New look

Imagine a barn, a big empty rectangle of thick rock walls, a simple uninsulated tile roof.

Cutting holes in these walls is expensive. And putting in wires and pipes? Forget it. Much easier to simply build within the walls, should you wish to convert the barn to something else.

This is our house: a new wooden box inside an old barn (well, half the box - our neighbours live in the other half). The box doesn't quite fill the original walls - there's a gap along one side. And, to let in the light, the wall facing this gap is made of glass.

I loved looking out from our bedroom to the rafters and tiles, loved the visual reminder that we do indeed live inside a barn.

You noticed the past tense, right? Yeah, there was a problem with those bare tiles: whenever there was a lot of snow on the roof, any trapped melt water on top of the snow would run up under them, and inside.

Both C and I have a natural inclination towards design over function, but here function had to win.

Off came the tiles.

This was when we discovered that the original plan had been to have glass along this entire section of the roof, only the village vetoed this so instead we just got sky lights. (The range of acceptable house looks in this part of the world is small. Very small. As in, less than you can count on one hand.)

I kind of wish I never knew that, because I like the roofless look even better than the tiles.

We needed plastic sheeting to waterproof the roof, and since this is ugly, it had to be covered on the inside.

I know I'll get used to it, eventually. I know our house is beautiful, that we are lucky to even have any kind of roof over our heads, but still. I don't like it.

I miss the tiles.

Strawberry fields (for cancer*)

They'd been begging to go for weeks, ever since the first hot-house grown punnets arrived in the supermarkets.

Soon, I said, when they're in season here.

Is it the right season now? Téo asked every week after that.

Last week I said yes.

And so we went strawberry picking, two villages away.

 There may have been gorging.

* Another example of my double standards: preservative-ridden processed food = bad! Second-most pesticide-ridden fruit = eat as many as you want! Sorry kids, hope there's a cancer cure by the time you need it...

Gender confusion

So this week I heard about a family in Canada who aren't telling people the sex of their child.

My reaction was a complete wtf? How can you raise a genderless child? And why would you want to? Isn't it more empowering to identify as a particular sex/gender, but be confident enough to defy the conventions for that sex/gender, should you so wish? And also, good luck: I'm sure Lukan's current obsession with machine guns is innate and not because he knows - or because society has told him - he's a boy.

But then I actually read the article, and I understood the parents a bit better. They're not trying to raise a genderless child, they just don't want him/her immediately classified by sex. And they make a fair enough point that the way people talk to kids changes according to whether the kid is a girl or a boy.

I am guilty of this: I have called my boys little man and beautiful boy since they were born. Honestly, I don't really think this is a problem... but I realised that recently I have begun responding/correcting in a gender-specific way.

- You're very pretty in that dress mummy.

- Thank you sweetheart.

- Am I pretty in this shirt?

- Handsome, yes you are very handsome in your shirt.

Again, I don't think this is really the biggest social ill, but it does imply that boys and girls are different. Girls can be pilots and doctors, boys can be nurses and teachers (yes, I have had to have this conversation already), but they can only be pretty or handsome, respectively. Does this change our perceptions, our expectations? I'm not 100% convinced, and yet and yet... for girls at least, wouldn't the option of being handsome - which once was an adjective for women - rather than only beautiful take a lot of pressure off?

Then there's the issue of pink. Téo loves pink. Lukan likes it too. I am happy for them to wear pink, and indeed they have some pink clothes. It saddens me that Téo is already sensitive about pink, because he has been teased at school. We've talked about this, how it's not true that pink is only for girls and blue for boys, how he likes pink but I don't, how colours are for everyone.

But at the same time, I steer both kids away from girls' clothes when they are attracted to them. I even say, out loud, that they are for girls and not boys.

Yeah, that's not really fostering confidence to defy social conventions, is it?

Clearly, I'm not as progressive as I would like to believe. But even with this realisation, I don't see myself letting them choose Hello Kitty t-shirts and sparkly pink jeans. Or a dress. I can't honestly say why, I have no reasoned argument for how exactly this would be a bad idea (apart from teasing), but still, I don't see myself encouraging it.

And hair. Every now and again Téo says he'd like to have long hair. I am fine with this, and have told him so. I've even mentally patted myself on the back for not caring about hair stereotypes, for being cool. But then, also this week, I saw a picture of a 9-year-old boy with pink nail polish and long, long, long hair. He's the son of a blogger I really admire... but even admiring the mother and agreeing with her parenting, I wondered how comfortable I'd feel if that was my son.

