Barbara or Margot? A bit of frivolous nonsensery.......

Ok, so just asking this question dates me.  If you, like me, grew up watching and loving the antics of Tom, Barbara, Margot and Jerry then you are a Seventies baby!

(If you didn't then click here to find out more or even watch a clip on the ubiquitous YouTube!)

Anyway over the (seemingly now finally gone) summer a love of gardening welled up within me and I seem to have discovered surprisingly green fingers.  I have long owned a book on keeping chickens but fear that my precious veggie crops would be ruthlessly marauded by my fictional chickens, leaving the garden looking as if it had fallen victim to unusually precise and anti-vegetable napalm strikes. I have started thinking about what and when to plant for next "season"....hampered only by my ignorance about  different types of plants or their care but I really really really like planting stuff and watching it grow.  And then, preferably, eating it. (I proudly presented a guest with a beautiful lettuce and herb salad only to be appalled when a small but unmistakeable caterpillar made a sprightly break for freedom from the depths of the salad bowl.  Needless to say she had already eaten her portion, but, made of stern stuff, she didn't even flicker.)

The financial benefits are undoubted - given my "retirement" from law and the Boy's current carrot crunching obsession I better start  intensive cultivation of root veg! The anti-stress benefits seem to work for all of us too.  But, I just like gardening, I even occasionally listen to Gardeners QT.......

I plant things at the wrong times, I put them in the wrong places, I don't really know what I am doing.  I am  relaxed and nonchalant in wellies at all times.  I aspire to livestock.  I'd quite like to put veggie crops on the front garden (this appalled more Margot-ish types, and raised the question of that most unspeakable of crimes: vegetable theft!!)

I am, clearly, a Barbara.  But then again, on stage singing opera in as big a frock and as much bling as possible, I do channel my inner Margot.  Do you think anyone would notice if I had wellies under my posh frock.....

Ten Year Goggles......

Now as the sort of person who likes to plan IN DETAIL for the short, medium and long term, I've been learning recently that letting go of those sort of planning paroxysms is healthy, liberating - in fact necessary.  I can get so caught up in The Plan that I forget to enjoy the moment, miss slightly unexpected opportunities and feel anxious when the plans go awry!

Of course I had an excellent "ten year plan" as a student: Law degree (check), Solicitors exams (check), training contract (check) - so far so good, six years accounted for.  This tied in with my life plans - marriage at 25 (check), children (check, two by age 30 - one of each, extra symmetry!).

And really that is where the planning paralysis set in.  Having children is such a leap into the unexpected for all parents, let alone when autism is part of the package. Adapting to today requires a certain amount of taking your beady eye off tomorrow .  My faith helps me do this, but my old habits of agonising about next year, three years, ten years etc are hard to break and if I don't stamp down on those thoughts, I know I am heading for a dizzying, relentless turbine of anxiety-generation. (Gaviscon anyone).

In addition it's easy when you are faced with challenging circumstances to become defined by overcoming them.  At times like that you need perspective, and to push the horizon back out again to include all the wonderful opportunities that are still available to you and the unexpected triumphs, pleasures and diversions that await you. And this, in turn, enables you to enjoy all the rewards and pleasures that are already in your day to day with you but that you have started to overlook.  The joy of life with small children, and of their wonder at the world (combined with their brutal honesty......). Sometimes looking at the bigger picture enables you to rediscover some of the smaller detail!  To allow yourself to just stop and smell the roses (or, as the case may be, blow bubbles)

And so, recently, someone told me to put my "ten year goggles" back on!(*)  To contemplate and look at the bigger picture, including the stuff that could be down the line in my future, including the domesticity that is currently an overwhelming part of my job description, but not solely restricted to that.  Self-expression, personal growth, fulfilment, achievement and, yes, singing.  I love it and it is a key stress management, brain training exercise as well as a huge part of how I express my faith too.

I am and will always be mummy, but I am also and will always be......me.  I don't lose myself in parenting or in dealing with autism, I bring myself to all of those situations, but it has taken a little bit of perspective to rediscover that truth.

So thank you, wise friend, for reminding me to continue to be me as well as being mummy.

I'm off to blow bubbles on the trampoline.

(PS: in my head ten-year goggles look exactly like a WW2 flying helmet & goggles - Mr LAL's influence you see, all is history)

(*) and also to get hold of a cheap tea-set - equally valuable advice.

Life After Law: Exit Complete.

Well, gentle reader, this is it.  I have received my P45 from The Firm.

(For the benefit of any readers not in the UK, the P45 is a short, yet illuminating document comprising a salary and tax "season roundup" - played 15, won 10, lost 3, drew 2)

Eventually, and after a period of grace during which The Firm gallantly refrained from mentioning the "W" word, I came to the point of having a talk with The Firm's very supportive and understanding head of HR.  We talked about the reality of how life works these days and how the needs and requirements of our family exist alongside the business needs of a commercial employer.  Which is to say that they don't.

