Associations Part ll: politics for children

This post is part of the Election Carnival, which is being hosted at Mummy do that!

I was writing about associations yesterday. Of course as a parent, you become aware that you sometimes have a hand in creating associations (though usually not...) For example, we all try to give our children associations that make them remember Christmas as fun, magical, exciting, and not stressful, tense, and fattening. As a parent, you're the director of your own family movie.

So when it comes to the election, what kind of association will you be creating for your child? (Or should I say 'trying to create' - for as parents, as directors, we can only do our best...)

I am so grateful to my parents on this score. To me, a general election smacks of excitement. However they did it, they created an atmosphere in which we children knew that something important was afoot. We knew it was fun to talk about politics. We thought it was absolutely fabulous that they disagreed, and we tried to get them to argue (Mum was a staunch Labour supporter, Dad would never tell us outright on the basis that it was private, thereby generating a layer of mystery and added excitement to what we all knew was his Lib Dem vote - whatever the Lib Dem equivalent was at the time). Staying up to watch some of the results was a privilege accorded with age, and those of us sent to bed would be eager to hear the news in the morning. I remember going with my mother to vote, and being shown how to write the X, but not being allowed to do it - that was an important job and hers alone to do. I remember her saying "we're playing our part in history". What child would fail to experience a frisson of excitement at that?

I remember the thrill of naughtiness, when my mother got one of us to jump out of the car, and stick a small, round, red Vote Labour sticker on the nose of the Conservative candidate on the poster on the telegraph pole outside the post office. Zooming away in the Renault 4, it felt for all the world as if we'd been involved in a major heist. It wouldn't have made a jot of difference, I'm sure. We lived in the safest Tory seat in the country. Sir Ian Gilmour had a majority the size of... the size of... oh I don't know... the size of a very large thing. But we were exercising our right to freedom of speech (and maybe we inspired Red Nose Day).

I'm not doing such a good job with my own children, though I have used the "playing our part in history" line a few times, and I have told them how my grandmother couldn't vote till she was 29. If there's an election every five years, you don't honestly have many chances with your children over the course of their childhood. Four? Perhaps five or six if the terms of government are shorter? At least with Christmas you get the opportunity every year.

At the last election, we were living in Scotland. I was working, and Husband was at home (see, I haven't always been a trailing spouse... well, I have actually, that was just a blip... and it didn't work out too well... and why am I defensive about the trailing spouse thing?) Anyway, I charged Husband with making an event out of voting. It had to be fun, but full of gravitas, I said. Memorable, at the very least. The net result was that he crumbled under the pressure and voted Scottish Nationalist by mistake. I bet the SNP doesn't get many votes from English people. Their candidate had the same surname as the local Lib Dem MP (Menzies Campbell), and in the voting booth with a wriggly baby and active preschooler, Husband saw the name at the top of the list and looked no further. To be fair to him, I have to say that when I voted I did notice that the first names were printed very small, much smaller than the surnames, so it was an easy mistake to make. Are there rules about size of names on ballot papers, I wonder? It's an area of potential corruption, come to think of it.

What about you? Are you making history with your children?

And here's a picture of a Renault 4, the perfect getaway car, though ours was dark green (better camouflage).


Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sludgeulper/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

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Associations

Today I went to a baseball match. Actually, I don’t think they call them ‘matches’. A baseball game. I enjoyed it. Definitely a whole blog post in there – another day.

It made me think about sensory associations. It was the loud, twangy thwack of the baseball on the (five syllable) aluminium bat that got me started. I bet that to Americans, that particular sound says ‘summer’. I bet they’d recognize it instantly, even if they’d been away from America for decades. I bet they’d close their eyes, and see in their mind’s eye a baseball pitch from their childhood or college days, feel the heat of the sun on their backs, smell the hot dogs at the concession stand, and hear the song from the seventh innings stretch.

As an expat, you're constantly developing a new set of associations. I suppose that's true of everyone, but it's exaggerated by a move to another country. The equivalent of the baseball thwack for me would be the repetitive thump of tennis ball on racquet strings, or the thud of leather on willow. Those are the sounds of summer. Accompanied by the smell of newly cut grass, of course. When you move abroad, you start building up a new library of associations: sound, smell, taste, feel. They don’t replace the old library. I guess you just overlay one on top of the other.

