Tuesday was a momentous day.
I don’t think it will happen again.
The Four Little Seymours were all under the “care”of the same school – on different sites, but that’s just splitting hairs.
It did kind of happen a few years back when Mini was at a nursery next door to the primary school. That felt nice too! But as Number One is about to leave compulsory education very soon and the youngest is in Year Five, it’s rather unlikely to again.
I am not sure quite how we got here. As she drives me around the countryside in Minty the Blue Polo, learning the necessary (but scary and expensive) art of driving, I sit and ponder on the fleeting years. Can I remember what she was like as a baby? Was I attentive enough? Did I engage in the moment? I know I was there, but how have we gone from then to now in the blink of an eye? How can I have an almost-adult..? Number One is grown up! I must have changed a lot too in that time but I still feel like I’m pretending at this parenting game. I have got older, but not any wiser. In fact, my first born has more answers than I do.
Number Two is also changing. Last time I looked, she was in Year Seven, and I blame Covid for the fact that I now have a teenager with pierced ears, Nike shoes and a school skirt of dubious length. She’s finding her voice at last – and it’s loud. She’s getting further away from the quiet, fat, Morris Men-loving, easy-going tot that she was. She’s even growing taller – at last. And I discovered recently that she is really rather an amazing dancer! I knew the girl had rhythm, but I saw a video of her hip-hopping yesterday and I was flabbergasted. She’s so cool!
Boy Seymour is as mercurial as ever. Loving and articulate one moment, seething with purple rage the next, he is demanding and a challenge to live with. But he is very clever and compassionate and also – NEWSFLASH!- a total genius on the drums. A term of lessons, a fourth-hand drum kit and lots of noise later and we have a small rock star on our hands. He’s brilliant! Which atones somewhat for the nightly temper tantrums.
Mini, whilst still my baby, is now big enough to suss out secondary schools! She’s too young, surely? But off she went the other day, to spend time sampling the delights that Key Stage Three will offer. I don’t want to tell her just how different secondary school is to the cosseting of primary school: I don’t need her to worry about the drudgery of a “big school” timetable: the homework, the peer pressure, the “banter”… I guess she will find out for herself.
But that’s all in the future. Today, I smile when I think that all four Little Seymours were together briefly, under the umbrella of the same big school, each at very different stages and each bringing very different ingredients to the metaphorical recipe that is our family.
And with potential homelessness looming*, life is certainly not dull!
(I will elaborate in my next post. Promise.)
How long ago it seems, that they wrote their time capsules. Click here for a reminder!
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