Songs For Your Mother Gordon MacMillan (good books for 7th graders .txt) 📖

orange juice from the fridge into a plastic cup and add some water. I add a straw and hand it to Luke at the table. I spoon coffee into the cafetière and pour on the boiling water. I open the cabinet and take out the chocolate wheat hoops I bought yesterday purely on the basis that it was the one that Luke pointed at, said was his favourite as it had monkeys on it and he loves monkeys. Now, as I look at the box, I start to wonder how wise a choice chocolate cereal was. I suppose that is what happens when you put a five-year-old in charge of grocery shopping.

‘You want these?’ I ask, and Luke nods as he sucks on the straw that hasn’t left his mouth since he put it in, as if it functions as a child life-support package and under no account must he remove it. I would normally only have coffee, but figure I will road test Choco Monkey Wheat and vet for future consumption.

With oat milk added, it does look more like chocolate than anything else, although to be fair the packet does say it is fortified with vitamins and iron. I try not to think about it too deeply and operate on the assumption that not everything advertising says can be a total lie. Maybe only fifty per cent, and that means there might be some small, unspecified degree of goodness in the bowl.

‘Do you like choco milk?’ Luke asks.

‘I love choco milk at practically any time of day,’ I say.

‘Me too,’ Luke says.

After breakfast I show Luke how to work the shower, which we establish comes down faster than he is used to and practically blows him away at first until he works out where to stand. Once he is out and covered in a towel, Luke needs help dressing, although he pretty much has it covered. This is a job Lauren would have done, and I imagine that she was good at it, and each day turned him out looking like a pretty cool kid.

I go through things and pull out khaki trousers, a light-blue t-shirt and a blue hooded top, which are ideal for the gusty autumn English weather. Looking at all of his clothes, I’m amazed that he came with clothes for all seasons. I also know that before too long, I will have to tackle buying clothes for Luke. I am so terrible at shopping. One bridge at a time, and I push this thought aside.

I sit him down in front of the TV, and we surf through the children’s channels until we find SpongeBob SquarePants, which meets with his approval, while I get ready for the arrival of my mother. I do a quick tidy of the flat, do the dishes and make sure that it will pass inspection.

Before then there’s time to head down to the shop for a few more supplies. Outside, as we walk, the mostly bare trees that line the street are shaking loose the last of their crisp leaves. As they float through the air, Luke is chasing and trying to catch them before they touch the ground. Every time he grabs one, he turns to me and shows me the leaf in his hand and stuffs it in his pocket.

‘Good job,’ I say. ‘That’s another leaf saved.’

As Luke continues to chase leaves, I turn and glance over my shoulder, and look at autumn; look at how the golden-brown colours are changing; look at how they are turning and how it is all turning; turning as I stand still, before I too turn and walk on after Luke, who is trying to catch it all.

I’m watching Luke like a hawk, mindful of yesterday’s supermarket experience, when usually at this stage of the day I am not watching anything at all and likely to be walking down the street staring at my phone. And if this were two weeks ago, I would also be walking straight into a tree. That was an encounter where I was lucky to remain on my feet. This begs the question: how do people do it? By people, I mean real parents, people with years of acquired experience who slogged through the sleepless nights and nappy trenches and the terrible twos. How do they switch from not watching anything to having to watch a small child all of the time; and regularly find cause to say things such as ‘take that out of your mouth’ or ‘don’t run off’. And, of course, the classic: ‘Has anyone seen my child?’

At the shop, I pick up a copy of the Sunday Times and a small carrot cake, which I know my mother will like. I also buy a yellow-and-black-patterned plastic football that Luke spots and we have to buy because ‘I’m really good at soccer.’

Back in the flat, I make fresh coffee as Luke has gravitated to watching something called Paw Patrol, which is a show perfectly summed up by its title.

By the time I return, Luke is dribbling the football around the sitting room and showing off his soccer skills. I sit down and, with some hot black coffee in hand, start to read the front page of the Sunday Times.

‘Don’t you want to watch Paw Patrol?’ I ask.

Luke shakes his head. Maybe that’s a good thing. I worry that I’ve already exposed him to a long loop of screen time and not much else since he arrived in England.

‘I want to play soccer,’ Luke says. ‘You could be in goal. I’m a striker. I score lots of goals. Will you play with me?’

Luke kicks the ball lightly towards me and I give the matter some serious thought. The room is far too small to play football in, anyone would tell you that. Of course, my response is ‘alright then’. I point to the edges of the couch and say they are the goal posts. Each goal is a point, and each save is a point for