I had a moment, a couple of years ago now, when an association stopped me short. I was outside a store, and I heard a clang, clang, clanging which I couldn’t place. It confused me, and then suddenly I knew it. It was the sound I used to love when we lived by the sea in Scotland, of boats in the harbour on a windy day, the ropes slapping against the metal masts. I looked around, and saw a tall flagpole. Ah, that was it. Same sound, different context. A cross-reference in my library of associations.

Sensory associations run deep, and the expat has to undergo a little retraining. The comforting sound of coming home is no longer the click and turn of the key in the front door lock, but the whirring of the automatic garage door as it opens. I have to trust that a bathroom is disinfected, even though it doesn’t smell of Dettol. I’m guessing that for Americans, the smell of Lysol or Clorox carries that same hygiene-assured feeling. The labels say they kill germs, but it’s been a leap of faith for me. They just don’t have that trusted Dettol smell...

I wash up after dinner to Jazz Café instead of The Archers. That didn’t feel right at first. How could I fill a sink with water and bubbles without that familiar music? And on the subject of music, does anyone else still miss the ba-ba-ba-ba of the Pearl and Dean adverts when they go to the cinema? That’s an age-related association as well as an expat-related one. The passing years pose no threat to old associations, though. When she visited, my mother said that the tornado siren, tested on Mondays at noon, was the wrong way round. The warning tone should be the all clear, and the all clear should be the warning. Strong associations from 70 years ago.

Once you start thinking about these smells, or sounds, or tastes, you realize what a huge number we all carry around with us, and of course we carry far more than we are consciously aware of. I love associations. Why don’t you tell me some of yours?

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P... p... p... pick up a costume

“Kindergarten is producing a movie, and your child is going to be a … penguin” said the note.

I have to confess I quite enjoy the costumes bit of being a parent. Sometimes not. I’m certainly not an “I wish it could be Hallowe’en every day” kind of a girl. But in small doses, I can enjoy putting together a costume now and again. My prowess extends from the tooth fairy (easy) to Martin Luther King Jr (difficult).

A penguin isn’t that bad. Trust me. Just follow these eight easy steps.

1. Get cancer. Have chemo. Lose your hair. Buy a black hat. Grow your hair back, so that you no longer need the hat on a daily basis.
2. Make friends with someone slightly eccentric, who gives you a large bottle of yellow craft paint saying “I don’t need this any more, but you have kids, you might find a use for it”. Put paint in cupboard.
3. Three years later, remember the paint, and its location. (This is by far the most difficult step in making the costume. If your expertise doesn’t reach to this feat of memory, you can always go to a shop and buy some. Less emotionally satisfying, but a similar result.)
4. Paint yellow penguin beak on brim of black hat. Squish with elastic band. When child says she can’t tolerate the elastic band across her forehead, remove elastic band and discover that the brim remains bent into pleasing beak shape on its own.
5. Find black pyjama bottoms that older sibling has grown out of.
6. Find your own favourite black fleece top and say “I’m sure nothing will happen to it. It’ll be fine.” Turn up the sleeves a good few inches.
   
7. Spawn genius older child (you have to do this bit a few years in advance) who says “Hey, Mom, you could use those swimming flippers for the feet”. If you don’t want the added expense of the extra child, and the subsequent swimming lessons with a teacher who requires flippers, you could purchase yellow socks. But then you'd also have to purchase black pyjama bottoms (see 6).
8. Spend 25 cents in Wal-Mart on a piece of white felt, for chest and eyes.

And ta-da! There’s your penguin.

Finest hours

Iceland. What the heck are you playing at? I'd have thought you'd be trying to curry a little favour with your European colleagues, after that financial debacle last year. But no. You've sprouted a volcano, and now you're using it. Not just an ordinary volcano. Oh no. One with a very long and frankly rather unrealistic name. Like someone just typed a capital E, and then let their fingers tap randomly for 2 or 3 seconds on the keyboard. Like this: Easdofihweonasdlf;oahiewt;lan. But without the semi-colons.

You won't win the Eurovision Song Contest now. Not a hope. Not for decades.

Still, you should know the Brits. We go all Dunkirky at times like this, and start talking about "bringing our people home". Is Gordon Brown saying "oh for heaven's sake, I'm busy trying to win an election here"? No, he's not. He's saying "Get me my Spanish counterpart on the phone. Let's turn Spain into a British hub." Shouldn't be too hard. We've managed to turn plenty of Spain into Britain already. In fact, you might say it was a cunning slow-burning strategy, put in place over many years, one plate of egg and chips at a time, for just such a national emergency as this.