Am I stunting my kids by not letting them explore gender more freely? Is my rigidity really better than the Canadian parents' approach?

Apart from the clothes, I do feel I have tried to teach my kids that gender is not restrictive, that many perceived gender differences are artificial. And if they insisted on wearing a dress, or pink nail polish, then I'm pretty sure I'd let them. But that's the thing: they'd have to insist, while if I had a daughter I'd offer such choices without thinking. I'd probably let her choose boys' clothes, too.

So from me, as well as from society, my kids get the message that boys and girls are different. Which they are, which they should be, which is something I most definitely do not think we should try to suppress. But I'm not sure I'm making it clear where that difference is something to celebrate, and where that difference should not exist at all.

Anyway, today Téo had to take a toothbrush to school. He has a new pink one, which he wanted to take.
I nearly encouraged him to take another one, a less tease-worthy yellow one, but stopped myself.

He likes pink. He shouldn't feel bad about it. He especially shouldn't feel bad about it from me. A very small step in the wider question of gender and identity and society, granted, but the least I can do is empower him in this.

Sunday snapshot

Like father like son.

In which I wax lyrical about a few rocks

For a while now, I've been feeling a bit bad for... wait for it... not taking the kids to the theatre.

Oh the middle-class angst!

But even recognising the privileged nature of this guilt didn't help, it just left me feeling... conflicted. The tug to take the kids to a play felt real, but why did I want to take them? Was it something they really needed? Or was it some kind of unconscious mompetition, a way to publicly demonstrate I am a Good Mother who does Interesting and Worthy Things with her children?

Anyway, back in January I finally got hold of a programme, and then last week I finally got around to remembering to actually go.

Because Lukan is usually the tag-alonger rather than the focus of any activities, I had chosen a show for his age group. Which meant that, although I was pleased to be going, I was kind of dreading the performance. What kind of inane forced cheerfulness was I going to have to sit through just to appease a vague sense I should expose my children to some bourgeois definition of culture?

And the price! 15 bucks each, no discount for kids, for a 30 minute show! Really??!!

But ...it was wonderful. Sweet and whimsical, in only the best sense of the words, with a not completely happy ending and a gentle message thrown in.

As I sat there, transported to another world by a man with few words and a kind face - a world made of rocks and sand and an old sardine can - I remembered how much I love the theatre. The physical closeness of the story. The complete belief in characters - tin can men with stone hearts! - you know not to be real. And the gut-churning hope that you will be transported, that the actor will not embarrass him/herself - or you - by failing to put you under his/her spell.

It was a kind of tonic too. My work is often quite sad, highlighting the worst of what it means to be human. Animals going extinct, oceans being emptied, forests being clear cut... writing about this leaves me feeling that people are a plague, destroying our planet through greed and selfishness and thoughtlessness.

But witnessing this man's ability to bring stones and tin cans alive - seeing his creations so perfectly with my own eyes - reminded me of just how special humans are. How we alone, of all life on Earth, can make beauty and stories, and share them and live them together. How incredible it is that spun star-dust can do this.

And when I saw Téo so enraptured, and heard Lukan laugh with delight, and when Lukan came home the next day with a rock he said was a baby triceratops... well, I knew exactly why I want to take my kids to the theatre.

Saturday snapshot

Maybe branded household items aren't such a rip off

- But I forgot to tell you I wanted a Buzz Light Ear birfday.

Lukan makes this complaint frequently, despite the fact that he never even heard of Toy Story until a good six months after his last birthday.

- So you didn't like the birthdays you have had? The tractor party, and the boat pinata you asked for?

- No. I didn't. I wanted a Buzz Light Ear one.

When he's not grumbling about past birthdays, he's moaning about the next one.

- But when is it my biiirrfday. I want it to be my birfday nooooow. I want my Buzz Light Ear birfday noooow.

Although, sometimes he does eagerly anticipate it.

- When it's my Buzz Light Ear birfday, you can buy me de toy of Buzz Light Ear and Woody fwom the shop and I'm gonna have a Buzz Light Ear birfday cake.

Last year he was equally obsessed with George Pig, to the point of insisting we call him George. I got him a George toy for xmas... and then his obsession promptly moved on to Fiona.

With three months until his birthday, I fear the same will happen with Buzz.

We really don't need any more abandoned toys littering the house.

But C's weakness may have saved the day! While doing the shopping on Saturday, he succumbed to... well... see for yourself:

Who needs to fork out big bucks for a talking, laser-shooting toy when for just 10c more, you get a tissue box that generates just as much excitement?