Retreating into Myself

They don't call life a rollercoaster for nothing. You have a dip, and then suddenly before you know it, you are climbing back up the ladder of life and squealing with delight at the top of the world. Does the universe just work it's magic sometimes without you really knowing? I really believe it does. Could I ever have imagined a year ago when I first thought up the idea for a week's writing retreat for my 40th birthday present, that the week that I chose was probably the week in my entire life when I would need it most?

All the dips of the last year - lost babies, a medical maelstrom, chromosomal chaos - have been overtaken by the climb back up. I write this with the sun on my face (yes, the universe even chucked in some hot sun on the west coast of Ireland in March to prove it's mystical magic). I have found a peace I don't think I've felt in years. Even the six hour drive was a treat - I'd piled up the passenger seat with CDs I haven't listened to in years, and belted out my youth as the sun shone on my road to the sea. I arrived on Sunday, and admittedly felt like the twelve year old who has arrived at boarding school. I missed home, I missed my girls, my room looked lonely and I was the new girl. But when I woke up on Monday morning in Anam Cara (Irish for Soul Friend) and pulled back the curtains, I literally stopped breathing. And I realised this place really was going to be a friend to my soul. The sort of friend who throws a blanket round your shoulders, bakes you a chocolate cake and hands you a slice with a large mug of tea. The view still takes my breath away. The desk in my room is against the window and every time I look up from my laptop I am still surprised by the beauty. The shimmering sea glistens in the crook of an arm of mountains and cliffs. I'm in the land of ancient celtic heritage. Mystical stone gatherings and folklore litter the landscape, while my own literary landscape has become as endless and textured as the mountains around me.

I write every day, and I walk, and I talk with the other writers here. Even my belly is swelling with happiness - although more to do with the freshly collected egg breakfast every morning and warm baked blueberry muffins, rather than my busy baby. As a self-diagnosed terrible sleeper, I am shocked to find I have to prise open my eyes in the morning to break the seal of sticky sleep.

This is a very special place, and a vey special time for me to renew, regather, regenerate - to write and sleep and to think (there are so many glorious places that make you want to stop and contemplate life it's amazing any writing gets done at all!) I needed this. So thank you universe for conspiring to make this happen, and thank you hubby for taking care of our girls for a bit so I can take care of me.

(http://www.anamacararetreat.com/)

Thanks to Susan partridge for your photo!)

my favourite photo

Thanks so much for Hot Cross Mum's tag - to show and tell my favourite photo. In this digital age when we have more photos than blades of grass in our garden, this was no mean feat. But I'm a great believer in instinct and not over-thinking, so the first picture that popped into my head when faced with the challenge is the one I'm going for (as opposed to the 254 subsequent ones that i picked after much thought).



This is me and my mum at Daisy's christening. I love this photo for so many reasons, the obvious one being the sheer joy and happiness and love we all share - three generations of smiles. But it also represents the beginning of so many things. A new relationship with my mum - one based on our love of my children, and her being needed once again, after years of being pushed away by an independent, cocky teenager and twenty-something. It represents the beginning of my life as a mum, an incredible journey that I am still only on the first tentative steps of. And finally, it represents the beginning of my writing career - this picture was included with my first ever published article called Mothers & Daughters (www.alanakirkgillham.com/Publishedarticles.html ) that began a new era for me and hopefully the stepping stones towards a lifetime of writing .


The future is impossible without the past, and often I have struggled with managing the two forceful elements of my life - the pre-children and post-children me.... and yet my mum has been the bridge between the two, keeping me sane and intact while while I often unravelled. Three generations of smiles are still smiling, and that makes me happier than pretty much anything else.

Those shoes

In answer to another of Josie’s excellent blog prompts at her Writing Workshop at Sleep is for the Weak, here is my answer to “Find a picture of a shoe that best sums up your personality” (of course, I’m late and the workshop is over – maybe I should have put up a running shoe since all I seem to do is run from one thing to another?!).

So here is my wedding shoe. Look at this shoe – shiny, glittery, impractical and glamorous. Just like me. Then. Look at that ankle – slim and waxed. Look at those toes – trimmed, manicured, and painted. Look at that heel – soft.

