Jim and Pearl

“They’re called Jim and Pearl”, my son says with the firm certainty of a three-year-old.

I marvel at the confidence with which he just knows things while I dither, my mind a clamour of competing adult thoughts.

“They’re getting food for their children. Jim thinks they need to hurry up, but Pearl wants to look a bit more.”

“How do you know they are called Jim and Pearl?”

“That’s just what they are called.”

His sureness makes me feel safe. As if he is the parent, and I the wondering child. Even his questions are older and wiser than my own daily ruminations on what to make for dinner, whether I remembered to lock the back door, and when I’ll next find time to wash my hair.

“Mummy,” he asked me once in the car, “if only grown-ups have babies, where did the first baby come from?”

I garbled a half-made-up answer and said we’d look it up when we got home, knowing even then that I’d forget, and he wouldn’t, and later I’d feel guilty again for not being as good as he deserves me to be.

Today we’ve spread a rug on the grass and are eating a picnic of imaginary cake and water-coffees. He tells me all about Jim and Pearl and their three children, their home in the woods, their arguments with the neighbours, and how Pearl used to live somewhere else until she met Jim. I’ve closed my eyes and as he speaks, I can feel the lists and questions slipping away. I’m in the moment and I realise that that is all he ever really needs of me.

Motherhood often feels like a euphoric illness, a mania of guilt and love. At times like these though, sitting in the garden with my son, watching two magpies bobbing along the rooftops, it is pure joy.