Grin and Tonic

I’m coming out of the closet.  For those who know me well, I came out of the closet a while ago, painted it, decoupaged it and upholstered the matching chair beside it.

I’m outing myself as a lover of ‘doing things up’, and that now means myself  as well.

My Mum was the expert. She bought old chairs in the charity shops and reupholstered them. I have the little nursing chair she made once (the cat sits on it now in the evenings). I have her wicker chairs that she bought second hand and brushed with Bright Green paint and upholstered in Bright Spring fabric that sat in the sun room.  A couple of years ago, in the limbo grief state of missing the woman she was, while caring now for the woman she is, I asked my dad for them and brought them home. Sometimes you have to take a bit of the past and brighten it up for the future. So I took them apart, photographing every step so I knew what order she had done it in, picked out every tack and then painted them, and reupholstered them, putting everything back just as she had done and nailing back every tack she had once nailed.   There was comfort in retracing her handy work.

Mum knitted and so over the years I have knitted. I have never learned to do anything as well as she did though. The cushions she made me from left-over curtain material ten years ago have outlived at least five lifespans of random cushion covers I have made over the years.  But I am slowly realising that bringing new life to old things should be done well and done to last.

And so, as I let go of the past, I feel a desperate urge to repaint and upholster bits of my life.   Mum and Dad bought our table and chairs for our wedding present and for 13 years they have served me well – early marriage dinners for two, mulch splattered baby years, manner-making toddler years, family dinners, dinner parties, birthday parties, Christmas parties, homework table, my desk table. I have written a book sitting at that table. My Mum and I had endless cups of tea at that table. My children have grown up at that table. My marriage began and ended at that table.

And so, as part of my painting up and upholstering of my new life, I decided the table needed a change.

I need to breath new life into my house, a house with memories and past. I need to give it a new future along with myself. So the day I signed my book deal contract I bought myself a new picture. It is captioned, “I am so full of love” by Yvonne Coomber and I wanted it to represent the family I now have with the girls in this house. We live in the kitchen, and I want it to be a bright and happy place for them, full of colour, full of baking, full of laughter, and most of all, full of love.

So when the picture arrived, it inspired me to take the table to task. Last weekend, my girls left to spend the weekend with their Dad, and, still not fully at ease with being alone, I broke the silence with my sweat as I toiled under a beautiful blazing sun and started to transform my table, my chairs, my kitchen, and really, my life.

Phase 1. 

Phase 2.

Phase 3. 

It took me 4 days and 12,586 strokes of paint and varnish, and a few hundred upholstery tacks.  It’s going to take me a little longer to repaint and upholster myself. But I’m getting there. I have a kitchen full of love, and a life full of love, and a future that I’m going to paint bright.

It’s been one of those weeks in our house. If we were a TV station, we would be called Drama Central, a series of shocking shows were reality and madness are entwined in a farcical folly of frantic antics, or (since I’m allowing myself to make up whole words these days, because, you know, I got a book deal and everything) frantics.

I’m considering upping my Gin intake so that I can justify a week in the Priory.

Just one episode this week started at 2am (all the best shows are after the 9pm watershed so I can swear without restraint).  What a surprise but I had a child in my bed. It seems like, OH WHO’s COUNTING?, months that I haven’t had a sick, injured or whole-bed-hugging child in my bed. It seems they have a rota queueing system that as soon as one is back to their bed, another comes in.  Anyway, this one had a newly attached cast on her little arm (second week of school, broken elbow, surgery to insert pins and wires. This was preceded in week one of school by a rare virus that made her joints swell up so she couldn’t walk. NOT MAKING THIS UP… Drama Central is a high octane channel). So I’m clinging to the edge of my bed because the little thing can’t get comfortable with a big solid sticky-out arm that won’t just quite lie flat on the bed, so she keeps rolling over and whacking me on the face with her aforementioned hardened arm. (I am already sporting a slit eyelid and black eye from a run-in with some DIY, so I’m looking the part for this show). So there I am thinking all the danger is in my bed, when I am poked by my middle one in a slightly hysterical manner with a mumbled frightened unintelligible panic-pronounced posturing that something terrible was happening in her bedroom.  Something about a hamster and a cat.  At this stage, filtered music was playing the Psycho theme as I stumble into her bedroom.  In this episode on Drama Central, two coincidences had to coincide to make the drama work. But life is stranger than fiction so I enter the bedroom to find that my panther cat has somehow snuck upstairs despite being locked in the kitchen, on the VERY SAME NIGHT that the hamster has somehow escaped from it’s cage. (Still not making this up).  So a demonic full-blown, fur-balled, cat and hamster chase is in full progress and it’s not looking good for the midget. Mid-mauling, I manage to throw myself on the cat, and, leaving the half-dead hamster feet up on the carpet. I manage to get him downstairs (scratches and near eye-ball tearing on the way down) as I throw him into the kitchen. I climb the stairs fretting with sickness about how on earth I’m going to now finish the job on the hamster and kill him in front of my hysterical daughter.  I arrive into the room to find her stroking the little mite who must have been playing dead because now looks pleased as punch and enjoying the attention. I spent the rest of the episode until 3am hand feeding her little pieces of apple to make sure she didn’t die of fright. Got back to bed, lay down, and whack!  My arm-casted little one rolls over and smacks me in the nose.

