petite anglaise

I take out Tadpole’s carnet de santé, the notebook which was presented to me at the hospital when she was born, in which doctors record the reason for every visit and the fill in the vaccinations she’s received. The entries within are sparse, to say the least. This is partly because Tadpole has enjoyed remarkably good health since she was a baby, and partly because I don’t feel the need to have every sniffle or short-lived tummy bug checked out, given that, in my experience, doctors here have an alarming tendency to over-prescribe. Especially antibiotics.

‘Any serious illnesses or operations to report?’ the school doctor asks, flicking through the pages and tutting when she sees that the double page set aside for a reporting the results of a general check up, aged four, remains blank. At a guess, I’d say the doctor is in her fifties. She’ll only ever see us for this one compulsory visit and apparently thinks this eliminates the need for niceties. Her manner is brusque, her voice clipped as short as her greying hair.

‘Um, she had a fall and split open her lip about eighteen months ago,’ I reply. ‘We were in England at the time, so there’s no record in the book. It was glued together at casualty… It seems to have healed really well.’

‘They used glue?!’ The doctor raises her eyebrows ceilingwards. I toy with the idea of ingratiating myself to her by making a snide comment about the NHS, pandering to her obvious feelings of superiority over English doctors. ‘It was surgical glue,’ I murmur instead, just in case the doctor thinks the incompetent English might have used pritt stick. But the doctor is already busy running her biro down the list of vaccinations at the back of the book, and gives no sign that she’s even heard me.  ’I have a prescription for her second MMR jab,’ I interject, seeing her frowning at the blank space next to the family doctor’s pencilled-in reminder that a rappel would be due in 2007/8. I can hear defensiveness creeping into my voice. I’m starting to feel like I’m on trial; my ability to bring up a healthy, happy child called into question.

During the hearing test, my heart sinks into my shiny ballerina pumps. Tadpole, dwarfed by a huge pair of headphones, repeatedly giggles and repeats ‘je n’entends rien‘ when sounds are piped into her left ear. The doctor inspects further and finds a large blockage. ‘There’s a lump of hard matter obstructing her ear canal and seriously impairing her hearing,’ she tells me, sternly. ‘Has your daughter ever had a serious ear infection?’ I reply that she’s only had one, that I know of, and she was one at the time. The doctor looks doubtful, and asks me whether I often have to repeat things to my daughter in conversation.

‘Well… sometimes,’ I admit. ‘But you know how it is at this age… It’s hard to differentiate between whether she’s not listening or she can’t hear. Half the time she’s caught up in her own little imaginary world and just ignores me…’

‘Well, you’ll have to get that obstruction removed,’ says the doctor, ‘and test her hearing again afterwards. We need to know whether this impairment is caused by the blockage or due to some other defect.’ I nod, mutely.

When it comes to the eye test, I feel more confident. After all, how many mothers have been taking their daughters to see an optician on a regular basis since the age of 12 months? Mindful of the fact that I got my first pair of NHS standard issue glasses at the tender age of four, I’ve had Tadpole’s eyes tested several times. At the end of our last visit, we were told there was no need for any action, and we should return in not one, but two year’s time.

‘Well, my test says she’s 9.5 in the right eye and 7.5 in the left,’ says the doctor, curtly. ‘When did you last visit this optician you mention?’ I leaf through the carnet de santé and realise the optician must have kept her own records in parallel. There’s no record of these visits whatsoever. It’s as though she never even existed.

We leave the school doctor’s office with two referrals. One to see an ear, nose and throat specialist and the other to see an optician. I feel utterly dejected. I walked into the room feeling reasonably confident in my abilities as a mother and walked out, half an hour later, feeling like I was guilty of criminal neglect.

I accompany Tadpole back up to her classroom, pausing just outside the door to give her a fiercely tight hug and whisper something in her left ear.

‘Did you say something, mummy? I didn’t hear you?’ Tadpole looks puzzled. I repeat myself in her right ear and she smiles.

When I arrive at the Centre de Loisirs, cheeks flushed from another two-hour session at the gym (my anti-anxiety drug of choice), the children are outside in the cour de récréation.

