Dear So and So - the bored now edition.

Dear Baby,

Come out? Please?

Mummy x

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Dear S,

Just because you can climb out of your cot, doesn't mean you should.   And 3 am is never an acceptable time to get up. Ever.

Mummy x

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Dear Baby,

Please come out.

Mummy x

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Dear A,

Yes, ok, you've understood, and you stay in.  Very clever. Well done. Thank you.

Still no excuse for being filthy during the day though.

Although when you look at me like that I can forgive you pretty much anything.  But that works for your sisters too.

Mummy x

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Dear Baby,

Come on!

Mummy x

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Dear L,

I said I'd never say it, but...

Life's not fair. Sorry.

And being told off for something you did wrong has absolutely nothing to do with fairness, equality or the state of the world economy, it's just what happens.  Tough.

Mummy x

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Dear baby,

What do you want?

I've walked, I've bounced, I've drunk endless cups of raspberry leaf tea. I've eaten curry (Indian and Thai).

I've even resorted to leering suggestively at your father.

Is it pineapple? Because I can get pineapple...

Mummy x

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Dear builders,

You're doing a fantastic job. You really are.  I'm so pleased. Just do you think you could do it slightly quicker?  Would be lovely to have somewhere to put this baby... Oh, and a kitchen would be nice too.

Harriet

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Dear medical professionals and random women in the supermarket,

Yes, I know I should be resting. Yes, I know that the baby won't come if I'm not relaxed (actually I think that's nonsense - if I don't relax for 22 months does that make me an elephant), yes, I know I should get lots of early nights, but have you seen what's going on in this house?

My mother is 350 miles away and caring for my father, my mother's help is on holiday, my children are refusing to sleep, the builder needs to know whether I want the lights "here" or "here", and you want me to rest?

Yours grumpily

Kitchen-less woman, ex-pat (sort of) daughter, and mother-of-three and a nearly.

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Dear friends,

I've known only a few of you for more than a year, yet I am overwhelmed with how kind you are being. I have a list of names and numbers, and I know that whoever I ring, at whatever time, will be here like a shot.

Thank you all so much. I am doing everything I can to ensure that this baby arrives at a civilised hour. 

Sadly, that's nothing, but it's the thought that counts.

Harriet x

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Dear self

Shut up. He'll come when he comes.

Bored now.

Me x

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Dear readers,

Sorry if I'm getting slightly tedious on the subject of waiting, but consider it a tiny insight into the inside of my head.

I promise though. No more waiting for the baby posts until he's here.

And head over to Kat's for more postcards.

Harriet

ps Oh, and if you were to fancy voting for me....

The last kiss goodnight

Imagine the scene:

You are staying at your parents'.  The children were in bed hours ago and are sound asleep, probably with arms flung above heads and covers wrunkled round feet. You've had a pleasant meal, maybe a glass of wine, definitely a splendid pudding, and you're off to bed.  You say goodnight and head upstairs with your best beloved.

You creep into the children's rooms, tucking them in and kissing each of them, relishing that sleepy baby breathing. You clean your teeth, wash your face, climb into bed and do whatever it is the pair of you do next (in my case, whinge about being uncomfortable, read a couple of pages of a book and warm my feet on the back of his legs (he loves that, by the way)), before turning the light off and settling down to sleep.

The door creaks open, light spills in from the hallway. In creeps your mum. She leans over the bed and gives you a gentle kiss on the forehead, brushing your hair out of your eyes.  "Night, night, darling. I love you. I'll see you in the morning".

Or not.

Because funnily enough neither of my parents comes in to give me a goodnight kiss any more. I'd find it more than a little odd if they did.

But when did they stop?  Because the goodnight kiss, the sleepy baby, the hunt for the lost Bunny in the darkened room, the tucking in of the tiny hands are all an essential part of my bedtime routine.  I would be significantly more likely to go to bed without cleaning my teeth than I would without kissing my children. 

But mine are (nearly) 4 and 2. So I can do that.  They go to bed before me. They are asleep. They expect me to creep in, to tuck, to stroke, to kiss.  And I know that I won't when they are 24 and 22.  But what about when they are 14 and 12?  Will they then be too cool? Too awake?  Too grumpy?

When does it stop?  When is the last kiss goodnight? How long have I got? Will I recognise it when it comes?  Because I'm going to miss it when it's gone and I want to savour it until it is.

Movers and shakers

My dad is a mover and a shaker.

Or rather he's not.  He doesn't shake and he can't move.

He has Parkinson's Disease.

A little while ago, a friend of mine asked if my father was dead.  Apparently I don't talk about him much. And it made me realise that I tend to use the collective noun "my mum" when I really mean "my parents".

And, mostly, Parkinson's is why.

