wash your language

  • All Posts
  • Publications
  • Services
  • Contact
  • Fairies at the Stone Circle
You are here: Home / Archives for Lice

The Lice of my Life

January 17, 2021 by EmmaP Leave a Comment

My life as a parent can be measured in lice. Those tiny creatures that never show their face but brazenly attach themselves to the hair shafts of humans – usually the smallest of humans – where they decide to chomp down and get cosy. And then, they start to make their own babies. You don’t know they’re there until they’ve really set up camp and it becomes more than just one battle to remove them from your child’s head: it’s a war.

Because my adult life has unfolded against the backdrop of moving between different countries I’ve gained some unique insights into how these little critters are treated– culturally and physically–in different countries. The one factor that stayed the same in each place–the control factor, if you like–was the scalps of my children, or, I’ll admit, in some cases my own.

I grew up in Dublin and I don’t remember ever having lice as a child. Nits we called them (though technically those are the eggs, but I don’t plan to go into any details here). I have no memories of being scratchy, of myself and my siblings having our heads being treated, washed and combed, or of classmates appearing red-faced into school with shorn heads.

My older sister (the unenthusiastic keeper of family lore) assures me that there would have been a “nit nurse” coming into school to keep on top of any infestations. I do remember a nurse coming once a year to checking that our backs were straight, pulling us one by one behind a temporary curtain set up in the school gym for the annual scoliosis check. Would she have had a surreptitious look at our scalps at the same time?

Did I have nits, was it bad? It’s one of those many banal-but-vital questions I never got to ask my mother before she passed away 7 years ago, but she had probably wiped any memories of it herself. I certainly would have, four children later.

So it wasn’t until I became a parent, in my 30s, that I was first confronted with the reality of nits, like so many other unexpected trials of parenthood no-one tells you about in the heady days of pregnancy excitement.

Viking Comb, Denmark

It started when the emails first came home from our kindergarten in Oslo–our 4-year-old needed to be checked for head lice (hodelus) and could all parents please take responsibility and do “the necessary”. I had a quiet word with my non-Norwegian mum friends, rather than embarrass myself more publicly by revealing my ignorance of such basic hygiene matters.

“Get the strongest mixture you can” they whispered. “Or better yet, stock up on the stuff they have at Boots when you’re next back in Ireland. You’ll save a fortune and they use some crazy chemicals that they don’t put in the stuff in Norway”. After getting the basics from the local apothek (pharmacy) and watching a few YouTube videos we figured it out, the next trip to Ireland not being scheduled for several months away, in the summer.

It didn’t take long for me to encourage my husband’s new-found talent for looking through a magnifying glass while deftly holding a fine-tooth comb through the hair of each child while they’d sit on the floor in front of Charlie and Lola or other show that would keep them still, the whitest of our towels over their shoulders, strong floor lamp pulled up close. All household members would be checked, though the ghostly itch would pass around the house whether your scalp was infested or not.

We got into the swing of it and soon began to take in our stride the regular missives from kindergarten, and then school. “Remember”, the school’s communication would offer as a palm leaf, “Head lice is a not a sign of uncleanliness. But just please remind your children to not swap hats and scarves with their classmates”. This being Norway both our kids were outdoors a lot, all year round, and went through many, many hats, scarves, balaclavas, toques, caps, and unattached hoods, some of which appeared in our house from unknown origins.

We made great efforts to not go down the road of mortification taken by the Russian mother who sent her son off our elder daughter’s class with bald head for half the year. No doubt, it toughened him up, but he must have gone through many hats of his own that winter.

In 2017, we moved from Oslo to Florence, in Italy, when our younger daughter was six–the lure of warm sun and more fresh air hoodwinking us into thinking juvenile parasites would be fewer. Instead, the Norwegian nits decided to move with us.

It was our serious bad luck to pick up a dose of lice during our last few days preparing to move out of our Oslo apartment–goodbye visits to friends or the recycling centre were delayed by our full family treatment and hair combing (using up all that precious Boots gear we had left). Over the course of a couple of intense summer weeks between emptying our house in Norway, flying to Italy, fitting in a short holiday, and trying to get a foot down on steady ground before the start of the school year in September, we battled the lice.

