Grin and Tonic

What is it about being sick?  Even as a 45 year old, I want my mum. I took my girls away for an adventure to my childhood haunts on the Antrim Coast where my childhood ghost played and laughed with them. I watched them stand on the places I had stood, watched them climb on the ruins I had climbed, watched them potter on the rocks I had pottered on.   They did all the things I did when I as their age, and I said all the things mum did when she was my age.   It was a like a deja vu but the old and new where merged.

And then we all got sick. I don’t think I’ve ever had a night when all three girls where sick at the same time, but there we were, mid adventure in our little hotel, and like green bottles on the wall, one by one we fell.   So we abandoned ship and headed home and I’ve spent another full night feeding syringes of medicine into gaping mouths like a mother bird feeding her chicks, until they all ended up in my bed and we moaned and sweated our flu together.   I stumbled through the early hours responding to cries and giving out cuddles, and even though she is alive, I felt my mum’s ghost guide me from room to room, because she always looked after me.  And despite being ill and on my own, I don’t mind that they are so clingy and miserable, and all they want is me.

Because all I want is my mum.

The loss of her means so much more when I really need her. I spent Wednesday with her, trying to get her to eat, doing her nails, trying to engage about meaningless stuff, because we can no longer talk about all about the meaningful stuff. I can’t tell her my husband has left, because she loved him and she loves me and I don’t want to inflict that pain on her. Especially when she is in a state where she can do nothing about it.  And she would have done so much about it,

I think about that a lot. How she would have mothered me over the last few weeks, how she would have lain awake last thing every night and called me first thing every morning, worrying and fretting. How she would have taken that Belfast-Dublin train on relentless mercy missions of mothering, to make me tea, talk it through, or just sit quietly on the sofa stroking my hair when there was nothing left to talk about.

Instead, I get the Dublin-Belfast train, and make her tea, talk about nothing and stroke her hair because there is nothing left to talk about.

And now that I’m sick, I want my mum, just like I can see the girls need me. And I guess that is the biggest pain of the sandwich years – that I now have to play mother to them all, and there is no-one left to mother me.  (Although Poppy assures me she will look after me when I’m old. Ruby already thinks I’m old – ‘are you old mum?’ she asks yesterday. ‘No,’ I say hopefully. ‘Oh,” she says. ‘You look it.”)

I’m lucky, I have three amazing girls who will (I hope!!) look after me, just as I know I will look after them until my dying day. I just wish more than anything my mum could still look after me.   But then I think, it’s ok. She looked after me plenty, and her looking after was enough to sustain me still. And I’m glad I get the chance to look after her back…. and that’s the cycle of mothers and daughters…. we all look after each other.

A limp sandwich filled with life’s off meat.

I’m the sandwich filling. I’ve covered that.   Squashed between caring for a (currently disintegrating) young family, and a (currently struggling) elderly family, my job is to be the lick of jam that makes their lives sweet and tasty.   Sometimes I feel like a gourmet filling, and sometimes I feel like an unrecognisable grey meat-like substance you see in a filling station in the middle of nowhere.

Today’s special is even worse than that.

Things at home are so fraught, the tears on my face for the tear in my life is stretching, straining, strangling me. My ‘Not Quite’ (not quite a husband not quite an ex) has to move out. We cannot work through a separation and continue to live together. If we want to attain what we need to attain for the sake of our girls, I need space to grieve and hate, then rebuild and forgive. So I have asked him to leave.  And although I know absolutely that is the best thing, the pain of knowing when he walks out that door in a week or so, he will be shutting it on 20 years of love and 10 years of marriage, and no matter how awful some of those years have been, the pain is breathtaking. And not in the beautiful way.  I want to be able to maintain a semblance of family for my girls, so amidst the adjustment of being with me, or being with him, I want there to be times we can still all be together. I know that is not for everyone, and will be monumentally hard, but this is not their fault and I never want them to feel they are fractured. I want them always to feel part of a family, however that family will now look.  For that I need peace of mind, and I can’t get that when he is in the home and we are dancing a deathly dance of defeat, where the beat is thumping my heart to death.

