Hot Suggestion

I was sitting on a bench in the centre of Leeds, breasts tight with milk and Nina still sleeping when the old lady approached. She was dressed in tweed, moving stiffly and as I remember her, she was using a walking stick. I may be imagining that because don’t all wise old grannies have one of those? She had come to look at the baby, and to give advice:  enjoy these years, because they were going to be the best in my life. It was at that point that Nina woke up hungry, my breasts spurted, and I was too modest to get my boobs out. I had to walk home with my top drying in the sun, smelling of cheese.

Even at the time, I was confident the advice was poor. I was a young first time mum in a strange town with no family support, about to be stuck with negative equity in our home that would last ten years. I had the final year of my degree to complete, no childcare, and no money to pay for any. I was about to walk two miles home through blazing August heat to find that our cat, unsettled by the move, had shat on the carpet. I’ve had happier times since. If that old lady had her magical advice giving hat on that day, the one that provides the sparkling gem of prescience that if taken will lead to a better future, she would have said, “Teach your baby to cook”, and then she might have moved on quickly so I could get on and feed her.

Nina is twenty now, and managing very nicely for herself in a student village in Swansea. I think Nick and I did very well in bringing her up. She’s ace. It’s just that she never wanted to be in the kitchen, and because it’s not the 1930’s I never insisted. I thought she would pick it up in her own time, and she has, sort of. A few years ago, while frying an egg, she set light to the cat (it deserved it, it had shat on the carpet all those years before after all and it was unharmed save the melted hair). She’s moved on from that. Lately, she’s been burning herself. There was a gammon incident a few weeks ago resulting in second degree burns to the face. Today, I see from facebook, there’s been a rice crisis.

It’s tough being a parent. You just never know what is worth teaching until all of a sudden the baby is out clubbing, and the decisions you took when you weren’t much older than your little darling is now are showing their worth. Seems a bit late to point out that hot liquids hurt skin. Ah well, she’s bound  to work it out before she loses an eye. Isn’t she? Or do you think I should advise her to live off takeaways?