That’s just one episode of my week. I haven’t been sleeping. I’m exhausted as I get used to the strain of parenting by myself. I am at the stage when I want to switch off the channel all together.

But as usual it is the celebration of sisterhood that gets me through.

Watching how my other girls are loving and comforting their little sister makes me wistful sometimes that I never had sisters. They are so entwined and embedded in each others lives, a pea, a carrot and a broccoli perhaps, but all from the same pod.  (There are plenty of episodes called Screeching Slashing Sisters where they literally take chunks of flesh out of each other, but I try and delete them). They amaze me, that sisterly bond.

And this week I felt how much I have it too.  I don’t have biological sisters, but I have bonded sisters all the same.  I have been really down, the full weight of the heartache and grief and dramas of this year settling on my shoulders as a new term begins and I realise how much work my new life involves. And how overwhelming it all is at times.

And my close friends – my sisters-in-situ – have put their arms of comfort around me. These are just some of the things they have done in the last week or so:

• Named a room after me in their new house, a place that I know is mine to come and bury my head (and drink wine and be given hearty meals), a welcome that tells me I have been adopted as part of their family.
• Daily check-in phone calls, face-time goodnights and texts of hello just to let me know I’m loved
• Showing up with home-made gluten free dessert on a Sunday morning as they knew I’d force myself to make one for the girl’s Sunday dinner despite being wrecked
• Showing up to walk my dog and ‘not stopping to talk’ so I could get my work done
• Giving me a birthday card they had just bought for themselves so I didn’t have to go out to the shops
• Sent me research for my book
• Re-organised their weekly calendar and sent me Tuesday night invites as they know I have to be out of the house so the girl’s daddy can put them to bed
• Bought me chocolate
• Gave me hugs
• Took me and the girls in for dinner again, even though it was my turn, because I needed to just sit down and abdicate all responsibility for a couple of hours.
• Tell me I look much better when I grumble I’ve gone up a dress size
• And one of my Mum’s best friends came to stay at the weekend and she walked into my house and said all the things my mum would have done “Oh I love the place!”. And she fawned over the girls as my Mum would have done, loving me and them on behalf of my Mum, because they too, shared the sisterhood of friendship.

I miss my Mum terribly, now more than ever.  But she has given me her sisters-in-situ, and I have mine, and that is making all the difference.

The heat from the summer sun is diminishing in strength. It’s a little chillier, a little earlier in the day.  I apply sun cream in the morning, and light the fire in the evening. Autumn is tapping it’s feet in impatience and the air, promising to bluster the dying blossoms away, is also, as Nora Ephron beautifully wrote, scented by the ” bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils.”

Change is chomping at the bit as we prepare to swap summer for school, and the feeling of newness is as crisp as the white blouses I bought in three different sizes yesterday.

You see, it’s not just the season that is changing. My whole life is.  As the school bells ring out on Tuesday morning, they ring in a new phase of my life. For ten years I have had a baby or small child at home. But today I laid out a uniform for my last baby, and for the first time I labelled three schoolbags as they excitedly packed their pencil cases.  All my babies are now schoolgirls.

I will have no childminder now, and can hopefully just work when they are in school, and sit at the table with them as they all do homework, no longer trying to entertain one, while trying to encourage the others to finish their sums. It is a nostalgic time, but then my baby has been shredding her baby ways for a while. A couple of days ago, I pushed her off as she wibbled and wobbled and wavered and (after crashing into a couple of trees) pedalled off for the first time without stabilisers on her bike.  She can wipe her own bum now too. A whole new phase of life.

All my life I have wished to be a writer. Words are my wisdom and my comfort. And slowly a dream began to become a little reality as I strived to build writing into my every day as a hobby and a job. Tomorrow I submit my manuscript for a book that will be published early next year. I met with my publisher recently and we talked about publicity and interviews and book covers and launches, and the little girl dreamer in me shimmied a skip of shock (the big girl author in me had a bit more decorum).  My wish has come true. I have another book idea already bubbling into a bundle of thoughts that are already looking like a contents page. A whole new phase of life.

