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At six AM on Friday Morning, I woke up to a Jack Russel leaping over me to have a Poodle for breakfast. At six-o-one, the Jack Russell flew across the room and hit the wall. Sigh. My maternal instincts, literally, kicked in.

“I wonder what I would do with a baby waking me up?” I pondered and then went back to sleep, dreamt about a childless life with George Clooney and turned up fifteen minutes late to work.

 

At girl at the office is pregnant. No, not the sixteen-year-old, but seriously that is possibly just one bottle of Absolute away from happening. At lunch, thirty-plus-year-old BabyMamma, sits and eats an assortment of miss-matched stuff I can only assume is food. While she consumes her pickles and ice-cream, she highlights passages from “What To Expect When You’re Expecting,” a book, I swear, should be sold in the horror section.

 

“Do you want to know some things about pregnancy?” She interrupted as I was about to put my dogs on Ebay.

“If you can elaborate on ‘It would suck’, then sure.”

She began reading aloud, listing the things one cannot do while Knocked Up.

No alcohol, no smoking, no trampoline jumping.

“So how do circus freaks procreate?” I asked.

No mercury-laden foods, no roller-coasters, no cocaine.

What a way to make nine-months disguised as a whale even more torturous. Next she is going to tell me that the whole “The stork brought me” is a myth.

 

With my parents being away and half of their employees eating for two (including the none-pregnant ones. But, whatever), Family has been a frequent topic of conversation at work.  

Whenever talk turns to the sentence of family, I immediately share stories about my London Urban Family. Partly because it may be inappropriate to tell AM’s minions about the time she burnt her butt with a hot water bottle. But also because, my Urban Family mean the world to me.

 

So I engage with my family stories which are mostly filled with, ironically, anecdotes about alcohol, smoking, roller-coasters, fish and cocaine. And, if I am honest, I think it is only a matter of time before I start conversations with, “So Dani and I were on a trampoline…”

Everybody laughs at my tales from London and marvels at the unique and beautiful situation we had where four young adults bonded over the unknown and Big Bad World.

There was the time we were evicted and expected to leave in one day. I have a lot of suitcases and didn’t know Kerry well enough to demand that she lift things.

There was the three months we lasted with no hot water and a broken bath tub to bathe in. If you love someone when they smell, you know it is real.

There was the time Wayne and I spent the better half of a Sunday morning on the floor of a telephone box. And the better half of the afternoon in Hell.

There was the eye-opening weekends in Berlin and Oslo where we all found new people to love momentarily (even if Dani’s was a girl).

But above all, there was laughter at every moment and we loved each other.

 

I noticed that no one else’s Family Stories featured such camaraderie and honesty. And they certainly didn’t include such respect and, namely, laughter. My Urban Family is one reason why I so desperately want to return to the Mother Land. The shopping is the other.

 

However, when I do, I will become the child (Yes, the child) of a recent broken home. Many children, some through the presence of alcohol, cigarettes and drugs, have survived such realities. And I know that I will probably do the same. But this is the fantastic nature of families: The roller-coaster.

 

Post By Salium.