The Naming of Cats

I suspect many people are familiar with the Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical, Cats. I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the source material - T.S. Eliot's book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. It was a feature of my childhood, and I can still recite chunks of some of my favourites (and am delighted with how much LittleBear loves McCavity: The Mystery Cat...)

That's not really the point, however.

The point is that it is time for a ceremonial re-naming of IdiotCat.

IdiotCat has continued to pee on the carpet with tedious, soul-destroying monotony. We have tried a wide variety of techniques, from escorting him into the garden to prove that there's nothing bad out there; rewarding him with treats when he uses his litter tray; valiantly attempting to eliminate the smell of cat wee from the carpet to convince him it is not equivalent to a litter tray; replacing the ammoniacal smell with washing detergent, with Vicks vapo-rub, with cat-reassuring spray, or with cat-repelling spray. None of these things have worked.

Now we have discovered IdiotCat has advanced renal failure.

IdiotCat is still an idiot (illness not having endowed him with more brains than he previously possessed). However, IdiotCat will henceforth be known as PoorPuss.

PoorPuss pees on the carpet just as much as IdiotCat did, but PoorPuss is not assumed to be able to do much about this unfortunate development. Attempts to prevent the floorboard being dissolved with noxious cat wee are continuing, but all hopes that we may train him out of his new habit have evaporated. One day we will have a new carpet, but that day will only come when we have been forced to say goodbye to PoorPuss, and I am not wishing the time away.

Jellicle Cats are black and white,
Jellicle Cats are rather small;
Jellicle Cats are merry and bright,
And pleasant to hear when they caterwaul.
Jellicle Cats have cheerful faces,
Jellicle Cats have bright black eyes;
They like to practise their airs and graces
And wait for the Jellicle Moon to rise.

And, for now, here are some pictures of my beautiful Jellicle Cat.

Jellicle Cats are black and white 

Jellicle Cats are rather small (under all that fur)

Jellice Cats are merry and bright
(when not napping on a dinosaur den)

My version of a madelaine

For Marcel Proust it was a madeleine that instantly and vicerally evoked memories of times past. For me, it was a soggy swimming costume. His was more romantic and picturesque.

On Sunday, LittleBear went to a party and he and his cohort spent a splendid afternoon charging round the birthday girl's garden in their swimsuits, hurtling down a water slide, sploshing in a paddling pool, leaping on a trampoline and generally having a high old time. Eventually I brought him home, rinsed out his costume and went to hang it out on the washing line...

... the heavy, damp cling of the fabric in my hands.

... the wet costume gently brushing my cheek as I reach high above my head to peg it up.

... the hot, crisp, burnished grass beneath my toes.

... the glare of the bright, hot sky above my head.

... the heat of the sun on the back of my shoulders.

I was transported immediately, heart and mind, to my grandparents' house in Johannesburg, to summers that seemed to last forever, but can't have been more than the standard two-week Christmas holiday we got from English schools. Afternoons spent leaping in and out of their pool while being reminded to keep quiet so Granny and Grandpa could have their afternoon nap. I could see the fly-screen door into the kitchen, and feel the uneven weight as I pushed it open. I could hear the Hadedas as they flew over the jacaranda tree at the end of the drive. I could taste the tea my grandparents served, that I have spent a lifetime failing to recapture. I was immersed, if only for a moment, in their garden, in the aloes and red hot pokers, the lemon trees and peculiar topiary.

I've spent the last twenty-four hours diving beneath waves of nostalgia and trying to remind myself that the time and place are now long gone, remembered only in the minds of a handful of people and preserved only in a few snippets of yellowing cine film. And I still don't know what blend of tea my grandparents drank.

À la recherche du temps perdu

It may have been the taste of madeleines that provoked Marcel Proust's involuntary memories, but for me it seems to be the preparations for Christmas. And this year, perhaps because of an abnormal level of tiredness, I am finding it a particularly emotional experience. I am reliving all the memories of my childhood Christmases, and mourning all the lost times and lost traditions that I never realised were so transient. At the time, everything about Christmas seemed permanent, immutable and Christmassy. My maternal and paternal families celebrated Christmas in more-or-less the same way, so no matter where we were, or who we were with, I could expect a very similar, reassuring, comforting, family Christmas*.

And now?

I haven't spent Christmas with my brother in eight years.

I haven't visited my South African family for Christmas in twelve years.

I haven't spent Christmas with my English cousins in twenty years.

I'm not seeing a single member of my family, beyond my own two bears, at all over this Christmas period.

We've all grown up. We have our own children, our own in-laws, our own families, our own traditions. BigBear's family traditions are not the same as mine, and we don't seem to have formed a core of our own, beyond the quirk of having an octopus on the top of our Christmas tree. I haven't yet found a way to incorporate the things that seem to me to be essential to Christmas into our own lives, and I can't enforce them upon my in-laws when I'm a guest in their house (as we are every Christmas-time, though never actually for Christmas).

So here I am, feeling again as though Christmas won't be quite right still. The house won't be full of family, the table won't be groaning with food, every chair in the house won't have been roped in to seat us all. I won't have bucks fizz before lunch while we all open presents, as nobody else drinks it. I won't pour brandy over a Christmas pudding and set fire to it, as nobody else eats it. I won't make GrannyBear's special very rich Christmas fruit cake as nobody else likes it. There won't be any arguing over who gets the last of the bread sauce, as nobody else likes it. Nobody will wheel out every single Asterix pun about bacon and ham, batting word-play back and forth across the table, as I'm the only one who knows the Asterix books back to front. We won't make a futile attempt on the King William quiz, because nobody can do it**.

Neither my own beloved Granny, nor LittleBear's Granny will appear mid-afternoon with the tray of "afters" for us to binge on while we play cards. There won't be a sugared almond, a crystallized ginger or a date in sight. I won't spend the afternoon playing board games and cracking nuts, seeing who can get a brazil nut out of its shell intact, and how much turkish delight it's possible to eat before feeling sick.

I feel lost and tearful at my inability either to know what our Christmas should be, or how to recapture enough of my own Christmases to assuage the immense waves of loss that are sweeping over me as I contemplate the past. My grandparents are long gone, as is my own father, and now my uncle too. I feel as though I'm single-handedly trying to cling on to all the precious memories and habits of times gone by while the other branches of my family have moved on and left me behind. They have forged new paths and new families and they have their Christmases, of which I will never be a part again. I feel as though I have lost something infinitely precious, and I never even got to say goodbye.

