Reflection on Times Past: Column From the Bearpit

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Reflection on Times Past
It is customary to end the old year and start the new with reflections on the previous twelve months. Newspapers and magazines all over the world do this. I imagine their editors are sneakily pleased when something really spectacular has happened, something that comes with good pictures and lots of worthy commentary. Famous deaths are hard to beat, especially if the much-lamented deceased was photogenic, young, and newsworthy. A really good scandal also accounts for acres of reflective newsprint. I defy anyone writing one of these features in 1998/99 to get away without a mention of Monica Lewinsky in some way. (See, now I've done it!)
I would prefer to reflect upon personal things for this past year. Every year brings milestones to us. Work, friends, family, home - something is bound to have happened in at least one of these areas that has meant something significant to us at some time over the past twelve months. Some of you may have had a baby for the first time, or be pregnant as you read this. I remember the first Christmas I spent pregnant. It definitely felt different from previous, non-pregnant Christmases. (Like, I actually managed to cook a meal for the first time in six weeks without throwing up! We only had a roast chicken that year. It was manna from heaven for poor Graham, who had been resorting to eating cooked meals at lunchtime so he could make do with a non-controversial, odorless sandwich at home in the evenings).
Well, I'm not going to be pregnant this Christmas (never again!), but every year brings changes to my children that I particularly notice at that time of year. I remember our Christmases since Tamsin was born - that was the Christmas she was six months old, that was when she was eighteen months, etc, etc. This year she will be five-and-a-half. She still firmly believes in Father Christmas, but recognized the Father Christmas who gave her a present at a childrens' party she went to today. She seemed fine about it - that was Stuart dressing up, but the REAL Father Christmas will be coming on Christmas Eve and leaving presents that Mommy and Daddy don't know anything about. (She wormed a confession out of me that I had actually bought the Dalmatian print headband and given it to the fake Father Christmas this afternoon).
I can remember Angus's previous two Christmases clearly too. The first one, he was a still tiny five-month-old, only just out of the woods in terms of health, and too young to know what was going on. The color and movement kept him amused, anyway. He enjoyed the pureed Christmas dinner I made up for him, too! Last year he was seventeen months old, a real tearaway. The tinsel we bought in 1990 finally bit the dust last year, when he and Tamsin discovered that it made good reins for reindeer. It balded rapidly and we spent weeks vacuuming it up off the carpets.
This year he will be nearly two-and-a-half, and a slightly larger tearaway. I think he understands the present concept this year. Father Christmas is referred to cheerfully, and informally, as Chris. He says 'Oh wow!' when given any present, however small, which is immensely satisfying to the giver! I'm looking forward to this Christmas, I think we will have many happy memories of it.
It will also be the first time my mother has seen Tamsin in four-and-a-half years, and the first time she has ever seen Angus. To date, Angus has only been viewed by one member of Graham's family, and some of my English/Irish relatives. My mother is making the big trip out from Australia to see her grandchildren. (I expect she will pay some passing attention to her daughter and son-in-law, too!)
Tamsin is rapidly reaching a state of terminal over-excitement. What with Christmas preparations at school, various parties in this last week of term, Christmas itself coming up, a trip to the ballet on Saturday, and Grandma arriving on Friday, I think a valve to let the steam out would have been a useful innovation in the design of small children.
By the time you read this, Christmas will be over and we will be thinking about New Year's resolutions and the like. I hope your year is full of happy reflection; possibly some events will need to be thought over carefully and gravely. I hope that you have all managed to escape the year without sadness, though I know this is seldom possible. I hope all of you have had a wonderful Christmas, full of joy shared with your families.
We have spent a lot of 1998 waiting for various things - house sales, results of job reorganizations for Graham, decisions about our future in numerous areas. We are longing to be reunited with our families back in Australia, but at the same time apprehensive about the move and the upheavals it will bring. We hope that 1999 will be a year of movement, of resolution in our lives. May yours be, also.
And I wonder what sort of year Monica Lewinsky will be having?

Judy Edmonds was born in England, grew up in Australia and is married to Graham Peters, a fifth-generation Australian. From 1990-1999 they lived in England - it was meant to be a two year working holiday but it took on a life of its own. They returned to Australia in May 1999, and are enjoying readjusting. Judy worked as an academic librarian until the birth of Tamsin in 1993, and since then has been a full-time mother to her and to Angus, born 1996. She is now embarking on a new career as a freelance journalist. Her writing can be found all over the Internet now, and she is the owner/editor of an Australian parenting EZine, Chloe & Jack.