The best thing for us is for me to be mummy.  Just mummy.  I mean this as a job description, not as a cry for help of the "I'm losing my identity" variety.  I have found that I have rediscovered that I am "me" and that, perhaps surprisingly, that inner self isn't defined by being mummy etc but that I bring that inner self to bear on everything I do. This has been quite cheering, actually.

So the upshot of me focusing on one employer (read previous blogs about inhumane and despotic management style of most children compared to most Law Firms) not two is that: We don't need to worry about trying to find the right after school childcare solution that provides one to one support for the Boy, or about how stressful it would be for him to have last minute stand ins (friends, relatives) if he is ill, or there is teacher training, or a strike, or about beautiful daughter losing out on mummy time even more..................and on those hideous leave-you-limp-as-lettuce days which most parents of children with autism will recognize, I can, if I need to, return home after the school run and sit and cry for 40 minutes or so after which I have a cup of tea and gather myself back together. Which causes consternation in your average office.

So now we are back(with a vengeance) to the Top Five questions about giving it all up.

In summary:
1. So do you miss it?
2. What do you DO all day?
3. So when are you going back?
4. I bet you miss the money, don't you (solicitors earn a fortune don't they)?
5. So what are you going to do NOW?

Seems as good a time as any to reconsider. Thusly:
1. No
2. Space restricts answer, read blog posts.
3. Maybe never, no time soon.
4. We're cash poor, time rich.  Have started growing veg. May send children chimney sweeping.
5......................................................................................watch this space.  Right now, have a cuppa. (No crying)

Starstruck & Unsophisticated at the Opera

As you may know, gentle readers, I do rather love a bit of opera. Singing it, listening to it, watching it, trying to understand the complicated "swapped at birth"/"disguise" story lines and so on.  Imagine my excitement on receiving a coveted ticket to Tosca at the Royal Opera House (from a friend who basically lurks, submerged except for his nostrils, on the ROH box office website all the time waiting to pounce on unbelievably cheap tickets to amazing shows - read his blog, he may give away his secret!) 

I was lucky as a child to experience musicals, plays, ballet, dance, concerts and so on of wide and varied standards.  School productions, local shows (including a panto which turned out unexpectedly to be so "blue" my parents told me it had finished at the interval), musicals on the big stage in Manchester, London and once, thrillingly, on Broadway.  I saw Welsh National Opera's "The Marriage Of Figaro" - my first live opera and still my favourite opera. All of these were important, special, stand-out occasions to me, the memories of which are clear and cherished.

As a family we always watched any music competition that was televised, and other signal landmark events: carols from Kings at Christmas, Last Night of the Proms.  I grew up to a mixed "shuffle" soundtrack from which various things stand out in my sepia tinted aural memory: Benny Goodman (dad plays clarinet), The Beatles, Abba, The Carpenters as well as Mozart, Weber, Beethoven, Fred Astaire's back catalogue, and so on and so on.  (Not so much Rock or Funk, but hey).  So for me music has always been part of our daily life but also part of our treats, celebrations, once-in-a-lifetimes.

My point is this: Has this made me take any of it for granted? De-mystified any of it, made it a bit everyday? Simply: No.

Tosca was simply amazing.  Bryn Terfel was astonishing - compelling, sinister, menacing, totally authoritative even to his last gasp as a murder victim.  Angela Georghiu's "big diva moment" - her second act Aria as she pleads for her lover's life - (and which one assumes she has performed many times more often than the role complete, being a crowd pleasing concert favorite) was captivating and yielded "mid-action" applause (interestingly, as I dimly perceive, clapping at the "wrong" time is a hazard for the unwary - in fact one dauntless clapper was audibly shushed by more right thinking operagoers during act one, although the audience was not at all inhibited about showing their approval at the end of the act - roaring - or during the curtain calls - foot stamping, shouting, whooping).

Antonio Pappano's conducting, (of which, given our "restricted view" eyrie we had a bird's eye view) was unknowably and yet in some way palpably the dynamo of unstoppable energy keeping the whole thing moving relentlessly and powerfully forward.  The (incidentally extremely beautiful) Jonas Kaufmann was seemingly faultless in every way, his movements, gesture, let alone his awe-inspiring "is he still holding that unbelievable note" singing. As for Puccini - I think I have found a new love.  (Don't worry Mozart, you'll always be my first).  I think that's probably a whole other blog post though. 

Walking into ROH for Tosca I felt a level of excitement roughly equivalent to that which would be unleashed if we were to tell our daughter that we were taking her to Disneyland (we are not - Mr Life After Law feels he simply needs longer to brace himself quite apart from remortgage the house to pay for it!).