Fear not, oh Brits stranded abroad. I saw some of you interviewed today, and you said you were a bit worried about getting back from your exotic holiday for "some tests called SATS, which are quite important". But if you can get to Spain, which we'll rename Brit-hub for the time being, a flotilla of Royal Navy and requisitioned merchant navy vessels will brave the Bay of Biscay to come and get you. A flotilla, or perhaps we'd call it an armada, just for old time's sake. We wouldn't want you to miss your SATS.

Interestingly insular of you, though, Gordon, because you haven't thought about people who might be wanting to LEAVE Britain. You're assuming everyone is wanting to get IN. There may be some, believe it or not, who are wanting to get OUT. Like my husband for example. Can he hitch a ride with the Royal Navy, and then get a transatlantic flight out from Brit-hub? Just wondering.

In fourteen hundred and ninety-two,

Columbus sailed the ocean blue,

When we got as far as two thousand and ten,

We could have done with the Santa Maria* again.

I, on the other hand, did not have one of my finest hours when he phoned this morning to tell me that Delta have cancelled all flights till next week-end. It was early, and I hadn't had tea. Never a good time. I also had five children in the house (they were out of bed, I wasn't), since having failed to find a babysitter, I did the honourable thing and hosted a sleepover for the two children of a friend who was planning to leave hers on their own, and not stay out very late, and probably not enjoy the evening very much for wondering about them (hers are at that age, but only just).

Did I commend his valiant efforts - valiant but unnecessary, as it turns out - to retrieve his passport from the depot in Northants where the courier company's "express service" has left it to languish, en route from the US embassy to my mother's address? Did I sympathise with the frustration of scrambled travel plans? Did I call forth bravery in the face of the huge hassle that will surely ensue? Did I delicately weave together the two contrasting impressions that a wife needs to give a delayed absent husband, that the family is doing fine without him, but also not too absolutely fine. Or did I grunt monosyllabically, and mutter "fine, thanks" in reply to every question?

Wonder what Mrs Columbus would have been like if Christopher had had the use of an international phone line. "Bring back a bag of potatoes and we'll have chips for dinner. Oh, and pick up a packet of Marlboro Lights while you're at it." Hang on. Maybe that was Mrs Raleigh. Doh... I wish I was better at history.

* The Santa Maria was Columbus' ship - a historical detail which all US first graders know. It's like knowing Harold was hit by an arrow in the eye.

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Mr and Mrs God in the Creation Kitchen

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed quite a few posts around at the moment on the subject of talking to children about big questions: death, faith, God? Is it Easter that's brought it all out?

Anyway, I thought I'd tell you about this fab book that I recently discovered. This isn't a sponsored post. I have no connection with the author or the book. I just like it. I found it, less than half price, in a bargain box of books in my local supermarket, amongst all the princess sticker books and Disney. It was rather a surprise.

The blurb says this:

Deep in the heavens, in a space without beginning or end, Mr and Mrs God are hard at work. They've got frying pans and mixing bowls, beaters and whisks, and an oven big enough to roast a star...

You get the gist.

I'll tell you what I like about the book. I love the fact that God is both Mr and Mrs. I would love my children to grow up to be comfortable with the idea of God as both male and female, on an emotional as well as intellectual level. Hurrah for The Shack, which helped us all along the way with this one. Remember the days (you won't unless your children are a little older than mine) when a baby book always referred to a baby as 'he'? Now it would seem quite bizarre if a baby book did that. I'm looking forward to the day when talk about God is similarly unfettered from its male history. It'll probably take a bit longer to establish a new norm than it did in the baby book market, but I'm hopeful. That's the first thing I like about the book.

The second thing I like is that Mr and Mrs God come across as hugely fun and imaginative, and that creation is portrayed as a big lark and adventure. Our tendency seems to be to take anything religious too seriously, so it's always a plus when there's a bit of jolly fun going on.

Then there's the relationship between Mr and Mrs God. Trinitarian theology is, I'm told, very important in Theology circles at the moment (the reason for which has passed me by), and it seems that relationship is central to this whole deal. Well, I like how Mr and Mrs God work together, even if it does involve Mrs God saying to Mr God "How could you?" when his pelican gobbles up her nice bright fish, and then not speaking to him for a thousand years.