Even this blog has changed. Seven months after my marriage ended, I have finally amended the Sandwich Years banner head to now better represent my situation (still to size it and put it up).  It took a long time and a deep breath to ask my illustrator to take out my husband from the banner that represented my blog but also my life.  It looked so brutal when I first saw it, and it hurt so much it took that deep breath away completely.  But it has to be done, like so many parts of separating, eventually each bit just has to be done.   In a week or so we sign the separation agreement and both move on to lives without each other.  But I like it too. It’s a privelege to be sandwiched by those wonderful people and creatures. A whole new phase of life.

But the biggest change is in me.  I am changing my passport and my driving licence, but it more than reclaiming my name.  I am back to me but have gathered three glorious gifts on the way, and a lot of lessons. I am back to me, but a better me: less selfish and a more self-focussed; scarred but strengthened; battered but not beaten; stripped and stretched but more layered and filled out; poorer but richer; alone but alive; uncertain but aware; hurt but happier. 

For many years – sandwiched in a storm of responsibility caring for my husband’s needs, my parent’s needs, my children’s needs, house and home and work needs – I lost track of who I was.  But I feel I am closing a door on all that confusion. I’ll take a rucksack filled with the goodness of that time, and leave the debris of destruction on the floor.   As the yellow summer sun does a dazzling dance with the golden Autumn glow before drifting away for another year, I am stepping through another door into a whole new phase of my life.   

I like the look of the one I am opening. I am a daughter still, a mother always, a friend to amazing people, a business woman, a creative consultant, an author. But rising above all of those I am me.

It is all change. Parts of that change are painful, but necessary. Parts of that change are frightening but worth it. Parts of that change are exciting, and bursting with opportunity. Part of it is about letting go, and a part of it is about grasping new things. It’s a bittersweet mix but I’m ready… A whole new phase of life.

Memories are moments remembered.  Often I say my brain is like a sieve because it loses everything (including my children’s names at times, as like my mum I call them all three, or sometimes the pets names until I find the right one!).  But our brains really are like sieves, filtering all the moments of our life and catching random ones.  Many moments are simply lived and then lost.

I don’t know why our brains keep some moments and let others go. Many are obviously the big ones we keep – my eldest daughter literally sees her brain as a shelf where she puts things to remember.    And we have reminders like photos and drunken Facebook posts (this is not directed specifically to any of my friends!).  But sometimes memory can’t be captured. It can be a smell, a song, a sound, a symbol that can take us back to a moment or time long gone. Sometimes they come upon us randomly, and sometimes they have to be made.

I had an idea when I was first pregnant ten years ago.  I was in that lovely phase of buying my first baby clothes, all full of wonder and worry.  I would hold them and stroke them unable to fully comprehend the little legs and heads that would fit into them.  And then suddenly they were filled, with real flesh and real smells and real wonder.  The clothes my little babies and then my little girls wore were like snapshots in time, summing up my love and that time and our life together. Many I bought, and I remember each piece. Many my mum bought (“Oh I just couldn’t help myself”), or they were simple ordinary clothes that the kids just loved and wore with relish.  And so I kept them. I put an age limit of five on each child and kept all the important little clothes that made a memory for me.  For ten years I have been holding onto to those fabric memories, each representing the fabric of my motherhood. And then they became this.  A 6 foot memory blanket to wrap myself in now that my girls are not always with me, taken away by a failed marriage.

This blanket is me. It is my mum. It is each of my girls, individually and together.  Wrapping me in love physically and emotionally, keeping me warm from the evening chill, and keeping me safe from the chill of the unknown.   Love stitched together, weaving the fabric of a precious period of my life, it is a quilt of kindness – there is not a single bad thought in it. Every fibre, every stitch pulling together the very best bits of me and the real true loves in my life.  When the memories are gone, I can still be wrapped in the moments, every single square a story I can tell.

I also had a bag of all the little cardigans my mum knitted before her hands knotted with arthritis and then knarled with the stroke.  Cardigans that grew each evening on her sofa, each stitch forming another line of love, growing in her hands, taking shape, until (like me) she had made something good with her own effort.  She would call me to tell me she had searched three different shops but she had finally found the right buttons.  I asked Angela* who made the blanket could she do something with them. They are so precious to me and I couldn’t bear for them to sit in a bag, memories tarnished with mould.  

And this is what she made me…. a patchwork cushion stitched by my mum and all her love, buttons intact, and labelled, like my mum’s cardigans “made with love by Nanna”. A cushion of memory to cushion my heart.