I know that we will have a wonderful Christmas, and that I will rejoice in my LittleBear's joy and excitement. And I hope that in doing so we will make memories and traditions for him to love and cherish and return to. There will be more that defines a Bear Christmas than just an octopus atop a tree, but at the moment, I don't know what it is. Despite decades of adulthood, I feel as though I'm starting from scratch. And I don't know what I'm doing.


* Obviously, no family is perfect, and we have some excrutiating memories mixed in there too, but I'm glossing over those at the moment.

** None of us has ever been able to do it, but my grandfather's answers were always able to make us feel as though we were at least slightly competent.
 

Offering a bit of balance

Sometimes I think BigBear might get what seem like poor ratings on this blog. He rarely features as much more than a bit-part player, frequently seems absent from my adventures, or perhaps may cause readers to think, "but if PhysicsBear is so stressed and unhappy, what's BigBear doing about it?"

And the truth is, BigBear is always here, always supporting, and always looking-after, but because he's a private person, and because it's not up to me to wash his dirty laundry in public, anything that strays into territory that might seem to be his private world is off-limits when I'm writing. Which means, though you may think I bare my whole soul here, there are often things I don't write about. And BigBear becomes a cipher.

So today I am, briefly, going to redress the balance and let you know that BigBear is lovely.

Last night, I stayed up too late making a cake. Part of the "too-lateness" of this cake arose from my own decision not to use the beaters until after I thought LittleBear would be asleep (his bedroom is directly above the kitchen). So I didn't start mixing the cake until 8:30. And it was a large cake, containing 7 eggs, and the recipe suggested cooking it at 140C, so it took a very, very, very long time to bake. And I felt as though Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry were hovering behind me, judging the lightness of my crumb or the sogginess of my bottom. When I first stuck a skewer in it, it was still essentially liquid in the middle, which ratcheted up my stress-levels somewhat. Gin was the only answer. For me, not the cake.

I bet you're wondering where BigBear fits in aren't you? He was watching football on television at the time, if you must know. His role in this story comes later.

As I've already mentioned, I'm suffering from an inability to drink alcohol at the moment, and even as I drank my G&T I feared that it was a Bad Idea. And I was right, because when my LittleBear came and jumped on my headache in the morning, I wanted the world to stop spinning so I could get off. Instead, this is what happened...

We had a lovely snuggly, family cuddle for a few minutes, and then BigBear and LittleBear got up and went downstairs. I had two paracetamol and a bottle of water and went back to sleep. I woke up at half-past eleven and went for a shower, and when I came out, there was a freshly brewed cup of coffee on my bedside table. I didn't get downstairs until nearly midday. I have a five year-old child and I stayed in bed until lunchtime, and BigBear has not once begrudged me that time, or teased me about having a gin-related headache, or asked for any special recognition or reward.

Because BigBear is lovely, no matter how infrequently I mention him here.

MPP: it's never all bad

There are days when it's harder to think of something positive. Days when I'm hot and tired and crabby, and I've just had to throw in the towel on part of a design at work and commit to another month of delay while I get a new precision part machined and electron-beam welded. And even then I don't know if it's going to work. But at least I tidied my desk today. Not that that's my Positive Thought for the day.

Today I'm wearing a bracelet. I don't usually wear bracelets, not because I don't own them, or because I don't like them, but because I generally stumble through life wearing my wedding ring, engagement ring and watch and forget to open my jewellery box and get anything else out. But today I thought it would be nice to wear something nice. So I chose this:

It's not made of precious metals, or studded with gems. It's not flashy or gaudy. But it has a story, and one I can be grateful for.

It was my thirtieth birthday present from BrotherBear. And we chose it from a stall on the Street of Facades in Petra. I've written before about the distress and misery that aspects of that holiday caused, but actually, this bracelet reminds me of the things that were awesome too. About how mind-blowing it was to walk the collonaded streets of an ancient Roman city, about how utterly, stunningly beautiful Petra was, and how unbelievably lucky I am to have been there. About my first (and only) experience of scuba diving. About the fact that my family are actually really rather nice, even though sometimes BrotherBear does try and wind me up on purpose. He's my brother, it's virtually part of the job description.

Tears of nothing

I'm sitting on the sofa, on a warm summer's evening, and feel like crying. And it's not entirely because I'm watching England playing rugby, though that experience has been known to induce tears in my fiercely competitive soul.

No, this time, the tears are just... nothing...

I've spent the weekend "glamping" (of which more another time) and seeing my family for BabyCousin's 40th birthday party. I guess he's not really BabyCousin any more. But he'll always be the littlest, and I have to differentiate him from the others somehow.

Really, I should be happy. Except...

... I saw my mother, my aunt, my brother, my niece and nephew, my cousins, their children, and assorted other relatives that are more or less related but defy description. And it feels as though I only managed to exchange a few sentences each with anyone, and at least 50% of those sentences were, "I'm tooooo hot and I don't like it!"And I was reminded how much time I used to spend with various parts of my family, and how much I used to enjoy doing so, and I feel a welling sadness at the passing of time, and the losing of connections, and the inevitable changes that growing older brings.

... I tried to spend time talking to my family, and so I neglected my LittleBear, who was rather forlorn, and for whom I hadn't provided enough toys or games. And he was very good, but I felt like a heel telling him to go and play on his own when there wasn't much for him to do. And I felt like even more of a heel because I didn't really gain much benefit from not playing with him in terms of talking to my family.

... I've woken up at 5am for the past two mornings as the sun streamed into my shepherd's hut (see reference to "glamping", above). I don't function when tired.

... my LittleBear has been poorly, in a vague sort of a way, since Thursday. He was sick (from an empty stomach, so not very sick) in the morning, and then fine. Since then, what with the heat, and the vague illness, and not sleeping well, he's now not really eating properly. And so now he's more-or-less-constantly tired, hot and low on energy. Therefore he whinges. And my reserves of sympathy and motherliness decrease in direction proportion to both my own tiredness and the ambient temperature. And once I start being crabby and short-tempered with a tired and pathetic little boy, I start to castigate myself for my own unkindness.

... I am, if I dare say so, a tad hormonal today. (BigBear did dare, and is alive to tell the tale).

... I drank a reasonable number of glasses of Pimms today. And, as everyone knows, Pimms contains gin. And, as everyone also knows, gin is Mother's Ruin.

