I had only one child with me and that felt positively luxurious. Normally when I walk through the park I have all four of my children in tow. The older two race ahead, one trying to beat the other to the best swing, and invariably tears, cries of cheating, unfair advantage, threats to harm and maim follow and I spend the entire time pushing a swing or sorting out disagreements between the kids.
But on this particular day I was having a lovely time. My baby was only eight months old. Silent, undemanding, still happy to be pushed through a park on a sunny day by his smiling, calm mother. He had yet to voice his desire for swings, slides or bike riding. I felt like the ideal, picture-perfect mother.
I thought of the friend at home minding my other kids with a twinge of guilt as I enjoyed my freedom. She has three kids who she finds impossible to get to bed at night—which means they are perpetually cranky, sullen, fractious little units whom other people try to avoid. That’s sad for them, exhausting for her and annoying for everybody else. As I left I’d given her some unsolicited advice with my characteristic sensitivity—‘Just bloody well make them go to bed. What is so hard about it?’
My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a man shouting. I looked up to see a fellow waving his arms and yelling out angrily at someone. I scanned the park to see what he was shouting at and realised, to my horror, that he was yelling at me. I tried but couldn’t understand what he was saying.
Alarmed,
I looked behind me. Was I being chased by a wild dog? An axe-wielding
maniac? An assailant who could perhaps be seen by the old man approaching
but not by me? There was no one in the park but we two. Three if you include
my fat, hairless baby. I couldn’t assume anything but that the man
walking, then striding, toward me was insane and best avoided.
As I searched for some alternative route I managed to catch what he was saying. ‘You get him out. You make him walk!’
‘Who?’ I called back. I couldn’t help it.
‘The baby of course. You make that baby get out and walk. You can’t be pushing such a big baby. He needs to get out and walk.’
By now the man, an elderly chap carrying worry beads in one hand and a navy woollen cap in the other, was standing before me. On his tanned bald head were visible beads of sweat. He really wanted to get to me before I got away. Before I could respond he was off again.
‘These babies always getting pushed around. It’s no good. No good. I see the mother she always pushing the big baby and I tell her it’s no good. But she never listen.’ He stopped ranting to breathe.
‘But my baby can’t walk. He’s only eight months old’, I replied by way of defending myself. I thought there could be little else to say on the subject. I expected the man would feel a little silly, shrug his shoulders and walk off in search of some other unsuspecting mother trying to go about her business. I was wrong.
‘Of course he can’t walk if you push him everywhere. If someone would push you would you walk?’ he asked rhetorically.
As if struck by lightening I was suddenly mortified at the parenting lecture I had just inflicted on my friend. I flushed with shame as I remembered her cowering at the table, leaning over her cup of coffee, willing me to drop the subject. Me all flapping jaws and unsolicited advice. Suddenly rather than the picture-perfect mother I felt like a mothercraft nazi.
The man was still standing before me, looking at me as though he had trumped the discussion. I could see he was pretty pleased with his logic. He could see I had to agree with him. At least he was smiling now. At me. As though I were some very dim person trying to do a good job but failing myself and my child through sheer ignorance.
As I saw it I had two choices. I could patiently go through all the developmental stages from newborn to five, which was a tempting but I suspected pointless exercise, or I could thank him for his concern and get as far away from him as possible and hope to never run into him again.
‘Thanks for that. I don’t know what I was thinking’, I said as I walked on past the man, resolving from now on to be more flapping ears than flapping jaws. As I left him there I thought to myself: ‘So many experts. So little time. Please God, don’t ever let me be as irritating as that bloke’.
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