Dear ones, it’s always the simultaneity of things, so today our Teen Time youth column is all about holidays and book birthdays. Two out of three children are on holiday – and I’m not. That’s what I paid for the holiday 😉
It’s so quiet here. I miss the clatter of the fridge, open-close, like a reflex and again, open-close, over and over again, day and night, the sound usually surrounds me. The sweets drawer remains untouched and the contents of the fridge just stay where they are – as if by magic.
No more empty packets of salami in the cold cuts compartment. And the pile of laundry just stays as it is and doesn’t grow every day… that’s when you realise just how much time is wasted on football laundry in our lives. The washbasins are free of toothpaste residue, the bathroom mirror isn’t full of water stains.
No moaning „I’m hungry“, no slamming doors, but a mobile phone vibrating several times a day because a snap arrives on it. A snap of boys jumping down cliffs, a snap of everyone eating paella, a snap in the dark in front of palm trees and the occasional update on how someone in the family is doing. Where you buy a bed sheet when you’ve forgotten yours and who gives you toothbrushes when they go missing. Things like that.
It’s so quiet here, did I mention that? Almost spooky, I don’t have to cook at certain times, every now and then our daughter turns up, moans about the next university exam and then goes back to preparing the next one, this week it’s four exams in 5 days, after that it’s finally term break.
And we parents work and then find ourselves asking each other at the weekend: What are we going to do now? Go for a walk? How do we organise our lives with so much peace and quiet? And the best thing is: as soon as we get used to it, they’ll probably all be at the door again…
„The days are long, the years are short“
It’s all quite impressive and it’s so blunt to say that it’s all happened quite quickly now, but the saying „The days are long, the years are short“ is somehow really so true. How long the days sometimes dragged on back then with three small children. Like chewing gum, sometimes even like rotten gum.
In the evening, we were happy if everyone had survived the day reasonably unscathed and we didn’t have to rescue or look after anyone for a while. And now we contact them ourselves and ask if there’s anything else we can do remotely. They are fine. They have their hood, their clique, their closest carers are with them. And we are standing on the sidelines, still hoping that they survive, of course, but we no longer have any direct influence on that.
This is an adjustment and sometimes you go mad with worry and then you become proud again. Back then, it was a 24/7 job with the fuzzies and it’s still like that for many people who read here. Even Katharina sometimes can’t believe that our boys are suddenly going on holiday together peacefully, when they used to want to beat each other up every day. Sometimes we can hardly believe it ourselves.
But back to the 24/7 job of parenting young children… Tomorrow is 24 July again and six years ago, on 24 July, Katharina and I published our first book together: WOW MOM. The mum encourager for the first year with a child. It is still selling spectacularly well today and we still receive love letters from touched readers who cry at the table of contents because we have categorised all the chapters into emotions.
Wow, I’m tired. Wow, am I overwhelmed and underwhelmed. Wow, am I in love. The book was deliberately published on 24 July to reflect the 24/7 job that parenthood entails. The cover was designed so that you can wash baby bumps off it, it’s the little details that stick in your mind.
This book contains real photos from our family albums, even embarrassing ones, but honest, authentic ones. And what we realise is that even six years after this book was published, women still need an authentic comparison, honest insights: not Insta filters with always smiling mothers in immaculate white shirts, but real life. Which is sometimes hard and sometimes soft, sometimes wild and sometimes wonderful.
Holiday camp and book birthday
We try to keep bringing this to you every day. And even if no publisher wants to have an encouragement for the puberty and teenage years, we at least do our best here to take you along on the tsunami that children whirl through our lives. We celebrate children on holiday and we celebrate book birthdays.
And we are very happy about everyone who feels connected to us through the books or this blog, some of you even for years. It’s great to have you here. Just keep making yourselves at home with us! And feel free to write in the comments how long you’ve been reading here and how you found out about us in the first place…