In truth, I could probably chalk up all incipient tears to being due to insufficient sleep, and a surfeit of gin. But the rest of it feels like it matters more. Just now anyway.

Saying goodbye in 2016

Headnote: which is a bit like a Footnote, but comes at the beginning. I've been trying, and failing, to write this for the past few weeks. I keep thinking of a sentence here, or a thought there, but nothing that quite works. I'm still not sure that this version quite holds together, or says what I want to say, but since I wanted to finish it before the year ends, I think this is the version that you get.

There isn't an error in the title of this post. This isn't about seeing out the old year. This is about all the goodbyes of 2016. I'm not talking about David Bowie, or Prince, or Alan Rickman, or Terry Wogan, or Carrie Fisher, or Debbie Reynolds, or any of other celebrities that you've all heard about. It's not that I don't think it's sad when someone famous dies, but in truth, their deaths are, for me, a gentle regret that something creative and bright has been lost from the world, and not a great depth of grief.

The goodbyes that I've said this year have been closer, more personal and more painful. There are three losses in particular that have cut into my life and hurt.

First of all, I lost a friend. And I still rage at the injustice of it. That someone so good, so deserving, so kind, who was so needed and wanted and loved could be gone, so quickly.

The second loss is not truly mine, and is not my story to tell, and there is nothing I want to say, or can say, other than that it has left me numb and lost for words. I want to say the right thing, but I know there is no "right thing" to say. So, I'll just leave that here - a spark was lost from the world this year.

And now, I have lost my uncle.

Many years ago I lost my father, and the final days of both their lives were, medically speaking, very similar. I have found myself being forced to remember and re-live the time spent by my own father's bedside, and the final acknowledgement that there was nothing more that modern medicine could do, and the waiting for the end to come. I have seen and heard my cousins doing the same with their beloved father. And I've discovered that I've spent more than twenty years carefully not thinking about my own father, not remembering his decline and illness, not thinking of all the bad times and sad times. And only now, as I start to grieve for my uncle and for my cousins who have lost their Dad, am I finally looking back and remembering the little girl who loved her Daddy so ferociously. And missing him. And wishing things hadn't been the way they were. And wishing we'd had all the years with him that we had with my uncle.

And so I find myself grieving not only for my uncle, but, decades too late, for my Daddy too. And even so, I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to write about him, no matter how many years have passed.

Instead I'm going to write about Uncle P.  Because I want to tell the world how wonderful he was. I want to share him with everyone. I want other people to know that the world has lost something special. I want everyone to hear his softly spoken asides, his puns, his wit and his wisdom. I want my friends to bask in the undivided and devoted attention he would bestow upon those who spoke to him, the interest he would take in your interests, the huge depth of knowledge and experience he would bring to every conversation. I want more people to delight in his gentleness, kindness, warmth, and enormous capacity to love.

He was, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the great and the good. He spent more than three decades serving his country with the Foreign Office, and then, even in retirement, didn't just sit back and relax. Instead, he devoted huge amounts of time and effort to helping others, most obviously working for Habitat for Humanity. And that's probably what marks him out most clearly as a truly good man - his immense generosity. And I don't just mean the easy generosity of giving money or material goods to others. No, I mean the deeper generosity of spirit that meant always placing others before himself. Always looking for, and finding, the best in others. Always giving his time, thought, love and hard work to make the world a better, brighter, warmer place. Even when in pain in hospital, when the pastor visited he didn't ask for prayers for himself, but for the confused, sick, elderly man in the opposite bed who had no visitors. He welcomed everyone into his home, with good cheer and kindness. More than that, he drew those who were alone, or bereft, or hurting into our family and made them part of us, extending the idea of family into much more than simply a matter of blood.

He's almost sounding too good to be true now, but he wasn't. He was simply a good man, in a world where there are far too few good men. He was a father, a son, a husband, a grandfather, an uncle and a friend. And he was bloody good at all of them, and he will be missed more than I have even begun to describe. There is a P-shaped hole in the world now, and though we may tug and pull to stitch the edges together, and patch up the hole, we will always know the place that should still be occupied by one of the best of men.

Goodbye Uncle P.

I loved you.

What I did on my summer holidays

Since I'm a bit too tired to write, I've decided instead to just hurl some photos at the screen and see what happens. Maybe this is more of a plog than a blog today?

Just look at the pretty pictures....

Give him a rock, and he'll climb it

If he's not climbing them, he's jumping off them

Or persuading Daddy to
join the jumping fun

How can I not be restored with this view?

How about when those same mountains disappear
for several days on end?

I turn my back and LittleBear gets over-ambitious
with his choice of rock for our dam-building

The hydrologist pauses to consider
his next step

Leading his mother and grandmother
up the mountain

LittleBear really does like
to be in the lead

In which I discover the stepping stones
are probably best not attempted
by 4-year olds

A rock and a river are made for each other

Thumbs up for another conquest

Being a 'jagular' in a tree

Me and my boy in the shadow of a mightier peak

Are there any bears in these woods?

We retreated shortly after this photo, when
GrannyBear was nearly blown off the mountain.

A holiday to look forward to

A preface:
To the members of my family who read this. I am tired, and pissed off today. I still love you all though. And mostly don't begrudge you anything.


The truly dedicated, or stalkerish, amongst my readership will recall a certain amount of Stress and Drama last year as I attempted to have a bedroom at our family holiday cottage decorated, while living 250 miles away. It was enormously stressful, but it did all turn out OK in the end. I have just re-read my words about it all turning out OK in the end, because right now, I need to try and hold on to that thought.

The upshot of the entire decorating saga was that the room ended up looking lovely. Apparently. I still haven't seen it. And I'm not going to either, because it has already been trashed. This winter, during the epic rains that flooded vast areas of the north-west, water was driven in through the slate walls, under the eaves and beneath the roof slates. And whither goest the rain, groweth the mould:

Under the slates and down the side of the chimney

Straight through the wall

Youngest BearCousin found this state of things when he paused overnight en route to Scotland, so he was unable to do anything about it. Nor was he able to do anything about the discovery that there's a leak in the bathroom plumbing. Fortunately we leave the mains water turned off when the cottage is empty, so there isn't a knee-deep flood in the bathroom now, but when the water is turned back on, the leak will recommence.

