The 90s picture of Stella with Linda which Mary took is one of my favourites. Touching and sad at the same time; you can see Linda's illness leaving its signs on her, and at the same time, it's such a lovely mother-daughter photo.
LOL, so he is. Could have made being a Kindergärtner his second job. I loved the anecdote in Pattie's memoirs about how when her little brothers were incredibly bored during her wedding to George (I can relate - as a child, I found weddings and adult birthday parties completely boring!), Paul spotted that and kept them occupied by playing with them. Which ended in one of their arrows plonked into his car (the Aston Martin from your pic spam, perhaps?), but what the hell.:)
On a more serious note, what Paul said to Chrissie Hynde about children was very striking:
CH: Did you ever take a vacation together without the kids? Most couples, they want to get away and have a little second honeymoon. Did you ever go off on your own without them?
PM: No, we even took Heather on our honeymoon. People are little surprised at that. We've met people who say, "Oh I like children, but I only like them when they get to be about three years old, when you can talk to them." Linda and I would look at each other and say, '"But don't you like them when they're little babies?" And they just gasp a little bit. I think it was just always such a mystery to us. I [come] from a very strong Liverpool family. And when Linda and I met, she was a single parent happening to get on with her life. So we just kind of pulled it together between us and just said, "Well you know, we'll just do it in a certain way." And we stuck to it. Just kept it very simple. We looked at issues and saw what seemed to be our instinctive reactions. Sometimes it can be against the grain. People will say, "No, you mustn't do that or no you can't do that." We said, "Well we're gonna do that and we hope we're right." And I think using our instincts like that, instead of what other people told us, was good because no one can tell you how to raise your kids. They are your kids. And this idea that babies are only good when they're three -- when James was really little I remember sitting on the sofa with him. He's just a baby and he was sitting with me like we were grown-ups and he was just sort of gaggling and going, "Ah goo, ah goo." So I just said, "Ah goo." Like agreeing with him in his language. He looked at me like, "You speak this language?" We're sitting there for hours just "ah goo." I just mimicked him because kids mimic their parents -- but its actually a lot of fun the other way around. Then I said, "Pa, Pa, Pa," and he'd just go, "Um, hum, Pa, Pa, Pa." They see you like using their words and it's oddly so exciting. From the second they were born to this day, I think you learn so much off kids -- if you're willing to be open and you don't close your mind and say, "Oh, I know how to be a parent." I always said to Lin that being a parent is the greatest ad-lib you're ever involved in. You make it up as you go along, you have no idea what the script is, you have no idea how these kids are going to turn out but if you're just with them a bit and listen to them a bit and let them talk to you instead of talking to them all the time, then natural things occur a bit more easily. We don't give them anything near the amount of credit they should have. They teach you in the end. This beautiful, innocent wisdom tends to erode as we get older, but they bring it back -- which is magic.
Also: great pic spam! One more for you:
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On a more serious note, what Paul said to Chrissie Hynde about children was very striking:
CH: Did you ever take a vacation together without the kids? Most couples, they want to get away and have a little second honeymoon. Did you ever go off on your own without them?
PM: No, we even took Heather on our honeymoon. People are little surprised at that. We've met people who say, "Oh I like children, but I only like them when they get to be about three years old, when you can talk to them." Linda and I would look at each other and say, '"But don't you like them when they're little babies?" And they just gasp a little bit. I think it was just always such a mystery to us. I [come] from a very strong Liverpool family. And when Linda and I met, she was a single parent happening to get on with her life. So we just kind of pulled it together between us and just said, "Well you know, we'll just do it in a certain way." And we stuck to it. Just kept it very simple. We looked at issues and saw what seemed to be our instinctive reactions. Sometimes it can be against the grain. People will say, "No, you mustn't do that or no you can't do that." We said, "Well we're gonna do that and we hope we're right." And I think using our instincts like that, instead of what other people told us, was good because no one can tell you how to raise your kids. They are your kids. And this idea that babies are only good when they're three -- when James was really little I remember sitting on the sofa with him. He's just a baby and he was sitting with me like we were grown-ups and he was just sort of gaggling and going, "Ah goo, ah goo." So I just said, "Ah goo." Like agreeing with him in his language. He looked at me like, "You speak this language?" We're sitting there for hours just "ah goo." I just mimicked him because kids mimic their parents -- but its actually a lot of fun the other way around. Then I said, "Pa, Pa, Pa," and he'd just go, "Um, hum, Pa, Pa, Pa." They see you like using their words and it's oddly so exciting. From the second they were born to this day, I think you learn so much off kids -- if you're willing to be open and you don't close your mind and say, "Oh, I know how to be a parent." I always said to Lin that being a parent is the greatest ad-lib you're ever involved in. You make it up as you go along, you have no idea what the script is, you have no idea how these kids are going to turn out but if you're just with them a bit and listen to them a bit and let them talk to you instead of talking to them all the time, then natural things occur a bit more easily. We don't give them anything near the amount of credit they should have. They teach you in the end. This beautiful, innocent wisdom tends to erode as we get older, but they bring it back -- which is magic.
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