Bittersweet… random wittering… emotive Mum 4, February 2010

Things with mini-me are going very well at the moment, although I think this is more to do with a recovery for my parents – who’ve booth been a bit crook. Something like that happens and you look ahead to visiting hospitals with a lively toddler, trying to keep him quiet around those who are ill, the sad thought that there are people you love who mean a great deal to you who he may never remember.  You think about the chances of him, perhaps, seeing things he shouldn’t see…  And then last night, I saw something I shouldn’t have seen!

I watched a programme about the second world war which featured home movies, Allied and German. The narrator explained that, naturally, there were few films of German cruelty… they then proceeded to show us one.  It’s clearly being filmed from behind the corner of a building and shows a group of people, possibly women, being herded to one side by german soldiers.

Suddenly a toddler rushes into shot from the left.  A woman takes two steps away from the crowd and bends down with her arms out. A german soldier steps in to grab the child and turns it roughly round, giving it a push back in the other direction, away from it’s mother.  He turns his back on the child to chivvy the mother into line.  Undaunted, the child makes another attempt to run to its mother and again she steps forwards, only one pace this time, and holds her arms out.  The guard puts his foot on the child’s chest and pushes it backwards so it falls over.  He turns to the woman and as she goes back to the group the child gets up and starts running for mum again… they didn’t film what happened next.  That’s all there is.

I suppose the fact the little thing ran exactly the way mini-me runs broke me up a bit. I consider myself to be emotionally robust, on the whole, but I do not have the strength I used to when it comes to cruelty. Presumably that’s motherhood.

But the two things that upset me most about that film were, first, that the woman and her toddler were not being subjected to mindless cruelty, it had taken thought on the part of somebody to separate them, thought about how to make a horrible experience worse. That’s chilling enough, but, of course, it’s a short step from that to thinking about all the places where that kind of stuff is still going on, today.  It’s all over the world, unpoliced and unchecked because it’s going on in countries where there are no mineral resources valuable enough to guarantee the West’s intervention.

It makes me realise how lucky I am.  It makes me realise that although being a Mum is difficult, at times, I want this and I am happy with my choice.  It makes me realise how much I love my son… now if I could just get that image out of my head, I might be able to get on with something useful…

On a lighter note… after that, I think we need one here’s a typical example of why I love being a Mum.

Mister Small is bimbling about my feet as I cook his supper, he opens the larder, there is a bit of rustling and I hear him run away. I’m not looking, I’m busy sorting out the stuff he took out of another cupboard.  I peep round the kitchen island to see where he’s gone.  No sign but the larder door is closed and a half full sack of potatoes is sitting in the middle of the corridor.  I laugh, open the door and put the potatoes back which brings him running.  I close the door, carry on cooking.  I tell him no and send him to look at my back pack.  After a few minutes’ listening to the sound of my bag being zipped and unzipped I notice the larder door open and hear a lot more rustling. I go over to see what’s going on but as I approach Mini-me bursts out with a leek in his teeth.  I guffaw before I can stop myself.

Luckily, instead of having to take the leek by force I am given it while he investigates the onions in the vegetable rack. (Why won’t that interesting thing fall down even though it’s hanging over the edge? Because it’s in a bag.)

And we’ve eaten the leek… even though it had teeth marks in it.