I’m ready to embrace the future because my sieve kept all the good bits and I am inspired by my past.   Bad stuff happens, but much more good does.   And as I wrap myself in love and memory, I can look forward to making new memories to stitch into the blanket of my life.   

*Angela’s Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/A.B.Quiltsandmore

I used to pride myself on perfection.  (In my head at least.)  I liked to think of myself as a perfectionist. My mum would disagree. She actually was a perfectionist, and could sew and knit to professional standard while my knitting looked liked a ball of wool after the kitten has played with it, and the cushions I sewed are currently spewing threads and filling all over my sofa.

But anyway, back in my head, I’m a perfectionist. No point in doing anything if it isn’t going to be done NOW, and well.  (I exhaust some of my friends with my quick turn-around from decision to delivery…..within three weeks of my Not Quite announcing our marriage was over I had redecorated my bedroom, complete with vintage furniture from ebay and my long longed-for vintage (hummingbird!!) wall paper.  I hasten to add that in hindsight, I think that was the only way I could take charge of a situation that was spiralling out of control – I could do practical because there was no way I was able to do emotional.)

So perfectionism and the desire to always set myself very high standards has driven me most of my life – to very good effect.  But in Donegal, sitting by the sea one day I had a sea change. It’s something about that sky that makes me realise how far my limits can go. Something about that solitude that makes me hear my own voice. Something about that beauty that makes me see a better view of my life.

I sat on the beach, my girls swimming and kayaking in the water, having the real Swallows and Amazons holiday they need every year where everything is just stripped away until only they and themselves and nature are left, and I had a revelation.

I have been sick with one or other awful thing for the last seven months (abscesses, chest infections and migraines to name but a few) , I have been stressed, I have been agitated and whiney with the girls at times, I have been angry, I have been hurt, I have been overwhelmed, I have been soul sad and will weary.  And as if that wasn’t all bad enough, I decided to heap a big dollop of guilt like a big red cold sore cherry on top of the melting ice-cream sundae of my life.  I have actually been annoyed at myself for all of those things, for not being perfect.  I had set myself a standard whereby I would sail through the worst time of my life, all smiles and strength, and I was failing miserably.

So I decided to put my Wonder Woman pants in the wash and sit on the beach and accept that for now, my life is not perfect, and so I’m not going to kill myself making me perfect either. And like Donegal in the rain, my life is still pretty spectacular though – I have three amazing girls, a heritage of past family that will help me create my new family, the love from my mum and dad spurring me on, amazing friends who remind me that I don’t need to be perfect and love me for me, a book deal, a business doing something I love….. and most of all, like the Donegal sky, a limitless horizon.

My life is not perfect.  But it doesn’t need to be. And neither do I.

We’re back. Me and the girls. Sucking in that endless sky and the sea-brazen air that blows around our heads, rustling our hair and filtering through our brains so that only the moment remains.   It blows away all the fog and fug until our skin tingles with newness and weather.  Donegal. No need for Spa treatments here – the wind and sand and sea strip away all the dead skin and the dead thoughts, like a facial for the soul.

Long lovely moments of nothing. Long lovely moments of everything.  Donegal. It always feels like coming home.  

The forecast was for rain every day, but the sun has defiantly burst through, sticking out it’s tongue saying “Na na na na na” and giving us time to run on empty glorious beaches where the horizon is so far away it feels otherworldly.  It shines down a brightness that lights the water in the sea, in the estuary, in the puddles everywhere so it feels we are dancing under spotlights.

Welly boots are de rigour. Washing is optional. Eating is spontaneous. Summer days in Donegal…. my childhood memories and their childhood moments merging into one long Welly Walk through my life… collecting shells and crabs, picking flowers, poking jellyfish and seaweed, catching worms, chasing butterflies, running into the waves, running away from the waves, checking out rock pools, stomping, splashing, clambering, climbing, exploring, hunting, finding, discovering, eating, talking, fighting, laughing. Staying up late, sleeping later, snuggles in between. Hot chocolate on tap, melting marshmallows scooped out with a teaspoon.  Sun hot sand lashing our legs jumping in the sea. Horizontal rain lashing the windows, board games by raging fire while the wind howls sadly outside because it can’t come in and join us.

Yesterday we went for a three hour hike over beach and rocks and pot-holed roads and harbour and dunes. We collected shells and poked dead jellyfish. The wind pushed us along and then we had a sun-blazed rest for chocolate biscuits and gingersnaps and tea from a flask, and as we reached the little harbour the rain drenched us in buckets but we laughed and ate M&M’s and the sun came out again and we took all our coats off. Donegal. Where the sun and rain and wind are like inseparable triplets.