And even though I no longer have those ankles, those toes, those heels, I do have those shoes. And that makes up for a lot. The ankles may have thickened and be less poised due to permanent flat-shoe-pram-pushing action; the toes may be chipped, unclipped and hairy; the heels may be hardened from carrying two toddlers, 14 bags, an assortment of nappies, half eaten apples, 11 mini boxes of raisons, spare pants (Daisy’s not mine I hasten to add) and a small bottle of bubbles for what seems like 12 hours a day, I still have the shoes, which still gleam and shine and glitz. They are still impractical but I love them. Occasionally when I carry another load of washing up the stairs I stop, pick up the dusty box, lift the lid and gentle pull apart the tissue paper, the sparkle lighting up my face like a treasure trove of gold. They are my Gina shoes. I’m allowed to be proud, since they are the only pair of shoes I am ever likely to own that have their unique brand name….. unlike all my others from M&S and Next that share their name with a shop that also sells, pants, socks, thermal underwear and those fuzzy nightdresses that very very old ladies wear.

They nearly cost more than my dress but I threw caution (and Euro) to the wind as if I knew they would be my last act of irresponsible, decadent frivolity. And although now I can barely walk the length of the kitchen in them, they danced for me for five hours on my wedding day.

And although now it is my girls that bring me my daily dose of sparkle, every so often I run upstairs to slip into something more uncomfortable and wear them to dinner with my husband… they raise me up, and not just with their 6 inch heel. And so to use that old wedding wisdom, when I wear these shoes…. From the past I borrow, and cannot feel blue, because when I feel old, they make me feel new.

Great Expectations

There are many reasons I love Dickens – his word wizardry aside. Who could not love a writer who gave me this perfect antidote in my hour of need when I weigh up washing my dirty laundry in another spin cycle, versus airing my dirty laundry on another blog cycle. “Mrs Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself.” Bah Humbug says I, clearly cleanliness is highly overrated. We’ve all been in houses like that and it’s no place for a child.

But still, just to keep us in a technically clean and safe environment I used to clean the house constantly. Not constantly clean the house you understand – of course I ate and shopped and played with the girls. But in between that, I cleaned the house constantly because sadly time never stands still. Not even for a millisecond, so the moment I have finished hovering, I see a speck newly gleaming on the carpet, magically morphing before my very eyes from a clean spot to a now dirty spot. As soon as I’ve tidied up, the girls empty a container of farm animals and playdo on the kitchen floor. As soon as the laundry basket is empty, a rancid pair of socks appear. So the constant flow of housework constantly needs doing. When people look at my girls and say “Oh you must have your hands full,” little do they know that yes, they are full – of washing, ironing, shopping, food going into the fridge, food coming out of the fridge, nappies, toys, hairbands, pants, socks, dolls clothes, dolls dummies, dolls prams, dolls, window cleaner, cooker cleaner, toilet cleaner, dishcloths, drying cloths, face cloths….

So, what has happened to make me a dirty minx? I got a cleaner. Yep, now someone else has their hands full and I get to be hands on with my girls, and (let’s be honest) my computer. So is my house sparkling like my merry eyes? Is it hell. It’s a pit. A den of dereliction. A heap of hairy carpets, and piles of pants. Do I have a bad cleaner? No, not at all. She’s great – she even puts my washing machine on! I’ve never been so pampered. The problem? She comes once every two weeks. So the first Tuesday of the month, I come home from the school run and step into a palace, gleaming and sparkling and shiny. But the next Tuesday a funny thing happens. The gleam has dulled down, the sparkle has fizzled out and the shine has been replaced by stains. But can I step up to the (dirty) mark? No. I have a cleaner, and as such seem to have been struck down by a complete (and constant) inability to do any cleaning myself. It gets to Wednesday and I think… the upstairs needs hovered, but sure its only 6 days before the cleaner comes. The toilets are a bit grubby, but hey, I have a cleaner. They can wait. I’ve gone from wearing a dishcloth as an accessory to someone with beautiful hands.

So like everything in this world, be careful what your great expectations are. I wanted my house cleaned so we got a cleaner. It’s never been dirtier. Or worse still, I have a cleaner, but I still have to clean. As the great man said, Bah Humbug.

