I’ve always been one for extremes: things are black and white, no shades of grey for me. But childhood or parenthood or the place where the two meet is something else.
If you’re looking for opposites, polarisation, antithesis, oxymoron, juxtaposition, then get a small child, or ideally two. You will instantly have enough love, joy and hilarity to last a small village fifty years. Meanwhile any supply you previously had of energy, patience and sanity will immediately vanish without trace.
When they sleep there is the peace of a deserted mountain range, still and reliable and changeless. Until, seconds later they wake with all the noise and chaos of a street market, making imaginative demands like a petulant fairytale king. And then they sleep. And then they wake…
There will be a bountiful supply of mess. Time to clear it up will be measurable in milliseconds. Or in minus hours or minus days…weeks...months…
Because really, the problem is time. If only we could spread this love, joy, hilarity, energy, patience, sanity, sleep, noise, chaos, mess over a lifetime. But what we have is a jumbled few years of extremity and then if we’re careful to preserve them, a lifetime of memories.
Article: by 10th December 2015