Quite apart from the sneaking "oh wow it is ACTUALLY Bryn and Angela - "Bryngela?? -" feeling I was simply overcome by the whole thing.  Opera is exciting.  Opera is fun and magical and moving and allows you to transcend yourself.  And I had this fabulous experience for £9.40 per ticket.

Opera is, above all, AFFORDABLE and accessible - everything has subtitles.  And in my view, opera is irreplaceable.  (If I had my time again I wish I'd run away to try my luck and abilities as an opera singer.  You know what I did instead.)

So when will the junior branch of the team be exposed to opera? Well, they hear it round the house a lot as you can imagine ("Mummy, (weary sigh from 7 going on 25) must you sing so LOUD?").  And if you allow the work of Messrs Gilbert & Sullivan as at the very least light operetta, then they are both well used to the genre.

I can't wait til their first time at a big opera house.  They have so far loved village hall panto, English National Ballet, The Gruffalo, G&S and so on with equal relish.  And I hope I am giving them some memories to match those for which I am so grateful to my own parents!

(May I also add, that I now fully understand why my parents would occasionally bring their own gin and tonic - taking small people to the theatre is ultimately rewarding yet fairly exhausting!)

What's in a Name? Or at least in a diagnosis......

"Autistic Spectrum Disorder" or "Autism" or "ASD" (doesn't everything have an acronym nowadays?)

What would you say if you received that as a diagnosis for your child? (After having a few initial goes asking questions like "what is it?"  which might be your natural response, and fair enough )

I think that people attempting to answer the question above are divided into two camps:

Firstly, and broadly, those who do not care for or know quite well a child with any special education needs.  They are sympathetic, imagining distress, grief, shock, anxiety, anger.  And those things are probably all present to a greater or lesser degree - but what surprises this first category is the following emotion that I and Mr Life After Law (aka The Man Of The House) felt at the crucial consultation (with a panel of four autism experts who had spent hours carrying out and repeating official assessments and weighing endless reports and feedback from an even bigger pool of relevant people):

Relief.  


So far out of all my friends relations and acquaintances the only ones who really resonate with the relief of the diagnosis are those who also live with it (my not-at-all-sweepingly-generalised second category).  This is not to ignore the amazing love and support of all the friends and relations who empathise deeply and sincerely with our position.  It's just that I don't think you really understand in your bones why there is a sense of relief unless you have been through it.

I haven't met many parents of children with ASD who have had that diagnosis fall like a bolt out of the blue.  On the contrary, many have spent months or years, even, getting to the point where the experts agree on a diagnosis.  Some have had to fight against all kinds of discouragement, criticism and lack of resources to get the appropriate assessments carried out, and to arrive at a conclusion.

And so, certainly for us, there was at the meeting at which we officially were pronounced "autistic" an overwhelming sense of relief.  We are not imagining it.  We are not inadequate parents.  Our child is not "difficult" or "defiant".  We are not hopeless or helpless.  We are not being weak in finding things challenging. We can make a difference. We can open up opportunities and there are lots of ways forward now.

I haven't blogged for a while - and you may now understand why.  We've been thinking about other stuff.  And I will undoubtedly talk about the trials and triumphs of Life After Law in relation to ASD.  It will be apparent that my decision to quit my career in law is related to the additional needs of our family.

But we have two children, not one - and we are a family unit of complex unique individuals.  Some of us really like to watch WWII war films for the 60th time, some of us think that everything can be improved by the addition of pink glitter, some of us will only eat one brand of baked beans, one of us (and I'm pretty sure it is me) really likes to listen to people sing about dying and/or love in a foreign language. While disguised as a boy/servant/swapped at birth. Preferably in a massive frock. And wig.

So I will continue to blog about Life After Law and "giving it all up" (stares nobly into middle distance) and parenting.  And blogging about ASD will be part of that, but it isn't the whole story, not by a long shot.  And I look forward to sharing snapshots of the next few chapters with you.

Weebles

No, I am not indulging in a Blackadder-style fake-madness attempt to avoid going "over the top" (or as I call it "The School Run") next week- in any case that was "wibble" as any fule kno (I digress Molesworth I).

A weeble is an ingenious toy, whose longevity is no doubt attributable to it's inherently humorous appearance.  The toys have a wide base and narrower top half (almost like an egg standing on it's fatter end) and they progress by a rocking, wobbling, shuffling motion that reminds me of the last two weeks of pregnancy number two.  By virtue of their wide base/narrow top/egg-like shape you cannot knock them over - they can roll right over but will simply self-right and carry on - hence their slogan "Weebles wobble but they don't fall down" (I wonder if that is what inspired ChumbaWumba's hit.......)