One day....

In answer to Josie’s fantastic blog prompts in her Writing Workshop at Sleep is for the Weak, here are my thoughts on my dreams for ‘one day…’

One day, I’d like to fulfil my dream of having a menagerie of weird and wonderful animals lounging around in my little backyard pet rescue. Chickens, goats, dogs, cats, donkeys and seals (yes, I know, but for some odd reason I’ve always wanted a pet seal). But then if I had that, how would I go on holiday? Better not.

One day, I’d like to be someone famous and glamorous – maybe an Oscar winning actress heading off to the awards having had my hair, and body and clothes ‘done’ by the experts with George Clooney on my arm (I usually have this dream while carrying the washing up stairs, or the ironing downstairs, and jump in fright when I see the wild woman of the west staring back in the mirror). But then would I want that crushing media exposure? And isn’t George Clooney gay? Better not.

One day, I’d like to have a squillion euro so I could lounge around the Med in my yacht while the nannies feed the kids with the food made by my chef, while my masseuse rubs my shoulders on the bed newly straightened by my maid. But then, if I had all this, what would I do for a treat? Better not.

One day, I’d like to wake up and have no washing, ironing, folding, cleaning, cooking, shopping. Actually, I’d quite like that another day too. Better not think about that too much.

One day I’d like to wake up and roll over and kiss a gorgeous guy and know he loves me. Then I’d like to go into the bedroom next door and get kissed and cuddled by two gorgeous girls who call me mum. Then I’d like to call my mum on the phone and know all my family are alive and happy. Then I’d like to open my laptop and immerse myself in my blogging world and see how all my internet friends are doing, knowing this mothering writing lark is hard but I’m not alone. One day I’d like to write for a living – a blogging life, a writing life, a full and frantic family life, with a cat, 3 fish and two chickens on the way.

Oh wait, that’s today!

One day I’m going to stop moaning and wishing my life away, and enjoy what I have, when I have it. Maybe I’ll start today…… no more ‘one days’. That said, one day
I’ll get round to doing another of Josie’s prompts…. Thanks Josie!

Accepting acceptance

For someone who rushes everywhere at warp speed – I’ve even been known to eat my breakfast and clean my teeth at the same time - I realised recently I’m actually a bit slow. Daisy starts school next year but it’s somehow taken me 4 years and 30 days to really come to terms with the fact that I’ve become a mum. Like I said, a bit slow.

Despite my kaleidoscope of colour coded charts, my litany of lists, and my plethora of plans, I actually didn’t see the wood for the trees – or to be more specific, the news for the nappies. I’m a mum. A walking, talking, baking, cooking, smiling, yelling, singing, driving, bum wiping, work-at-home mum. I fought a good fight, but I finally surrender… and of course, wonder why I bothered to fight at all.

One of my favourite authors, Alice Walker, wrote a disturbing but incredible book called Possessing the Secret of Joy. All the way through the story, the main character ponders the assertion that black people possess the secret of joy. At the end of the book, in heart-stopping drama, she is finally given the answer. Resistance is the secret of joy. And maybe subconsciously I adopted that because I did a pretty good job of resisting my maternal mantel – and despite never being happier, never complained more.

But I realise now, for me at least, that my secret of joy is not resistance. My secret of joy is acceptance. I like this life. Accept it. I thrive in this life. Accept it. Damn it, I think I’m even good at it. Accept it.

And the reason all this has come into my thoughts was reading so many of my fellow mummy bloggers and the recent chat about why we write our blogs. I write mine to use my brain other than for calculating the salt content in Barney crisps; to capture moments in time because said brain is like a sieve; to remind myself in the future how I felt; to remind myself now how I feel. Because writing is like therapy… and like all good therapy it takes a while to work through the crap and see the smiling baby shining down at you all the time. So writing has helped me accept the change that children brought to me. And finally I write because I very much like my blogging mummy friends….. and accepting that I’m not the only one enjoying this gig – but struggling with the washing, cooking, cleaning, time suction and other ranting that we share with each other…. Among many other things.

So here is to acceptance. And accepting friendship in cyberspace. In particular I’d like to thank a few fellow fighters who have helped me work through the therapy!

