the haves and the have nots

'What have you been doing? Where have you been?  What are you reading? Whom have you been seeing?' A asks me. She's resurfacing after almost six months of motherhood.   'Tell me what's been going on out there.'

I'm reminded of that scene in Pride and Prejudice where Lady Catherine de Burgh wants to know 'what the young people are speaking of'.  Indeed, I feel like my friends are becoming younger and younger as more of the late thirty-somethings disappear off to have children, leaving, well, only young people with whom to do singleton type things.

Although you might not want the great chasm between the childed and the childless to open up, invariably it does so, despite everyone's best intentions.  The mothers meet other mothers and disappear off with them into the world of play-groups and toy-libraries; the rest of us keep on keeping on with whatever it is that we do (racy nocturnal activities, mountainbiking and so forth).

Anyway, on Sunday, A invited me to drop by at the Silver Bullet when she would be playing scrabble with some of the other mothers in order to catch up.  (I was banned from assisting as the Brains Trust, and then when they finally let me look at some tiles, we had a disagreement about what should really be on the two-letter word list, so I was truly blackbanded.)  A said that we really must catch up properly, as her brain was going to mush as the baby discovered new sounds (the latest being raspberry-blowing), which she repeated not just once or twice but for hours and then days on end (enough to make you suspect a diagnosis of Asperger's).  To be honest, my private opinion is that children take a good three years to get interesting (when they discover dinosaurs and so forth), my idea of what to do with babies being to pick them up and hold them like a cat, except that you can't be as playful with babies in case they get Shaken Head Syndrome or some such thing.

As a singleton/enchilded reconciliation activity, I went on voyage to Birthday Waterhole on the public holiday with A and M and their baby, and their friend D and her toddler.  The mothers sighed with envy when I arrived carrying only a water bottle and a bag of food: it took a few moments to realise they were alluding to my baby-unencumbered carefree state. 

The road out to Birthday Waterhole was fiendishly rocky at times, but took us through some beautiful countryside, which included corkwood and eremophilia in bloom.  (In case you might think we're experiencing a lovely mild winter here, it peaked at about 15 C on Monday; we built a fire at lunchtime to keep warm, and yesterday, it was -3.7 C when I got up at 7.30 am.)

(Apologies for the blotches on some of these photos -- a lot of them were taken through the windscreen.)

Comments

[susoz]

At a certain stage, you'll find that there are a lot of childless or now-childfree older people to spend time with. I've been hanging out with quite a few people in their 60s, which is a slightly odd sensation at first.

[Jude]

You could have taken a cat or two along with you on the picnic - that would have livened things up.

[Jude]

Cats aside - your pictures here of the trees are very impressive. Picked up your photography skills from your Dad no doubt. Have you thought of submitting something for the Festival of the Trees?

See:http://www.vianegativa.us/2006/06/01/announcing-festival-of-the-trees/

[elsewhere]

Thanks, Jude. Trees are one of the things I make a point of photographing. Not sure that humble point-and-shoot photos will make the grade, but I'll have a look...

[tigtog]

I love catching up with your photos - they're helping me slowly slough away that primary school image of the Red Centre as this bare place that's flat apart from Uluru. I've known since high school that my primary school image was wrong, but it still persists.