A husband needs a wife

A husband needs a wife
The West Australian
Ros Thomas
Published: Saturday July 14 11, 2012
Section: Opinion

My husband doesn’t want to get married. He says he doesn’t believe in it. Secretly, I worry he might be saving himself for someone else.

As ‘Papa’ to the two smallest members of the house, (and son number one, the cherished gift from my first marriage), he is the father I dreamed of giving my children. Which matters all the more because I didn’t have one myself. He’s also very good at being a husband. Because that’s what I like to call him, even though we are not married, and probably never will be.

But I am his wife when I call his office and speak to the secretary. Sometimes I mix it up for kicks: ‘Can I tell him who’s calling?’ ‘Yes, it’s his lover’. ‘Who shall I say is calling?’ ‘Tell him it’s the Minister for War’.

I like being a wife because I think it gives the job some much needed prestige, some matrimonial gravitas. I’m just not sure I want to be called one. But I can’t be over 40 and still be his girlfriend. Not after all this time. Girlfriend sounds transient, like a bit of fluff he’s still toying with. I’m not the apprentice, I’m fully trained. A wife is permanent, and I am fiscally, emotionally and socially responsible for a family, and for the smooth running of the train wreck we call our home.

I don’t really like the term partner either. It sounds so ambiguous. And romantically detached. I’ve always thought de facto was just plain ugly. It’s Latin for ‘existing, but not necessarily legally ordained.’ That’s about as dull as it gets. I’ll stick with wife thanks, even if I’m not legally ordained. Because really, I am a wife in every sense of the word.  Except THE word. I am mother to his children. I am loyally and totally committed to him, and only him. I live with him, I share everything I have with him. (Except  this column.) I hope we grow old and senile together and I live out my wifely delusions in the twin-bedded bliss of a nursing home.

It must be all those Jane Austen fantasies I still harbour about being a member of the genteel classes. But in 1816 Miss Austen wrote in a letter that ‘single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor, which is one very strong argument in favour of matrimony.’  And you only have to look to the insufferable Mrs Bennett in Pride and Prejudice to understand why she is so desperate to marry off her five daughters. No doubt they were happy to escape her aswell, but marriage was for most, the only way of breaking free from the confines of family. Whether or not it was a favourable alternative, it was almost always preferable to being an old maid. And Jane Austen should know – she was 39 and never married when she published her last novel, two years before she died.

In these most modern of times, being married remains a very obvious marker of identity for society at large. They don’t call it marital status for nothing. Perhaps that’s why weddings are often a showy affair. I think weddings are the greatest collections of joyous people you’ll ever meet. (not forgetting maternity hospitals.) But I’m not sure I need another one, or would want to part with our savings to have one. If only I was immune to the lure of a pretty dress – for me, that goes way back to my girlish rhapsodies raiding the dress-up box to emerge as a shining bride

That said, a marriage gives couples a starting point, a day in amongst all the other days in the great curveball of our relationships that belongs only to them. A marriage is about the promise of happiness, the hope for a healthy satisfying cozy togetherness. Yes, it’s rose-tinted to look at it that way, but when you’re living in sin, there seems to be no sense of occasion to celebrate – which day do you choose? – the day you met? Your first date? Your first kiss? Moving in together?

I’ll be clear now that I’ve never wantonly sought to be a Mrs. Not even during my first marriage. I just wanted to be me. And that’s what I was. No prefix.  What is it about Mrs that to me, sounds so antiquated ? Maybe I still don’t feel old enough to be one. Mrs is what I called my friends’  mothers because I wasn’t mature enough to refer to them by christian name. I wonder if it will become  as obsolete as all the other colloquial terms for wife that have gone by the wayside over the years – spouse, missus, better half and the awful old lady-  because they all signal ownership, and a derogatory sense of ownership at that. It’s all about whether we’re connected to a man. He is a Mr. whether he’s a husband or not. And the absence of a ring on his left finger doesn’t give it away either. Men get to keep their mystery. We don’t.

You’re publicly ‘off the shelf’ when you’re a Mrs. There’s no point being coquettish about it. You are by prefix the solid dependable type. On the other hand, Miss. is sweet, until you turn 35 and then it’s condescending and you sound like an old spinster who has been passed over. Good on the French deciding recently that Mademoiselle (Miss) was outdated. Now you’re a Madame whatever your marital status and you can’t be judged on it by society or bureaucracy. French feminists have hailed it as a symbolic win for gender equality and I agree with them. Language shapes our attitudes and cultures and as a woman, and an individual, I would like to be addressed however I wish. And I don’t wish to be the cheese and kisses.