Etruscan comb, Italy 160AD

Still, one of the first new words I had to learn upon arriving in Italy was Pidocchi – head lice. It sure sounds nicer in Italian but I soon realised it was a word I’d be using a lot.

We must have appeared like a family of gorillas perched on our hotel beds on the pristine island of Elba that July, the golden beaches and outdoor patios calling to us like sirens. Desperate for something to just zap these critters away, whatever their nationality, I entered the mysterious realm of an Italian pharmacy (part homeopath, part pharmaceutical workshop) and was seriously reprimanded for thinking a bottle of something would help. “No,” said the surprisingly stern young woman in the white coat, “You must take this comb and use it all the time. It is the only thing that will work. Don’t waste your money on some other stuff. And don’t go near chemicals.” It was, of course, rather a beautiful comb, but I didn’t want to tell her I already had a few at home. 

Two weeks, and much scratching, later I had no qualms about asking a different pharmacist, this time in Florence, for the strongest damn stuff he had. “No, I don’t want the gentle herbal stuff, give me the kick-ass killer (with a photo of two smiling kids on the box) please”. A busy shop, it was handed over with no questions asked.

This stuff did the job. But a week or so later, the school term started and one of the first things the other mums were telling me–“oh yes there’s always lice here in Italy, the kids are always getting it”. I braced myself for more emails from school to look out for. And come they did, but we were veterans at this point and sitting outside in our garden under the olive trees to do the job with the conditioner, the comb and the white towel never seemed as painful as it did in Oslo.

Comb from northern Italy, 16th century (Bargello, Florence)

Then there were the Canadian lice, apparently. One summer, while visiting family in Alberta, our elder daughter was kicked out of a hairdresser in Edmonton for having nits in her hair. Which she definitely didn’t. Oh the shame of it. “I’m sorry madam but I have to stop”, said the Kurdish hairdresser, in a steely tone., swinging her own luscious dark hair, and rolling on a fresh pair of gloves to tidy up the area around the chair my unfortunate 11-year-old had been sitting in.

Luckily it was next door to a drug store where I hopped in to pick up whatever kind of kick-ass bottle Canadians use. When I got her home later I took a close look at the hair of both girls. I looked and looked, so did the husband (the real expert) and we saw nothing. At least we hadn’t paid for the partial-haircut, but I had left a guilt-tip.

Now that we live in Ireland full time, and can pop into Boots anytime we like, we’ve seen nary a nit on anyone’s heads. We must have become immune over the years and Irish nits just haven’t bothered to give our scalps a try, pity for us! The same messages still come home from school, now in English, and we check and monitor but we seem to have sloughed off the curse somewhere off the coast of Ireland.

I’m hanging on to our beautiful little nit combs just in case. And to remind us of our scratchy travels.

Nit comb

Filed Under: Family, Kids, Language Tagged With: Lice, Nits

A Blog and More

I write about language and the quirks of our family life in Dublin and previously in Italy and Norway. Read More…

RSS
Facebook
Facebook
fb-share-icon
Twitter
Visit Us
Tweet
Instagram

Instagram

Facebook

Cover for Wash Your Language
216
Wash Your Language

Wash Your Language

Musings on language and daily life in Ireland with memories from Canada, Italy and Norway

Wash Your Language

2 weeks ago

Wash Your Language
Here's one from the archives - back before I had a dog, I'd spend many waking hours looking at other peoples' dogs. Whatever the breed. ... See MoreSee Less

Besotted by Bassets - wash your language

washyourlanguage.com

It’s becoming a saga – this business of our family not yet having a dog. My elder daughter and I spend a lot of time discussing breeds and looking at other people’s dogs. Like this little fella ...
View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Wash Your Language