I’ve left my children this weekend because it is too painful being with their father. I am looking after my Mum who can’t say my name, and so doesn’t know my pain, because what is the point of making her life any worse than it already is?  So I smile, and scrape the nose pickings out of her nails, wash her teeth and clean their house and wish more than anything my old Mum could come back and hold me like she used to, and make me a cup of tea and for a few moments, make everything feel ok.  I got the worst of parenting this weekend. A splintered phonecall of nothingness from children who are tired and fraught and distracted, and then later, a shattered phonecall from Ruby who desperately needs me and screams hysterically at me from 200 miles away to please, mummy, please come home.   I am left to sing her a lullaby through the phone.

People keep telling me I’m strong. I know they mean it as a compliment but somehow it makes me flinch. It makes me feel they don’t understand my pain. That to be strong, I mustn’t be hurting. That being strong meant I was hard. It reminds me of when I was a child and my Mum would say “I never have to worry about you…. I do worry about your brother though”. This hurt.  My childish self would shout back silently, “but I want you to worry about me!”  And so when my gorgeous friends and those around me say, “But Alana, you are so strong, you will come through this,” my little inner child still pouts and shouts, “but I’m hurting!”

But this weekend I realised that being strong is what I am. It is who I am.  And I am proud of it. 

I am strong, and yes, I am hurting.  But I am not hard. I am loving and that is what makes me strong. And that is what this marriage took from me. The belief in my loving strength. And that is what I am reclaiming.  I am strong and I love and protect the people around me, even when I’m hurting.

I am protecting my Mum. Because I am strong and loving.

I am protecting my girls. Because I am strong and loving.

I am even protecting him, keeping his story hidden until he is ready to tell it. Because I am strong and loving.

My marriage is over and I’m left with three children, debt and a cold sore.

But I’m reclaiming my loving strength.  My filling just got a bit of chutney.

So life is a bit in flux right now.

For someone like me who likes order (colour coded preferably) this is quite traumatic. So I’m obsessively making lists.

For someone like me who likes to try and focus on the positive (and get a grip on the crap) this is hard. So I’m obsessively searching for the light in the current gloom.

For someone like me who likes to find solutions (or a road map at least) this is frightening. So I’m obsessively trying to focus on what my future will look like.

So, here is my obsessive list of positive (and crap) things about getting separated to help me find a way to the future.

The good things about being separated.

•  My children are seeing more of their dad (ironically) and blossoming from quality time with him.
• My dinner can now be just two glasses of wine and three packets of Doritos (if i want). Or I can eat chicken mango salad every night (if I want).
• I have time. Time to think (see also bad points), time to write, time to work, time to relax, time to read, time to do all those ‘jobs’ around the house there is never time for. Now there is time. (Though still ain’t doing those jobs…)
• I can write. Book Number 1 is finished and is on a dating dance with agents. I am 10,000 words into Book Number 2. I have an outline of Book Number 3.
• I can invest time in being a writer and all that that entails – I am blogging, and building a community of on-line comrades (my family got smaller but my world got bigger), going out to literary events, tweeting and twittering and immersing myself in a world I didn’t have time or energy for before
• I own myself
• I realise how loved I am, and how amazing my friends are (I always knew it but now I know it!)
• Despite the brutality of the situation and the grief that comes with it, I feel lighter. I am no longer investing most of my energies trying to fix a marriage that is unfixable. I am no longer venting my anger and frustration at being unseen and unheard on someone who could not see or hear me. My energies are spent in creativity and making my girls smile.
• I am getting a kitten. (So there!)
• I can sleep without ear plugs (no more snoring….)
• I know I am strong. I’m relearning that I’m also a nice person again, not the horrible person I assumed I must be.
• I am back.

The bad things about getting separated.

