Express Yourself

Week Twenty-three: Sunday 4 – Saturday 10 March

I’ve been banging my drum a lot recently. Calm down euphemists, calm down. I joined a Samba drumming group about six weeks ago; every Friday night, for an hour-and-a-half, I go along and bang a drum.

It is a great thing to do. Not only am I learning how to drum and about drumming, something I have wanted to do since I lived in Zimbabwe and became mesmerized by the trance inducing drumming I experienced there, I am expressing myself.

All the thoughts, worries, concerns, tensions and pensiveness that I carry around with me all week dissipate for that one and a half hours as I bang away to the rhythms of the Samba band.

I really feel liberated while I bash away, and I get an opportunity to express myself. It’s such an important thing to do – express yourself.

Last week the Samba band even had a gig. Thursday 8 March was International Women's Day; as we practice at the Falmouth Women's Institute we offered to lead the procession that marched through Falmouth High Street. It poured with rain for the whole of the march, but the marchers got a lot of public support as we followed the banner clad women raising awareness about the many inequalities that still beset women all over the world in the 21st Century. All about expression, and expressing yourself.

Children, of course, are far more adept at expressing themselves than us adults, bashed and moulded into societal constraints as we are.

Take my five year old nephew, who comes to visit us once a week with his dad, my brother. Last week, after dinner, he (my nephew, not brother) decided to strip off to his underpants and run around the house hollering and whooping like an extra from a Mel Gibson movie.

Now, in certain circumstances such behaviour would cause embarrassment and discomfort to the adults present; not in my house, where such expressiveness is encouraged and treated with impressed pleasure. Actually, the person who seemed most put out about my nephew’s strip tease, near nakedness and hollering was my three year old daughter.

Which is kind of odd, as she loves nothing more than running around the house naked after she has had a bath screeching and laughing. Her favourite activity after a bath, and whilst still naked, is to get on our bed and jump up and down as if her life depended on it. Like a dog retrieving a ball or stick, she seems content to carry on jumping, then loosing her balance and falling, until she collapses with exhaustion. Even when she bangs her head on the wall, or falls off the bed, she isn’t perturbed for long and is soon back, big smile on her face, jumping away.

And she finds more subtle ways to express herself too. Last Saturday my wife and I went out for a meal, thanks to the kindness of one of my course mates who offered to baby-sit, or ‘big girl sit’ as our daughter insisted it be called.

Now, it was a bit of an act of expression on my wife and my part as we haven’t been out for a meal since our daughter was born. We felt quite excited about having a totally trustworthy person in the house looking after our daughter while we went on a ‘date’. And a lovely night we had too; pre-dinner drinks, and then to the local steak house for a couple of juicy slabs of red meat. An African’s dream; I don’t think such a thing as a vegetarian exists in Africa! And I love my beef too – euphemists, relax.

All had gone well with the big girl sitting when we returned; Jenny (my course mate) merely mentioning that she didn’t know what pyjamas our daughter was to wear and, given she seemed very sure of herself, she let her pick her own night wear.

When our daughter came through to our room in the morning she was dressed in the most eclectic mix of clothing, never mind pyjamas, that we have ever seen her in! A pair of purple ankle socks, three quarter length floral trousers that she hasn’t even worn yet as we have been waiting for summer, and a stripy vest top. She looked great, even though, while it doesn’t really matter what she wears to bed so long as she has something warm and comfortable on, her outfit bore no resemblance to her normal pyjamas.

Once again, I learn more from my daughter than I can ever hope to teach her. I just wish I was able to lock into that expressive, free will that a child comes into the world with for more than one-and-a-half hours a week.