When he was diagnosed I was about twenty and he was fifty-five.  That's early-ish for a diagnosis, but not unheard of and doesn't put him in the Michael J Fox category of early-onset Parkinson's at all.  We are lucky.  To be honest it was a relief. I'd noticed things were wrong and although I'd never have said it out loud for fear of making it true, I thought it was Alzheimer's or a brain tumour, or something, I thought, truly debilitating and awful.

Something that was going to take away my dad.

Which is ironic.  Because that's precisely what Parkinson's is doing.  Slowly, yes, but inexorably nonetheless.

As I say, he's neither a mover nor a shaker.  If you think of Parkinson's you probably think of old men with wobbly hands.  He doesn't do that. He doesn't have a tremor, doesn't shake or shudder.  Instead he has a freeze.  The messages from his brain to his legs just don't get through and so, from time to time, three or four times a day, he can't move.  He's stuck,  for minutes rather than hours, but long, agonising, frustrating minutes while he counts, out loud, like a toddler with a new skill, willing his feet to carry him where he wants to go, his knees to bend, his legs to swing at the hip as they used to so thoughtlessly.

And it's not just his legs messages don't get to.  His hands don't really work either. His writing, never what you might call legible, is now spidery: weak and nearly as painful to read as it must be to write.  His mouth doesn't work, so he mumbles, and dribbles, and makes people shy away from him in the street, or look the other way, or just get cross and frustrated as he holds up an entire conversation trying to get the right words out at a level that can be heard.  In the night, when he stops taking the two-hourly drugs that make any movement possible, all movement ceases, and he is totally reliant on my mum, a carer rather than a wife.

He doesn't read this blog and I wouldn't be saying any of this if he did.  But he isn't, in so many ways, my dad any more.  He's my dad, so obviously he's always been annoying and frustrating and embarrassing.  But he was also charming and witty and sparky, given to random flights of fancy and appalling puns.  He's still the same, but he's lost the ability to communicate the spark that made him such great company.  His dad jokes are inaudible, his frolics of imagination unfollowable.  He's an unbelievably adoring grandfather, but one who can't pick them up for fear of dropping them.  

And if he's been taken from me and my children, how much more has he been taken from my mother, at a stage of their lives where they were looking forward to his retirement and freedom from children?  I asked her once, early on, how she felt.  She said, "I promised to love him for better or worse, in sickness and in health.   We didn't plan for this, we didn't want it, but I made a promise and I'm going to keep it". 

Parkinson's is not fatal. He could, and should, live a normal life span.  It is his seventieth birthday this year, his allotted three score years and ten, and we have a big party planned.  He will be brilliant, I know.  All his effort will go into hiding, as much as possible, the effects of this disease.  He will, insofar as possible, speak up, not mumble, stand straight, take the drugs that keep him moving, and this will, in the days that follow, take its toll.  And we will watch, and worry and try not to think about the Parkinson's related dementia that might, one day, add another symptom to his personal list.

I realise, even in writing this, that I am lucky.  It is just Parkinson's.  It won't kill him, and for the moment, it isn't taking his mind. But it is taking his body and his spirit, and it has already taken the dad I knew growing up.   

Apparently I don't talk about my dad much, but then if I don't, who will?

 

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This week is Parkinson's awareness week.  One person in 500 in the UK has Parkinson's. Even if you or they don't know it, you will know someone with it. It may be more or less debilitating than it is for my dad, but it will, regardless, have changed their lives and the lives of everyone who knows them.  It will therefore come as no surprise to you that my charity for this month is the Cure Parkinson's Trust. You may well have heard of The Parkinson's Disease Society which does an amazing job of raising awareness and supporting my dad and others with the disease, but wouldn't it be amazing if their support wasn't needed ever again? 

I vant to be alone. Or do I?

I am alone. 

Shall I say that again?

I am alone in my house.  There is no one else here.  Just me.    And an awful lot of tidying and sorting out.

I honestly can't remember the last time I was actually alone.  It was certainly pre-A and S, which means it's over sixteen months since I sat in my house, on my own, with no-one else in it.

I have been looking forward to this moment, to this week, for a while now.  I finished work on Friday (new-look blog, new-look description of me and what I do, possibly even new-look name if I can think of one coming up just as soon as I can cast off my luddite tendencies and make it work), and I am enrolled in Millinery 2 this week.  This means that this week my heroic mother is having my children ALL WEEK.

I have been so excited. In fact I've probably been downright unpleasant in my smugness at having a week all to myself and B.  And in fact, it'll feel more like all to myself, because not only has he heroically taken them to my mother's (leaving me to tidy up and start the pre-move de-cluttering, ahem) but he'll be at work, so at the beginning and end of the day, my time will really be my own.

So, as I say, I have really been looking forward to it.