A welly walk in our T-shirts, or a welly walk in our coats. Donegal daydreams. We’re back.

(lest I give the illusion that this is some sort of idyllic out-of-normal-parenting experience where we all sing sweetly to the birds and the rabbits all gather at the front door and talk to us (and do the dishes), and the food miraculously appears and then disappears, and no-one cries, and no-one fights, and NO-ONE WHINES, and everyone picks up their wet towels, and dirty pants don’t gather in piles like mole hills in the garden, and NO-ONE WHINES, and I get so much sleep I can fly and did I mention all the food that miraculously appears every mealtime…….. I’m sorry. That is not the case. Donegal is a little bit of heaven, but it’s real.)

(lest I give the impression any of the above matters when we can spend a morning tramping over cliffs to find a secluded beach and everyone gets wet playing tag with the waves, and then we tramp home sandy and wet and eating a sweaty bag of melted chocolate biscuits..…I’m sorry. It doesn’t. Not right now anyway….)

Lovely as my dog and kitten are,  they can be a bit naughty at times (my super cool cat however is never naughty, only a haughty purring panther perfection).

I love it when a new idea changes my life.  I’ve a number of hammocks unhung and unsung in my attic, picked up on various travels when there were an abundance of coconut trees to hang them from. Back in dubious Dublin they gathered dust. It wasn’t just the lack of sun that made hanging one a problem, but a distinct lack of coconut trees. (Good idea: sell hammocks with coconut tree seeds?)

I have one lovely sturdy tree in my garden but no opposite sturdy tree, only a green grass garden.  The sun actually came out one day and standing with the hammock attached to the tree and my hand gave the kids about 3 minutes of pleasure….. but not really a practical solution. And besides, there was no-one to hold it up for me. So my super knowledgeable friend told me about a new idea that was in fact a fabulous idea.  An Irish company that sells HALF HAMMOCK POSTS!  Seriously, I needed half a hammock stand and lo and behold, someone makes them.   So I pressed Send and my piece of wood and various chords duly arrived and my hammock now swings gayly in the garden and it’s become the new hangout. Most days at least one of my kids can be found on it, and most of the time all three sit on it and swing. And yes, I have even had a glorious moment or two of me, glowing under a pink fading sun, a hammock and a gin.   Some ideas are the simplest.  

Except. I have a naughty dog. So every time the hammock swings he barks furiously.  I was sick shouting at him (sort of ruins the hammock zen) when my eldest remind me of a trick we used to use when he was a puppy. Water spray!! I frantically searched the unused garden greenhouse and found a dusty old spray bottle containing (funnily enough – Cat and Dog Repellent!) and after spraying the real chemical around my new herb patch, emptied the rest down the sink and filled it with water. Oh the power. Every time he barks he gets sprayed.  After just one afternoon I just have to lift it without spraying and he walks (silently) away.

The kitten has been driving me mad, climbing up onto to the counters in search of anything food like. He jumps on the table when we are eating, and generally makes eating now some sort of obstacle challenge where you have to stand, and hold your plate in the air between bites.

Not any more.

He jumps on the table. Spray!  He climbs on the counter. Spray!  He climbs into the dishwasher (yes, to lick the plates). Spray!  Again, I now just have to lift the bottle and he slinks away very sorry for himself.   Oh the Power!   

So, I’m lying on my hammock thinking (because the dog is no longer barking)…… if it works on the dog and the kitten…….who else might it work with????

Dinner time was a dream. Chewing with their mouth open?? Spray!  Getting off their seat?? Spray! Interrupting someone else?? Spray!! Oh the Power!  Oh the joy! (Please note my kids were laughing, and I was doing it very tongue in cheek…….. but I was still doing it!)

I now run around the house like some power-dazed, gun crazed Mother Superior! 

Of course, as easily as power is given it can be taken away. I was lying arrogantly on my hammock, so pleased with myself that I made the fatal mistake of closing my eyes and relaxing. Revenge is sweet and best served cold.   The garden hose water is VERY cold. And three little rebels got me good. Oh, and it made the dog bark too. My spray was in the kitchen, and anyway, being hosed down by three hysterically amused children was a game winner.  I let them take the glory……… For now.   But the Spray will be securely strapped to my gun-slinging hips.  My Spray day will come again.

Last night I had to admit I’m a fairy.  My daughter looked at me dubiously. A sustained campaign of Gin and chocolate do not a waif-like woman make. But I fluttered my invisible wings and confessed, a fairy I have been, and will continue to be.

