Three years ago, when the eldest was eight, she wrote a poem about me at school.
It went like this …
My mum is orange
She is spring time
Mum is in the kitchen
She is warm
Mum is a jiggly jumper
She is a little lounge
Mum is Mr Bean
It’s funny how other people see you. I would have never described myself as warm and Mr Bean-like, though I totally get the “little lounge” bit.
I noted at the time that “my version of the poem would have been much drearier: ‘I am grey, I am wintertime …'”
It rattles me when I hop in my blog ‘Tardis’ and travel back through the years. The vision I had of myself back then wasn’t a happy one. Kinda bleak, really.
There’s no way I’d describe myself as grey and wintry now … even though my hair desperately needs a colour.
It’s lovely that my daughter could see such fun, silly traits in me. It reassures me that despite my inner turmoil at the time, I was still doing the parenting thing OK.
I constantly doubted it. My ex was never very positive about my relationship with the eldest. “I’m sick of having to come between you two” was a bit of a broken-record refrain.
We did rub each other up the wrong way in the early years. I have no idea how you have full-on arguments with a two-year-old, but I did. She was highly verbal – and feisty – from a young age.
We have a video somewhere of her saying stuff like “kangaroo eating grass” as she looked at a picture book with me as an 18 month old. We thought we had a genius on our hands.
Her skill with language continues to this day. Despite being resolutely unacademic, she just scored a distinction in the UNSW 2015 English International Competition – one of only two given to year 6 kids at her school. She was off the chart (when measured against her peers) for … get this … syntax – go her!
Proud mumma.
Love my girls.
And they love me back … which makes me feel very warm and springtime.
Have your kids ever written something funny at school about you?
Song of the day: Split Enz “Years go by”
housegoeshome 
It’s wonderful that thanks to your daughter’s poetry you get to see her perception of you. You sound like a lovely mum! And she clearly has a gift for words. I don’t think my son has written anything about me. He draws pictures of us and says funny things though. Like once when I had a full face of makeup (quite rare) he said, “Mum, you look like plastic!”
It’s funny how anti-make-up kids are … and I wouldn’t be caught dead in public without it
I know that I NEVER have the same idea of me as other people have of me. Love your daughter’s poem – not sure that my child ever wrote a poem about me.
I do know I miss her heaps and hang out for every time we manage to get a good facetime connection !!!
That must be hard living so far apart
I think it’s a very clever poem. Love the metaphors. That’s a big deal getting that distinction. She’s taking after her mother, Alana! I know I’m bragging now but my eldest son wrote a play about his siblings and his father and I when he was 14. He won the Qld Theatre Co Youth play writing competition and the Qld Theatre Co. flew him down to Brisbane and performed his play. I got to go with him. One of my proudest moments even though the mother in the play was a complete ditz.
Wow, that’s worth bragging about. What an amazing thing for him to do and you to see together.
At kindy my youngest painted a ‘lovely’ portrait of me and under it his teacher had written the most important thing that I did for him – changed the video. I was mortified. Using electronics to raise my son – not my finest hour. But it was a result of trying to run a business from home.