Ms. at least measures up to Mr.

In doctors’ waiting rooms you can fill out the clipboard as Ms. knowing you’re in safely ambiguous territory no matter what’s wrong with you. The only way they’ll work out if your better half is responsible for your ailment is if they spy a wedding ring.

Which brings me back to why I still like the idea of being a wife. Everyone knows we’re a couple committed to each other and the children. But perhaps because I’m not constitutionally a wife, my soft pink, slightly insecure underbelly wonders how the man I love can really be so opposed to  marriage. Well, not opposed to marriage per se, (he’s a very modern man) but opposed to the idea of marrying me. Maybe it’s the legacy of growing up female – all those fairytale happy endings that were read to us. That Cinderella has a lot to answer for.

My paramour has joked that if ever we’re in Vegas, we can hire Elvis and Priscilla costumes and get married at the Little White Chapel. I only half believe him. Though if we ever do plan a holiday to the States, I’ll make sure I pack a pretty frock, just in case. And I’ll make sure I cross out Mrs. on the paperwork.

Burnt in Bonfire of Vanities

Burnt in Bonfire of Vanities
The West Australian
Ros Thomas
Published: Saturday July 7 2012
Section: Opinion

You know you’re on a long haul flight when the trolley dolly wakes you at 3am to ask if you’d like the chicken curry or the braised pork. I know I’m not allowed to call her a trolley dolly anymore. It’s politically incorrect. But on this occasion, it was cosmetically correct. Actually, it was probably anatomically correct.

I think she was aiming for a look somewhere between Bambi and Barbie, but she’d inadvertently ended up closer to a Cabbage Patch doll – misshapen, puffy and tending towards scary. That stewardess had more plastic in her face than in all the little bottles I had in my toiletry bag. Her forehead was so shiny it could have shown the way to the emergency exits. I couldn’t tell from her wide-eyed expression if she was looking at me with disdain, despair or delight, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her, for all the wrong reasons. (Though I hasten to add she did seem very nice.)

What is going on with women and Botox? In some suburbs you’re sliding scarily towards the minority if you’re of a certain age and you’re not tinkering and tampering with your face like it’s a home economics project. There’s a veritable sewing kit of now common procedures – from Botox needles, to fillers, plumpers, and threading – (no, I don’t know what half of them are either, except I’m reliably informed the latter is de rigeur for shaping your eyebrows and taking years off).

I’ve no doubt I’m as insecure as the next woman. It’s taken me 44 years to accept that my face is an agreeable enough reflection of who I am. Yes, I’d like to wind back the clock to that first flush of nubile, peachy-skinned womanhood, but I was too bloody insecure and self conscious to think any man who cast me a sideways glance then, was seeing anything but the flaws that loomed large in the mirror before me each morning. The closest I’ve come to cosmetic surgery was a week of going to bed aged fourteen with the tip of my Roman nose taped firmly to my cheeks with bandaids, in the vain hope it would emerge by morning as a cute little upturned button. All I got was a nasty rash.

That said, I refuse to look down my nose at anyone who chooses Botox over Oil of Olay. But I am fascinated. And increasingly so. Because Botox is as trendy now as skinny jeans and ballet flats. (Or am I passé already?) It’s no longer a strange quirk of celebrity pandering, but a full blown obsession with the middle classes. (At least those rich enough to afford it.) The young flight attendants I got chatting to on a later flight told me they already felt the pressure to start on Botox, given their industry was still obsessing over its appearance. And they said a medical clinic at Melbourne airport had just started offering Botox for hosties needing top-ups. Obsessed indeed.

In a hip cafe in an affluent suburb last week, I stood in line be hind a 50-something woman. She could only just move her mouth to order the fish of the day (no wonder with that trout pout) and she barely stood out in relief against the wood panelling of the counter. (I couldn’t tell who had the better tan, but I think the wood panelling had a slightly more natural stain)

I’m certain she was smart and funny and kind, but I’m sad to say she looked ridiculous and eerily disconcerting. Had she left her eyes and lips alone, she would have been an attractive older woman. Now she was being tittered at behind whispering hands and eyebrows cocked above menus.