Hot Cross Mum
Sleep is for the weak
Who’s the mummy
Musings in Mayhem
Re-writing motherhood

Fickle Fancies

I’ve come to the conclusion I’m fickle. Not only that, I’m shamelessly shallow and materialistic. I also think I’m a bit smug. It took a new mirror to reflect the real me….
Oh how I would mock those grasping celebrity types who looked so needy as they paraded themselves in OK magazine, their homely splendour spilling opulence onto every glossy non-recyclable page, their smug smiles trying to hide their delight at living in a larger house than my tiny little railway cottage, while the rest of us mere mortals tutted and toiled over loads of washing, panted and puffed over endless meals to be planned, bought, prepared and cleared up after, fretted and fussed over the non-existent time we have to pursue our ‘other work’ – be it writing or whatever.

Reading back over my previous but one blog about moving house, I saw how fickle I’ve become when after a week I realised I had not cast a single thought to my old house, not once. Not one swaying tree had disrupted my childish, fiendish delight at my new (spacious – there I go, smug again) home, where I can now officially swing a cat. I haven’t actually tried it yet, but to know I can is enough. Ok, it’s not actually that big, but compared to our previous doll’s house, it’s positively palatial.

We had bought our beautiful (little) cottage because it was quaint and full of character. Then we had kids. Quaint and character are about as useful to parents as a two seater car. So after much scrimping and saving, sacrificing and shameless standard-dropping, we bought a house – completely devoid of quaint character but bursting in super, sensational space. Beautiful things may come in small packages, but maternal merriment comes in a big open kitchen, large landings and enough rooms to loose your kids in. In our old house we could literally step from our bedroom into theirs without touching the 2 x 4 landing, so I actually cried tears of joy the first time I couldn’t find the girls after we moved!

So there you go. I left the sturdy swaying trees for the fickle smug satisfaction of a kitchen I can cook in without braining the children at my feet when I take a saucepan from the pot stand. Ok, so I still have all those loads of washing, but now there’s somewhere to hide it when I can’t be bothered. I still have an unfeasible amount of meals to manage, but now I can do so while watching the girls play in the garden and not in the vegetable cupboard. I still have no real time to write, but I see a spot in the attic room with my name on it where I can sit and muse over my meandering thoughts and hopefully the children will take so long to find me I might actually get something written down.

Working is child's play

We are moving house soon, and at last, AT LAST, I will have a room of my own to write. OK, so I’ll probably have to share it with my husband, but to all intents and purposes, I will have my own study, my own writing room, my own creative sanctuary.

Am I happy? Of course. Am I sad? A little….

Currently I share my desk with my children’s toys, my study is their playroom. I write where they play, our imaginations working furiously together.

And as my creativity mingles with theirs, our energies bounce together, chatting and jumping like the Jack-in-the-box in the corner. Prams, half-dressed dolls, tired jigsaws, and gaudy ponies with synthetic hair litter their lair. Their half is wild and exploded, chaos in chemistry – a fairy in the dolls house, lego pieces in the pens drawer, playthings as scattered as their bouncing brains. My half is neater and calmer, and duller. Blue and black files stacked tall, books precariously piled high, mounds of paper trails leading to my biggest toy, the computer.

Their bookcase is a rainbow of colour, mine a monochrome of monotony. While their mouse runs up the plastic yellow clock, my mouse works against the ticking clock as deadlines loom. I sit at the desk, thinking, straining, one hand writing, the other stroking their hair while they toddle at my feet. And at night, as they murmur in their sleep upstairs, heads still racing, but bodies limp with exhaustion, I sit in the noise of their silence and work.

I’ve yearned for so long to have a room to call my own (see 14th March 2008 blog), imagining serenity in silence, peaceful pontificating, retreating from the wreckage to write words of wisdom and wit.

But I suspect, at times, as the silence crushes my creativity, I might yearn for the chaos, and I might take a trip from my privacy to hang out in the playroom to recharge my head, and recharge my heart. Although let's be clear - I'll be running back upstairs as quickly as that is done... and possibly even locking the door! Roll on the move!