There had been a vague plan to get a plumber to visit as soon as possible, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside, and I've now been informed that there is no plan. Since I'm the next person to go to the cottage, this strikes me as A Little Bit Unhelpful. I will be arriving with only LittleBear after driving 250 miles single-handed. I don't need a leaking bathroom. But apparently I can just make sure I only turn the mains water stopcock on when I need water. Yay.

There is also a more general plan to have the mould and damp affected sections of the bedroom repapered and painted. We are unanimous in thinking that it would unwise to simply have the paper stripped, replaced and re-painted without making more sterling efforts to kill any mould spores*. So instead of calling Jonty the Ever Helpful Decorator to come and deal with it, the next person to go will strip the damaged wallpaper, and treat the walls with something appropriately anti-fungal. Who is the next person to go? Oh yes, that would be me...

I have also (helpfully) been told that the curtains that I agonised over are too long. They're not, but Jonty the Ever Helpful Decorator did not put the curtain rail at the height I requested. And though they've been up for a year, nobody has done anything about the unsatisfactory length.

I've pretty much given up on the cushions I was making to match the curtains. I mean, really, what the fuck is the point?

Packing for the holiday is now looking like a barrel of laughs - in addition to the usual collection of clothes, bedding, towels, books, games, boots, waterproofs, food, drink etc I will also be taking a steamer, wallpaper scrapers, stanley knife, exciting anti-fungal chemicals, toolbox, plumbing spares and a sewing machine.

For the first week of the holiday, I will be sharing a mouldy bedroom with LittleBear, while Tigger and her family occupy the other (hopefully healthier) bedrooms. For the second week of the holiday, I will be sharing a mouldy bedroom with BigBear while GrannyBear and LittleBear argue over the other bedrooms. At some point in this "holiday" I will be attempting to sort out all the things that are wrong. And probably spring-cleaning, weeding, removing moss from the flagstones, polishing the silver, and the other 101 tasks that need doing every year.

It would be fair to say, I'm not enormously looking forward to some aspects of this holiday. The mould and the leaking plumbing aspects mostly. But it's OK isn't it? This is the price we pay for owning a holiday cottage in one of the most beautiful parts of the country isn't it? We all pull our weight and contribute to the upkeep as part of the cost of ownership. Except my family has not yet left the 19th century, and the cottage is in fact owned by the two eldest sons on each side of the family**. I do not have, and never will have, any ownership of it. And I only have the assured goodwill of BrotherBear and CousinBear that "we're all in this together". Best not fall out with either of them had I?

On the plus side... both the photographs at the top of this page were taken on holidays to our cottage. And it all turned out fine last year. Repeat after me... it all turned out fine... it all turned out fine... it all turned out fine...


* There's an even more substantial plan that involves having the rear, weather-facing, wall of the cottage rendered and weatherproofed to prevent the rain driving in again.

** Once upon a time there were two sisters, each of whom received a half share in a cottage from their parents. The elder sister had two children, and the younger sister had three. When the time came, despite both having degrees in science, it was apparently "too complicated" to divide one half into a further two halves, and the other half into thirds, resulting in a quarter, quarter, sixth, sixth, sixth division. It was also "too complicated" to merge the two halves and then divide it into equal fifths. So each sister gifted her share in the cottage to her eldest son. I am neither the eldest, nor a son.


 

Stages of Grief

Mostly on this blog I attempt to confine myself to things that pertain solely to me (and LittleBear, because he can't defend himself). I don't generally write about things that I perceive as "other people's stuff", even when their "stuff" intersects with my "stuff". It feels like a bit too much of an invasion of privacy to write publicly about something that isn't wholly mine. But I can't not write about this any longer, because it's eating away at me.

One of my friends has terminal cancer. He was diagnosed in January with an inoperable aggressive glioma of the brain. Radiotherapy hasn't worked, the steroids are failing to keep the swelling under control, he's losing cognitive function and the doctors were talking about moving him to a hospice. His wife has done everything in her power to bring him home instead, to where he desperately wants to be.

Why write about it?

Because I'm angry. I'm filled with an unmanageable rage that this is happening. Fuck cancer. I want to scream and rage and fight to stop this happening. It's not right, it's not fair, it should not be happening. This is a good, kind, gentle man with half a lifetime ahead of him that is being stolen from him. This is the one of the best, funniest, most loving, wonderful women I know being robbed of her beloved husband when she deserves so much more time, so much more love, so much more life with him. And I know it would be awful even if they were horrible people, but they're not, and they're my people. They're my friends. They're nearly family, and I don't want this to happen.

Which brings me to denial.

Even through the red mist of rage, there's part of me that refuses to believe that it's actually happening. That D is actually going to die. That one day, probably a lot sooner than I want, I will go to visit them, and it won't be "them" any more, it will be only be her. If I don't think about it, it's not real. In my own mind, in the memories I can conjure up in the blink of an eye, all is still as it's always been. D is still the same wry, softly-spoken man he always was. In my own mind he hasn't lost any memory, or cognition or speech. I haven't seen him since his most recent seizure and therefore it hasn't really happened. It's impossible to imagine a world where he is no longer there. I simply refuse to accept it.

Except when I do.

And then I start wanting to know what I can do. What bargain I can strike. What battle I can fight. How I can make this NOT HAPPEN. Surely there's something? Something I can do or say or change or make or offer or sacrifice that would make everything different. It can't be this simple. It can't be that this just happens. That one days the doctors simply say, "Sorry, there's nothing we can do". Surely something can be done. What do they need from me? What do they need from the world? What is there that can change this? Please, someone, tell me what the magic thing is that I need to do, and I'll do it...

And then I'm back to helpless rage that there really isn't anything I, or anyone else, can do. That this crap just is. And sometimes the tears well up as the reality sinks in, and the rage flows away and I'm left feeling empty and despairing that life is hard, and cancer is vicious, unseeing, unknowing, uncaring and sometimes incurable.

One day I will probably reach the "acceptance" stage of grief. In the meantime I shall continue to oscillate between anger and denial and bargaining and despair.


