Grin and Tonic

I have spent most of my sandwich years being pushed and pulled between one need and another, thrust about between joy and grief. Pushed and pulled between the needs of my children, career and parents. The joy of a baby and the grief of losing my mum.  And once again, two aspects of my life grab a hand and pull in opposite directions.

I literally could not be going through two more opposing experiences right now.

One is my dream come true, and one is my worst nightmare.

I have a lived in dream-like state for the last year as I gestated a book, knowing each week another essential part of it was developing. (My favourite words in life were being able to say “This week I am growing eyelashes on my baby”). And so there were weeks I could say  “this week I am actually constructing what looks a lot like a chapter. “  It grew and grew and grew and until finally, it had a cover, and a launch date. But still it was a bit of a dream.  Only me and my publisher knew it. It could still not be real. But then a package arrived, and there it was, my actual book. With chapters, and pages and everything.

And now, I am literally living beyond my dreams, as journalists are reading it and interviewing me, and I am being asked on radio and TV and to signings and all such exciting things and it feels like I’ve landed on the moon.

On the other hand, my mum is at the end stage of her life.  I’m not sure if I’ll be hosting a book launch or a funeral in the next couple of weeks.

Mum is home – there is nothing more they can do in hospital. I don’t know how long it will take  for her to slowly, softly fade.  However long it takes we will be there.

As I wrote my book, about my mum, and all we have gone through during these sandwich years , I realised a very important thing.  When everything else is stripped away, the only thing that is left, is the only thing that matters; love. She doesn’t know my name, and she can’t remember all the amazing things we have done, but when she sees me, she knows she loves me.  When her best friends of 50 years come to see her, she can’t say their names, but she knows that she loves them.   She can’t share memories or plans with my dad, but when she looks at him, it’s clear she loves him.

And despite all the pain and my dad, brother and I feel, we are all calm. I know now that letting her go is what she needs. And I am no longer afraid. Because she has taught me the most important lesson in life. When everything else is gone, you are left with the love.

And so I ride these two waves – one so high, and one so low, but both of them crashing to shore, me tottering to keep my balance, not really knowing how I’ll land.

I went back down to Dublin for a day and when I arrived back this morning, for the first time in my life, my mum didn’t smile when she saw me.  She is too tired to even do that now.

I take calls and answer emails and say yes to events, and meetings and photoshoots and interviews because I don’t know when I’ll have to say no.

I will ride these waves and let them both take me to the places they need to take me.  Because I have always ridden the wave she made for me, a wave made of love. She has held my hand all my life, and always smiled when she saw me.  Now she can no longer do that I will hold her hand until the end of her life and smile for us both.

I’ve come to realise that good times are measured in memories, and bad times are measured in time.

Of the good times, we say, “do you remember when we did that?” and laugh at the memory, pulling it into the present, keeping it safe and close.

Of the bad times, we say, “it’s a year since that happened,” and sigh at the diminishing pain, relegating it into the past, keeping it safely at bay.

One is about moving forward, and one is about moving on.

It’s a year since I found out I no longer had a marriage.

A year full of so many emotions and experiences it feel like 20. But the satisfaction of being able to say “it’s a year since that happened” makes me feel like a survivor. The further it is relegated into the past, the safer I will be.  It was the second toughest year of my life. The first was the year following my mum’s stroke when my sandwich years began, caught in a perfect storm of care, looking after my mum and my children.  Both years have threatened to destroy me with their assault.  But I am a survivor of both, and although I will live with the legacy for ever of both of those years, wounded and war-torn, I am stronger and wiser.

And as if to parody this bad time anniversary, my mum is back in hospital, just as she was a year ago.  For the last year she has slowly stopped eating, and has taken less and less interest in living. Perhaps she has been making one final choice for herself, when the stroke robbed her of all other choices.

I have spent a lot of this week by her bedside, reassuring her and letting her know she is loved.  The doctor has told us she may not recover this time from an infection. We’ll know soon whether her body will respond to the antibiotics. If it does, we all sigh with relief, and continue to watch her wish it was over. If it doesn’t then, there is nothing more they will do (or would we want them to as it would involve lots of distressing and painful interventions), so the priority will be to make her comfortable and be with her until the end.

The child in me wants her to stay with me, but the daughter in me wants her to go.   I have had five years to come to terms with my grief and loss, but she has paid a heavy price.  I thought I was ready for this, but I don’t think we ever can be.

She may pull round, she may respond. But we know that we won’t force her to eat, or subject her to painful procedures.  Our only priority now is to make her comfortable, and loved, and to respect her wishes.

