I got my first troll this week. I’m apparently really lazy (fair enough), my kid’s got rubbish hair (eek) and I’m irresponsible for promoting ‘all this #mumbathing’ (sunbathing as a mum). I feel like I might be famous now I have a troll – well, that’s what my Aunty Janet (‘Doesn’t Lady Gaga have one of those?’) said.
Have a go at my slothfulness – one peek inside our house and its mighty justified – dislike the urchin’s top knot (perhaps too failed hipster for some) but ‘mumbathing’? A moment of calm and happiness under the sun, while the kids merrily cavort in the sandpit or some other child receptacle?
Nope, as 90s stalwarts MC Hammer would holler, ‘you can’t touch this’.
Sure, hashtags are irksome (there’s nothing we can do, the Internet Gods have paved the way), but the concept of a mother taking a moment for herself? God forbid.
We spend our lives trying to chat with friends, while peering over their shoulder to see what catastrophic situation our toddler is about to dive into. We have FTSE 100-level panic attacks if we leave the house sans wet wipes and we’re ON IT 24-7; from a mewling at 3am to a full-on A&E ‘pulled elbow’ emergency after a E-colour fuelled birthday party with some kid you aren’t even sure is in your daughter’s class.
Those moments – perhaps glimmers – of calm before the parental storm are to be cherished, to be enjoyed and to be remembered when the going gets tough. They’re our moment to regroup and think ‘I’ve got this, everyone’s alive and if I squint a little/a lot this could be some boutique gaf in the South of France’.
There’s no cuppa to slowly get cold, sunshine is free and everyone looks better with a tan. So troll, you are correct, my house is a warzone and I don’t always clean the surfaces properly, but I’m SPF in hand and ready to kick-back (Sunday supplements at-the-ready/one eye on the enfant) with no remorse.
That said, my kid’s hair could do with a trim. You can’t have it all.