• The silence. For ten years I have craved it, and now there is too much. 4pm-5pm on their day with Daddy seems to be the most silent of all.  And pretty much all of Sunday afternoon.
• The time. I have gone from having none, to having too much. But, I will find ways to fill it (see good points above)
• The loss of friendships. Everyone is lovely and so supportive, but at the end of the day the people that were his friends and family that I have grown to love over time will eventually stop texting. He gets full custody of them.
• Saying goodbye to the girls in a smiley high-pitched voice when they are leaving for the day, and my dog nuzzling my legs and wagging his tail as he knows I’m sad but he gets me all to himself now.
• Going to bed every night by myself…(did I mention I’m getting a kitten?)
• Seeing my marriage divided out on an excell spreadsheet – this day is mine, that day is his, this furniture is mine, that is his, this money is mine, that is his.
• 4am
• Having to admit how much I spend on Amazon and then having to delete the Amazon app from my phone. (Did I really buy that many books last year??)

 Things about getting separated that are just so brutal I can barely breath

• Hearing from Teacher that my daughter told the class her parents had separated.
• My girls crying.
• That I face a life alone.
• 4am

There are things there that I cannot change.  But there are things there that I can.

There are things there that scare me.  But there are things there that excite me.

There are things there I will take with me.  And there are things there I will leave behind.

A colour coded list, with positive solutions. Phew. I feel better already…..

Ok, so today was the first day I had on my own.  The first day my – actually, what do I call the man who is still my husband but isn’t? The man who I’ve known for 20 years, been married to for 10, who gave me three children, but no longer wants this life? What do I call him? He’s not quite my husband, he’s not quite my ex, he’s not quite estranged, he’s not quite anything. So maybe for now I shall simply call him my Not-Quite. So today was the first day my Not Quite took my children.  For, what shall now and forever more, be known as ‘his day’.   Five weeks ago I was married. Now I loose my children at certain times to ‘his day’. Soon there will be a ‘his weekend’. There is a horrible penciled in line in the summer called ‘his week’. And because I can’t write about just how shit that feels (see previous post on limiting overload of words on said topic) I will write about the smidgen of positive.

I had a whole day. I always imagined if I ever got a day to myself I would indulge in the luxury of nothingness, eat chocolate, watch the telly. But my mind is way too fragile for that sort of abandon. So I worked. And I wrote. For every minute of it. And it was amazing how much I got done….  I have spent years squeezing big amounts of work and writing into small amounts of time. Time so limited it never sucked up the lists. They spilled over into my afternoons, my evenings, my early mornings. But today I wrote and wrote and worked and worked and ticked and ticked until my whole list was gone and I felt full to bursting with the pleasure of stuff done.   And my mind was so packed with writing and work it pushed out all the pain and the sadness.  Words will save me. Work will support me. Friends will love me. And eventually I will get used to having whole days, and whole weekends, and horrible whole weeks to myself.  But for now, I just had my first day. A box ticked all of it’s own.

And can you believe it?  Just as I pick myself up again, re-energise myself and my blog, finish my novel, begin my second, realise I have a really successful business, run my marathon, feel like I’m on top of the mountain after a long long climb……  my husband ends my marriage.

Whoosh! A massive gust of wind throws me over the edge. But you know what Life?  You know what? I’m still hanging on.  Your gust has blown me off the top but not back down. So I am not going to talk about that right now, because there is so much to write about how and why my marriage has ended so abruptly that I might crash WordPress with the volume of words I need to write. Either that or it’s another book… perhaps a trilogy. Perhaps a whole fucking library. Because this is some story. But it’s not for today.

Life’s wind is buffeting me but I am hanging on. Today I want to talk about my novel.  I finished it. And several people actually think it’s good.  Good enough to be sent to agents. Good enough to encourage me to hurry up and write my second. Last night I attended the Irish PEN Awards to honour an amazing woman writer (and so prolific she leaves me breathless) Eilis Ni Dhuibhne who spoke about the importance of words in our lives to enrich and support us, to teach us and guide us. And words will get me back up that mountain. Words that I will read (oh the pile of books beside my bed smile at me like friends I know they’ll be), and words that I will write. Words that I write for my day job, words that I write for fun and words that I write for my sanity. Life, you can blow me off course as much as you like, but I have an armory of words and they will always lead me home.