3 weeks ago

Wash Your Language
Ever feel like your day is full of cliches? Check out this piece written by my clever, fellow Dublin writer, Stephen Brady. -------At the crack of dawnI rose and shoneHad a breakfast of championsAnd blew out the stopsGrabbed the bull by the hornsAnd hit the streetTo meet and greetThe great unwashed;I wended my wayTo join the clubWaiting for the rubOf the greenTo set the sceneOf what might have been.I left no stone unturnedWhile the home fires burnedAnd the powers-that-beHad an air of mystery.But the empty vesselsMade an unholy noiseAnd the unstoppable forceMet the immoveable objectAnd the next thing I knewIt was an open-and-shut caseOf “we are where we are”where I was.At the eleventh hourIn my ivory towerI circled the wagonsGot my ducks in a row;I let sleeping dogs layWhere every dog has his dayAnd all the world was a stageWhen we were on the same pageI was flavour of the month‘Til I was yesterday’s newsMy talk was cheapBut I didn’t lose sleepThen it hit me like a ton of bricks!I’d been out of the loopLanded right in the soupAnd I was the last to knowI should have gone with the flow. At the end of the dayIt was a game of two halvesI was ahead by a noseBut got pipped at the postBy the Host with the MostAnd if turnabout is fair playYou could colour-me-amazedWhen the chickens I countedDidn’t come home to roost.For the grass it is greenerWhere the rolling stones gatherNo moss.(No loss.) Too many cooks spoiled my brothAnd a soft answer turn’d away WrathBut there were too many chiefsAnd not enough indians.Many hands made light workOf my best-laid plans(I’d had the whole world in my hands!)So I beat a retreatTo a threadbare roomWhere I quietly fumedTil the sun was under the yardarmAnd the daydodgilydamnablydone.-----Also available on the Inkslingers blog here. inkies.ie/record-of-a-day-rendered-entirely-in-cliches-by-stephen-brady/ ... See MoreSee Less

Photo

View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Wash Your Language

3 months ago

Wash Your Language
Here's a (true) story I wrote and told at an event in Belfast last year. It's the tale of the accordion that travelled many places with me and which I decided to pass on to someone who would need it more than me. The nice folk at BBC Radio Ulster recorded some of the stories from the event and you can hear it here (the first one). www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0fr7t46 And if you have an instrument to donate in Ireland you can find the Gift of Music to Ukrainians page here. www.facebook.com/groups/5018344234885700with Tenx9washyourlanguage.com/the-accordions-tale/ ... See MoreSee Less

The Accordion's Tale - wash your language

washyourlanguage.com

I wrote down this tale of an accordion looking for a new life, and I told it at a storytelling event in Belfast last November – the wonderful Tenx9 monthly event. The theme was Small World, and so t...
View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Wash Your Language

4 months ago

Wash Your Language
Amazing! ... See MoreSee Less

South African firefighters sing and dance after arriving at Edmonton's airport

www.youtube.com

More than 200 South African firefighters deployed to help combat Canada's wildfires performed a dance at Edmonton's airport.Subscribe to CTV News to watch mo...

Video

View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Wash Your Language

6 months ago

Wash Your Language
I've had to clear every last thing out of my parents' house, the one they lived in (and we grew up in) from the mid-60s on. 2 weeks ago it passed along to a new family and it's starting a new life.The deepest reaches of the attic were cleared and I rediscovered some treasures from my life. Starting with this book.I bought it on my first ever trip to Oxford when I was about 19 - took a day trip with a friend while staying with my sister over the summer. I found this gorgeous 1931 edition in a stand at the old covered market, which I think is still there. We also picked up a sandwich which we brought to eat on a bench in Christchurch meadow. The book was inside a paper bag with some postcards I'd just written.An hour later, on the bus, I realised the bag was still on the bench and I'd never see it again. If the police found it they might blow it up, those being the days when every package or bag was a potential threat.Turns out the police did find it, but instead of destroying it they looked inside, saw one of the postcards addressed to Mum & Dad Prunty with our home address, and they posted the whole lot back in a padded envelope. With a compliments slip from Thames Valley Police.How could I have known that in the same city 4 years later I'd meet my husband? And that 30 years later I still wouldn't have read the book? ... See MoreSee Less

Photo

View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Wash my language?

Språkvask is the Norwegian word for proofing text. Literally it means “language wash”; a more poetic way of saying it!

Blog comments

  • Donna on The Wall of Pink Covid Hearts
  • EmmaP on Tunes in an Empty Pub
  • Cathy Hogan on Tunes in an Empty Pub

© 2023 · Handcrafted with d by 2 Pups Design Co.