I always thought adulthood began at 18. But on this, like many things I am learning as I get older, I was wrong.  Becoming an adult is a long stairway with many steps that begins much earlier and lasts much longer than a day on a calendar when you are handed your first legal drink and a driving licence (now there’s a worrying contradiction).   One thing the Sandwich Years has taught me is that there is still an awful lot of growing up to be done.

Last night the fairytale ended, and grown up life began for my eldest daughter who is almost ten.  She has asked me several times over the last year or so is the Tooth Fairy real.  There are many terrorising moments in parenting –  worms, Vesuvius flowing diarrhoea, three year olds finding your entire nail varnish collection and painting the carpet – but this has been the one I have dreaded most.  So I’ve deftly deflected, careful not to lie directly, but deflected all the same. I don’t know for whom I was more scared of the truth being out – her or me. 

The whole Santa / Fairy thing has always sat a bit strange with me.  In principle I hated lying, but in theory I loved seeing their delight.  And I embraced the lies with a gusto that beggars belief.  But now my eldest is realising the fairytale of life is not so clearcut, and I brace myself for all that she will discover and face.

So last night, I decided to help her take a step up that stairway. Now, more than ever, she needs to know I will always tell her the truth.  So I stepped up a step myself and sat down on her bed.  We’ve already done ‘the talk’ and we all survived.  Somehow this scared me more.

The thing is, I don’t actually remember when I found out. I bear no deep childhood scar from the trauma of finding out my parents had lied to me and all my sweet childish dreams where destroyed….somehow my mum always managed to keep the magic going.  (I am still traumatised though by the memory of my parents lying to me when I refused to eat tuna. They pretended my favourite meal of chicken pie was in fact made with chicken, and then all sprang “Ah Ha!” at me when I ate it all up. It had been filled with tuna. Am. Still. Traumatised.)   

So I don’t remember the death of the dream, and I’m hoping this is just another step up that stairway to adulthood for her, and one from which the new perspective of height can give her a good view of her childhood.  My little girl is growing up in so many ways, and part of growing up is learning the depth and strength of your own resilience.

I don’t remember crying when I found out the tooth fairy wasn’t real, but I do remember the first time I cried alone.  I remember being a child, about my daughter’s age, standing on the darkened landing outside my bedroom door. I had been asleep, or perhaps couldn’t sleep and I was scared and wanted comfort. But something stopped me. I leant over the landing bannister as the sounds of mum and dad’s TV filtered up.   I don’t know why I needed comfort or why I decided not to call down…. I knew my mum would have been straight up to me.  But I decided to face it alone. I cried out for my mum but not loud enough to be heard. I have often thought of that little girl – and is that were I first learned my resilience? Is that where it began?  Resilience I would have to lean on and build on time and time again in my life?

And will my little girl start to cry and one night I won’t hear her and in doing so she will realise that despite being so loved, she is in fact alone? And once she understands that, she can start to build herself?  Resilience is one of the greatest gifts I can give my girls. That, and the knowledge that they are so loved.  Lessons I learned as a child.   I am alone. I can’t call my mum – she can’t help me now. I can’t call my husband – he won’t help me now. I have lots and lots of friends to call… And they would and could comfort me. But sometimes I need to know my own resilience. To stand alone at the top of the stairs and cry and realise it is down to me.

When I told my daughter the truth about the tooth fairy I pre-empted it with two pieces of advice. The first was to know that while she grows up – through all the scary and exciting things that growing up entails, I will be by her side. My mum stayed by my side long after I left home.  Through all my growing up in my 20’s and 30’s, and becoming a mum myself, she still helped me up each step of adulthood.  I could cry alone because I always knew she would come if I called out loud enough.  And so I realised I didn’t become a real adult, I didn’t take the final step until the moment I realised she could no longer come. I am on the last step. 

My mum has left the staircase and is letting go of life. The magic she always kept in her eyes is dimming. The love is still there but it is tired.  The smile still smiles, but not as wide. She is done crying alone, and she is done with being grown up. And that’s ok. My role now in the sandwich years is to finally step up and be the grown up at the top of the stairs.

And so as mum lets go, I reach out my hand and start to help my daughter on to her first few shaky steps. She has a long long long way to go, but as I told her last night I will be by her side as long as I can.

The second piece of pre-emptive advice I gave her last night before I told her the truth, was that a certain responsibly comes with growing up. The experiences, knowledge and things she has as a result of stepping up and onto that adult staircase are for her, and she has a responsibility to make sure her little sisters, and younger friends, don’t step up before they are ready.  She liked that. She liked that she was being trusted.  She liked stepping onto the stairway.

And then I told her to ask me again. Ask me the questions she need answers for.