Footnote
I came across a really good description of how to interact with people who are grieving or bereaved or terminally ill. It's based on concentric circles, with the most deeply affected person at the centre. Your own position within the expanding circles is determined by your closeness to the central figure. You can scream and rage and sob to anyone further "out" on these circles, but should only ever pass comfort and support inwards. I would never tell D's wife how much his illness tears me apart, only tell her that I love her and to try to find ways in which to show that love, and to offer my support.

courtesy of http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/08/use-the-ring-theory-to-know-how-to-comfort-someone/

I know that there may be people reading this who are closer to D and his wife than I am. Who are on an "inner circle". And for that reason, I've hesitated to write any of this, because D's cancer is not about me, or how I feel. And I don't want to dump my shit on anyone else who is hurting. To those who know and love D, I hope you read this knowing that I love him too, and that all I can offer is my love. There is nothing else left.

Second Christmas

What do you mean you don't have Second Christmas? Next you'll be telling me you don't know about Second Breakfast either. Doesn't everyone get home from Christmas with their in-laws and launch into a full-scale repeat with another section of family?

To be fair... it wasn't exactly full-scale. There were only me, BigBear, LittleBear and GrannyBear. And the only presents were from, ah, yes, well, my whole family and various friends, so LittleBear had another huge pile of presents. And we didn't have roast turkey. We had roast duck. But I did take advantage of it being several days after Christmas, so I bought lots and lots of yummy food, and crackers and other Christmas treats all massively discounted. Top tip folks - buy your crackers now and put them in the attic for next year!

It was a marginally chaotic day, what with me having failed to let GrannyBear know that we'd safely escaped from The Floods in Lancashire, so she thought we weren't at home and had gone back to bed to nurture her cold. When she then discovered we were home, she rashly got up and drove straight here, skipping breakfast. Yes, I do get it from somewhere.

I managed to dispatch LittleBear and BigBear to the cattery to retrieve the Idiot Furball, and in the hour that it takes to do that, I managed to... find enough space in the spare room for GrannyBear to sleep. I really must remember to at least try to keep that room accessible and not use it as a general dumping ground into which to shovel all the detritus in the house the night before the cleaner is due to come. The Idiot Furball has been miaowing incessantly and vociferously ever since. He picks up bad habits at the cattery.

Once we had retrieved the Idiot Furball and GrannyBear had arrived on the doorstep, snuffling, tired and hungry, I would like to say that the day calmed down somewhat. But I have a four-year old, a deranged cat and a poorly mother, so of course it didn't. However, I did manage to insert lunch into all of them, then persuade LittleBear that yes he was going to snuggle up with Daddy for stories while GrannyBear napped and Mummy got things ready for dinner.

GrannyBear duly curled up on the sofa while I prepared braised red cabbage, potatoes for roasting and duck for roasting. Snoring soon emanated from the sofa. The Idiot Furball curled up behind the television and BigBear read books about sharks and whales to LittleBear for an hour (hooray for BigBear!) I even managed to squeeze in ten minutes with my book before everyone emerged and it was Present Time II: More Presents.

Just as it would be nice to claim we had a calm afternoon, I'd like to claim that present opening went smoothly. However, LittleBear's life was almost ruined by the fact that he only received one more dinosaur toy, and this meant he would never, ever, ever get another carnotaurus. Yes, really. Never mind the fact that he also received a fossil-excavating kit with replica velociraptor fossil; a dinosaur t-shirt; a dinosaur fleece; a dinosaur colouring book; a dinosaur board-game and (outrageously) some really, really cool non-dinosaur presents. So we had to have a little chat about being grateful for the presents he was given and not demand more or different presents. I know, I know, he's only four, but being confronted by that level of self-interest and ingratitude actually made me really uncomfortable. So we had tears. And snot. And flailing. And threats not to play with us tomorrow. And more tears.

On the plus side, the roast duck was lovely. Not that LittleBear ate any of it, obviously.

Christmas in numbers

I have been on the go almost constantly since a small body launched itself on top of me and declared "It's Christmas and I really need a wee!" It's been a busy, fun, hectic day with 4 children under 11. Everyone has been fed, watered and provided with a plentiful sufficiency of presents. I've even had the chance to Skype my lovely, lovely cousin KoalaBear (she's in Australia, what do you expect me to call her?) and BrotherBear, with GrannyBear lurking in the background while the BearCousins waved their favourite new toys at me.

And I have a super-duper splendid new little laptop that I can write all my random burblings on without half-inching BigBear's laptop. Yes, you're right, BigBear did give it to me. No, of course there was no ulterior motive, it was because he loves me. He told me so.

And since it seems too hard to try and condense today into anything particularly coherent, especially after a few glasses of wine, I shall instead condense it into a numerical summary:

0... fights, fallings out, fractious words or fisticuffs

1... extremely happy, extremely excited, extremely tired LittleBear

1.5... hours spent playing in bed with spinosaurus, bunny and a head-torch before getting up

2... new toy dinosaurs (Spinosaurus and Giganotosaurus, since you ask)

3... cousins to play with

4... hours LittleBear managed to contain himself before being able to open his Christmas presents

5... new books to read (for me)

10... people round the table for lunch

12... hours LittleBear kept going without rest, pause or relief before finally collapsing into bed.

13... hours LittleBear kept going without rest, pause or relief before finally falling asleep.

15.5... pounds of turkey

39... roast potatoes (all eaten)

53... brussel sprouts (not all eaten)

60... hours of extra sleep BigBear and I would both like now and are not going to get

Uncounted... the number of presents under the tree

Uncountable... the warmth and love and joy and memories made and shared today. There is nothing in the world as lovely as the joy a small boy finds in Christmas and nothing as infectious as his excitement.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Now, about those sixty extra hours of sleep I'd like...

Home: just like a holiday but with more responsibilities

You may recall, I claimed that holidays are just like being at home, only harder work. I think I may have been wrong. Shocking isn't it? Me, wrong. My world-view has taken a battering.

The thing about being on holiday, is that nothing is really your responsibility, other than trying to keep the whole family alive, fed and out of prison. OK, so some days even achieving one of those feels worthy of some sort of medal, but once you get home, you've got to do all that and more. On holiday, if the radiators are making a funny rattling noise? They're not mine! If the DVD player grunts and clatters mysteriously when you press switch it on? Who cares! If the side panel is falling off the bath? Meh! If the garden is an overgrown jungle of weeds? Pah! I was going to the beach anyway.

Meanwhile... back home.... if the circuit breaker for the whole of the downstairs has tripped? That's my freezer and fridge that have defrosted, my carpet that is soaked, my life that is filled with rotting food. If the cat has shredded the arms of the sofa? That's my sofa that's threadbare. If the cold air sneaks in through the gap under the window behind the desk? That's my cold feet, my heating bill, my masonry repair job. If the pipes start banging every time the hot water comes on? That's my air hammer to fix. And then there's the car...