And then, this morning, I realised something.  I've got to spend a whole week without my children.  And I don't want them to go. Even when L was being hideous this morning, there was a part of me thinking "but I don't want you to go".
 
But then the odd thing. Did I make the most of the day we had together? Did I spend lovely quality time with my beautiful, much-adored children? Did we reaffirm our familial bond and love for each other? 

We did not.

I was just the same as I always am.  Concentrating on the washing up, the tidying, the getting dressed, the packing.  Are they eating enough? Not enough? At the right time? Are they playing nicely? Who snatched what? Who needs to say sorry? Do this. Don't do that. 

Come and give me a cuddle.

Why do I do this? Why can I know, and feel, one thing, and yet do and say another? How can I simultaneously long for this week to come, and yearn for it to be over?

Forget the battle between working and non-working mums (in which number, lest I forget, I must now count myself).  I think my biggest battle will remain between my all-consuming love for my children, and my just as demanding selfish needs.

Mothers and other irritants.

I've dithered about this post.  I don't think my mum reads my blog. She's certainly never mentioned it and she's not usually backwards in coming forwards, but I know my brother does, so it's possible.  And I'm not sure I'm ready to deal with all this face to face...

But anyway.  My mum.

I've read other people's posts about their parents and I realise that in the grand scheme of things I am very lucky with my mum. She's kind, loving, intelligent, generous (see Canada trip...), fantastic with my children and I think must have done a pretty good job with me and my siblings (she says modestly).

So why am I finding her so difficult at the moment?

I used to have this fantastic relationship with my mum but somehow since my girls were born it's changed.  On the outside you'd say I still have a great relationship with her.  I see her relatively often, we speak probably once a week or so, we get on well when we see each other, she helps out with the girls, we don't (generally) bicker or argue.  But I don't call her unprovoked,  just for a chat, the way B does with his mum.

And all that does is add to the guilt.  Because I've worked it out.  The reason I feel uncomfortable when I'm with my mum is because I feel guilty.  All the time.  And I have don't entirely know why.  I just get the impression that she thinks I am letting her down.

Some of this, at the moment, I know is related to my job and the dithers I'm having about it.  But what else is going on? B, the amateur psychologist, thinks that she must feel as though her role is being usurped by me.   She's been the mother and the mother figure all my life, and now I am.  So what does that make her?  This sort of relates back, in his opinion, to my job.  She's done a great job as a mother (she hasn't done paid work since I was born, and didn't do any work at all until after my younger brother went to school) and I'm the living proof of this - happy healthy family, great job, modern exemplar etc etc.  If I give up work and become "just" a mum, what does that do to her status as mother to this pinnacle of virtue?

And then some of it, I think, is because I do feel guilty.  I feel guilty because I get irritated. I get irritated when she implies, or seems to imply, that she knows my children better than I do. Or when she knows me better than I know myself.  Or when she complains about the way my house is arranged (although to be fair, I complain about the way she arranges her house, so that's totally hypocritical of me).  Or when she tries to solve problems with money.  Or when she puts herself second, again, and I just want to say "Stand up for yourself, mum. Do what you want to do when you want to do it", even when the person she's putting herself second to is, well, me.

And I feel guilty because I don't call her, and because I don't help enough with my dad (who's ill) and because I know she'd love me to pile all the girls in the car and drive up and see them once a month as so many of her friends' children do (and I don't because I'm lazy, and L is carsick and I know that when I get there I'll just feel guilty, so I don't, and the cycle continues), and because my brother's in Canada, and my sister's uncommunicative, and I'm talking about moving to Scotland and taking the girls with me and I suspect, in my heart of hearts that she feels abandoned, yet I'm still doing it...

I realise that a lot of this is because I've just spent 12 days in the company of my family for the first time in probably as many years, but I've talked to some of my friends about this, and it appears that I'm not alone. So what are we doing wrong? And how can we rescue it? And how, please, how can I stop my daughters needing to write the exact same post in thirty years time? Because that thought breaks my heart.

And Mummy, if you are reading this, I'm sorry.  Maybe we should have a chat.

How much is enough?

Tomorrow is the first day of the working week (snow permitting).

Well, at least it's the first day of my working week.

You see, as of tomorrow, I'm working, by the tolerance of my employer, a mere two days a week (Thursdays and Fridays) and while I thought it was what I wanted, I'm worried that it just isn't going to work.

From the happy halcyon days of Whistler I was thought "Whoopee! Only two days a week in the office! It's going to be great!", yet I woke up in a cold sweat on Monday night:"Oh help! I've got to fill three days with the little monsters this week, what on earth am I going to do with them!" and now, having had three very good days, jetlag notwithstanding, I'm praying for snow to shut the nursery so I don't have to go in...