So you know, when I decide to do something I decide to do it. In my last post I said I was taking a break to grow down…to focus on living for a while instead of surviving. To run, to write, to breathe.

And I did all of those things……… it just took me 18 months!

18 months!  That’s some super break.

But you know what? It worked. I took time out, I grew down…. and in doing so I grew up.

Sometimes you have to stop to start.

Sometimes you have to step back to move forward.

Sometimes you have to let go to get a tighter grip.

I was too busy being busy. So I stopped being busy and got on with living… and achieved so much more. 18 months ago I listed three things I was too busy to do but really wanted to. Write. Run. Find a better work/life balance.

And I did all three.

I have finished my novel, and am about to embark on the ever-so-frightening, ever-so-exciting, ever-so-grit-your-teeth challenge of finding an agent and even a publisher.  I’ve also started my second.

I ran so much I just completed the Dublin marathon.

And I changed the focus and direction of my job and now I only do what I love doing. I write for a living. Every day.

And most importantly I still get to care for all my people without feeling every second is being borrowed from a different piece of the pie. And now there is a good-sized piece of the pie with just my name on it. A new slice that often gets lost in the steaming filling of life, but is so important to make all the other slices taste good. (there’s a line threatening to come out here about having my slice of cake and eating it but I’m letting my analogies run away with me).

So I’m leaving my old MummyMania blog behind.  In honour of my last post, I am restarting and renaming this blog The Sandwich Years.

I still feel like the filling – a squashed meat stuck between the breads of caring for young children and elderly parents. Sometimes I feel like a limp petrol station pre-wrap. It has all the right elements but is somehow lacking in taste. But sometimes I feel gourmet. Creative, filling, full of flavour and bite.  And that’s life. I’ve learned to take life’s calories and burn them up brilliantly whichever way they come.

The Sandwich Years is also fitting because it describes the phase I’m in right now with three small people at school and parents who need my love and attention. I’m in that culinary chaos of combining the bustling business of raising a family, alongside the bludgeoning business of building a career.  I’m also writing a novel, have written a novel and need to see where that takes me too. It’s mayhem, but it’s my mayhem and I want to enjoy it, not just endure it.

So I’m back. I’m physically fitter after training for a marathon, but I’m also mentally fitter. I want to write more about the marathon, because it wasn’t just one day. The training and the preparation taught me many things about life. It taught me I can endure pain, and carry on. It taught me I can make time for the things I need to do, and no-one dies (the house is a bit dirtier but who cares?). It taught me I am stronger than I ever imagined. And that life, work, writing a novel are about setting goals, and working hard to make them happen.  So more of that.

I want to write more about writing my book – and how actually what I learned was writing a book and finishing it, is pretty much the same as training for and finishing a marathon.  I couldn’t do the latter without actually going out and running every day and I couldn’t do the former without actually sitting down and writing every day.  So more of that too.

And then lots just about my life…. Depending on what filling I feel like at the time!  I hope you hear from you…

