3 minute read
BEVERLEY TURNER
CHANGE...
and boiling frogs
There is a famous scientific for a life providing piercings for the beach- that parents can work more flexibly and experiment called “The Boiling dwellers of Goa. But for most people even remain productive - a fact that working Frog” which has become a small change is hard. Big changes are even mums have been sure of for years, but whose metaphor for life. If a white- harder. words were ignored until a global pandemic coated scientist places a frog in a vat of Even before the 2020-21 pandemic caused the men-in-suits to see they were boiling water, the frog will leap straight out, lockdowns, we have all read, fascinated, right. Insert eye-roll emoji. presumably thinking, “Bejeesus, what was about families in tabloids who sell up and We may have changed how we holiday that?!” take their kids backpacking for a year, this year too. No last-minute jetting off
But if you place a frog in cool water and bemused by the logic that must require. to the Med, but instead, a cottage in the raise the temperature slowly to boiling point, Then we turn the page concluding Cotswolds that proves to be just as pleasant poor Kermit doesn’t spot what’s happening that it surely requires stupidity if accompanied by the luck of sun and a good and dies in his very own soup. and selfishness as we exclaim, supply of pink gin.
The story illustrates that “But what about their GCSEs?” Some people have literally changed the slow, incremental changes I’m not through slightly jealous way they look this year! Not just the hair– which may not be in our best interests – can creep suggesting you gritted teeth… However, throughout down-our-backs or beards, but the bodies which have grown either flabby and squidgy up around us, unnoticed swap the family this last year we have due to the lack of gyms and too many takeand before we know it, for a life providing all coped superbly with aways; or toned and fit thanks to Joe Wicks, we are floating belly-up piercings for the immense change. And daily walks and the absence of available in the vat of our own life. I think many parents, beach-dwellers of it would all have been for nowt if it didn’t make restaurants. And, as we (hopefully) come out the other in particular, can relate Goa. us pause to consider what side of this period of containment with all to this. Once we have little we have learnt about being of its attendant challenges, we should give people to whom we are perpetual happy and thus what changes we ourselves credit for the huge amount of slaves, it is incredibly easy to lose can make. change we have endured. sight of ourselves: our loves, our needs and The mass exodus of house-buyers ditching This knowledge should give us strength, any external influences which may help to London for country piles demonstrates the as life evolves on the other side, that we can keep our identity and emotional wellbeing shift in priorities on a tangible level - many cope with more than we probably knew. We intact. people have asked why they still live in a can be brave and stoic when the government
The changes that come with parenthood city when they could have a small holding literally tells you not to hug your loved ones are not all bad - far from it - our babies teach in Dorset for the price of a two-bedroom flat (who would have thought that was possible us selflessness; they encourage the growth of in Chiswick. 18 months ago?) and we should not be afraid our own enquiring minds (this actually never Towels have been thrown in on jobs that to regularly take the temperature of our own stops, even when our offspring are adults weren’t worth the stress. Children’s crammed lives… just to check we’re not one of those themselves) and they teach us to love with weekly schedules have been ripped up after boiling frogs. 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
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.
