Improvisation

Our house is littered with tiny socks. I keep finding them, stuffed down the side of the armchair, scrunched up and left on the bench next to the dolls house, one in the box with the trains, its pair in the box with the tractors. I find them in my coat pockets, in our bed, in the kitchen, on the piano stool, in the car. Tiny socks. Everywhere.

Why, you ask? Because our 2 year old will not keep them on his feet. It was -6•c when we got up this morning and still: “I not want socks, mummy”.

I put them on him. He takes them off. And shortly laments that his feet are cold. I end up carrying spare pairs round the house with me for the inevitable moments when we need to leave the house and he’s somehow managed to remove the last pair without me realising and stashed them somewhere.

He is having a brilliant time. I am tired. I think it’s starting to show because socks ended up making an appearance in my response to today’s Plant Your Poetry prompt: Improvisation. This month’s theme is play and it’s fun and refreshing, but I’ll admit that what started off as a playful response quickly saw some of my parenting frustrations seeping out onto the page.

I’ve largely kept my poems in response to these prompts just within the Plant Your Poetry community but I wanted to give this one a bit more air. Largely because, as I was writing it and my sock related frustration came to the fore (actually one of my least frustrating parenting experiences at the moment but the easiest to pin down in words!), I started to feel guilty. Oh, that well socialised mum-guilt. How dare I express anything less than utter adoration and satisfaction in my role as mother?! I should surely, at the very least, couch it with reassurances that it’s still the most wonderful thing in the world and I wouldn’t change it really?!

How do we become so conditioned to believe that voicing the challenges of being a parent somehow makes us ungrateful? Or even bad parents?! I should not feel compelled to follow up any and every expression of frustration or struggle with reassurances that I love my kid.

Of course I love my kid. He also drives me up the wall and parenting is hard and exhausting. There are brilliant bits and fucking horrible bits and why is it okay to give voice to one but not the other?!

I call bs. So, for any and all parents out there in the throes of the hard stuff, whether big life altering things or simply small socks, I see you and you’re doing great. This one’s for you.

🪁 Improvisation🪁

“It’s child’s play!” They say

Whilst they watch and laugh as I try

A fifteen-hundredth way to

Convince you that your feet will be warmer

With socks on

And that coats really are wonderful things,

Especially when it’s raining, but you simply sing

Another jumbled verse of that

God-awful tractor song.

I never thought I’d spend so long

Making meals for you to reject

Saying you just want grapes whilst I panic it’s neglectful

To give you yet another piece of toast

With cucumber sticks on the side,

Trying to hide the mass of beige food

On your plate with a hint of green.

It’s so easy to feel unseen

When all they see is cherub pink cheeks

And golden curls

And how I look at you like you’re my world,

Because you are, really, you are

And we’ve already come so far from those

Early cluster feeding days

The newborn haze, but here’s the thing:

They warn you about the sleepless nights with babe in arms

And you expect it to be hard

But why did no one mention

It gets harder?

Because we’re nearly three years on

And I’m still up with you at 4am

But cuddles don’t soothe and instead you’re asking me again, and again

For that one specific episode of

Heaven only knows which show

And another piece of toast, but not that one,

The one I made for you.

No, only the one on my plate will do.

And I worry they’ll think me ungrateful

That I look at you—my abundant plateful—

And forget how lucky I am.

But I don’t. I truly madly deeply love you best

In all the world I just, dear goddess, simply need to rest

But you’re still going

So here I go again, too,

Putting my best mummy smile on, just for you

As I improvise game fifteen hundred and two

To convince you to put your socks on.

Thank you for reading. Go gently.

J x