Why do women still think the only way to be measured is by their looks? Haven’t we come far enough to realise there are attributes far more attractive on offer? And is it men who are prodding this fixation with the superficial? I could be mistaken but I don’t think so. No man I know wants the object of his affection to be the object of public derision. Perhaps it’s our never-ending quest to remain forever young? But I think many women do it for other women. In some thinly-veiled attempt to become the envy of other women. The sisterhood has turned in on itself. We have been gazumped by our own.

Women who go overboard on botox (and its family of facial additives) start to look like they’re related. Have you noticed? They all have the oddly blank faces, and the fishy lips and the strange puckering around the eyes. They look like some new breed of Stepford wife. A homogenised underbelly of the middle classes with hair extensions and terracotta tans.

I’m sure anyone reading this column who has partaken of the artificial elixir of youth will be affronted by my thoughts on this subject, or worse, be mighty peeved. She will argue that she is happy with her decision and even happier with the results. And she didn’t go under the knife or submit to the needle out of any insecure vanities. She just wanted to give herself a helping hand and feel all the better for it, inside and out. And I’ll be so glad to hear her say that. Because I would like to be wrong. And very possibly am.

Why then, the secrecy? Why, if everyone’s doing it, will no one admit to it? I think we’re lying to ourselves, let alone each other, if we think anyone buys the story that we look this refreshed because we’ve just had a holiday in Provence. You can’t rewind the clock that much. We’d all like to look good for our age, not a decade shy of it.

I admire the women content to justify their wrinkles as character lines used to illustrate a life well lived, and yet often I hear this as an act of defence, that when put on the spot, they somehow need to explain why they haven’t turned to Botox to stave off the inevitable.

Would I like to try it? Yes, I would. Do I know what I’m missing? No. I don’t. For one simple reason – I’m too scared. Petrified of having it go wrong. I know I would rather have the flaws time is giving me than the ones some cosmetic wizard accidentally created for me.

Does that make me a coward? Absolutely. But I’m okay with that. I don’t feel morally superior being au naturel and I don’t feel physically inferior. But I do worry Botox is going to star as the centrepiece of some sort of moral battleground – that those who don’t use it will use it to take the high ground over the those who don’t. Is that fair? God knows I could do with a helping hand – why bother with all those skin firming creams and potions that promise miracles you never see when Botox delivers straight up? The pursuit of ageless beauty is forcefully marketed these days and I think even young women are feeling under siege. But what are we saying to the next generation of women if we’re not prepared to age (dis)gracefully ourselves? That they must hang onto their looks at all costs? That the minute they see the first sign posts of a wrinkle they must move immediately to erase it, lest anyone notice? There are few windows into the failures of cosmetic medicine. They are well hidden, unless like me, you notice them everywhere.

In the meantime, I’ll try not to obsess over my reflection in front of my small daughter. I’ll try not to let on about my insecurities in front of my two boys either, in case they decide it’s okay to judge women by their looks alone. And I’ll pray this fixation with trying to look permanently younger is just a passing fancy we’ll all grow out of. And I’ll have the chicken curry please.

Grief for Tragedy of Lost Mind

Grief for Tragedy of Lost Mind
The West Australian
Ros Thomas
Published: Saturday June 30, 2012
Section: Opinion

I find the elderly strangely beautiful. With their crepe paper skin and dimming eyes, lined up in the sun at the nursing home.

Some of them with a busy mind but useless body. Many more with robust bodies but minds clouding inwards, leaving reason and memory beyond reach.

This is the most awful thing about the ageing process. People you know and love who have pressed forward in their lives with their cleverness, their kindness, their bravery, suddenly forced into decline. A decline that proceeds, sometimes with imperceptible slowness, sometimes at great speed, to an irreversible end.

My much-loved grandmother marched into her 70s and faded into her 80s. Small strokes robbed her of her steadiness but her refusal to be dependent kept her at home, with my mum keeping vigilant watch.

It was stressful and life-altering. My mother worked full time, I was a teenager, and at 82, her mother was becoming a child.

Other family were interstate, and the responsibility was my mother’s alone. She never described it as a burden, but even my immature self knew it was.

Five years went by cooking one extra dinner, popping in daily and small panics when she took too long to answer the phone, and the endless management of a life that could not manage its own.