And as I have learned  more than anything in these sandwich years of my life, love is not a line, but a circle.  Her love has come round full circle. Yesterday I sat beside her as she lay in an awful geriatric ward of people who looked like zombies, dressed in some man’s pyjamas because she had been sick so much she had had no clean nightdresses left.

I held her hand, and stroked her hair and tried to comfort her. So I sang her the song she had sung to me as a child. The song she had sung my babies. The song she had taught me to sing to my children.  Two of my daughters still insist on it every night.  A you’re adorable.  So I sang the song and it was my mum, myself and my girls all wrapped up together in memory and melody, the good times always remembered and moving us on. Love is a circle, and someday I will sing that song to my grandchildren, and my mum’s voice will be carried on the notes.

My marriage is over, and I might be losing my mum. The good memories will last long after the bad times are relegated to a distant past.  As the excitement of my book launch approaches and I live an experience I always dreamt of, my heart soars and dips in grief and joy. But that is the other thing I have learned in my sandwich years. That life is never about one thing. It is always a mix of good and bad, highs and lows, joy and grief.  But always, if we’re lucky, a circle of love.

This song is for you, mum.  

It’s new year and I should be make resolutions to improve me, my life, my temper, my body, my mind, my parenting, my daughtering, my writing, my working, my balance.  Blah, blah, blah.

Well, I am resolutely against resolutions. Especially ones that imply I should give up on my dark chocolate indulgence or the sounds of tonic dancing in a gin glass, my pre-frozen lemon slice bouncing off the sides.  Life is hard sometimes.  I need my chocolate and my gin. That’s a resolution I can stick to.  But I will admit I do have to move a bit more than I have done for the last few weeks. Like actually exercise. 

So as I preen and pull, pluck and prim myself into shape to face the new year, I get asked to join a pilates class for the over-50’s.  

I am 45. 

Now I think I’m doing ok for my age.  I’ve got my mother’s genes, but thankfully I no longer wear her jeans. (When I became  a mother, I thought I should look like one. Sadly I didn’t  choose Harper and Brooklyn’s mum and I went through a worrying habit of looking like my mum).  Thankfully I got over that, and I feel actually, that at reaching my mid-point I have found my best point. 

Yes, I have reached that half-way point (I will not say middle aged) – if I drink enough spinach and mango Nutribullets I can maybe live to 90) so I have reached the mid-point. Not middle aged. Mid way. Half way. It just means I’ve spent my first half in training and now I get to graduate, and live with the knowledge that I know a lot but have more to learn (as opposed to most of the first half of my life were I lived with the knowledge I knew everything, only to learn over and over again, I knew very little indeed.)

Anyway, I am 45 and feeling like the starting pistol on my life has just been fired. I am raring to go! And I get asked to join a 50+ pilates class. Admittedly it is my best friend’s class and she wanted to trial out her new routine… and (yes, I’m still making excuses) this is the only class that I can fit into my schedule. But Really!!  50+  !!!  (believe me there are more exclamation marks being printed in my head).

It was a shock to me when I reached 40.  I’m still coming to terms with becoming a single parent. and now it was a shock to realise I am (too) fast approaching another momentous stage – 50.  It took a decade of my 30’s to prepare for being 40, and now I feel I am only settling into that. Then, for the very first time I was forced to think about the next impending milestone. Next month I turn 46…. closer to the next milestone than the last.

BUT!

My mind still thinks I’m 25, My ears still prefer 80’s music, my boobs still think they are 35 and my inner child is always 5 and loves a good tantrum.   So this is rather perplexing to me.

As I have aged, I really feel I have started to look better the last 5 years. All those teenage trying offending fashions years , all that ‘who am I?’ look changes, all those fat and frumpy ‘I’m just in pregnancy, breast-feeding, exhausted’ mode. All that baby birthing is over, and I have found an inner joy with my look that no longer requires me to be trendy, but I’m not quite at the comfortable shoes stage yet.  I make an effort (it takes more effort) but it’s more for me than anyone else.

I take real issue with the idea that women over 40 start to become invisible in society.  I’ve just reached the stage when I finally like the way I look and have found my voice.  I WANT TO BE SEEN AND HEARD PLEASE!

I have reached the mid-point of my life, but I do not want it to mean I am middle-of-the-road, or middle-aged, or tottering on middle ground. I want to voice my opinions, be fearless and frightening, and fun and fiesty.