It takes me a while to spot Tadpole. She’s not dangling upside down by her knees from the climbing ropes, a sight which set my heart fluttering last week. There is no sign of her queuing to go down the slide, either, and she doesn’t appear to be under the inverted V-shaped structure the kids all refer to as la cabane.

Then I spot her, sitting by the edge of the playground alone, back to the wall, hands cupping her chin. With her long, spindly arms and legs Tadpole is often mistaken for an older child. She’s inherited her father’s body shape, something I’m sure I’ll be intensely jealous of one day. At her age my knees were surrounded by little rolls of fat; the kindest adjective to describe my legs would likely have been ‘sturdy’.

As I stride towards her, I am waylaid by a black girl whose name escapes me, her hair separated into an elaborate patchwork of squares, each ending in a little knot, bound with a thin band of colour. ‘Elle a fait une bêtise,’ says the girl, gesturing towards my daughter. ‘Elle nous a montré ses fesses au milieu de la cour.’

‘Ah bon?’ I say, trying not to smirk as I imagine relaying this exchange to Mr Frog, later. I have no idea what could have possessed my daughter to lift her skirt, pull down her pants and moon in public, but the mental image it conjures is priceless.

‘Honey, why did you show your bottom to the other children?’ I say, in a neutral voice, dropping to my knees and ignoring the tale-teller, who stands to my left, her arms folded across her chest.

‘Because Edith did tell me to do it!’ says Tadpole, scowling. ‘And then I did get into trouble, and not her. It’s not fair.’

Tadpole stands her ground with me (and the other adults in her life) all the time, but I’ve noticed her behaviour in the presence of her peers is very different. She lives in a cruel world where a classmate may decide to be her best friend one day, her sworn enemy the next. ‘Dina didn’t want to sit with me today because I was wearing trousers and not a skirt,’ she once told me sadly on the way home from school. She refused to wear trousers after that. It went on for weeks. The shy, bespectacled four year old I once was can’t really blame Tadpole for seeking the approval of her peers. But she’s going to have to learn some boundaries. Because I’d rather not pick up the pieces when Edith dares her to jump off the top of the slide.

‘Well,’ I say, ‘maybe next time Edith or any of your other friends asks you to do something that you know is silly or naughty, you should think about saying no. There’s no friend worth getting yourself into trouble or hurting yourself for…’

‘I know that mummy,’ Tadpole says indignantly, pulling herself to her feet. ‘But I didn’t think showing my bottom was a bêtise. At home when I take my clothes off and wiggle my bare bottom you do always laugh.’

‘At home it’s different,’ I say firmly. ‘Outside there are different rules. It’s rude to show your bottom to a waiter in a restaurant, or to children in the playground. But I’m allowed to laugh when you show it to me, because I’m your mummy.’

Life lesson delivered, we head for home, where my rules are law.

‘I’m going to miss you while you’re staying with mamie and papy‘. I snuggle into Tadpole’s back, trying to inhale and exhale in time with my daughter, willing my runaway heartbeat to slow.

At lunchtime I’ll collect Tadpole from the Centre de Loisirs, leap into a taxi, and deliver her into the waiting arms of Mr Frog’s mother at Gare de Lyon. She’ll trundle off with her wheelie suitcase for the second leg of her school holidays.

The panic attack began, inexplicably, on Tuesday morning and shows no signs of abating. My body has slipped free of its moorings, drifted out of my control. It’s a law unto itself. My mind races in pointless circles, skittering from worry to worry. I know my sense of perspective is warped. I know, from experience, that it’s a temporary state. In a few day’s time, when I’m back on an even keel, when I can sleep through the night, I’ll have trouble even remembering how this felt.

‘Don’t worry mummy,’ Tadpole says earnestly. ‘You’ll be with [The Boy].’ She grabs my hand and plants a tiny kiss on the inside of my wrist.

‘And mummy, si tu t’ennuies, and you don’t want to go in your office…’

‘Go TO my office.’ I’m pedantic about prepositions, even at 7.45 in the morning, mid panic attack.