A month or so ago, the bonnet catch stopped working and after topping up the engine with oil I couldn't close the damn thing. Fortunately I was at work at the time, and with the help of my colleagues we fettled it until it closed. (I say "we", actually, two of my colleagues did it while I stood by looking useless and saying things like "what's that sticky out bit for?" in a sudden rash of incompetence). The bonnet then closed, we went on holiday and I promptly forgot all about it. Now the bonnet won't open.

On the last day of our more recent holiday, the boot catch stopped working. Overcoming my previous rash of incompetence, I managed to find a way of tweaking it into closing, by manually moving the catch as I swung the boot down, lifting the handle, sticking my tongue out, standing on one leg and praying to the flying spaghetti monster. That got us home, but was clearly a last hurrah on the part of the return spring. Because yesterday the trick no longer worked. The catch can no longer be manually swung into place. So now my car sits on our drive, unlocked, boot unlatchable, and the garage can't take it till next Thursday. Please don't steal my car, m'kay? And if you do, don't try to top the oil up, the bonnet won't open*.

And then of course, there's the broken wing-mirror indicator light cover, from where I drove into a post in Tesco carpark, that I'm too embarrassed to even explain any further. And the mystery warning light that only comes on when it rains, because of a corroded cable. I keep reminding BigBear of our friend who broke her wing-mirror and reckoned that was reason enough to replace the whole car. With a brand new Jaguar. I don't seem to be winning that argument. Apparently the fact that we have a whole other car (BigBear's) that we basically never use is apparently a good enough reason not to actually need another car.


* PS. I'm wiring it closed from the inside tonight, so any of you proto-twoccers out there, there's nothing to see here, move along...

Holidays: just like home but harder work

I'm not sure holidays used to be like this. Or maybe they did, but I didn't need the break so much. But a holiday with LittleBear appears to be not dissimilar to being at home, just a bit harder. Maybe if we didn't choose self-catering as our holiday-of-choice things would be different, but I suspect they would just be differently stressful, as I'd have to do awful, unthinkable things like talking to other people, and finding food that LittleBear and BigBear will both eat, ideally at the same place and same time. And self-catering, even in the best-equipped places leads to the following:

Washing clothes... with an unknown machine with obscure heiroglyphs instead of instructions.

Washing up... either by hand or with an unknown machine with obscure heiroglyphs instead of instructions.

Preparing food... with a selection of blunt knives and no chopping board

Cooking... but with no oven trays, no sieve* and no microwave dishes. Oh, and an unknown oven with obscure heiroglyphs instead of instructions. Where do rental properties find appliances that use a completely unconventionial set of markings? It's quite a skill.

Playing with LittleBear.... but with a very small subset of toys**

Reading to LittleBear... but with a very small subset of books**

Running out of milk every third day***... but having no idea where the nearest shop is

Desperately craving sleep... but having a bed that's too small, too soft and too hot

Looking forward to a nice relaxing shower... only to find that on this installation, "red" means cold and "blue" means hot. Of course it does.

Hoping LittleBear sleeps later than 6am... but having him in a room with vast windows through which the light floods at dawn due to the not-entirely-effective venetian blinds.

And then there are all the fun and exciting outings, in which we get to spend our time trying to make sure LittleBear doesn't catastrophically injure himself, vanish, drown, eat his own weight in ice-cream, try and catch a wasp, grossly offend other people ("Why is that man so fat?") or run headfirst into people, traffic, rocks, or beds of nettles.

Obviously, I exaggerate for comic effect. But I'm sure that when I was a child, I didn't have to work this hard on holiday... oh... hang on... sorry GrannyBear. I think once again I may have under-appreciated you...



* Surprisingly little rice ended up in the sink.

** OK, I'll admit, this is actually easier. He becomes totally engrossed in one thing, when not distracted by rooms full of toys, and makes me want to throw away 95% of his toys when we get home.

*** Yes, this happens at home. Every third day. Every third day for three years, and I still haven't learnt. Truly, an old dog cannot be taught new tricks.

A postscript on the decorating saga

Any of you remember my appalling indecision over a choice of curtain fabric? Or my vexation with the hopeless decorator?

You may remember that despite the not-at-all-decorated bedroom, we still had a lovely holiday. And that I laid the smack down on Jonty (the decorator) to insist that everything had to be finished in time for MrCousin, MrsCousin and the LittleCousins to go on holiday at the start of August.

Miracle of miracles, the decorating was finished in time for the CousinFamily to go on holiday. And MrsCousin very nobly stayed inside on the loveliest, sunniest day to receive the new carpet.

The end result?

No pictures or mirror back on the wall yet, but definitely an improvement! Even better (from my point of view) is that MrCousin and MrsCousin report back that they were very impressed with the workmanship and the choices of colour and design. Yay me! (And yay you too, my delightful readers, who offered fabric suggestions and comments.)

Life being what it is though, there was a final fly in the ointment. Of course there was. The invoice. It arrived and was considerably more than I'd expected. Unfortunately, I hadn't actually been sensible and got a written quote from Jonty. No, what I had was the back of an envelope on which I'd jotted down what he'd said over the phone. Gulp. All that advice you read about making sure you get a quote, and not just an estimate? Not only wasn't I firmly in town with a quote,  I wasn't even in the suburbs of an estimate. I was somewhere out in the boondocks with my scrap of paper. I nearly just paid the invoice with a despairing shrug. But instead I had a rush of blood to the head and sent Jonty a text asking why the labour had come in at so much more than he'd originally suggested. In reply? A text saying he'd "look into it". Oh.

But the next day... a phone message from Jonty's bookkeeper... a grovelling, humble, apologetic phone message... Jonty and "the boys" had been working on two different cottages in the same terrace, and she'd got the worksheets muddled up and billed me for the other cottage as well. A new invoice duly arrived, with another apology, and £500 smaller than the first invoice. I am inordinately pleased with having the confidence to question the first invoice rather than just rolling over meekly. Completely, disproportionately proud of myself. At least £2000 proud of myself, not just £500 proud. I wonder if that means I can spend the other £1500 of proud on something for myself? I mean, that's definitely the way it works isn't it? Isn't it?

My Grandfather. My hero.