So the starter pistol has fired on the second half of my life and I’m starting out again – not in the middle of anything.  Instead I’m at the start of everything. I’m starting my new life as a single woman (ok that’s the first time I’ve said that, how weird). But this time my mum isn’t dressing me in homemade, second hand clothes, velvet jackets and weaved skirts. This time I’m not wearing the broke and brittle clothes of student poverty. This time I’m not dressing up as a mummy. This time I am dressing how I feel.   This time I am starting with a lifetime of fashion fiascos behind me, and a realisation that my skin is as important as my hair – treat it well. I preen, I prim, and I trim. I look after myself because I want to look good and feel good.  I will run to the sun now to keep fit and healthy, instead of running to the hills in desperation. This time, the only real make up I need is my own (although I’m not giving up mascara.)

Ok, something quite weird has happened – I just love the serendipedness of the universe. As I write this blog my word for the day has pinged on my phone (yes, nerdy and proud to have the Dictionary app) and today’s word is BEATITUDE.  I have never heard it before. It means:

Beatitude.

Definition: (noun) Supreme blessedness or happiness; a condition of supreme well-being and good spirits.

Synonyms: blessedness, beatification (which means to exalt; glorify)

So I will embrace and exhalt and glorify the next half of my life. It will not be perfect, it will be well worn and frayed. Like me.  But it will fit. I will have terrible days and amazing days, and plenty of dull and drudgery-driven days. I will have highs and lows and lots of flat lines. But it will all be a blessing. 

And so, with a head held high (and a specially made T-shirt saying ‘I AM ONLY 45!’) I will head off to the 50+ pilates class and be proud to be in such company.  These are women that have lived.   Oh, and to make us all feel better, my friend has renamed the class – Fit for Life.  I feel like I finally am. 

It is New Year’s Day and I have swept away the fallen pine needles and dragged the dead tree outside. (I like to put it up early, to squeeze as much tinsel and glittering lights into December as possible but then I always take it down as soon as christmas is over. It reminds me of dirty dishes – the party is over, time to clear up.)  And so as I throw the dusty green needles on the fire, I reflect on the year. This either makes me laugh ludicrously or reach for the Gin bottle (thanks friends and family for your 3 lovely bottles by the way… happy new year indeed!).

Today is the start of a new year, and the start of a new life for me. I have just hoovered up (more pine needles) and washed the floors – I’m getting my house in order, as they say. But not because I have died. Because I am going to start living again.  This year my marriage ended, and we made palliative care decisions around my mum.  So much is ending. But so much is beginning. My new life as a single parent, raising my girls to be amazing women. My new life as an author.

This year has been the worst and the best. It has been full of loss and gain, ends and beginnings. and most of all it’s been full of learning.  I became a single parent and an author. But I remained a daughter and a mother caring for the two ends of my love life – my children and my parents.  And they cared for me.

So as I brush the pine needles from my hair, and brush my self down from the rubble of last year, I think about what I have learned.   

Some of those things admittedly I had no desire to learn…. like the fact that sometimes I can’t fix things, and my children just have to learn to experience pain. Like the fact I can protect them from sugar overload and screen overdose brain freeze, but I can’t stop Life throwing boulders at them. I can only teach them how to emerge from the rubble and help them pick the dirt out of their hair.

I learned I could fulfil dreams and write a book. I learned that I had had no idea what hard work really was until this year.  I learned to have faith in myself.

I learned how to get rid of the glass recycling (this took me 7 months), and how to put ink in the printer, and how to figure out buying a Christmas tree and getting it up by myself (it fell on me three times but I did it. I’m still picking pine needles out of my teeth, but I did it.) I learned that I can still throw a Christmas party and that even though it had only half the people that have come every year, it was the half that love me, and that’s what counted. I learned my two eldest girls are old enough to waitress and take coats and that although I have a huge burden, I can delegate.

I learned that raising three girls alone has an inhuman amount of housework – all those dishwashes to be emptied, all that food to buy, prepare, serve, clear up by myself. Endless, endless, endless clothes washes (and then hanging them to dry, taking off the dryer, sorting into piles, piles by bedroom doors, then sorting into drawers). I am seriously considering just buying 21 pairs of socks a week and chucking them out after every wear (that’s 42 socks to be washed, hung, carried upstairs, sorted, paired, put away – so why do i have 3759 odd socks????).

I learned that being lonely alone is hard but it is better than being lonely with someone. I learned that I get overwhelmed sometimes and my inner child has an outer tantrum and I must learn to keep her nourished, because there are enough tantrums in this house as it is. I have learned that my amazing girls still amaze, and despite everything they are going through, they are bright, funny, articulate and curious. (I have also learned that despite this, they still and probably never will figure out how to put their dirty knickers in the laundry basket.)

And I learned by absorbing the kindness of friends and family, to be finally kind to myself.

I have learned to lean in to the challenges that Life gives me, and to lean back from the need to do it all. I have learned to care for myself, and not worry so much, and to wash the floor when I need it as a therapeutic thinking exercise, but to leave it when I have more important things to do. And that sometimes those important things to do includes sitting on the sofa and eating chocolate while singing along to the box set of Nashville.