‘If you don’t go to your office,’ Tadpole continues, ‘then, you can play with my toys if you want. You can build some things with my pink Lego, or watch one of my DVDs.’

The back of her pyjamas, where my face is touching them, are now damp. Thankfully Tadpole doesn’t notice.

‘But mummy,’ she says in the bossy voice she usually reserves for her collection of soft toys when she’s pretending to be la Maîtresse. ‘Please don’t forget you have to tidy them up again afterwards.’

Below is the picture drawn by Tadpole over lunch in a café last weekend, using my favourite book signing pen and a rather grainy, textured napkin. It prompted a lively discussion with The Boy, during the course of which I discovered that not only do the French have two different words for owl, but that one has tufty, ear-like appendages (the hibou, pictured), while the other (the chouette) does not. Who knew?

I suspect the inspiration for Tadpole’s picture came from the fact we are currently reading about Plop, the Owl who was Afraid of the Dark, at bedtimes, which is bringing back all sorts of lovely memories of reading the same to my baby sister, many years ago.

But it’s the other, cartoon-like bird on Tadpole’s picture that amused me most. Very Roger Hargreaves, don’t you think?

‘We’re making a “k” for “kite”,’ says Tadpole, her voice a half-yawn. This would be true if her bed wasn’t an extra short lit évolutif from Ikea, which I really should lengthen one day soon, as Tadpole is tall and willowly. My (shorter, stumpier – do I sound jealous yet?) legs are currently bent at the knee, so even if she is lying in a sort of sideways ‘V’ shape, with her bottom nestling against my tummy, we’re making a special sort of K. With a tail.

I glance at the Miffy wall clock, which reads 7.43. Almost half-time.

My morning routine (on weekdays) goes something like this:

7.15: Alarm clock sounds. It’s actually the alarm on my landline phone, and whenever I’m in a shop or restaurant that uses the same ringtone, it sends icicles down my spine.

7.20: I press snooze.

7.25: I press snooze.

7.30: I press stop.

7.32: I get up, walk along the corridor, raise the blackout blinds in Tadpole’s room, then climb into her bed.

7.32 – 8.02: We snuggle. She tells me what she has been dreaming about. Or I guess. It can be one of four things: mermaids, princesses, fairies or unicorns, so the odds are not exactly stacked against me.

8.02 – 8.25: She eats cereal, we get dressed, I drink my first Cloonette of the day.

8.25: We run to school, slipping inside just before the doors close, at 8.30.

I realise that this may not seem like the best time management policy, but try as I might, I can’t bring myself to change any of the above.

‘So, what did you dream about today?’ I ask, my voice muffled by her curls, which are also tickling my nose.

‘I did dream that I was a princess, in a castle,’ Tadpole begins. So far, so predictable. ‘And you were the queen, mummy… and grandma was the maid…’ Chuckling, I make a mental note to tell my mother about her demotion to the servants’ quarters. I wonder whether granddad made an appearance in Tadpole’s dream, perhaps as the court jester, but wisely hold my tongue. We will be visiting England in a few weeks’ time and Tadpole can always be relied upon to repeat precisely those phrases she shouldn’t. (‘Mummy says I shouldn’t eat my spaghettis like that because I’m not a piggy like you.’ Ouch.)

But there is to be no mention of granddad. Instead, Tadpole swivels around so that she is facing me and we (almost) form a triangle. ‘In my dream,’ she says, looking at me intently, ‘my daddy was the king and he did live in the same castle as us.’

‘Did he now?’ I say, reflecting that although my daughter may not look much like me, we’ve both inherited the recessive subtlety gene. ‘But mummy already has a king, doesn’t she? And she can’t have two… I mean, I’ve never seen a castle with two kings in it, have you?’

Tadpole shakes her head, seemingly satisfied with my explanation. I glance back at the Miffy clock. It is only 7.53, but I decide to make breakfast early.

‘So,’ I enquire, ‘did the princess in your dream eat special K with chocolate pieces in for her breakfast?’