When the time came, my nanna fought her move to the nursing home with everything she had, and my mother’s guilt was palpable.

Almost every one of us has had a glimpse into the shadows of human frailty. It’s not a place you ever want to go, but we’ll all end up there if we can hang on long enough.

Now you hear of dementia and Alzheimer’s everywhere, like it’s a communicable disease. A colleague and I eat four brazil nuts a day in the hope of warding it off (someone told one of us selenium is good for brain function). But with a family history of dementia for both of us, we discuss with wry humour our dread of being the one who picks the short straw.

A lovely friend told me that caring for an elderly relative, especially a parent, forces you to change places with them. Her mum had become nurturer to her grandmother, and it was uncomfortable to no longer have a mother in return.

When the move to a nursing home became inevitable, she told how her mum’s greatest relief was to be able to return to her rightful place as daughter, because someone else was now doing the “caring”.

I have just experienced again the ageing process in all its indignity with my favourite uncle, my mum’s only and gifted brother.

To watch him regress to being almost infantile at the age of 76 was frightening, but at times quite lovely. It gave him an instant bond with my children, especially the small ones, who delighted in his gentleness and quiet concentration at their baby games.

As his dementia progressed, he became their absolute favourite for playing hide and seek, seeing as he hid in the same spot every time.

He was only as good at puzzles as they were, and like them, he startled at loud noises and needed help cutting up his dinner.

But the great tragedy of his twilight years was the swift unravelling of his brilliance. As a concert pianist, academic and mathematician, that disease robbed him of all he had been.

First it stole his ability to pick left from right, add up a bill or recognise a coin in his wallet. Then it took his encyclopaedic memory of music until he could no longer play a note or sing a tune.

The end came as quickly for him as it came cruelly for us, two years after diagnosis and a day after he took a rare walk around the fountain at his nursing home.

And I hear each week of another friend whose father has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, or a mum whose intellectual decay is awaiting a name.

What is the price of longevity? And how will we pay it?

The latest census tells us there are more than three million people aged 65 years and over in Australia, and the statistics tell us almost 10 per cent of them have some form of dementia. That is projected to rise to 30 per cent by 2050.

You can’t survive it and it’s not a normal part of ageing but this slow massacre of our elderly will continue unabated until some branch of the sciences finds a way to stop it. And more importantly, reverse it.

We also have to think long and hard about dignity. Dementia can take years and years to tighten its vice-like grip on the mind.

Those who are new to the symptoms of its rude interruption to life will see their family members and friends slip quietly into the personalities of someone else. People we don’t know and don’t recognise.

It’s as disconcerting as it is distressing. I don’t ever want my mum to become somebody else. She is the bedrock from where I began, and I don’t want that ground to shift because some merciless disease has changed on a whim the essence of who she is.

What are we to do? And how are we to manage? A generation of us is faced with the freedom of our empty nests being thwarted by the need to care for ageing relatives.

Do I worry about it? Of course. I cannot bear the thought of my mother’s decline. As a once single mum and her only child, we have an inseparable bond.

She says she wants me to knock her on the head if she starts losing her marbles.

But it will be my great duty to care for her as she cared for me. Even though there will be days when I will hate it. And maybe hate her for it.

But I will try to push through the gloom of losing her one day by holding tight to the memories I have stored away for retrieval when the time comes.

I don’t even know what’s there. But I know there is a vault of them buried somewhere in the intricate folds of my mind.

As long as I can keep it.

‘Harmless’ slap and tickle

‘Harmless’ slap and tickle
The West Australian
Ros Thomas
Published: Saturday June 23, 2012
Section: Opinion

More bosses have asked me to take my top off than I care to remember.

Back in the 80’s. Actually, it was the 90’s aswell.

Radio then was loose and fast and a hotbed of lascivious ego. Lotharios stalked the corridors (the best ones were in advertising) and were good at brushing up against you as you passed them in doorways. Men old enough to be your granddad offered up their laps if there weren’t enough chairs round the IBM to sub your story. The kitchen was a dangerous place to be after an executive lunch, and the gent’s toilet door was often left ajar to give you a tantalizing glimpse of what you were missing. Perhaps disinfectant.