I have put away the glittering baubles and swept away the pine needles. And so too in my life, I will lift the treasures and gems from the rubble of this year and sweep away the unwanted debris.

I had dreaded Christmas day.  All year, as we dismantled our family, that day which represents the beacon of family days loomed over me.  But I was determined that the girls have the family Christmas they deserved so their dad was here and we had a family day. And it was painful to be reminded of all that I have lost. But actually all that dread was misplaced. Because although the pain was there, and the loss was felt, what shone through on the day was what I still retained.

The last time my family were all together for Christmas was five years ago, just 3 months after Mum’s stroke.  We were all shell shocked and traumatised as my mum dribbled at the table and couldn’t speak. This year we are all together and the glittering baubles reflected our laughing faces. Mum’s bed was wheeled around the house so that she could be a part of everything.  It will never be as good as it was before her stroke, but it is still amazing to be together. My brother and his family came to support me this year and they arrived laden with love and wine. 

And as the day progressed, I realised all the bad stuff was gone.  The pain of saying goodbye to a marriage is still better than the pain of being in an unhappy one. But the pleasure of being part of a good family is better than anything else, even if that family has had to adapt.

In my book that is coming out in February, I write a lot about this family, and despite dreading Christmas day, I spent it in the best possible way. With my old life and and new life merged, but seeing that the oldest is the strongest, an the new one I am creating with the girls is bursting with potential. I laughed and I cried. I was sad and I was happy. I have lost but I am loved.  The biggest lesson I have learned this year was wrapped up like a present on Christmas day; life is joy and grief, it is good and bad, it is light and dark, it is love and hurt, it is pain and gain.  They walk side by side, and I have finally learned to embrace them all.

Last year was the worst and the best, but it is the best that will carry me forward.… Last year was about surviving. This year is about thriving. Watch this space.

It’s done!!   Last t crossed and i dotted. I have a book. I have a cover. I have a book launch date.  I have a desperate urge to both drink a bottle of gin and go to bed for a month. I may do both.

This year took a lot from me, but it gave me a lot too.  While this year threw away a life that I knew, it taught me a way of life that I never knew I could live.

It also taught me that you never know how things will evolve.

Twenty years ago I met two people in the wild jungles of Borneo… I thought one was merely a friend or someone I would know generally, and one was someone I thought would be a soulmate.

Ten years ago I started a blog. I barely knew what a blog was but I was home with a wobbler and a baby having given up my career, and I needed a space to express myself.  And also to just ask basic questions such as Really? Is this much poo normal? and How can a two year old seem to know the code to my internal nuclear launch keypad?

The blog was called Mummy Mania and I wrote about the wonder (of them) (and my colour coding planning skills) and the withering (of me) (and the looks my child was capable of giving me), of the joy and enchantment, and the stress and the frustration. And I found a community of women from around the world who followed my course through those unchartered waters, and whose own writings comforted me.  Many of them became friends, and we share with each other still.

Now, of those two people I met in Borneo 20 years ago, time has told a different story.  The one I thought was my soulmate and married is slowly reducing to someone I just know, while the other has emerged from the depths of our friendship to being the best soul-mate mate possible (she’s like the best gift ever – always comes with a free bottle of wine).

Those relationships evolved and transformed, just as my life did.

And that blog that I started in the chaos of my children’s playroom, also evolved with my life. It eventually became the Sandwich Years after my mum’s stroke and I wrote about the issues of caring for small children and sick parents, and a place to explore my love for them both.   And now, finally, extraordinarily, that blog has evolved into a book.   Very little of the blog is in the book, but it was it’s creator, it’s muse. 

And here it is….. Daughter, Mother, Me.  This is the blurb…

In life women can have many labels: daughter, single girl, wife, career woman, mother. I had worn them all and, while life was hectic, I was the one in control. Then four days after the birth of my third daughter, my mum had a massive stroke and, just like that, everything changed.

Over the time to come – in what I call the sandwich years – I found myself both grieving for and caring for my beloved mum, supporting my dad, raising my three young daughters, while trying to get my career back on track. The cracks began to show. I discovered that sometimes having it all, means doing it all and that, amid the maelstrom of need, I had lost the label I had started out with: me.

Daughter Mother Me is the uplifting, at times, heart-breaking but ultimately inspirational story of the bond between a mother and a daughter and how one woman who, through caring for the person she had relied on the most, finally found herself.

All very exciting. Very honoured to have Patricia Scanlon read it, love it and give me a quote for the cover: ‘There is real life on every page of this funny, sad and wise book’ Patricia Scanlan.