“Is the Tooth Fairy real?” she mumbled, half excited, half scared.

“Yes,” I said truthfully.

I told her I believed in magic and that life has an amazing way of delivering beauty and glitter and as a result, I can’t say for sure that ‘fairies’ don’t exist. But the Tooth Fairy does. I know, because it’s me. 

She looked at me dubiously.  All that Gin and chocolate. All that, you know, height. 

I told her I was the one who took her teeth to keep them safe. I explained it started as a way to give her comfort when big changes were happening in her life and like I said, I would always be by her side, as she goes through all the stages of growing up.  It will take many forms, my support, and this form just happened to be a fairy. 

As I left her in the fairly-light lit dark, I wondered just how long I can be with her.   In a desperate attempt to meet my mortality head on, I bought a Nutribullet last week, and whizz up a cocktail of kale and spinach and pear and kiwi every day just to make sure I can get her up as many steps as possible before it is time for me to leave the staircase and she finally reaches the top step of adulthood.

My nine year old daughter still doesn’t quite believe me about the first time I got a mobile phone.

“How old were you?” she asked hoping my age would be similar to hers so she could get one.

“32.”

She laughed, then stopped abruptly.

“No seriously, how old where you?”

“32.”

She still can’t grasp the concept that cave men didn’t sit on top of rocks texting each other about Mammoth sightings.

I still remember starting work for an international aid agency and there being no website and email. We did archaic things such as faxing.   Oh, and calling people on a telephone.  Damn it, I even hand wrote all my university essays. I vaguely remember there being something called a ‘computer room’ on campus but I had no idea what I would do in there.

But from the first twangs of that first dial-in to the internet, my technical tolerance and turbulence has accelerated at a frightening pace.  In 10 short years, my world has transformed. I’m write this now an my Macbook, on which I can be alerted about my messages, texts, tweets, appointments, while accessing all my music, and photos and gleam any piece of information about any topic from a mind-boggling googling gadget. Beside me is my mini iPad, and beside that is my mobile phone. I am never far from any of them.   My mum and I wrote each other letters all our lives, but soon I was leaving her far behind.

And already my child is overtaking me.  She is already tutting at my incompetence. She makes videos – funny, smart, edited pieces of art – like I used to make paper aeroplanes.  Yesterday I got a fully rolled eyes, sigh response because I couldn’t pick up fast enough WHAT SHE WAS TRYING TO TEACH ME!

And it makes me laugh…. but it also makes me sad. I might have been ancient getting a mobile phone at 32 but my mum was positively antique at 60. But she got one and took to it with gusto.  If talking was an animal, mum would have been a cheetah.  She could outrun anyone on the talking front. She used to complain that doing the food shop took her all morning. She failed to see that talking to everyone she met at the frozen peas delayed things somewhat.   So if I thought getting at least three phone calls a day was intense, once she got the hang of texting I was pursued with relentless relish.  But sometimes she couldn’t work things out, and I really regret not being more patient.   I regret not sitting with her longer while she tried to work out internet banking instead of getting up and telling her to just go to the bank.  I think in the last five years she has stayed still, while the world has whizzed past at broadband speed, she would have loved skyping and she would absolutely loved being able to message my older girls with that same relentless relish. I’ve no doubt whatsoever I’d have woken every morning to a FaceTime grin and “good morning!” from her.

My daughters are full steam ahead into the world of technology – they are known as digital natives, while I am of the generation of merely internet users.   They will grow up using technology as I grew up using a pen. Fundamental to communication. The  divide between my mum’s generation and my daughters’ generation are world’s apart with me sandwiched in the middle.

But then I think technology hasn’t left her behind. It is dragging her along.  She has a Digital photoframe beside her bed and like a film reel it flashes the story of her life and the story of her loves.  It is a constant, streaming reminder that although her life is a still frame, it is part of a moving picture. My girls send her videos they’ve made, and we can Facetime over breakfast and make her part of our everyday life. And when I go to see her I show her all the latest photos on my ipad. She can’t use the technology that has passed her by, but we can use it with her, and for her. At the moment I am still in the race with my girls, but I’ve no doubt they will someday pull way ahead.  I just hope they don’t leave me behind.  I hope they can include me in the latest technology trends … like me and my mum.  Here’s our latest ‘selfie’.

Sometimes my children know better than me.

After 3 hours of solid singing in the garden, Ruby flopped on the bed and proclaimed: “I’m out of battery. Plug me in to recharge!”

And she’s right.  Sometimes we just need to plug back into life and recharge.