I’ve decided I want to grow down for a while.  Not reduce my height grow down, but the grow down that is the opposite of grow up. I want to grow down and find all those fun and childish values that get pushed out of the way to make room for more bone mass and chocolate induced fat cells as we get older.
Life has got super serious the last couple of years, super serious and super super stretched. I’ve taken on too much work, but still raise the girls, so I find myself lurking at my desk while the rest of humanity (rightly) use the dark hours for sleep, I have too much time away from them,  and back to the keyboard every evening once I’ve done the ususal routine of putting Ruby back to bed 14 times, whilst trying not to throw her (and me) out the window in frustration.
I care for my mum. I care for my children. I care for my husband. I care for the house, the family meals, the dog. I work. I no longer write my novel as there is no time. I barely write this blog.  But that’s the time that’s in it, those sandwhich years where I am the filling (nearing out of date) squashed between the breads of burden.
So to put a bit of life back into that filling (since I can’t change the bread), I’ve two chutney challenges for myself.
The first is to reduce my workload so that I can fit some stuff in that (shock, horrow! How dare she?) is in fact just for me. Like writing, like running.  I have just made that income v living balance decision, and its scary but it’s good.
And the second is to grow down. A few things happened in the space of a week to make me realise I’ve become too grown up. One morning Ruby was awake early and we went to walk the dog. I was in fowl form as I had hoped to get some work done before the girls all got up, so I stomped around the soggy park in the rain, dog and child in tow. I’d put Ruby’s wet gear and wellies on so when she spotted a big muddy puddle she ran for it like a true Peppa Pig fan. The lure of her jumping around in this mire of mud was too much and I stomped right in and it splashed my mood away (I did not have wet gear and wellies on which made me rather sodden by that kinda added to the joy). And there it was. A moment of joy in a world of work. I grew down for a little bit and it gave me joy.
A few days later I was out with the girls and we were at an outdoor farm / playground place and Poppy said, “Mum, let’s run to that fence and back again.” I looked at her with that adult face that says, “for what purpose?” Because everything we do as adults has to have a purpose. And Daisy looked right back at me and said, “Why don’t grown ups run?”  Kids run everywhere. Just for the pure expression of energy and joy. They see a space and they see a chance to run. Not the running (I’m supposed) to do where I set my distance, measure my pace and pound the path. Just a run. From here to there. Just for the fun of it.  So we did.We ran to the fence and back several times and puffed out lots of laughs between strained breaths.
I was at a worky workshop this week, and to start us off we were asked to draw the person beside us and then introduce them – their name and where they worked etc.  The room was full of apologies and cringy laments about bad drawings and ‘it doesn’t look like you’s’.  The facilitator threw away a comment – if she had done this with a group of children, they would have attacked the challenge with vigour and made no apology for their masterpieces. Why do we loose that confidence, that enthusiasm, that total lack of embarrassment when we grow up?
And the last reason for wanting to grow down? If I don’t grow down, and instead keep growing up, I’ll keep growing old. My beautiful (grown down) daughter was sitting on my bed while I got dressed the other day. She came up behind me and squeezed my bum. “I love your bum mum,” she said. “Thanks lovely!” I said, deligthed to be appreciated. “Yeah, it’s really squidgy.”  This was followed by a perfectly innocent “I like your boobs too – they look like monkeys hanging down from a tree.”
So, two things I take from this. I have to make time to exercise so I do stay young and fit. And that kids call it as it is. They don’t evaluate every comment, sanction every thought before they make them. They just accept who they are, and see things in simplicity.
So here’s my simple thought. I’m super busy. I’m super stretched. I’m super sodding strangled.  And I’m not feeling super at all. In fact, I’m feeling rather crap.  So, I’m going to be grown up and cut down on work, and I’m going to be grown down and try and enjoy the simpler things in life.

Thre is no greater sound than the cacophony of childish giggles, yells and squeals. It is the sound of life living.

But there is no sweeter sound than the seconds after they all run out the door……a stampede of squealing, shouting shoe-searching, coat catching, that leaves a wake of  pure, blissful, unadulterated silence.   A silence so powerful it can knock you over.

It is rare, and all the sweeter for that. But, apart from being a mere pleasant moment that most parents at some points have sighed, “ah, peace.” I wonder is it actually good for us?

I find myself increasingly searching silence. I used to relish the rare moments of being in the car by myself and slot my favourite CD on, blasting it loud and singing songs that didn’t have the words ‘bus’, ‘star’, or ‘baby.’  But now?  I turn off the cd player and listen to a blasting of silence.  I no longer have the TV in the background in the eveing while I potter round doing odd jobs. I potter in peace. I sometimes even take it a step further. I lie in bed sometimes and put my book down and just lie there. Awake, in the moment, taking a little moment to be, slightly amazed and bewildered that no-one is talking to me.

Damn. I must be getting old. I’ll be telling them to turn down the music next.