So it is done.  The year is nearly over and it has thrown everything at me. I am walking through a new door with a rucksack full of promise and leaving the debris of destruction on the floor.

Now, where’s that ice and tonic…can somebody cut me a slice of lemon!

There was a time when I used to hate the sound of Bob Dylan’s words clanging through my bedroom wall as my brother played that whinging rasping voice full blast to drown out my Wham beats.

If your time to you

Is worth savin’

Then you better start swimmin’

Or you’ll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin’.

Last year, I treated my brother to a Bob Dylan concert in Dublin, and I sang along and loved that whinging raspy voice.  Times changed.

There was a time when my Mum was my anchor that I could swim away from, safe that I could always find my way home.  Her Stroke cast me adrift, but I have learned to swim strong and true and find new places to call home. 

There was a time when my babies were babies and I wondered if I’d ever emerge from the double buggy years. But now my babies are growing faster than I like and the buggies are gone and they walk beside me. I will always be pushing them on as I did when I stood behind those prams, but I will always be pulling them back just for one more cuddle before they stride off ahead of me.

There was a time when Grief tied his leg to mine and I limped around like a three-legged runner unable to shake the soreness. But I have found a way to untie his leg, and now he just potters in the background, always there, but only sticking his leg out occasionally to trip me up.  I am learning to step over him when I see him, but I’ve also learned to sometimes just sit down beside him and have a chat. Acknowledge he is there but not let him lead me anymore.

There was a time when I thought my new family would be secure and safe forever. But now I’ve had to readjust and build a new new family of just me and the girls. Times have changed but we will always be safe and secure forever.

There was a time when all I ever dreamt of was being an author and seeing my name on a book in a bookshop. On the 11th February next year, my first book will appear on shelves and I might possibly wet myself.

I sometimes go running in my local park, and beyond the main section, and all the football pitches and walkways is a little forest. It has an earthen path and the trees rise up along each side and their branches flutter in the wind, forming a sort of guard of honour as I pant past. I love running through that wood with the sounds of the stream trickling alongside. And in that wood there is a tree. I call it ‘My Tree’. Like spaghetti on a plate, it has roots spaying out all around it, clutching deeply into the ground. Its trunk is solid and marked with time and weather. Sprouting from it are solid branches and from them smaller branches and then thin branches and from all of them leaves that hang on tight and make it so big and detailed. That tree is always changing, and yet it is always the same. In autumn it astounds me with its glowing colours of sun and gold. In winter it stands bare but coolly defiant against the chilling winds. In spring it sprouts with green and promise and in summer it glistens as the sun glitters through the gaps in its leaves. Its beauty always makes me stop.

I just stop and gaze at it, and it always, always makes me feel better. It gives me my moment and for some reason always makes me feel grateful. Because it reminds me of me. I am the trunk, but I am just the middle piece. I have deep-rooted beginnings and branches that sway into my future. All separate parts but all connected. I am mother, I am daughter, but sandwiched between the two, I am me, weathered and craggy but damn it, glorious and strong, always changing, always growing. I am finally starting to blossom. In reaching the middle of my life, I am becoming the woman I always wanted to be, and the woman I was always meant to be.

There was a time as a hungry teenager, an intrepid 20 year old, an ambitious 30 year old that I wanted everything perfect and NOW!  But as a weathered, craggy but damn it, glorious and strong middle-life embracing woman, I know that everything is flux, everything is flow. Times are always a changin’ and I am always time travelling.  But I don’t need a machine because life is a time machine.  We are constantly travelling – yearning for the past, letting go of the past, reaching for the future, keeping the future at bay, whizzing past the present, trying to acknowledge the present.

Times are a changin’ and I’m trying to keep swimming.

It’s Christmas!!!  It’s official! I have decorated my first tree (only 7 more to go!) and it’s all systems go.

I do Christmas like TOWIE does vajazzles. I stick glitter in every conceivable place.

Christmas is never just one year… it is always a nostalgic mish mash of past and present.  From my earliest memories, Christmas has been a glittering, comforting smorgasbord of frenzied family festive fun.

My Dad would bring down the box of decorations from the attic and Mum, delving into her own nostalgia, would take out each one and tell me it’s story. Most came from her own childhood Christmases, and then each year we would add new ones. Every single decoration had a memory attached and as we hung history on the tree, every year added new memory and nostalgia to each piece.  Decorating the tree was as much a part of the Christmas experience as cooking the turkey and opening the presents. Mum would put on her CD of King’s College Choir singing carols, we would open up her Tupperware of home-made Caramel Squares, and we would hang and argue about covering gaps, stopping every so often to stand back and admire our work in progress and sip from our mugs of tea.