If you had a nice bum it got pinched, if you didn’t, a smile might win you one anyway. In their wanton eyes, it must have been a glorious time to be female. I got my first job answering the phones and making tea. I was so good at it they asked me to accompany my cups of tea into the studio and be the ditzy barrel girl for competitions. I was so bad at it they asked me to try on the new station t-shirts. Without a bra.

I’m not sure what let me down, my assets, or my resistance, but either way, they asked someone else do the publicity titbits and let me do work experience in the newsroom. I was 20, naïve and unworldly but keen as mustard. Now this was right up my alley. I became a cadet. And the sexual politics of my first job in journalism lay spread-eagled before me.

It made for hysterical drinks with girlfriends after work on a Friday night.

There was the one gentleman who took me to lunch at a posh restaurant by the river to celebrate a ratings win, only to expect dessert in the bulrushes afterwards. Or the Don Juan who would pay for my drinks at office parties and then demand to settle the bill at the motel room he’d pre-booked across the road.

Best of all was the visiting American disc jockey who locked me in the music library so I could share his hot dog. There was no shortage of yankee  doodle in his establishment – apparently.

He was married. Come to think of it, they all were. The young single guys were the safe ones. They were trying, like me, to work their way up the ladder with all they had. Hopefully talent. The older married ones had career superiority and deep radio voices and wore the pants. With their fly undone.

I never once thought of dobbing on anyone. Career suicide.  And they knew it. Sexual harassment was sport and they were self deluded enough to think deep down we loved it. The one in the bulrushes? All he scored that day was an own goal. But he didn’t speak to me for weeks afterwards. He even wrote me a poison pen letter asking did my mother know what a tease I was?

It wasn’t just me of course. I was the late bloomer in the office so god knows what the pretty girls had to cope with.

I discovered years after leaving one job that a girlfriend who later worked in the same office office had a bulrushes story of her own, identical to mine. We got our own back by swapping notes on his ridiculous modus operandi and laughing long and loud using our little fingers as props.

Sexual harassment was then a disease that pervaded certainly my industry, and I’m sure plenty of others. It worked its lecherous fingers into any office where men had power and women didn’t. And it cared little for being caught, because power gave you immunity against any salacious dirt that some girl might dig up because she was riddled with vindictiveness, or needed a shrink.

We didn’t need a shrink, all we needed was the sisterhood to do what it did best. Take the sting out, giggle uncontrollably, exchange stories, empathise. It was harassment pure and simple, and if you caved in they got to brag about it. I never heard of anyone in my line of work who was physically assaulted or hurt. At least those Casanovas were smart enough to beg for consent.

But that doesn’t excuse it, does it? Or does it? In the 80’s I don’t recall any protection, of the legal sort. It was Mad Men circa 1988. With big hair and stretch ski pants instead of coifs and twin sets. But the pearl of wisdom I received at the time from a much loved older (female) colleague was not to take offence, but negotiate the treacherous path of unwanted sexual advances with cheekiness. My smart mouth saved me every time. And saved my relationship with the men who really were very good at their job of teaching me. If only they’d concentrated on it hard enough.

As I got older and wiser, they became more manipulative. In Sydney, the long  90’s lunch was like quicksand – how deftly could you make your escape before you got dragged under by the cocktails they plied you with and the expensive red wine that was working its magic on them under the table.

But for every groping buffoon there were a dozen others who were a joy to work with. Colleagues and bosses throughout radio and television who were decent and professional and served as the best and most inspiring of mentors. Those who still knew how to have a good time. With their wives.

Whatever happened to the yankee and his pals? I expect they had long and fruitful careers, and in retirement can look back fondly. On their fondles. I heard one is now calling sumo contests in Japan. Good luck propositioning one of them.

I now have a small daughter  and two sons. The boys hopefully will have a good moral compass to guide them in the workplace. I hope my daughter never has to tell my kind of stories. Funny as they are, they’re also a dirty scourge on the heyday of media in this country. And now I’m at home with 3 children I’m free to try on any promotional t-shirts. As long as they come with a built-in bra.

Life as an Invisible Woman

Life as an Invisible Woman
The West Australian
Ros Thomas
Published: Saturday June 16, 2012
Section: Opinion

I will still be taking my youngest to primary school when I’m 54.

There, I’ve said it.

The (laughable) truth of it.