And if you're looking for a bit of theology in the book, you'll like the ending. I've always struggled with the whole 'free will' concept. It seems to me suspiciously like people trying to let God off the hook. "Well, God IS both perfectly good and perfectly almighty, and he COULD have made a perfect world, but then we would have been like robots and not had a choice about how we relate to Him (Her)." Choice? What, like some consumerist approach to shopping in the universe? Seems to me that if I was omnipotent, as well as being all-loving, I could have thought my way round that one, easy-peasy lemon-squeezy. Anyway, I'm not saying that Mr and Mrs God in the Creation Kitchen makes sense of it, but there's something about the final page that appealed to me. As they set the baking tray on the earth, and watch their baked man and woman get up out of it, the book closes:

"I wonder how they'll turn out," said Mr God.

"Who knows?" said Mrs God.

"We'll just have to wait and see."

It's not a theological treatise, is it? But somehow, there's something about it that I like. Perhaps it's because it's unresolved. I like unresolved.

So I like the characters, and the plot, and the text. I'm not so keen on the illustrations. They seem chaotic and not very well defined, which was probably to reflect the idea of the story, but for a child, I think they might be overwhelming. They're also a bit grey and lacking in colour, which again is probably a deliberate reflection of the story - where colour is used, it's not in the kitchen, but in the finished creation. But that's just my opinion. You might love them.

If you're going to be troubled by any creation story other than the Big Bang or the Bible, then this isn't the book for you. But if you want to put some fun thoughts regarding one of Life's Big Questions into your child's enquiring mind, and end up saying "well, nobody really knows exactly how it happened", then this could be the book for you. (But don't buy it if you're the mother of my godchild, as this is definitely a birthday or Christmas present coming his way.)

Here's a link if you're interested.

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Dear So and So

Dear Man whose fiancee's car I scraped

I'm enclosing a check of the amount of $216.25 [made out to the garage, not to you.]. I feel obliged to do this, as I did cause the damage. It does seem very expensive, though, for a scrape the size of a nickel. I'm not going to be claiming this on insurance - I know that sometimes make a difference to how auto service centers approach the charges to these things [is that what you call them over here? repair garages? why do I still have so many occasions when I don't know the right words? you have no idea how much I hate that].

This sum represents significant expenditure for us [I know you're going to look at my fancy check and think we have some kind of premium account because we're fantastically rich, but we opened that account when we came over from Scotland, and we were bringing sums of money over - the proceeds of our house sale, that kind of thing - so they gave us a fancy check book, don't let it mislead you]. If you could see your way to finding a more affordable repair shop, I would be really very grateful. [This amount would pay for me to have my hair re-highlighted THREE times.]

[And by the way, it gives me small but satisfying pleasure to think of a 'Not the Nine O'Clock News' sketch from way back, which you would never have seen because it wouldn't have been on US television, in which a gorilla being interviewed by Pamela Stephenson has the same name as you.]

Yours sincerely

Iota


Let's see if there is decency in this world, shall we? I know, I just know, that there would be no point insisting on other quotes, or trying to negotiate over the phone. I think, honestly, it's worth $216.25 not to have to pursue this any further.


Dear Fiancee

Please don't marry this man. Marry someone nicer.

Yours sincerely

Iota

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Really whingey complaining post; don't read it if you're looking for something cheerful or uplifting

Well, here's a sad thing. I don't like my hairstyle. I don't like the cut and I don't like the colour.

I liked my new cosmetologist, and it was all very soothing and enjoyable. And when I came away, I really really liked it. I liked it so much that I cried in the car all the way home, like the little pig. When I went to pick up the kids, everyone at school said it was too cute, so I still liked it.

Then I came home and looked at it more carefully, and all the shine fell off the day. For a start, the fringe/bangs isn't/aren't long enough, so the shape round my face still looks like a Playmobil character. The rest of it is kind of ok, but it's not very interesting. It's just sort of... there. What really irks me, though, is the colour. It was meant to be, after a long discussion, high lights and low lights. But as far as I can see, it's patches of purple. There are bits that are pure purple (and we definitely talked about red and never once mentioned purple), and then there are bits that are the black/grey that I was trying to cover, untouched. It's choppy, clumpy, blotchy. Highlights aren't meant to be like that. Are they?

Look, here's a picture.


See what I mean. Look at the Playmobil-meets-Medieval-Edmund-Blackadder shape at the brow. And look at the purple stripes. And there's a great big splurge of purple right at the front. See? It was meant to be a subtle effect, not an 'I've just dipped my head forward into a pot of purple paint' look.

The only good thing is that I can now go back to buying the odd DIY kit from the supermarket, and be happy with the result, and not feel I'm being cheap. I honestly think I do a better job. Most of all, though, I just want my old hair back, like I want my old body back, and my old life back.