Born Again

So my husband has finally persuaded me to have another baby. That sounds like I don’t want one – I do. I really do – when I look into the future and see a tea table full of chatter and stories, I desperately do. When I look at newborn babies, I desperately do. It’s just the thought of taking 20 steps back down the ladder of independence. It’s just the thought of being pregnant exhausted and sick and looking after two children under three. It’s just the thought that all my hard fought writing time will evaporate in a puff of epidural.

But, my ‘I desperately do’ outweighs my ‘it’s just the thought that…’. And so I’ve made a decision. Whatever happens over the coming months, if I am blessed with a successful pregnancy, then I am determined to not fight, not resent, and not pout, but to enjoy the last time I do this. I will write for the rest of my life. I will have ‘me time’ again at some point. But I won’t nurture a baby again and I don’t think I did justice to my first two pregnancies. The first was raw and terrifying, all shock and awe that left me reeling with post-traumatic stress. The second was hurried and harried, a penance to pay as quickly as possible, my first smile in nine months the morning my daughter was born.

I remember a few weeks into my first pregnancy, blue lines zigzagged across my bludgeoning breasts. A chaotic map of mammary ducts and I realised – a little terrified – that my body was getting ready without me. My body was rearranging itself and leaving my head behind. Even after Daisy was born, my brain never quite caught up with my body’s transformation from single focus to multi faceted machine. I would stare at her, mesmerised and wonder where she came from. I was quite a creative person I thought. I’d even knitted a few choice jumpers (albeit the sort one would only wear on a remote west of Ireland island). But this perfect piece of engineering? This angelic arrival? How could I possibly have made her? And so I never fully accepted – believed – I was actually going to have a real baby. That actually breathed and cried. An actual person. The fact that stored neatly (or not so neatly as it transpired) behind my puzzled belly button was another human being – that I was making – seemed way beyond my imaginative capability.

“Why are you so tired?” my husband would stupidly ask.
“I’m making eyelashes today” I would announce majestically from my horizontal position on the sofa. “Tricky work those eyelashes.”
Or toenails. Or fingers. But despite my giggles at such maternal magic, I never quite believed that was what I was actually doing, despite the trillions of books and websites I was devouring along with my folic acid and banana fruit smoothies. Every new hour, every new symptom was analysed. I poured over the sections that listed the possible side effects of each trimester, gleefully ticking the horror list of swelling ankles, heart burn, bleeding gums like some test I had to pass. I didn’t have varicose veins. What was wrong with me? Was I not doing it right? Where were the damn piles? Ah great, indigestion. Damn, it hurts.

I was too busy being worried about the bad bits to be happy about the good bits. And of course my colour coded neatly typed birth plan merely made a mockery of my final tenuous grasp at control. The moment the heart monitor jabbed it’s distress call, I was no longer in any sort of control as my baby was ripped from my body before I could even say “I’m pushing!”.

Still doey eyed and lovesick, I got pregnant again before my baby’s first birthday. Quite a bit before. And then my husband got a job overseas. There was no ‘let’s put this baby back in the jar until a more suitable time’. He went, I stayed and struggled with a wilful toddler, pregnant and pouting at the unfairness of it all, my second confinement like a prison sentence. I love my daughter dearly but let’s face it. Guantanimo Bay would be a lot more successful if they swapped water boarding for toddler torture – locking inmates up with a toddler 24 hours a day – they’d confess to anything to get free! There was no escape, no reprieve and certainly no time to nurture my pregnancy. I had backache, piles (oh good, got them this time), heartburn and chronic tiredness. More purgatory than pregnancy. My husband came home two weeks before Poppy was born and I had no time to blink before we clutched our hearts in the rollercoaster ride of two under two.

And so now I approach my third. I say my third, but it is really my fourth. Sadly my third didn’t make it, forever a butterfly in my garden of daisies and poppies. Another reason why this one has to count.

I know now to appreciate my miracle. I know now that worrying won’t change the outcome. I know now to love every minute, every change, every blue zigzag, and every careless kick. This will be my last, and in a way, my first. There will be no shock, just awe. I will languish in the lavishness of my belly, resting my hands on top, knowing that afterwards for a while, maybe forever, I will go to rest my hands on my mound and feel disappointed there is none. The private pride of knowing the secret within me, the ridiculous bond I will have with them, unknown but loved entirely already, so that when they emerge it’s like they’ve always been there. To clutch my cleavage and sashay my voluptuous glory down the street, goddess, magical, majestic.

