Five Trains in Five Hours
I'm finally home from the last trip away of the year. After suffering from headaches all week, I finally jumped in a taxi to the railway station mid-afternoon, and arrived just in time to get a fast train to London. From London onwards I kind of operate on autopilotswitching underground trains and main-line trains to find my way home. My homing instinct is strong.
While travelling towards London I finished watchingSeason 2 of “Awkward” on the Kindle Fire. I watched the first six episodes last night in the hotel (I had nothing else to do after eating dinner at the pub, and going Christmas shopping), finally falling asleep at about 2am. On the journey from Preston to London I watched the remaining six episodes.
Season 2 was better than Season 1but that's not saying much. There's only so much “will she, won't she, will he, won't he” that an adult can really standbut I guess we all remember being the age of the characters in the TV show, and we remember obsessing over peopleso it's kind of entertaining to watch it now, now we're out of that particular hell.
Of course as grown-ups we have an entirely different hell to deal with. Like figuring out how to parent our children. Especially our eldest children, who we kind of have to wing it with. There are only so many parenting books you can read, and only so much advice you will take any notice of. We pretty much steer by our own rudder as much as we can.
It's worth saying that our eldest daughter has had a pretty horrendous year. She's always been one of the prettiest kids in her year (and of course we are biased), but also had perhaps the least confidence in herself. Never the centre of attention. Never the social butterfly. I was the same. So her falling into the periphery of a circle of girls brimming with confidence, nastiness, and deviousness this year has been really, really hard for her to handleand often without sharing her struggle.
It's hard to see your kid struggle. Hard to see her upset, sad, or to shut herself away from time to time. Now and again she's the happy go lucky little kid again though, and we hold onto those times, and try to nurture them, but it's so, so hard sometimes.
I think perhaps all parents have a built-in instinct to want to fix everything for their childrento make anything and everything better if they possibly canbut sometimes all you can do is be there. Sometimes you can't even catch theybut you can pick them back up, dust them down, give them a hug, and try to put them back together again. Even when don't want you to.