And since I'm now doing a misery post, I'm going to add a few more things in. In no particular order, the following things are really getting me down.

I can't find a babysitter for Saturday night. Husband is away in England (Hi Honey), and there's a school fundraiser do. I really fancy going. This is quite big and brave, since of course it'll all be very couples-orientated, and I'll be on my own. I have tried all my usual babysitters. I have asked around, and people have asked around for me. The kindergarten teacher has asked her daughter. The school secretary's daughter (who is babysitting for someone else) has asked all her friends. Beyond simply going up to complete strangers in Target and asking them if they fancy pizza and a movie with three delightful children on Saturday night, I have really run out of options. I hardly ever go out, and I was invited to join a table of particularly nice bods, so this is a blow. Today was the last day for buying tickets. It's 11.45pm. I've still got 15 minutes. I suppose I could nip over to Target...

Our front lawn is covered in dinner-plate-sized spots. I suppose you could call it green highlights, but actually, it just looks very odd. Very odd indeed. Like some kind of attempt to produce a chess board of dark and light squares in our front garden. It's the work of the garden company who came and sprayed and fertilised the trees. They said "It'll be fine in 2 - 3 weeks, when your lawn starts growing for the summer, and the rest of the grass will be the same as the spots where we put the fertiliser". That was 4 or 5 weeks ago. I would post a picture, but it's dark now, and really, this kind of drivellous out-pouring is best just posted when you write it, rather than waiting for tomorrow's daylight hours.

I scraped another car in the school parking lot. The damage was minuscule. I had to rub the dirt off to make sure it wasn't just a spot of mud. Here's a picture.


I photographed it with the key fob for scale. The key fob is less than an inch and a half wide. I left a note, and was sort of expecting the car owner to say "Thank you so much for leaving a note, lots of people wouldn't have done. Don't worry about it. It's really a tiny mark, and as you can see, the car isn't in pristine condition". Or failing that, maybe "I'll ask my friend who runs a repair shop if he can touch it up". But no. The owner made it clear that I was causing inconvenience, and went and got a quote for stripping down and repainting the entire wheel arch, and mailed it to me, and it's $261. I did the right thing, but it's turned out to be a very expensive piece of real estate on the moral high ground that I'm occupying.

Not one of the FIVE people I emailed to ask to be proxies for my vote in the UK elections has replied. I guess I'm just a name in a spam mail folder these days. I've done my best, Emmeline Pankhurst. Well, I suppose I could phone as well, but it's kind of hard to pick up the phone out of the blue to people you haven't talked to for years, if you're after a favour, and if you're not even on their 'safe senders' list.

What else? Well, there's the tedious, and expensive, and aggravating, and bureaucratically demanding, process of medical examinations that we've had to go through for the purposes of getting permanent residency (which actually, in an ideal world, we wouldn't do, because we'd be heading back to Britain, but this isn't an ideal world...) I could probably write quite an interesting post about it. Some of it would even be quite funny. Like the 'every parent's worst nightmare' moment when the doctor asked about the bruise on my upper arm, and 6-yo piped up "it's from when her husband beats her up" (because I'd made a stupid quip about the bruise to her and 12-yo before the doctor came into the consulting room), and then I found myself on my own in the room, with the children waiting outside in the reception, being investigated for domestic abuse, except it turned out not to be, because THANK GOODNESS I decided to ask the doctor outright "are you investigating me for domestic abuse?", rather than go home and wonder for ever more what was written in my records. It turns out that part of the immigration medical is to check you for gonorrhea, which the doctor said was totally ridiculous "What are we going to do? Deport people for an infection that can be easily cleared up with a course of antibiotics?" and then he added that actually most of the medical exam was pretty much a formality, and I said "So why do they do it?" and he shrugged, and I thought "Best not pursue this line of enquiry, since I know why YOU do it, having just handed over a few hundred dollars to you for the privilege of being on the receiving end", and then I felt mean because actually he was very nice, and when I asked "Am I going to fail because I've had cancer?" he looked like he wanted to hug me.

Oh my word. I didn't know that whole immigration medical still rankled so much. And the whole immunisation thing. I get it, that every country wants to protect itself from foreigners bringing in diseases, but I've had mumps, I've been inoculated against measles and rubella, so did I really have to have that MMR jab? I've been living here over 3 years already. I don't think I could have been silently incubating any of those 3 diseases for all that time.

I think I am putting this one down as the Ultimate Bad Hair Day.

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