It may not be a perfect pregnancy. There may be pain, and scares and exhaustion. But it will be a perfect pregnancy because it is a miracle. A magical maternity miracle, and one I intend to enjoy.

Is writing compatible with motherhood?

Virginia Wolf didn’t think so. She sacrificed being a mother for being a writer. And didn’t one of those early women writers actually give up her children so she could write? And can we even put down the proliferation of our best loved Irish writer, Maeve Binchy down to the fact she has no children?

Ok, I hear you saying, what about JK Rowling? Millions of words and millions of pounds later, she’s a shining example of successfully combining motherhood and writing. Aha, I suggest. She writes children’s books. That means she probably gets all her ideas from them, and can count reading over her work as quality child time. She can even arrange playdates with Daniel Radcliffe.

A room of our own? That’s a laugh. I don’t even have a pen of my own. My office? My desk? My room? A large Orla Liely bag which contains all my current musings and laptop that I clutch to my breast looking for a quiet corner of the house. Sometimes the bag retreats to Starbucks and sets up office there. I’m a writer in waiting: waiting for the kids to sleep, waiting for the Dora half hour on TV, waiting for my time to come after everyone else in the house has been taken care of.

I met John Boyne recently. I discovered he wrote the first draft of his best selling, multi-award winning, Hollywood-film-showing novel, Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in two and a half days. TWO AND A HALF DAYS! That’s how long it takes me to scrape the Weetabix off my laptop so I can find the delete button to rid myself of the appalling drivel I wrote the previous week in between cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, shopping, arse-wiping, knee-kissing, jigsaw constructing, rocket making (cosmic pink with tinfoil windows), and remembering to breathe. Like all good writers, it seems I need a wife. But my kids need a mother so what’s a woman (writer) to do??

I’ve just had to stop writing this in order to construct a rather fetching ‘tent’ in the playroom by draping some blankets over some chairs. I’m pretty sure Stephen King doesn’t have this problem. (Not that anyone is likely to want to get in a tent, no matter how pink, with Stephen King.) Still, the point is, it’s hard. I know enough wonderful women writers who are mums struggling with the same issues as me (and actually, I’m sure it’s not restricted to writers.) How do we find time to do what we love amid doing what else we love? To clarify, I mean being with our children is the other thing we love. I did not mean, and never will mean, thinking about what food to give us all, shopping for the food I’ve still not thought about, cooking the food I’m still not sure what it’s going to be – just something that starts with the left over onion in the fridge and see where my (lack of) inspiration takes me, washing up the dishes the food was not eaten off, hoovering the food off the floor, and washing the clothes that are covered with the food I’ve been thinking about all day.

How do I correlate wanting to be a full-time mum with being a full-time writer? How do I even correlate being a part-time mum with a part-time writer? I can’t, because I can never be a part-time mum or a part-time writer. Both are in my blood. Both are what I am. I cannot successfully be one without the other. If I was no longer a mum, I would have no inspiration to write. If I was no longer a writer I would be a terrible, disgruntled unhappy mum.

I don’t know if that makes me bad at both, or just in one of those places that no matter how often I ask the question, there really just is no answer.

So I’ll carry on being both, doing both, shunting one in front of the other occasionally, trying to find the balanced line. I’ve just danced with them to Abba, and read the Princess book. Again. Now they’re having tea with dad, and I’m clutching my Orla Kieley bag to my chest. My time.

Change as good as a rest?

It takes a week to pack. The holiday lasts a week. It takes a week to unpack, wash, dry, iron and put away all the junk. The ratios just don’t add up…

Luckily we have a spare room. It’s called “Nanna’s room” but she is banished from visiting prior to a holiday as her room is transferred to the ‘packing chamber’. I used to work for UNICEF – travelled to war-torn countries and packed the night before. It was easy. Iraq? Long sleeves and flip flops. Sierra Leone? Short sleeves and sports bra (very bumpy roads). In my previous life I travelled the world for two years with one rucksack slung over my back. It held all the knickers I needed and one saggy bra kept all my bits in check for all 674 days. Now? A week’s holiday on the west coast of Ireland requires military precision and 104 lists.

