The warmth of a daughter’s hand

I never expected to feel love for my daughter in such a physical way.

You know how your heart jumps in your chest when your new boyfriend calls you, or when your husband comes home with a single red rose or a huge bunch of lilies, or when your best friend announces that she is pregnant?

Well, holding your daughter in your arms and getting that hug back from her feels just the same – it’s the feeling of love. Physical love.

It also happens when she caresses your face, or your arm, or your hand as she suckles your breast or as you give her her bottle.

Then there is also the times when all you want is kiss – no, eat! – her tummy, her legs, her feet, her cheeks, her nose, her neck. That also comes from a place of physical love. You just can’t resist it. Just like when you want to kiss your new boyfriend all day long, and then again all night long, or just like when you want to kiss that precious space in your husband’s neck.

But what always takes me by surprise is the warmth of her hand in mine. Not when we’re about to cross the road. No – in a quiet moment. When we’re looking at a book together, or when she is upset or ill and I am about to take her in my arms to give her the biggest cuddle to make her feel better. That tiny hand provides so much warmth, I can never quite believe it when I feel it.

PS: The picture is from when my daughter was 2 weeks old!

First cooking lesson!

On Tuesday, C and I made a plum clafoutis. She loved watching me break the eggs, and then she loved stirring the liquid dough. She didn’t want to stop. If I had let her, we still wouldn’t have a cooked clafoutis.

I felt a surge of pride about the fact that she was keen on cooking/baking, and a sense of nostalgia about when my mum and I used to bake together. I never liked cooking the starter or the mains, but the dessert, ah yes, I was always there for the dessert! And most specially for licking the large wooden spoon from which the dough was still dribbling (I always made sure there was lots left on the spoon after pouring the dough into the dish!), and then making my finger slide all around the bowl, till the last drop.

C didn’t propose to lick the spoon or dip her fingers in the dough, so I didn’t encourage her. There is plenty of time for that!

Sharing this kind of thing with a daughter – is there anything like it? Passing on your savoir-faire, your experience, your tastes, your preferences, subliminally at first, consciously much later – I think that’s what having children is all about.

That, and passing on your love of them and your love of life. So that they can pass it on too – hopefully.

Back in business!

It's a scary thought, but for the past few weeks I have been musing about my blog. How I've been missing it. How, wow, now, it looks like I really may have the time to write a post every now and again!

It's not a scary thought at all, of course. It's a blindingly wonderful thought!

Just yesterday, I had an idea for a post. I can't remember for the life of me what it was, but it doesn't matter. The fact is: I'm thinking about my blog, I'm thinking about what I want to write, and best of all, I'm thinking that I can do it! I can write again! I thought this would never happen!

So just in brief: yes, motherhood really is the hardest job on earth, no manual, no preparation, no anticipation possible, but YES YES YES it really is worth it! I'm only now convinced of it, it took so long (my daughter is now nearly 21 months old), I know, but hey, I got there in the end! My daughter is so funny, now that she can say quite a few words, in both French and English, and so loving, and so sweet, and so cuddly, and now that she sleeps well consistently, it's a whole new experience. You can't compare it with the sleep-deprived nights and hazy days. No wonder some of my friends have been relishing motherhood since their babies were tiny - because they were sleeping well (both mummies and babies). Now I can too!

So thumbs up to having a baby!

Table for four

I had dinner at an Italian restaurant in Oxford last night with one of my (many!) pregnant friends.

‘Table for two?’ asked the East European waitress in a thick accent and barely audible voice.
‘Yes,’ answered my friend, N.
‘No, table for four,’ I whispered, smiling at N.

Ah, pregnancy bliss! The pleasure of being able to imagine and, now, to know that there is someone in there, a real person, who is growing stronger by the day, kicking harder every day...

Soon, there will be three of us in this household, but I can already feel that we are a family now. It is a wonderful feeling, one that I had not anticipated. Roll on third trimester!

Hay-on-Wye take 2

– or why you should always take a book with you, even when you go to the Town of Books.

Stupidly, we waited for the rain to die down.

Stupidly, we pottered about in the morning, instead of leaving as soon as we could.

So, stupidly, we found ourselves in the midst of the non-stop pouring rain – and the mayhem that it caused.

Stupidly, I hadn’t taken my camera with me, so all I can provide here is a couple of pictures that I got off Yahoo.com – so sorry... We had already been to Hay-on-Wye (see this post), it was going to be grey and rainy, we were going to be busy looking around bookshops all weekend, so no, I didn’t take my camera. Damn I regretted it!

Some scenes were quite spectacular: going through the deep puddles, water splashing by the sides of the car and soaking the windscreen in a huge curtain of water; a Mini going for it in what looked like a river but then its engine drowning and dying in a volute of white smoke in the cold 10 p.m. air...

Others quite amusing: Monsieur l’Anglais setting a trend by getting off the car and standing on the verge of the road to relieve himself; me NOT setting a trend at all by trying to hide between the driver’s door, the central reservation and Monsieur l’Anglais holding the huge golf umbrella, and NOT managing to relieve myself, so petrified was I, despite the ‘It’s OK, nobody’s looking’, the ‘I’m siiiiiinging in the rain, la la, la la la!’ and the ‘Come on, chérie, everyone’s going to think that you’re having a crap!’ (now that really helped, of course!!...NOT!)

And yet others quite miserable: abandoned cars, flooded cars, sorry drenched drivers walking by, on a mission – but which one? The closest town or shop was miles away, we were in the middle of the A40, about 15 miles away from Gloucester!