I always decorated the tree with my Mum, and then as soon as I was able to, I decorated my own trees with the same sense of occasion.  She had many years then when she decorated the tree alone. When I had children, Christmas became my most exciting, happy time of year.  All those sleepless nights, all those lurid green poo swamped nappies, all those rejected meals that ended up on the floor were forgiven as I got to indulge my childish obsession with Christmas under the guise of parenting.

Once again, putting up the christmas Tree has become as important as the turkey, and now, when I bring down the boxes, the girls take out each piece and we tell their stories, and they know exactly where all the decorations go.

But when Mum had her stroke five years ago, she could no longer put up her tree. So it became my job. I would put on the King’s College Choir CD of carols, and once again, I would do it with her, me placing the pieces, her watching, sometimes pointing, but I told the stories back to her because she has now forgotten. Dad brought down the box of decorations from the attic, and I unpacked them, some of which were so old, she had put them on her Christmas tree as a child. And now, because my Mum can’t do it, I hung history on the tree for her.

And this year, my children did it for her. This year, we all hung history on the tree together, Christmas a mish-mash of past and present, a glittering, comforting, smorgasbord or frenzied, family, festive fun.

I’m wide awake, and not just because I’m still not sleeping (see previous post).

Despite the lack of sleep, (yes at least one of my children is still in, or coming into, my bed at night), despite my exhaustion, I’ve never felt so awake.

Because in the midst of all the struggle of the last few years – caught up in the sandwich years of losing and caring for my mum, supporting my dad, raising my girls, figuring out a career, dealing with a challenging marriage and now finally dealing with the end of that marriage, I have emerged from the bomb wreckage rubble with slightly frazzled hair and a slightly more bewildered look my face, but with a clearer view.

I have always struggled with the need to fix and care for others.  I still want to do that, but now I know I can no longer do it at the expense of myself.

This year, in the midst of terrible grief, and emotional upheaval, when instead of having some much need duvet days, I painted furniture, decorated rooms, wrote, worked, worried. I have tried to negotiate the end of a marriage while trying to keep together a family.   I thought I could do it on my own.  I thought we could have a family without a marriage.  But what I want and what I need are two different things.

I have tried to write a book.  I have written a book! But it’s been like the homework that never ends… always there at the beginning, middle and end of every day.

I have tried to care for my Mum and support my Dad.

I have tried to keep myself together while my world is falling apart.

I have tried to wrap my children up in love and protect them from all the stuff that is hurting them, while trying to parent alone and pick up their endless piles of dirty knickers and make endless meals and packed lunches, and it’s been a real challenge. They’re emotional, I’m exhausted and sometimes there have been tantrums. They’ve been upset too.

Like many women my age, I grew up being told I could ‘have it all’.  And so I strived for that.  But like many women my age, really, all I ended up with was the feeling that I was ‘doing it all’.  So what I have realised is who wants to have it all?  All the work?  All the responsibility?  All the guilt? All the pressure?

So this year, I feel I have been going through an awakening (perhaps it’s a deranged, sleep-deprived hysteria?). Either way, as I hit the half-way point of my life, coming out of a marriage, I am coming into my own.

I realised that having it all, was not the answer if it meant doing it all.   I have been giving it all, but giving it all away.  I was giving nothing to myself.

So over the course of the last few months I have armed myself. I have relied on my friends and family and allowed them to look after me more than I ever have done before. It was hard for me to do because I am normally the carer, but it feels good.  But I’ve gone a step further. I cannot do it all alone. I cannot fix everyone else, care for everyone else, if I don’t find a way to fix me, and care for me.

So I found a wonderful solicitor who’s first words were “I will protect you” – words I haven’t heard in a very long time.  I no longer need to negotiate this separation by myself.

I have an amazing counsellor who tells me “care for yourself” – words I really need to heed.  I no longer have to keep it all to myself.

And I have found a parenting expert (who skypes me from New Zealand!) who says “here are some tools to help you help your girls”  – words that would allow me to finally sleep at night (if I didn’t have so many visitors).  I no longer have to figure it all out by myself.

Helping my children through this time has been a big job. And someone is now guiding me and helping me reach them and it is making all the difference.  It is a revelation. Instead of shouting and being the Commandant, I am learning to openly communicate with the girls in a way that gives everyone a voice.  I love my new voice. It is the kind loving voice I always knew was there. It is the voice of my adult self, and not my inner small child self. It’s the voice my children need. I still have at least two children in my bed every night. But for my eldest, now that I understand her fear, I have told her she can stay as long as it takes.  I’m going to write a whole blog about peaceful parenting soon, because it is amazing – not just for them, but for me.