This is another of my slightly left-field posts. Perhaps because I've recently been re-reading sections of my family's "Log" from our holiday cottage and have therefore been reunited with my grandfather's handwriting. Perhaps because I've been irked at work by opportunities that have passed me by. Either way, my mind has wandered to my grandfather, and to just what an extraordinary, accomplished, brilliant man he was.

My grandfather (KWP) was born in 1907 to a working class family in a small village in Derbyshire. When he reached an age where he could go to secondary school, there were only two available to him in Derbyshire. Presumably there were more than two schools, but none that would offer a free education.

KWP's parents wanted him to leave school and go to work, to help support his family. However, his headmaster managed to persuade them that they boy had potential and to let him continue with his education. It does his parents great credit that they agreed to give him a chance. Even then, it wasn't exactly an easy matter - he had a six mile walk across the fields to school every day, and six miles home again. He remained proud, to the very end of his life, that he undertook this walk every day come rain or shine. It's hard to imagine having that level of dedication to the simple act of getting to and from school every day. KWP certainly made sure his grandchildren knew how much harder it had been for him if we dared complain about school!

I don't know how it came about, whether his headmaster again encouraged him or whether he made the decision entirely himself, but at the end of school he applied to university. He was offered a place at Emmanuel College, Cambridge but in the end couldn't afford to take up the offer. Instead, he took up a place to read Chemistry at Nottingham University, much closer to home. From my perspective this was a sound choice, for it was during University Rag Week that he met my grandmother, who had just graduated with a first in Geography and her teacher training certificate simultaneously. (The extraordinary women in my family are going to be the subject of another post. I wouldn't diminish their achievements by making only passing remark to them here.)

At University, KWP turned into one of those people we all know, who seem to be good at everything. He captained the University cricket team as a fast bowler and in one match took all 10 wickets. He also broke 11 stumps in the course of his bowling career there. With his friends he also, after the style of Gilbert and Sullivan, wrote a "Chemic Opera" - a comic opera on the theme of Dr Faust based in a Chemistry lab. He wrote the words, and his friends wrote the music. GrannyBear still owns the libretto to the opera, and we rather hope that her cousin owns the sheet music still. As it turned out, one of the the music-writing friends became GrannyBear's uncle by marriage, when he married my grandmother's sister. [Endearing aside here: One University holiday, KWP was invited to stay with his future in-laws, as my grandmother's beau, and he took his friend with him. My grandmother's sister's response on meeting said friend? "Isn’t he lovely, thank you KWP". Reader, she married him].

On top of all that, and cross-country running, and writing poetry, KWP graduated with a first in Chemistry. At that point he was offered a place on Notts County Cricket team. Sadly, in that era all players had to be amateurs and, not being a gentleman of independent means, he couldn’t afford it.

Instead he went on to undertake a PhD on silicon polymer chemistry under Frederick Kipping. From all accounts it wasn't a completely happy period, with a certain amount of friction between KWP and his supervisor. They did publish one paper together (J. Chem. Soc., 1930, 1020) but eventually KWP decided that he wanted to marry my grandmother, and being unable to support himself and a wife without a proper job, he left his PhD to start work as an industrial chemist for Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd (ICI). And he spread his wings and flew...

... During the war he set up the first nylon plant in Huddersfield to manufacture parachutes when the Allies had no access to silk from the Far East. (We have a rather unusual presentation gift from "The Works" in the shape of three industrial chemical vats, which contain samples of some original polymer.)

... After the war he, my grandmother, GrannyBear (12) and AuntBear (10) moved to New York where he became Managing Director of ICI New York.

... He became managing director of the heavy organic chemicals division of ICI.

... He was awarded an honorary ChemEng for his work with ICI. 

... He was quoted in the House of Commons by his MP, and appears to have been rather ahead of his time in 1964. Among the things he said were:

"I would also like to see some redistribution of Government departments away from London, and Tees-side take something from" [the over-concentration there]

"I would like to see a new university on Tees-side preferably a special institution for scientific and technological education and research of very special character."

Fifty years ago, my grandfather was trying to encourage investment into the north-east, and the de-centralisation of government. Fifty years on and nothing much has changed.

My grandfather, the working class boy who was to have left school at 11 but took a first in Chemistry instead. The young man who couldn't afford to go to the University of his dreams. The young man who couldn't afford to become a first class cricketer. The young man who couldn't afford to marry the love of his life and complete his PhD, so chose love. The young man who went on to become a captain of industry, who never let life hold him back, who championed the cause of the working man all his life, who painted in oils, who wrote poetry, who solved cryptic crosswords without filling the answers in, who could beat any one of us at cards as he counted the deck, who hybridized and named his own roses, who wrote stories for his grandchildren, who invented a dragon that lived in his wardrobe and had adventures with his grand-daughter. His woodworking left a bit to be desired, but you can't have everything can you?

My tragedy is two-fold - he was already 67 when I was born and died when I was 15 so I had little chance to know him, and I lost the last years of his life to Alzheimer's, so just when I began to consider my own path through life and would have loved to have heard more about his path, he was lost to me.

KWP, you gave me so much, and I love and miss you.

Ironing a tea-towel

Yesterday evening found me ironing a tea-towel. Just stop and think about that for a moment. Ironing. Ironing a tea-towel. Who does that kind of thing?

Let me try and explain my relationship to ironing. Purchases for my wardrobe are largely made based upon the cleaning and care requirements of the clothes. Does it need dry-cleaning? Not buying. Ponder what it will look like un-ironed... an abomination? Not buying. I do own a lovely pair of linen trousers. When I wear them, I love them, but they're white, and basically at the end of the day that's it, they're straight in the laundry basket. (To be honest, they're usually wrecked by lunchtime, but I draw the line at more than one outfit per day). They get washed. I'm pretty good at washing. And then they either go in a mysterious heap in the spare bedroom, or get hung up. Last time that happened it was TWO YEARS before I wore them again, because that was how long it was before I got the ironing board out again. Seriously, ironing just doesn't feature in my life. LittleBear doesn't know what the iron looks like, or what ironing is, and he's three-and-a-half now.

So how did I find myself ironing a tea-towel? (And pillowcases, and duvet covers. I nearly ironed a duster.)