But we were lucky. Very lucky. At least we weren’t on the M5 or the M50. Those who were slept in their cars that night of 20th July 2007, a day to be remembered. Instead, we were on the glorious A40. We spent a very romantic 12 and a half hours in our little MG, sometimes a bit worried, sometimes laughing our heads off, sometimes annoyed, sometimes happy because I had taken a book with me (‘just in case’, as I always do – though Monsieur l’Anglais hadn’t wanted to listen to me and was bored stiff a lot of the time!), sometimes surprised that we had already been waiting on the same spot of tarmac for more than four hours, sometimes alarmed at the realisation that perhaps we would not make it to Hay-on-Wye for our anniversary...

But we did make it, and we were in a warm bed in a warm room at 1.45 a.m., 15 minutes after arriving at our little B&B in the centre of town. What a relief!

By 8.55 the next morning, we were up and ready for breakfast (they stopped serving at 9). We had only had a few nuts, a few dried apricots and a little water between 1 p.m. the previous day and 9 a.m. that day! Thank you Me, always ready for the unforeseeable – at least we hadn’t starved!

And then by 10 a.m., we were pushing the door of the first of the 20-odd bookshops we were to visit that day and the next.

Unfortunately, the bad weather continued, so we didn’t even get to go back to The Spot Where Monsieur l’Anglais Proposed. Getting to that spot would have meant going through mud and probably impassable paths, where the rain had lodged itself... I was gutted.

It was an interesting adventure. We will always remember our first anniversary. A rainy anniversary. Ah – a bit like our wedding...

No, I wouldn’t recommend planning anything around 20-22 July in future. It seems to always rain... We won’t any more. We’ll celebrate our anniversary a bit later from now on!

But here’s the remarkable collection of books we managed to buy and bring back from the Town of Books! (Recognise the kitchen counter?!)

Hay-on-Wye, Town of Books, Town of Love

We met on the internet. It was my mother who suggested I try. I thought she had gone mad. She said, ‘A lot of young women do it nowadays, it seems to be the new way to meet people, you should give it a go.’

Believe it or not, four months later, carrying out my first New Year Resolution of 2003, I was subscribing to datingdirect.com, paying a fee for three months and starting to get obsessed with meeting all these interesting men.

Internet dating – I was the first among my friends to experiment with it, and I was the first to be successful, too. I never looked back. I have not had to go back on the site since meeting the man who turned out to be The One. It is quite incredible. One of my friends made me realise, the day I told her he had proposed, how extraordinary it had all been. She said, ‘I want to have a love story like yours!’ I had never quite appreciated how fantastic my love life had indeed been. We met, we moved in together five months later, we bought a house a year after that, we got engaged six months later, and now we’re getting married! (Don’t know about babies yet – see ‘Motherhood’ post below.)

Monsieur l’Anglais, for lack of a better nickname, loves books as much as I do. However, he reads ten times faster, so although he possesses around 250 books, he has read every single one of them (except for the last six he bought on Sunday), while I have about 600 books (I haven’t actually counted them – I suspect it could well be more) and have only read... 100? If that. This is because I’m a bookshop-aholic. I can’t get into a bookshop without buying at least one book. The dilemma is that I can rarely just buy one book – so in fact, I can’t walk into a bookshop without coming out laden with plastic bags full of books.

It is my only sin, though – am I forgiven? It’s a nice fault to have, I think (except when I panic because I have too many books dying to be read... [see ‘To all writers’ post below]).

So when Monsieur l’Anglais turned up at our first meeting holding a Waterstone’s bag (not full to bursting with books, but it was the easily recognisable black plastic bag nonetheless), I knew things would go well. It was a very good sign.

So what better place to ask me to marry him than Hay-on-Wye, when we went in July last year? We had done a car boot sale in June and had decided to use the profits to go to Hay for a couple of days. My then-friend and now-bridesmaid had told me so many times, ‘You really should go, you would love it!’ – and we were finally going! But I would never have guessed that Hay would become synonymous with (hopefully eternal) love and would mark a new episode in our lives.

On the Saturday evening, we went for a stroll around town after our meal. It was 10.30pm and Monsieur l’Anglais was getting a little anxious (so he told me later) – many bookshops, books, drinks and hours after our arrival, there still had been no perfect moment to propose... until we went through a kissing gate, in a field close to the river Wye. It was there, after a brief bisou, that he popped the question.

I was so shocked that my English got all muddled and for a few seconds I thought he’d meant ‘Will you...’ in the sense of ‘Some day in the future, will you...’. There had been no getting down on one knee, no telltale sign that something like that was coming, so I wasn’t ready in any way for this kind of question. But it then dawned on me that he had actually just asked THE question, silly me – and of course, I said yes. As I did, he produced a ring between his thumb and forefinger, as if out of nowhere. Like a magic ring. It was so sudden that, again, it took me a second or two to fully comprehend that it was a real ring and that he really was asking me to marry him – NOW! Not for the future, not as a joke... but NOW, and with immediate implications! He slipped the ring around my finger, and it was the perfect size. Clever and Opportunistic Monsieur l’Anglais had taken to the jewellery shop the ring I normally wore every day but for some reason had left on my bedside table for the past few days, a ring that only fitted on this symbolic finger (a gift from my parents), and he managed to find a beautiful solitaire that was exactly the same size. I was very impressed with his sneakiness!

Today, we’ve only got four months and a bit to wait before we say ‘I do’. I hope I won’t get my tenses confused again and won’t say ‘I did’ or something daft like that. What’s for sure is: I can’t wait for our big day!