Which is all, quite frankly, just me being typically dithery.

But I do honestly wonder if it really is going to be possible for me usefully to do my job in two days a week.

When we were away, we were sitting round the table and I was talking about something I had done at work before I had L.  My mum said "Oh, right, that was when you had a proper job".  That's as against, in case you'd forgotten, the exact same job I do now, only at a higher level and while simultaneously looking after three small children.  But I do wonder if maybe she was, sort of, right, and if there comes a point when actually you do need to devote a bit more of your time and your energy to your job than it seems I'm prepared to...

But then that way lies the jump I'm not yet ready to make, and until then, my employers are just going to have to take what they can get.  And I'm just going to have to hope they'll continue to think it's enough.

Oh Canada!

It was amazing!

I don't want to get all gushy, although it might make a nice change from my usual whinging, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to.  At least about Canada, Canadians and skiing...

First a week in Whistler.  I can't quite yet believe that we managed, with the three girls in tow, to have four full days skiing, but we did and it was amazing.  To someone used to skiing in a tiny wee village in France with about six lifts and ten runs, Whistler-Blackcomb was utterly beyond all of my expectations.  The width of the pistes, the efficiency of the lifts and staff, the friendliness of everyone, the vast number of ladies loos everywhere you stopped...  And to top it all off, I skied well! 

Having fairly quickly come to the conclusion that this was my holiday and that therefore however much B wanted to launch himself off sheer cliff faces, I wasn't in the business of scaring myself silly, I spent my four days flying down friendly wide slopes, arms outstretched, wind whistling over the top of my helmet*, huge grin on my face.  Can't be bettered.

And all this with free babysitting, cooking and cleaning....

Christmas itself was, well, sort of just another day on the slopes with a lot of presents for the girls and one each for the adults (we'd done a not-secret-at-all Santa which worked out really well).    

Then on to Vancouver Island to stay with my brother and his wife.  I don't imagine I'd ever have visited Vancouver Island were they not living there and I feel very lucky to have done so.  Where we were, on the very southern tip of the Island, is a temperate rainforest, and coming there from the snow was, almost literally, like being hit with a wall of green, an assault on the eyes that took several hours to get used to.  And yes, it rained.

The thing I found odd about Vancouver Island is how beautiful the scenery is against how utterly hideous much of the architecture is.  Admittedly many of the houses are built in what I presume is the local vernacular - clapboard style - which is (or can be) attractive, but most of the other buildings seem to be chanelling the low-rise strip mall look.  There may be some very sensible tsunami-surviving, or rain-repelling or otherwise practical reason for this but driving through it feels a bit like being in the title sequence of a film about the misery of American suburbia - as you pass yet another Lube Center (and, incidentally, can you really build a business on engine oil?).

But that is, perhaps, to complain unnecessarily.  We were very lucky to be there at all, and I'd definitely go back to both Whistler and Vancouver Island (although I admit the presence of the lovely S&T is the biggest draw there).  The best bit is that I think the girls had, in many ways, a better holiday than all the rest of us.  They had 7 adults giving them constant attention and presents too.  Coming back to home and just boring old Mummy has, I imagine, been a bit of a comedown.

The downside?  Well, not a downside as such, but 12 days with my family deserves a post all to its own...

*three years ago it would have been "wind in my hair" but three children later I've somehow become very aware of how much I need to stay alive.

What a waste?

My parents came to stay last night.  This happens quite frequently because my mum, who is a saint in human form*, comes up once a week to help me take A&S swimming and my dad, who isn't very well, prefers to be where she is (bless!).

So anyway, last night, my dad had some dinner for his old cricket team (he hasn't played cricket since about 1975 but still), so we had the pleasure of my mum's company for the evening.

We were talking about my current dilemmas, options and choices when she said "funny really; after all that expensive education you're going to throw it all away to make hats. Ha ha."

That was a joke by the way.

Except I didn't find it terribly amusing.  Because, guess what, that's occurred to me too.  I am ridiculously expensively- and well-educated. My dad worked long hours in a stressful job to pay for this and my siblings and I did what we were "supposed" to do by going on to good universities, getting good degrees, and good jobs. Now here I am; with (allegedly) potential to go "all the way" in my Proper Job, and I'm talking about walking away from it to look after my children.  Is that a waste of my education?  Apparently my father thinks so.  And although it was a "joke", I suspect my mother's not far away.

Now I don't want to go through this all again because even I'm bored of it and I've come to the conclusion that I've got to do what feels right for me and my family, even if I don't yet know what that is.  But what worries me is that if even my own parents don't understand that what hope have I got that anyone else will?

* and, like, I imagine, most saints, she makes mere mortals (including yours truly) feel guilty and irritable much of the time...