Original artwork (watercolour) by Erin, Aged 6.5
Yesterday I bit down on a particularily chewy piece of muesli bread and broke the cusp off one of my molars. This molar has a very old ugly filling in it so I’m not sure there’s much hope for it. The cheaper option would certainly be to remove it. I’ve had a kind dentist recommended. I hope she is the Mother Therese of dentists because I haven’t let one touch me for almost five years out of pure fear. It’s not my fault I have weak teeth, and that despite brushing and flossing well beyond the recommended daily requirement, they may not see me into old age. Years back while working in Leeds, I had a butcher of a dentist remove the corresponding molar on the other side. He actually put his foot up on the dental chair and to pull it out. And thought my jaw was going to go with it. Later, in Manila, I refused the option of a bridge to replace it; at around 360 Euros it seemed expensive. I dread to think the cost I’ll be quoted for one this afternoon. But I suspect it’s that, or a liquid diet for the rest of my life, as I’ve discovered in the past day that the inability to chew on either side of one’s mouth really is an inability to chew altogether.
And in other news.....In a stroke of genius, I answered the barnehage’s call for help at its summer party this afternoon by offering up table decorations (it was on the sign-up sheet, I didn’t just invent the requirement for them this time). So my flower arrangements may, if they survive the first party, go on to gladden the hearts of my friends at their farewell do on Saturday (see previous post if you are going 'Huh?!').
I'll miss party no. 1 because of the dentist but am sure that the liquid diet will work very well for party no.2. See? every cloud has a silver lining :-)
As I grow older, I notice more and more how I have similar mannerisms to my mother. I also find myself thinking, 'God I sound just like my mother’ on a regular basis and this is not a good thing. And now it seems, I’m acting like her too.
Three good friends are hosting a farewell party on Saturday night. (Yes, it’s that time of year when I briefly acquire a social life. Unfortunately this consists entirely of farewell gatherings, something which almost guarantees an eventless social life once June has passed.)
As the three friends have nine children between them, and are all packing up houses to leave Norway, I thought they could do with a bit of help on the day of their party. I offered but of course they insisted that they have everything under control. Determined to do something, I then suggested that I could take some flowers along to decorate the venue. There’s an enormous hydrangea bush where the snow mountain was only a two months ago – the miracle of nature eh! – so I have plenty of flowers to give away. They graciously accepted but I suspect that I’m not really reducing their stress levels, just complicating their preparations, while making myself feel useful (or not, now that I have really thought about it).
The thing is too, I haven’t a clue how to arrange flowers into beautiful table adornments. I’ve never done it before. I couldn’t even remember the name of the flowers in my garden when I needed to. What was I thinking?
Then it occurred to me as I played with the idea of buying those spongy things for sticking flowers into that I had just done exactly as my mother did for my wedding.
We hadn’t given our friends and family much notice, and as we got married in Scotland, there wasn’t much my family (in Ireland & Denmark) could do to help me prepare for the event. They were, I suspect, too stunned by my wedding announcement to do much actually; my father used to joke every time I got a new boyfriend that he was going down to the betting shop to check the odds of the relationship lasting. He had the opportunity to use this joke often enough that it became tired. You can perhaps understand their surprise that someone was finally offering to keep me for life while giving them only six weeks to find plane tickets and outfits for the ceremony.
Anyway my mother organised the wedding cake in Ireland and put it in the boot of my friend’s car. Fortunately my friend was driving to Scotland for the wedding, otherwise I could be telling a very different story. Back to the flower thing.
The day before the ceremony, my mother also offered to do some simple flower arrangements for the tables. I hadn’t really thought that I needed table decorations – there was a lot I didn’t know I needed - but sensed that my mother needed to do something, to feel useful, to be involved in the event.
And this is exactly what I have just done with my friends’ party without consciously thinking about it.
It doesn’t seem to matter that my life has been completely different from my mother’s, that I’ve had opportunities she could only dream of, have lived all over the world and, for the most part, have had it easy. Not a jot. My mother in times of needing to be needed offers to arrange flowers. And so now it seems, do I.
And what if flower arranging at social events is just the start of the slippery slope into mimicking my mother’s ways? Right now I hate golf. Don’t understand it. Haven’t the patience or focus needed for it. What’s the betting that I'll start playing when I'm 58?By the time I turn 60, I’ll be playing three rounds a week and spending every phone call with my children waxing lyrical on the joys of hitting a little white ball around some grass with a long thin metal stick?
In the meantime though, I've got some hydrangeas to arrange. Any tips?
My six-year-old daughter lost her top front tooth yesterday. This is her bedside table last night. Yes, there is a connection. The cheese slice, torn into rat-sized bite pieces, is for the Norwegian tooth mouse. The tooth is lying at the bottom of the plastic cup of water; the mouse apparently can swim. Lest the mouse be under any illusion about whether the cheese was free or not, she left two folded fifty kroner notes under the cheese to remind him to leave money. The silver thing is a tooth-holder her little brother received as a present when he was born; it was presumably there simply to impress the mouse who may or may not have wanted to use it to check its reflection.
Her mother went off to Book Group, reminding herself to get change for a fifty, very confused, bemused, and certain that some Norwegian person would illuminate the whole Norwegian tooth mouse theory.
No one had ever heard of it.
Thankfully the tooth fairy ignored all this mouse pandering and quietly took the tooth away and placed coins under my daughter’s pillow. My daughter’s first words this morning, as she looked at her table and reached under her pillow for her coins were, ‘Oh the mouse didn’t come and eat the cheese. So there IS a tooth fairy.’
The mouse theory came from her teacher at school apparently. I’ll be investigating further but am happy to have passed the test. Now must go throw some dried-out cheese in the bin and put a tooth away for posterity.
