BEVERLEY TURNER
CHANGE...
and boiling frogs
T
here is a famous scientific for a life providing piercings for the beachexperiment called “The Boiling dwellers of Goa. But for most people even Frog” which has become a small change is hard. Big changes are even metaphor for life. If a whiteharder. coated scientist places a frog in a vat of Even before the 2020-21 pandemic boiling water, the frog will leap straight out, lockdowns, we have all read, fascinated, presumably thinking, “Bejeesus, what was about families in tabloids who sell up and that?!” take their kids backpacking for a year, But if you place a frog in cool water and bemused by the logic that must require. raise the temperature slowly to boiling point, Then we turn the page concluding poor Kermit doesn’t spot what’s happening that it surely requires stupidity and dies in his very own soup. and selfishness as we exclaim, The story illustrates that “But what about their GCSEs?” slow, incremental changes through slightly jealous I’m not – which may not be in our gritted teeth… suggesting you best interests – can creep However, throughout swap the family up around us, unnoticed this last year we have and before we know it, all coped superbly with for a life providing we are floating belly-up immense change. And piercings for the in the vat of our own life. it would all have been beach-dwellers of I think many parents, for nowt if it didn’t make Goa. in particular, can relate us pause to consider what to this. Once we have little we have learnt about being people to whom we are perpetual happy and thus what changes we slaves, it is incredibly easy to lose can make. sight of ourselves: our loves, our needs and The mass exodus of house-buyers ditching any external influences which may help to London for country piles demonstrates the keep our identity and emotional wellbeing shift in priorities on a tangible level - many intact. people have asked why they still live in a The changes that come with parenthood city when they could have a small holding are not all bad - far from it - our babies teach in Dorset for the price of a two-bedroom flat us selflessness; they encourage the growth of in Chiswick. our own enquiring minds (this actually never Towels have been thrown in on jobs that stops, even when our offspring are adults weren’t worth the stress. Children’s crammed themselves) and they teach us to love with weekly schedules have been ripped up after a fierceness reserved for lionesses. Children seeing how much calmer they were without make us question ‘How can I be a better 16 different hobbies each week. Cleaners parent?’ ‘How can I be a better person?’ but have been forgone (or hired!) as the division we should, perhaps also ask, ‘What changes of labour in households became either more can I make to improve my own life?’ equitable or more troublesome. I’m not suggesting you swap the family Some employers have (finally!) realised
that parents can work more flexibly and remain productive - a fact that working mums have been sure of for years, but whose words were ignored until a global pandemic caused the men-in-suits to see they were right. Insert eye-roll emoji. We may have changed how we holiday this year too. No last-minute jetting off to the Med, but instead, a cottage in the Cotswolds that proves to be just as pleasant if accompanied by the luck of sun and a good supply of pink gin. Some people have literally changed the way they look this year! Not just the hairdown-our-backs or beards, but the bodies which have grown either flabby and squidgy due to the lack of gyms and too many takeaways; or toned and fit thanks to Joe Wicks, daily walks and the absence of available restaurants. And, as we (hopefully) come out the other side of this period of containment with all of its attendant challenges, we should give ourselves credit for the huge amount of change we have endured. This knowledge should give us strength, as life evolves on the other side, that we can cope with more than we probably knew. We can be brave and stoic when the government literally tells you not to hug your loved ones (who would have thought that was possible 18 months ago?) and we should not be afraid to regularly take the temperature of our own lives… just to check we’re not one of those boiling frogs.
BEVERLEY TURNER shares her thoughts with Marina Fogle on the As Good As It Gets? podcast. She also runs the Happy Birth Club ante-natal classes. thehappybirthclub.co.uk CITYKIDSMAGAZINE.CO.UK 11
