DO NOT PRUNE

A note to self

My eldest is sixteen.

Sixteen year old Beautiful Alien who likes maths.

I’m still inexplicably baffled by the fact that she is, in fact, a person entirely separate from me, with (gasp) her own character. This in itself is hard enough to comprehend, let alone the fact that she appeared a whole SIXTEEN years ago. Of course, sixteen years for me is a much shorter time than it is for her, and that’s why I can’t quite compute it. I mean…I just caught my breath for Heaven’s sake…still stupefied by the seemingly interminable thing of getting from hour to hour with a baby…the overwhelming joy and love and the tiny feet and the dimples and the giggles and the cries and the pain and the endless nights and unstinting boredom of it all, and all of a sudden there is a person standing there in front of me with opinions, and thoughts, and a fierce, immovable solidity. About to fly. Trajectory unknown.

She keeps her own counsel you see. There is none of this nonsense where you talk to your mother about things. I look at her face as I might stare at an alien. In fact, in an effort to lighten the sense of awe and panic I feel about this, I have her on my phone under ‘The Beautiful Alien I Birthed’, and I realise that this is my rather pathetic attempt at preserving my own dignity… somehow getting in front of the situation, as if it’s entirely expected and normal to me, like my cat when she falls off someone’s knee and saunters off, emanating “I meant to do that you know”.

I remember an old friend once describing how he’d felt at being sent to boarding school at the age of seven; “I just remember walking around floored…completely floored” was the phrase he used. Never being able to gather oneself because there was always something new around the corner…a constant state of surprise. Perhaps the anticipation of threat. I feel like that sometimes, watching the story unfold. It’s exciting and bloody petrifying. Sometimes you want to ask them please, just please could you just stop for a second, so I can breathe?

I’m in Paris. I love it. I used to live here about three hundred years ago, in a ‘boarding house’ of sorts, at 99 Rue du Bac. It was the family home of a very grand old lady who rented the rooms out to girls. She was quite the snob, and I remember a high number of European princesses staying there. Not sure how I wangled my way in, but it was a really excellent base from which to explore the city. I loved it. And I still love it, not least because of the joyous easy train, and the trees.

I notice they let the plane trees here grow to their full potential, no ugly pollarding. I’m sure there is a reason for this; perhaps it’s because Paris streets are wider and grander and there’s more space for the canopy, but I’m also open to the possibility that London street trees get brutalised every other year for no reason other than the fact that someone way back decided it would reduce leaf litter and nobody has questioned it since. In my bit of West London there are people constantly out with strimmers and hoes erasing any signs of life that dare to appear from cracks in pavements. This seems to me like a pointless waste of time but what do I know? Perhaps it’s a ‘health hazard’. The leaf litter must be monumental in Paris compared to London; I realise I need stats on how the French manage this and do everything else they do so well so well.

Giant pain au chocolat

So enough, as I remind myself that I really must remember not to attempt to pollard my daughter (although the chance would be a fine thing). Any related wisdom gratefully received.

x Laetitia