Some mums do have ’em,’ my old grandma used to say. I used to think she referred solely to new boy babies.
The newbie would be lodged in the welcoming arms of the family. Everyone would press around making silly noises and saying how cute it was, how it had various attributes of the parents. ”
Look at that chin,” some auntie would say. What chin, I would think. I couldn’t distinguish anything much except a blobby head that seemed to be trying to escape the rest of the body.
I’d creep away, thinking to try later when the baby could talk. At the 21st birthday perhaps. But no, it’s the daughters who have a way with ’em’, apparently.
They are soon winning their way with the dad, blathering away to them and establishing a strong personality with a voice that demands to be heard. Amazingly their dads would continue to adore them, despite struggling with the daily toil that would be required for the upkeep of daughters.
The girls would finally be old enough to go to school where they would begin to suspect that dear old dad didn’t necessarily know everything. But more likely, they would think, it was the teachers, dear Ms Soandso and Master Wotnot, who didn’t have it quite right.
They would stick with the dad. They would also bring home weird kids from school to be their lifetime companions. Amazingly, the Dad would continue to adore them and seemed to find their friends tolerable.
I don’t know if the dad of my daughter’s best friend in early primary school was even aware of her presence, and I rather suspect he knew nothing of the game Cuddles the Thug liked to play. It involved swinging his daughter around by one arm and one leg.
This girl child, now a grown up and just recently married, appeared to be able to totter home after class with all limbs intact. It may have contributed to the wee girl’s adult tendency to have frequent accidents involving ankles and wrists, but as Cuddles was one of the bridesmaids, it seems she didn’t hold it against her.
Let me explain that I am speaking from an observer’s point of view when it comes to dads and their daughters. My world was almost wholly female, as I came from the generation whose dads didn’t always come home from the war.
As I knew from my childhood, it’s not all about the dads, and I was extremely impressed by by the mum of Cuddle’s little friend – she is one tough babe. I was happy when she came to parents and teachers meetings because she would help stand up for my apparently strange ideas.
Imagine trying to persuade the school that they were giving too much homework to the children to cope with. Then there was the battle when they tried to separate my child, her child and their other best friend into different classes to stop them talking. I don’t actually know how we won that one, as they patently DID talk too much, all the time.
Their final performance as three witches in the Library Week activities, involving Eno’s fruit salts bubbling potions, terrified the ‘tinies’ and sent me skulking home before I could be called to the headteacher’s office.
Despite finding different pathways to their future lives, the Three Little Witches stayed in amazing close contact. They would come home from far off institutes of education and a midnight phone call would rouse me to the knowledge that the great mates were all back together – for the moment.
As they grew older they held on to the values and loyalties they had developed in their younger years, those things that glued them together as friends and of course family. T
hey were also a great deal of fun, ready to fall off their chairs laughing. They delighted in their family jokes and tales, and slipped in and out of each other’s households where the parents were ‘mum’ or ‘dad’ to all comers.
But being a friend who is now family means you also had to do your assigned tasks, as Cuddles found out being a bridesmaid at the recent wedding of the once-little friend. My daughter, one of the schoolgirl triumvirate was assigned to welcome guests at the top of the steps.
As none who know her will be surprised to hear, Cuddles abandoned her duties and was found by the mother of the bride larking about with the boys and the beer. She was hauled away and given a smart smack.
Everything appeared to go splendidly from there. And it truly was a magical week of wedding festivities (which is really the minimal amount of time required for these things in Fiji, as we know).
Many moments for family, and friends who are family, to remember fondly the three little chatty kids they were, and clap madly as they trotted down the aisle, Cuddles in pink behind the vintage-dressed bride, as the glamourous, beautiful and rather wonderful women they have become.
No wonder people always cry at weddings, it’s all a bit moving really.
