The Circle of Life

I often wonder what my parents would have thought of our boys, had they lived long enough to meet either of them. I feel fairly confident that Mum and Dad would have enjoyed having the boys to stay from time to time, but I fear that they might have come to relish the prospect of ‘handing them back’ too! Having brought up six children of their own, I also suspect that they might have viewed some of our more challenging parenting chapters as being an appropriate form of karma, secretly quite enjoying some of the (all too familiar) power struggles being played out before them. After all, history seems to have an unfortunate habit of repeating itself – and revenge can be deliciously sweet!

I wonder how much of what follows will sound familiar. In truth, we have only really reached verse 3 so far but (with raging hormones rapidly becoming a regular feature around the house) the remaining ones didn’t take all that much imagination!  

‘The Circle of Life’ by Gaynor Hall

Freddie kept us up all night – he had a bout of colic,
(It was shortly after twenty to one that he embarked upon these frolics)
I paced the kitchen floor for hours, hugging him to my shoulder,
Rubbing his back and stroking his hair as my toes grew steadily colder.

Freddie kept us up all night – his teeth are coming through,
(It was shortly after 2 o’clock that he worked himself into a stew)
I paced his bedroom floor for hours, whilst his gums gnawed into my finger
And in no time at all the dawn had come, with scarcely a moment to linger.

Freddie kept us up all night – his temperature worryingly high,
(It was shortly after 3.00am with no indication why)
He begged us to let him share our bed, and keeping him close did make sense,
But the constant kicking and writhing about left us both feeling terribly tense.

Freddie kept us up all night – he was fretting about his exams,
(He’s had months and months to prepare of course, but now it’s ‘out of his hands’)
He paced the living room floor for hours whilst we tried first to soothe, then cajole
But nothing we said was well-received, so we crawled promptly back to our hole!

Freddie kept us up all night – having gone into town with his mates,
(We studied the clock for hours on end imagining why he was late)
A car pulled up, a door was slammed, before promptly driving away
The remaining extraneous noises merging into the next working day.

Freddie kept us up all night – his wife had gone into labour,
(We tossed and turned ‘til the early hours just hoping for good news to savour)
A healthy boy, tall like his dad, and sporting a strong pair of lungs
Mother and baby both doing fine, and all close relatives rung.

We hear that Freddie’s been up all night – with ‘Junior’ causing a stir
(He’s rather lively apparently, and it’s night-time he seems to prefer)
We’ll pop over in a day or two, kindly cutting the parents some slack
Then later we’ll take full advantage of handing the little one back!