I have often been compared to a weeble - obviously, and flatteringly (!) because of a certain similar pear-shaped-ness, but mainly because of my own ridiculous resilience when knocked virtually flat to simply sproing back up going "I'm ok, look it's fine!!!" (Obviously I mean emotionally, if you knock me down physically I'm gonna stay down until I know that you have gone away - or is that bears you do that with, sorry no, T-Rexes on ill-conceived vanity-projects islands owned by misguided millionaires................I digress).

So where do I get this "hey, I'm ok now" nanosecond recovery time from?? (Because, dear reader, if I can find out and bottle it I will have enough money to (a) build a huge library to support Mr LAL's monstrously huge history text book collection and (b) actually live in London for the purposes of stalking opera singers at Covent Garden).

Unfortunately I am b*****ed in my quest for such wealth as I have no idea! Temperament I assume, plays a large part.  It is certainly possible to dent the weeble-resilience and it doesn't work half so well if I am on the Keats/Byron end of the "mood positivity spectrum" - but that pretty much only happens if I am seriously under par and also at the same time coping with difficult circumstances.

Or to put it another way, how do you create a sense of hopefulness or optimism in yourself to help you cope with the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune"? I don't know.  The "comfort activities" towards which I incline are shopping and eating - neither of which work.  I'm grateful I incline to nothing worse.

Singing and being outside both do work.  Being at and worshipping at church does work - not least because that is the place where I can let out a lot of negative emotion (tears, snot, stress) in safety without any judgement or anyone freaking out that I may be having a proper breakdown - they just pass the tissues and give me a hug!

The weeble resilience was certainly useful in my earlier days as a trainee solicitor, being sent on endless appearances before District Judges to argue the case for big insurance companies defending claims by the reams of claimants who have tripped over the paving slabs on the high street -you do lose a lot of cases when you defend!

But that usefulness was NOTHING compared to the vital need to "bounce back" from each fresh parenting challenge!  And for now, I am rocking, wobbling, shuffling and weebling my way through.  And sometimes I feel as if I have rolled on my big pear/egg shaped base until I am almost flat. But then......

SPROING!! I'm ok, I'm back up!! And I am very thankful indeed to feel that way.

Now, does my bum look big in this...........................

Normal for........

As a lawyer the word "normal" could be a source of great comfort : "well, normally in a case like this we would expect whatever-it-is, and so I think we could proceed on that basis". Of course that expectation could lead to disappointment - but then again "normally" can be your friend "well, normally, such and such would apply, but of course in this case...".

"Normal" was a friendly word, a tool. And then, I entered a different gladiatorial arena.  I became......a parent.

(I very much enjoyed Katy Brand's parody of Kate Winslet - based on her wearing red carpet dresses at all times while reciting "I'm a NORMAL  mum, I'm a NORMAL mum......Katy Brand Clip - click here)

In fact in our house the word "normal" is not a favorite.  Mainly because when you find that you fall outside it (from "normal" to officially, educationally "special")  it suddenly carries a negative overtone.

But even if you are a parent (or carer) of "normal" children (sorry!) you face constant anxiety about how "normal" (or not) they are.......all their developmental milestones are measured and commented on by reference to "within normal limits" and the range of what can be "normal" is bewilderingly wide, tall, long, and deep!

(There is also another use of the word "normal" from my childhood - as in "You know that's not normal, don't you".  Which when uttered by a Professor of Psychiatry is worrying.  Answer :Yes, I know. Am I bothered).

Now, there are various "normal for....." sayings (for example Stephen Fry's oft-quoted "Normal for Norfolk" and in our family and circle of friends we eventually coined the phrase "Normal for Boys" as quite simply the only explanation for some of the mystifying behavior that the Boys seemed to have in common.

So,  I have now decided to embrace the word "NORMAL" and come up with one all-purpose definition of any behavior you care to exhibit or observe: thusly................."Normal for ........SOMEWHERE". And so I joyfully remind myself that rearranging my mugs so they hang in a certain order and always preferring to drink out of one particular one is......yup, NORMAL  for somewhere!

My refusal to eat creme eggs if they are not chilled so the fondant is not runny, my inability to leave pictures unstraightened and my aversion to food cooked by children unless I supervised them personally - NORMAL! for somewhere.


My obsession with all things opera, with Mozart music, and even my love of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas and heroines......NORMAL for somewhere.  


My inability to hear anyone speak to me if reading a gripping book, my need to turn off sources of sound so that I'm not deluged by simultaneous cricket on the radio, cBeebies and shrieking/trampolining, my preference for labeling things in cupboards......NORMAL for somewhere.


(I think we are best served by NOT considering where the "somewhere" is that these behaviors would be considered normal.)

So whoever you are and whatever your own little quirks or foibles (so long as within legal, moral and any other limits you care to adopt!!) - relax.  You're NORMAL!

Right, I'm off to rearrange my mugs and eat a chilled creme egg.  While I watch Opera on YouTube.