Let me take you back to 1969. My beloved grandparents bought a holiday cottage in the Lake District. It was initially solely for the use of the family, but was soon being lent out to friends for holidays too. Because you could never quite guarantee who would be there, my grandmother wrote handy little notes, and sellotaped them to the inside of cupboards, and on the top of old biscuit tins, to inform visitors what lay within, and what should be returned. I think some of those little notices are still there. And the ones that have disintegrated have been replaced by similar notices in the hand of GrannyBear, or her sister AuntBear. There was never any question but that one must return all items to their proscribed locations. One must also always, on pain of my grandmother's diapproval, clean the cottage at the end of the holiday.

On one occasion University friends of my parents stayed and did not leave the cottage in an acceptable state at the end of their holiday. That was more or less the death-knell for non-family members being allowed to stay unaccompanied. My grandmother's disapproval was so stark, and so unwavering, that none of us dared ask again (and I don't think I was even born at the time). There now seems to exist an unspoken embargo on others staying there. They Might Not Clean Properly.

So now, we clean the cottage. And I turn into some kind of deranged monster in my insistence that it be clean to the standards of a woman who died thirty-odd years ago. Though my mother holds us all to the same standards. She notices if the skirting boards haven't been washed. Really. I'm not sure I've ever washed the skirting boards at home, but at the cottage? Oh yes. And I dust inside the lamp-shades, and move the fridge to clean underneath it. The kinds of the things that would be just a bit too much like effort at home, are utterly, irrevocably vital at the cottage. And it must all be done in one morning, as we're packing to drive for six hours to get home. No, I don't know why I make it so hard either. But I do know that BrotherBear does the same thing - his wife has complained to me that he goes a bit bonkers in cleaning up and starts doing un-natural things like cleaning behind bookcases.

I'm not entirely sure that the rest of the family has been imbued with the same sense of terror of Granny Disapproving Of Inadequate Cleaning, but my god it's had a lasting effect on me. (In fact given that one of my cousins once asked incredulously whether I genuinely got down on hands and knees to wash the kitchen floor rather than just using a mop, I know that it's perhaps affected one side of the family more than the other.)

What's all this got to do with tea-towels though?

Well... among the many facilities provided for the weary traveller at the cottage are a chest of drawers and an old chest full of tea-towels, towels, sheets, pillow-cases, blankets etc. And being incompetent and disorganised I had not taken any tea-towels, or any pillowcases with us. Go me. So I used the supplies from the cottage, and as is traditional, will pass them to the next visitor to return. But they came out of the drawer crisply ironed, and I cringe inwardly at the thought of returning a white Irish linen tea-towel in anything other than pristine condition. And thus I found myself ironing tea-towels. My family has a lot to answer for.

Two sides of the cousinly coin

I have a lot of cousins. Admittedly, I only have 5 first cousins, but then I also have my mother's cousins, my father's cousins, my uncle's cousins, my cousins' cousins, my grandfather's cousin's children, my grandfather's cousin's children's children. And they're all just "cousins", because quite frankly, though I can do the whole second cousin twice-removed thing, most people don't then know what I'm on about and it's easier to just call them all "cousins" and if anyone really cares, I can explain exactly how we're connected later. If it actually matters. And, to be honest, nobody really cares.

At various times in my life some of my cousins have lived with me. I've been on holidays with them, I've descended on them in a soggy heap when my life has gone pear-shaped, I've spent more time that was probably good for my liver with them in a shared university house while I was still at school but trying to escape from home. I've travelled to far flung corners of the earth with them, or to visit them. We're a close-knit but far-flung family in many ways.

This weekend we went to stay with one of my cousins, let's call them MrCousin,  MrsCousin, GirlCousin (14) and BoyCousin (12). They used to live only about twenty minutes away, but work took them further south and on Saturday it took us over 4 hours to get to where they now live. LittleBear was enormously tolerant of a very hot, very boring drive on very congested motorways. And we then proceeded to have a fabulous time. Not just because I barely had to do anything to entertain LittleBear once he'd discovered BoyCousin. And not just because we were waited on hand and foot with glorious food and drink by MrCousin and MrsCousin. And not just because we had a chance to sit and talk and have (hot!) cups of tea while the three smaller people played together. And not just because it was beautiful warm, sunny weather. And not just because GirlCousin and BoyCousin were delightful and a reassuring glimpse into the future of bigger children who are independent but still loving and affectionate. And not just because MrsCousin has Been There and Done That with picky eaters, and took LittleBear's foibles in her stride. And not just because LittleBear behaved beautifully and we didn't have a single sobbing meltdown all weekend. All of those things, but also because I got a chance to talk to my lovely cousins, who I haven't really seen properly in years, despite being very close for so many years before they moved. We completed each other's jokes, we reminisced about family absurdities from years ago and it felt like it hadn't been nine years since they moved to another part of the country.

Meanwhile, I find myself disheartened, disappointed and hurt by the other side of the cousinly coin. Among my rafts of other cousins are more that I also love, that I have always had fun with, that I've been on holiday with, that I want to spend time with, and I keep reaching out to...

How about you come and stay with us?
       Yes, we should make a plan sometime...
We could come and see you - we'll be in your part of the country soon.
       Yes, we should make a plan sometime...
We'll be visiting GrannyBear in August - why don't you come over for lunch while we're there?
       We'll have a look at our calendar...

There's always an assurance that we should make a plan, but never a plan.

And no matter how many times I invite them, or try and make a plan, I'm always deferred, delayed, put off, and nothing ever happens. They're busy. I know they are. I know it isn't really about me. Their immediate families are scattered around the world, and they spend a lot of time travelling. I get it, I really do. And then, I hear that they're going to see one or other sets of my cousins. Or I'm told about a party for a different arm of the family that they're going to. Time and again I discover how often they see the rest of my family. But never me. I try not to take it personally. I try not to feel hurt. I know that it's not a slight, it's just a matter of being busy, not being organised, being in the wrong bit of the country.

But I'm reaching a point when I can't do it any more. I'm sure the coversation they hear goes something like this...

How about coming to visit us?
Sure, let's check the diary... <diary is full of business trips, family visiting, holidays, more business trips, more family visiting>... um, it's looking pretty full, how about later in the year?
OK. Let's make a plan later in the year.

And what I hear?

Like me. Please?
No
Love me. Please?
No
Want me. Please?
No

It doesn't matter any more how much my rational mind knows it's not about me. The rejection still hurts. Even unwitting rejection.

To paraphrase...

After all... I'm just a girl, standing in front of her family, asking them to love her.

Just for a while, I can't keep asking.