My own counselling has helped me enormously. I now think about my feelings rather than avoid them. If I’m sad, I don’t run away from being sad. I allow myself to be sad. When I feel good, I’m not afraid of that either. I try to live every minute of feeling good.  And most importantly, now when I feel uncomfortable and not able to be myself, I ask myself why. Its amazing how much I have been doing that does not make me feel comfortable.  So I don’t anymore.  It is such a relief.

It’s my 11th wedding anniversary today.  I’m a bit sad, but not as much as I thought. Last year I was still married but miserable. This year my marriage is over and I’m sad but not miserable. In fact when I think about this day 11 years ago, I mostly think about (and miss) my Mum, and what a gorgeous morning we had getting ready. I think about my best friends and my dad and my brother that morning, all drinking champagne with me. I think about staring out at the crowd and seeing so many people who loved me. And they all love me still. I have learned a lot about myself over the last 11 years, I have three amazing girls, and all those people who made that day special are still making my life special.   I’m not going to focus on what I’ve lost. I’m going to focus on what I’ve gained. This is me and my Mum 11 years ago. How lucky was I?

Nobody loved me like my Mum, but now that she can no longer care for me, I have to start caring for myself.  In the midst of parent-care, child-care, home-care, work-care, ex-husband care, I am finally learning about self-care.

And so I’m investing in three areas of support: legal advice-  someone who will take sure I am protected and safe; a parenting expert who will guide me to make sure my children are protected and safe; and a counsellor to make sure I know how to make my self protected and safe.

I’ve reached the middle of my life, but I’m not having a mid-life crisis – I’m having a mid-life opportunity.   C.S. Lewis once wrote: “Nobody ever told me that grief felt so much like fear.”   I have felt so much fear over the last few years. But I’m done being afraid now. 

Tonight I will share the evening with friends and we will drink wine and be merry.  Eleven years ago I got married. Tonight I am still surrounded by love and friends and I am not afraid.

Sleep, sweet sleep

It’s the difference between life and living.

There are many differentiators between me and my children.

They are digital natives while I will always be a digital tourist – I only have a vague map and know half the lingo. My youngest was born swiping.

They talk with an American accent because that’s seemingly the only country that makes children’s TV programmes.  I grew up thinking the BBC Test card was interesting. 

My kids think smoking is the most disgusting thing anyone can do.  I grew up in a smoke-smeared world where the only place that people on a plane DIDN’T smoke was the toilet.

But the biggest difference between my children and me is our attitudes to sleep.

My children resist sleep like a broccoli bake.

I seek sleep like a calorie-free chocolate cake.

For them, life is too full of excitement to miss a moment. For me, life is too full of chores to leave any moments free.

They fight for those last fraught seconds, when my patience is thin and my exhaustion thick and in those moments when our attitudes collide, it feels like an insurmountable war. 

I fight for those last fraught hours of an evening when my head is spinning and I just want some me time, and in those moments when our attitudes collide, I feel embattled and attacked.

They’ll do anything to stay up late, and I’ll do anything to get to bed early.  They spring up out of bed as soon as they wake, I try to cling to my sheets as long as possible.

They chase life and I chase sleep and we chase each other round the house and round the beds, night after night.

I stare at the night-dark, trying to banish all light, the slightest glimmer enough to distract me.

They stare at the night-light, trying to banish the dark, the slightest glimmer enough to comfort them.

My eldest comes down all evening, sitting beside me on the sofa, on that bridge between childhood and adulthood, wanting to join my evening.  I try to keep my sigh inaudible.

My middle one, potters around her room unable to hear my rising tones of frustration as I ask her to get into bed over and over again.

And my youngest just screams. Every night. For an hour. Just because she doesn’t want to be alone. And at that time of day, being alone is the only thing I want to be.   We battle and bruise, I shout and soothe and despite the bedtime reading, the stories, the cuddles and the songs, it is never enough for her. She always wants more. They all, always, want more.  And I give them as much as I can, but it is never enough.  And I guess that is human. We love being loved and we always want more.  And I’m aware there will come a day when it turns on its head and they strive out on their own and I will chase their love and it will never be enough.  I wonder is there a time when for a brief moment of perfection, we all get exactly what we need? 

Until then, the nighttime routine takes most of my evening, as each of them needs their love and time and then fight their need to sleep and fight my need to get them to sleep.

So it is always late when I clamber into bed, all the chores done, all the piles of washing folded and allocated to each room, my work emails sent, the dishes put away.  Often I get to my bedroom and have to lift my eldest from my bed and carry her upstairs to her own bed, a place these days she likes to wake up in but not go to sleep in. 

