A love letter to my son

This one is for all the boy moms

Thank you for reading this issue of The Middle. I hope you enjoy this selection of my thoughts, feelings, etc. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss a single sentence. Sian x

Thoughts

• The Stanley girls are getting unhinged with the fall/spooky season/boo basket videos but it’s further convincing me how truly batshit this content is. 

• Of all the things that could make me feel aged and old, working in the garden is peak among them. There’s something about weeding on hands and knees and planting lavender into some pots I’ve had plopped inconveniently in my driveway for three years that is incredibly ageing to me, and not in the fine wine kinda way. 

• I keep seeing new headlines of new lawsuits being filed against P. Diddy and wonder when they are going to stop. I can’t believe the scale of some of his reported crimes and abuse just went undiscovered for so, so long, it makes me wonder how many other sick humans are hiding in plain sight in the entertainment industry, sweating bullets that they don’t get uncovered next. Is there no end to how appalling and depraved the stories will get?

• My toxic trait is convincing my friends to read the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J Maas and then sitting back and waiting for their emotional destruction via a barrage of chaotic text messages and crying face emojis. 

• Can’t stop thinking about James Vereker’s lip balm in Rivals and how it needs it’s own cast credit or Oscar nomination for ‘Best Emotional Support Prop’. More on the show below. 

Feelings

There are some days where I (jokingly) threaten to sell you on an online shopping platform with a strict no refund and no return policy. And there are days that you ask me to lay down on the couch and pretend to sleep, the blanket draped over me, so that you can sweetly come lie down next to me for a 1.8 second cuddle before you’re up and ploughing a tractor through the soil of my face and hair. Or the times you see me sitting and want to ‘hug’ me but it’s done at speed and with force and suddenly your very thick forehead is colliding with my nose and I am convinced it’s bleeding with the amount of sharp pain and stinging tears you’ve managed to extract with your tiny skull. Not a care in the world as you cuddle into me, completely oblivious to my frantic assessment of my nostrils, checking to see if the gathering moisture is snot or blood. 

There are other days when the simple five minute task of watering the garden with you results in seven thousand hand washes with the hose because you are convinced this is the perfect time to dig in the wet soil with your excavator. That the ‘dirty dirt’ is culpable for your filthy limbs and not your lack of impulse control. And of course there are the days when the veritable encyclopaedia of truck-related content on YouTube does not satisfy you; it’s not the correct bulldozer video, the trains have taken too long to appear, the ads are interrupting your viewing experience. The days when I wish for the screen to suck your attention so thoroughly that it buys me precious minutes to go to the bathroom alone or scrub the toilet without you wanting to lick the inside of the bowl because it seems like a good idea. 

I could go on, of course, and tell you the innumerable ways you make me want to scream in frustration as we negotiate how many trucks will accompany us in the car on the four minute drive to childcare but that seems a bit too simple and a bit unfair. It’s easy to get lost in the abyss of toddlerhood but equally, I find myself marvelling in wonder at it too. There are absolutely the days I’m counting the hours, minutes, seconds until bedtime and I am able to deflate from the day. But I find I stop counting time when I’m sitting in the sunshine with you, too.

There are those moment where you look up at me and say ‘whoooahhhh’ at the pile of dirty dirt you have amassed outside of the garden bed. That little twinkle in your eye and emphatically pronounced ‘yeah’ to my request that you don’t climb up the slippery dip backwards (no thanks to your grandfather) that gets completely ignored as you beam at me with pride. Or those minutes where I simply sit and watch you as you take in the world: kicking the trunk of a tree (also no thanks to your grandfather), collecting gumnuts in the park, sneaking around the back of the house to check on the little birds nest, the mama bird piercing you with her protective gaze. 

These fragments of time, and that’s truly all they are, help me shuck off the layers of adult life that gradually accumulate and weigh on you. They help me to see the world as you do; with an unrivalled sense of adventure and joy in the smallest of things. They tell me to stop and look and really see and breathe and smell and watch you in your wonder. They tell me that the washing can wait, that the dishes will always be there and the people asking for a reply on the other end of my phone can hold on a bit longer. They teach me to let go. 

They show me that my use of the eye rolling or melting face emojis that I sometimes (oftentimes) use to describe you are so very easily replaced with the heart/heart eyes/tearing up eyes emojis. They show me that you are the greatest love of my life (sorry, Andy) and that when you reach up from your cot and request a ‘Mummy hug’ after waking up disoriented and hazy from your nap, your little stick arms trying to squeeze me as you nuzzle into my neck for comfort and safety, that all the trucks and dirt and head butting and endless snack-preparing are also the best parts of it, too. 

I love you, little Truck Lord, dirty dirt and all.

The reigning King of the trucks: the excavator.

Etc

WATCH - Rivals on Disney+

I love this show so much that I’m on my second watch. I know I’m talking it up a lot just in that one sentence alone but this is one of the best things I’ve watched all year. Rivals is the most recent adaptation of Dame Jilly Cooper’s famously raunchy 80’s novel of the same name. I’ve been dying to read one of her books since I first heard Dolly and Pandora talking about her back in The High Low days. When I saw that the book was 700-odd pages and the second in a series of eleven novels, I got too overwhelmed and parked it for another day. That is, until, I watched Rivals and then immediately downloaded the first two books onto my Kindle. Rivals encapsulates all of the hedonism and glamour of the 80’s; big hair, bigger earrings, outrageous fashion, blue eyeshadow, rampant affairs, an offensive amount of booze and ciggies and really posh twats. The opening scene is of a couple banging in the airplane toilet on the Concorde, a bare arse greeting your eyeballs in the first thirty seconds. I am obsessed. Watch it immediately.

READ - Selling Sexy: Victoria’s Secret and the Unravelling of an American Icon by Lauren Sherman and Chantal Fernandez

Off the back of

Pandora Sykes

viral newsletter on the VS show, I have absolutely inhaled the book that she recommended in her piece, Selling Sexy. I always have spare audiobook credits hanging around so I cashed one in on this bad boy and it was well worth it. The book is very comprehensive and kind of unbelievable in its level of detail. The authors discuss the very initial conception of Victoria’s Secret way back in the 70’s, the history of lingerie and bra’s and the rise of the shopping mall, and takes us through Les Wexner’s entire life story, association with Jeffrey Epstein and how VS was built and it’s more recent fall from grace. One thing I’m glad to see shining through the book, is how much of a fucking creep Ed Razek comes across as. Ed was the top marketing dude for the company for years and finally met his comeuppance in 2020 after news broke of his long history of bullying and harassment. Stories about Gisele Bündchen and Tyra Banks etc are the cherry on top.

LISTEN - Anna Kendrick on Call Her Daddy

Anna Kendrick on the Call Her Daddy podcast was the most perfect dose of Twilight and Pitch Perfect nostalgia. If you, like me, moved through your adolescence and early adulthood with these iconic movie franchises than this episode is perfect for you. Kendrick is so sarcastic and dry in her humour, I can see why it throws some people but I loved her and her chat about her past abusive relationship and comments on the responsibility of women to spot the red flags in their own relationships makes for a very interesting listen.

Jilly Cooper’s newest fan,

Sian x