Not exactly war torn but it certainly has its fair share of bumpy roads, and with the arctic / tropical summers we have, it’s like packing for two different holidays. Oh, and throw in two kids and a busy husband and I need a logistical plan of epic proportions to remember everything – washing and ironing has to be planned days in advance, medical kit, clips, books, toys, buckets and spades, swimming gear (hot and cold weather dependent), potty, toilet seat, pink toilet paper, nappies, pack lunch for the journey, favourite snacks, favourite spoons, favourite dishes etc etc etc. One saggy bra no longer fits the bill I’m afraid – two kids later I need a structural engineering masterpiece.

And two things happen.

Ten minutes into the journey my husband asks if I packed the kid’s DVD. I deflate in frustration. The one thing I forget out of the 4729 things I remembered and it’s the first thing that’s required.

And every holiday I pack my ‘me bag’. Stuffed with my writing magazines, my books, my writing notebooks that in a moment of mammary maladjustment I think I’ll get the time to enjoy, the bag remains forlornly and depressingly untouched, like the beach bag on a two week holiday of rain.

But then two other things happen.

I fall in love with my family all over again as we play together for endless sun drenched / rain drenched days, and I rejuvenate enough to know that this exhausting time of young babies is time finite. I’ll keep packing my ‘me bag’ and one day, on one holiday I’ll open it. That’ll be the day my kids can entertain themselves - and a little part of me will rejoice and a little part of me will weep.

(c) AKG 2008

the original women writers

I’ve been feeling a little daunted of late. Giving up my high flying career to look after my girls seems to have morphed into a full-time child-rearing job, combined with a (very) part-time writing career, swamped by the domestic drudgery of housekeeper, cook, cleaner and general slave to everyone else’s wishes.

As I fight a loosing battle for some time to call my own (having long given up on a room of my own, a desk of my own, a moment of my own), I’m afraid writing has taken the biggest hit. As I lie under the duvet desperately grasping another ten minutes of rest, I console myself that I’m not leaping out of bed earlier than my sleeping angels to write, by the fact that I’m a hectic mother of two under three and exhaustion has won the day. I pat myself on the back for getting through the day without causing anyone any actual physical harm, and meeting my magazine deadlines. I shrug my shoulders at the long list of writing I should / could / would be doing if only I had the time / childcare / energy – my blog (once daily, then weekly, now sporadic), other blogs, my diary, my novel.

But now I must confess to being shamed. I’m reading a book called Can Any Mother Help Me?, about a group of women in the 1930’s who were isolated and bored and stressed from marriage and motherhood. In those days women gave up their jobs when they married and raising a handful of kids by yourself was the norm. One day a lonely woman wrote an ad in The Nursery Times asking if any other mother could help her. She was desperately lonely and isolated, and needed creative interaction. She got so many replies from so many women around the country they decided to set up their own secret magazine. They all took anonymous names and wrote articles about their lives. Taking them through their child-rearing years, through the second world war, through marriage breakdowns and life’s highs and lows, these women found solace in their writing and their friendships. The magazine – called CCC (Co-Operative Correspondence Club) – lasted for over 55 years.

Their lives where often harsh, and many had been educated but forced to become nothing more than domestic drudges after marriage. They endured bringing up their children alone and in austere circumstances during the war and they fought their own battles to find identity, creativity, and achievement. They were brave, funny, witty, enduring, strong and smart. They worked much longer and much harder than I do, and they still found time to write. For 55 years these women literally wrote the story of their lives, weaving a weapon against boredom, domestic drudgery, marriage and motherhood. Life gave them something to write about, and their writing gave their life meaning.

So, it’s 5.30am. I’m writing. And it feels wonderful.

(c) AKG 2008

A room of my own...