Then I pull up my duvet around me and sigh a deep sigh of relief. This moment is finally mine. And then a cry from another room, the patter of little (and not so little feet). No, this moment is not mine either. It is still theirs.  Every moment is theirs. This year, in the year that’s in it, when the girls have faced the worst thing that can happen to them, the disintegration of their family as they knew it, those feet have worn out thin paths to my door.

There has barely been a night in the last 9 months when one, some or all of them have not sought comfort in the loneliness of the dark and I have not felt able to turn them away.   It is not that I have not loved having their warm fidgety bodies beside me, each of us chasing the shadows of the past away. I love waking up hearing their sleepy snores on my cheek, and opening my eyes to see their sleepy skin stretched over closed eyes beside me. But at 2am it is like having my teeth pulled out. A fidget and a fart, and a kick and a flick of their arm across my face. I am restless and weary and once I am woken, often the worries of the day invade my night and I know sleep won’t return. And if it does then the morning arrives before the sun, when my youngest kicks (if she’s beside me), talks to me (if she’s beside me) or comes in and pokes me (if I managed to get her back to her own bed during the night). At 6am.

My youngest has promised me she won’t scream tonight.  When I asked if she might also stay in her bed all night she looked a bit dubious. But said she would try.

The other day – after a morning where I woke up with two in the bed after carrying a third back during the night – I made a decision.  I asked my ex husband to come and take the girls to school the following morning. I worked like crazy to get my deadlines met.  And the next morning, after another relentless night of musical beds, I got them ready for school. But this time, when the front door shut and his car reversed them out of the drive, I took my tea, my dog, my cat and my book and went back to the place I miss the most. I slept for three hours and then read. Until it was time to collect them from school again. It felt so outrageously self-indulgent I didn’t even feel bad.

Sleep, sweet sleep. I’ll take you when I can.

Clunk, Clunk, Clunk,.

That’s what writing used to sound like. Not the quiet, understated, hardly-there tap of a Macbook, with it’s lit-up keys and sexy jumping icons.

These were chunky clickety clunks, the loud, overstated, fully-there tap of a typewriter, with it’s lift-up keys and sexy jumping letters.

I went home to Belfast last weekend, a visit to mark the five year tideline on this tsunami of grief and care since my Mum’s stroke. As I struggled with the memory of the last five years and the uncertainty of the next five years, my Dad gave me a little bit of the past. He gave me my grandfather’s typewriter.

My Pappa was a writer, a newspaper journalist. And once, in a tiny window of chance, while my Dad (also a journalist and writer) was doing a stint at the same newspaper, I went in as a teenager on work experience. I wrote a little piece and the editor, being kind and generous, gave me my own byline. I still have that copy – an edition of the newspaper with three generations of by-line in print – my Pappa’s, my Dad’s and mine, articles signed off David Kirk, David Kirk, and Alana Kirk.  A colliding of three generations and the love the words.

That clunk clunk clunk played the soundtrack to my first writing attempts as a child.   I still remember the physical delight of inserting a dove white sheet of paper and rolling it through, and setting back the metal bar that kept it in place. Of pushing back the typing bar and resting my fingers momentarily on the keys like a piano player ready to begin. Of taking a deep breath and pressing that first key and watching that first letter hit the ribbon and when it retreated, leaving the first black letter on the sheet. The story had begun. There was no delete button, so every letter of every word was thoughtfully considered, and when decided upon, was branded into the page, not just a black mark but an indent, so that when you pulled out the page (is there a better sound?) the page FELT written as much as it looked written.

As a child growing up, it was one of the most exquisite experiences; a sheet of blackened, indented paper that I had created from a blank white nothingness. My Pappa smoked while he wrote, smoke-slit eyes peering at his page, his tweed jacket smelling of age, and stale smoke wear.  The typewriter smelled of him, and of ink and of imagination. I dreamed of being a writer on that typewriter, so many years ago.

And as I sit with my Mac book, my Pappa’s old typewriter beside me, I edit my book that will be released next year. It has been written on and by many things. Post Its, pens, pencils, pages, on my phone, ipad, MacBook.  I’ve written it beside my Mum, beside my Dad, beside my children, at the kitchen table, in bed, in the car, on the train, in Starbucks, in Avoca, on the wall.   Modern technology has allowed me to write this book whenever and where I am.

But it all started on an old typewriter and a wish. It was a hard weekend, remembering all that had been before Mum’s stroke. Five years on, and I wish more than anything my Mum knew what I was doing. I wish she could read my book. I wish she could stand with me at the launch.  But then in many ways she will be. And so will my Pappa. This is a modern-written book, but it could not have been written without the past. 

Clunk Clunk clunk.

Tap tap tap.

The present always tapping into the past.