.
I’ve seen those before. Lots of them. So many in fact, I part time as the tooth
fairy.
This loose tooth though is another of the
first of the lasts.
Because it’s Smallest Boy. His first loose tooth is right on the
bottom. The one next door to it is in
no great state either. A double
wobble. They will both probably fall
out in time for Halloween.
They’re only teeth. He will grow
perfectly fine and beautiful adult ones.
But this is it. It’s another marker. Like the first proper haircut – the one that
strips the baby look off them – the onset of adult teeth puts the look of an
older child on them too.
Once upon a time he didn’t want his
teeth to fall out because it would be sore and he wouldn’t be able to eat
apples.
Now he can’t wait till it happens
because he will get “millions of euro from the tooth fairy.”
May all his wobbles in life be so
small.