Women didn’t even have the right to vote when Virginia Woolf first voiced our need to have our own piece of space in a Room of Our Own. A hundred years later and feminism has taken us beyond Virginia’s wildest dreams I imagine. Back then as a single woman, she was refused entry into a library without the escort of a male gentleman. Today there are few, if any, buildings we cannot stride into, and even have the chance of running should we so desire or work hard enough. However, one thing remains the same. How many women – and us mothers in particular – have a room to call our own? A space that is ours? A refuge from the hurly-burly tumble of motherhood?

I for one don’t have a room of my own. Not any more. Not one room. Not even a cupboard that locks or has room enough for me to hide inside (believe me, I’ve tried!). I have two daughters under two and a half years of age, and by two my eldest had discovered the delights of trying on my new red suede high heels (scored before I’d even worn them), could reach into the drawer and unzip my make-up bag, (I won’t go into the implications of liquid blusher on a cream carpet) and stand on the windowsill to reach across my dressing table to pull my necklaces and beads off the rack. But it’s not just the physical assault on my belongings, the loss of scared things that are mine (as every mother knows – a two year lives by the motto, what’s mine is mine, and what’s everybody else’s is mine too). It’s that little pocket of solitude, that tiny oasis of space, that miniscule crevice of peace, a place to run screaming to and slam the door shut should the desire overwhelm us. My daughters have it. My husband has it – an office at work, a shed, the study. Even the damn cats have it. But somehow between being a child and having a child, I lost the right of privacy.

When I was young I had my own bedroom. Poster laden walls and heart patterned curtains with secret hiding places for furtive writings and diaries stuffed with longing. As I grew up and chased life in a tirade of exciting adventures I had many rooms, in many houses, in many towns, in many countries; rooms that, when all was said and done were mine to close the door on, and say goodbye to the world. And then, when I had wilted, recouped, rested, regathered, I could throw open the door again to say hello to world, myself intact and recovered.

I only ever actually owned one of those rooms – well, three to be precise if you included a bathroom and kitchen/lounge area – and that was the best room of all. Mine, all mine. Well, mine and the cats. I can still just grasp that glorious feeling of how good it was to wake up on a Saturday morning, the blinds still down and hiding me from the outside, the door still bolted to keep me safe inside, as I languished indulgently in my space, alone to decide how the day would proceed, with space to just be. But no sooner had I secured my room (s) of my own, than I invited someone in to share it. Our love took over and we moved on to own multiple rooms together in a sorry house that whispered of many stories untold. Now I own several rooms, but none of them are mine; no part my husband doesn’t share (and clutter), no area my daughters don’t ransack. I don’t even close the toilet door anymore – that intimate moment of privacy too has been stripped away by an insecure toddler. And since giving up my full time desk-job to look after the family and pursue a freelance career, I no longer own an office where people would knock to enter and I could choose to welcome them, or not.

Now don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t change one second of motherhood (well, ok there are about 30 seconds I might exchange) but here I am. 37. A mother and writer. And for the first time in my life I have no room to call my own. I write at the dinner table amid dollops of baby food and smidgens of egg yoke and between piles of ironing. I was deliriously happy recently when my husband grudgingly allowed me to store some old crockery in the shed so that I could have a whole half cupboard of the dresser to store my laptop and writing. A whole shelf! Who needs diamond rings when you can have a whole shelf, I ask you? When I surveyed a bunch of mum’s recently about their thoughts on motherhood, one of the strongest moans was lack of privacy and personal space. And I don’t think we even dream of anything grand. All I want is a little corner of the house that belongs to me; a place where all my piles of ‘stuff’, and notes, and ‘things’ can congregate together in harmony. I’d like to feel I belong, rather than have bits of me scattered around the house in every available recess like a hobo in my own home.

But for now I suppose I must create my own ‘room’, my thinking and writing place. My solitude must take place amid the hectic squealings of motherhood. My creativity must fight its way through the mundane acts of domesticity. I must claim my room where I can; in my head; in the car as I wait for the lights to change; in between the nappies and the boiled eggs and soldiers; in bed as the moon recedes and little voices have yet to break the silence of the morning. And maybe one day I will have a room again; one that’s just mine. With a door. A soft door that’s knock is mild and not intimidating. A gentle knock that I will gladly say ‘come in’ to. Because I can.

(c) AKG 2008
(Published in Spring 2008 issue, Modern Mum)