The week before last, I had a terrible week. Truly shattering. But now I’m having a great week. Truly mattering. (So good I’m actually going to allow myself to make that word up, that’s how good I feel).  I’m back. Recharged and in charge.

I’m only able to talk about last week, this week. Sometimes you need space from the place of stress.   

The Sandwich Years don’t come with an appointment card and a Preparation Pack.  Sometimes they quietly slip into your life, unannounced and under the radar, until you realise one day that the balls you are juggling are falling in around your ears.   You are caring for your children and you think your parents are caring for you. But slowly, slowly you discover they need more from you and in a gradual process you switch roles of cared for and carer. 

Other times, the Sandwich Years arrive by ambulance, a clear cut line delineating before and after.     That was my experience.  Five days after my mum have been at the birth of my third baby, she put my other two girls to bed, read them a story, and kissed them goodnight. An hour later her brain exploded and the line was drawn very firmly in the ground.   The mum I knew was gone, and the person she became needed 24 care. 

My mum and dad used to roll their eyes at me. I could never just have a little drama.  I always had to have the Grade A, Maxed up, Premium Gold Level Drama (in fact at my wedding, dad confessed in his speech that as I grew up and left home, they would know when the phone rang there would be a crisis. “You answer it,” he’d say to mum. She’d be shaking her head, “no, you answer it!”)

And so it was even when I entered the Sandwich Years.  My situation couldn’t have demonstrated it more starkly – the conflicting, contrasting needs at both ends of my love life – my mum and my baby.  The months after mum’s stroke personified the acuteness of the Sandwich Years – I literally changed my baby’s nappies and my mums. I spoon fed my baby and my mum. I stroked her face as she could only speak to me with her eyes, and I stroked my baby’s face as she could only speak to me with her eyes.  Sometimes, I would look around and wonder was this some kind of joke?  It was like a comic tragedy…. without the comedy.  Looking back on that first year, I still can summon up the desperate darkness of powerlessness and the tsunami of need that overwhelmed me.

It will be five years in September.   After that first year, things with my baby and my mum continued in parallel…. trying to do jigsaws with them, building language and diction.  But after a while, only my baby progressed.  Things with mum certainly improved….she can talk, and eat herself, and we can take her out and about in her ‘Patmobile’ but life has essentially halted.  Her book still lies unfinished by her bed table upstairs.  That little baby, however, starts school in a couple of months, but my mum lies still, in that bed.

The Sandwich Years have had ups and downs. We’ve had wonderful times, and terrible times, but mostly we got into an even routine. The wrench of leaving my children to be with mum, the guilt of not being with mum to be with my children slowly, slowly dulled from an acute pain to an on-going ache as it all became the normal.

But then something happens again, and the contrast and conflict returns acutely.  Now that my Not Quite has left, time now with my girls is so precious because they are taken away at times by him, and when I am with them, I have so much more to do. They are fragile, and need a little extra TLC.  But at the same time, my mum has been deteriorating. She needs me too, as does my dad.

And so, between the girls being with their dad and me having to be with mum, I ended up not seeing them for days and days last week. It was terrible.  I even missed their school sports day (although Daisy was secretly pleased I’m sure, as I usually embarrass her by shouting the loudest.)  And because my dad was away having a break, in order to return to my girls, I had to put my mum into a home for a few days. Brutal choices, brutal options.

So my batteries were running out last week.  And when I got home I was still agitated and upset (hence my last post!). There was so much to do, and the pressure to have a good time with the girls before they went off with their dad again for the weekend felt enormous.  I was giving out about them not helping and then asked them one of those questions we stupidly ask our children, expecting them to come up with an answer.

“What am I supposed to do?”

Except sometimes they do come back with an answer. Quick as a flash Daisy replied “Have a poo. It’ll make you more relaxed.”

It did make me relax, but only because I was laughing so hard.  And also because she’s right – sometimes you have to let go of all the shit to feel good. Sometimes your kids know better. 

It took me a couple of days, it took me to be around them again, it took me to take deep breaths but I finally plugged myself back in.  And it reminded me of something Poppy had just said on holiday, a perfect example of her laid back character.  When Daisy (who like me, is the opposite of laid back) asked for the umpteenth time exactly what our daily schedule was going to be, I rolled my eyes and she smiled shyly, “I think I have OCD.”  Picking up their wet towels from the pool for the hundredth time, I replied, “And I have cleaning OCD.”   Then Poppy’s voice piped up from her sun lounger floating in the middle of the pool, “I think I have relaxing OCD”   Sometimes your kids know better.

So that’s it then.  Sage advice from my children

I’m plugged back into my life, I’ve had my (metaphorical) poo, and I got a cleaner – some times you just have to listen to the kids.