No-one in their mid 50’s should be glued by any sticky-fingered tendrils to the exhausting gusto of early childhood, but there are loads of us. Women in the full flush of motherhood interminably marching from the front door to the school gate because we started families early and finished late. Or friends who had exhilarating careers before sudden yearnings had them lining up for motherhood before the chance slipped away. And all of those who thought they’d started in time only to slide into their 40’s still sitting in the waiting rooms of fertility clinics trying to create those babies who just wouldn’t come on their own.

My friends are amused to think that I may one day be mistaken for my daughter’s grandmother.

But I don’t feel any different now to how I felt when my first baby arrived 12 years ago.

I feel energetic, perhaps more capable, certainly more confident. Except for a gnawing sense that I am somehow less visible. Less appreciated. Because I am now just a mum at home. I‘m not trying to have it all.

I worked full time through all the early years of son number one. It was a beast of a job: it had me at its beck and call day and night, travel, deadlines, a pressure cooker. It showed no mercy if my toddler had croup and it didn’t blink if I missed his kindy concert. But in return it allowed me to make a public contribution, carve out a career, use my brain and of course, it paid the mortgage.

I look back now and wonder how I did it –  taking conference calls with a whimpering 2-year old stuck to my hip, the blinding rush to get out the door on time lest I be exposed as somehow less committed than my childless colleagues – the whole time snarled existence of it. I remember picking him up from family day care to be told he was completely toilet trained and feeling a surge of guilt and then a wave of relief that there was just one less thing to do. Sometimes I think my best parenting was done in the car, that small window of my complete and unswerving attention – singing ditties and laughing at his lisping stories.

After son number two arrived, I made a conscious decision to leave my career aside while I carved out a little niche of domestic immunity, a cocoon to grow the two littlest members of the family.   `

People ask me all the time: ‘Are you still working’? and I tell them ‘No, I’m at home’ and watch them fight the frown that accompanies ‘Really?’

And then they don’t know what to say. And I feel forced to fill the gap with some breezy banter about the fulsomeness of life with little children while I watch them switch off. My small talk is now only entertaining to pre-schoolers.

Strangely, it’s the older people I sometimes briefly befriend through the conduit of a chatty toddler that tell me how lovely it is to see happy mother and child, and I bask in the glow of their approval. Strangers who see me for who I am, not for what I no longer do.

In the mornings, I eye the corporate mums racing through the school gate with a mixture of envy and gratefulness. Grateful I was financially able to step off the treadmill. Envious of their importance. That they’ll spend their day having uninterrupted conversations with grown ups. That they’ll get to go to the loo on their own – no wriggling pre-schooler glued to their lap.

When did we tell women who are ‘only mothers’ that their contributions are somehow less worthwhile? That if they’re not visible, they’re not valuable. Because who could possibly want to mind the nest? The whole grubby-faced mess of it. On the days when I want to be productive  and in control I want to fly free of the nest too. It’s demoralizing. No wonder it’s a rare man who puts his hand up.

Clearly I have relevance deprivation syndrome. No one sees the work I do. The robotic   monotony of home life. The house looks the same at the beginning of the day as it does at the end. Only I know how many times I have done the dishes, vacuumed up play dough. How long it takes to go to the shops with a tantruming daughter in a trolley. Why I still haven’t showered by 5pm.

Will my children appreciate the gift of an available mother? My mum had no choices. The stigma of divorce hanging over her head, she worked like a dog to give me a good start. And now I love her all the more for it. Because it gave me the gift of a present and available nanna who baked me afternoon teas, counted letterboxes on the slow walk home from school, looked for beetles in the overgrown buffalo. Time rich. Will my children look back and feel nostalgic like I do? Remember the excitement of thundering down the hallway to the smell of biscuits.

Later on in my teens, I knew only too well the sweet loneliness of coming home to an empty house. Of my single mum bound to her job never thinking ‘she had it all’. How lucky I am to have a choice.

Often reminded of how brief this little window of womanly life is, I have decided to throw off my cloak of invisibility and get on with it. I have the gift of freedom, and perhaps there are as many mums out there who secretly envy me as I envy them. So I will remind myself to be glad   I’m the one who gets to lift my smallest out of her cot, all baby breath warm and sleepy and bundle her into the pram with a biscuit and a teddy to walk the path to school we know every step of by heart. I’ll try to enjoy it for what it is. Fleeting.