On a Parenting Roll

I’ve been thinking alot recently about what I like most about parenting, and I realised it is this:  hearing my children laugh, preferably together, without my involvement. (Actually what I like most about parenting, if I’m honest, is getting through a  day without losing it COMPLETELY, the silence that descends upon the house at about 730pm, and that first mouthful of wine, preferably a good Meursault.  But apart from that, it’s hearing them laugh.)

And so it was honey-infused balm to my raging scorched ears on the school run today to hear the two of them, snuggled together in the bike trailer, giggling like two besotted lovers. The sun was shining, a gentle pollen-free breeze was blowing, and suddenly, the stresses of the morning were gone.  Not that the morning was any more stressful than normal:  the usual mad breakfast panic, intermittent screeching, pointless reasoning, search for wallet / keys / hairbrush, shoe-tying negotiations, protracted fixing of trailer to bicycle, ushering of children into said trailer, dash back into house to grab smocks / a banana / hair-band, tie kids in, see the state of their noses, dash back into house, grab toilet roll, dash back out, round up escaped children, tie everyone in again, realise I don’t even have time to blow their noses, chuck toilet roll at them, put on sunglasses and aaaaaaaaaaah! Off we go. 

It’s a fairly easy school run, and one I try to do on the bike when the weather is good.  Getting the trailer unfolded, put together and hooked up is a bit of a pain in the tits, as is the inevitable squabbling and bickering between the two kids, shoe-horned in on top of each other, but today was nice once we got to the park.  They started to giggle and laugh, and sounded so delightful that my heart fluttered a bit and I wondered if this is what parental pride feels like;  and then when others going past us were laughing in response, I thought:  Yes!  It is!  And I beamed at everyone, acknowledging my role in making their day just that little bit happier, with my giggling offspring sprinkling joy into their lives. 

The ride stops being as easy when you get to the end of the park, where there’s a particularly steep curb that the effing trailer just WON’T mount; I have to get off the bike and physically pull the whole contraption manually, and I look and feel like a moron, but today that didn’t matter because the sun was shining and my children were making me, and everyone who passed us by, happy.  I heaved and grunted and finally, with a judder, we were up.  Turning around to beam at the kids I saw, stretched out across the park behind us, as far into the distance as the eye could see, the entire roll of toilet paper, unfurled.  This, I realised, as I watched it flapping and whirling in the wind, while shrieking toddlers ran through it, dogs cavorted in it, and old ladies tutted and gingerly stepped over it, is where pride gets you.

Which brings us to the thing I like least about parenting:  no matter how fabulous everything seems, there's always some sort of carnage and chaos bubbling away under the surface.