Grown up love

I'm so proud of them. No, I'm not talking about our girls - although they make me so proud there isn't a blog host or an internet range large enough to hold the stuff I could write about them. No, I'm talking about my other family - my mum and dad and brother. I know this is not normal. We spend most of our lives being embarrassed or pissed off, or more often than not irritated and frustrated with these strange people who are so familiar they're like our skin, yet so alien to us, they feel like a rash on that skin. And I've often felt all of those things.

Like most families, mine has had its fair share of dramas... but despite the sparks and the strifes, we've shared time, willingly and with pleasure. Despite branching out in our own lives, in the last ten years my brother and I have found ourselves coming together to holiday with mum and dad, and strangely our family strengthened instead of weakened as we married and grew. My mum was the central nervous system - the magnet which pulled us all together no matter how far apart we were. And in the awful days and nights after her catastrophic stroke, my dad, my brother and me - supported by my sister-in-law and husband - formed a vigil, a protective presence, a desperate determination that she would never be alone. As the weeks have slowly drifted into months and decisions were made, plans put in place we did so as a family - as she would have wanted. We are the family she taught us to be - strong in support, united in love.

My dad has been outstanding. He is 74 and caring full-time for my mum now. Most men his age couldn't cope on their own for a day. He cares for her - and himself and does it with extraordinary competence. I don't just mean he copes with the house and manages the washing. When I went up to visit last weekend, we had homemade soup for lunch - with homemade bread, and a stupendous homemade fish pie for tea. It was a sunny spring day so we got mum into her wheelchair and wrapped her up and took her round the park at the end of the road. The first crocuses of Spring were waving hello in the grass and we stopped to feel the sun on our faces for a moment. It was almost bearable. Because we were still together.

My mum is in a terrible place, but while she is there she is being wrapped in love. She taught us that and I hope we are making her proud. For I am proud of them - my mum, my dad, and my brother. So proud that my life has been shared with them, through the good times and the bad.

High Fives

This has been a good day, for lots of reasons. We are snowed in and I managed a whole day trapped (ahem, that meant to read enjoying) in the house with the girls without any major tantrums. The girls were pretty good too. I was commissioned to write 3 articles today (I’ll not focus on the fact it took 12 pitches). I lit the fire at 3pm – always the sign of a good day. I enjoyed an avalanche of creative musings from my on-line friends (where we all snowed in or did Josie at Sleep is for the Weak hit on an amazing idea?). Daisy and I built a snowgirl. Hubby came home early and threw a snowball at me. And, to top the tip top day off, I got two, yes count them, two high five memes from the lovely, the witty, the entertaining, the courageous and the good Carrot in Mum’s Hair and Foodie Mummy. (Is there a connection with my over love of food and the fact both my cheerleaders today have food in their titles??!). So I accept the high fave tags and bow down to the task of writing my five highlights of 2009. I’m going to call them my Five Family Favourites.

1. We moved into our family home, the place I will sleep (hopefully), laugh (definitely), cry (probably), and write (inspiringly) as we raise our children and deliver them out into the world loved and laden with encouragement.
2. Our family holiday. It was local, it was wet, it was windy and it was wonderful.
3. My summer off with the girls. The first time I realised I could let go a little, and enjoy (while not being pregnant or breastfeeding) long days of just being a mum in the sun, picnics and adventures galore.
4. Our extended family holiday when the Kirk Clan descended on Dublin, little people laughing while big people ate – bliss.
5. After a hard day at home with the girls, coming home in the evening with a glass of wine to my blogging family – wonderful women who teach and inspire, and challenge and support and encourage and make me feel I belong to something amazing. Oh wait… I do!

And so I offer the High Five tag to the following…. And I’m sorry if she’s been tagged before but I have to add Josie in there,
Sleep is for the weak
Spinning Plates
Rosie Scribble
Vegemitevix
Rewriting Motherhood

High Five y’all, and here’s to the many highs to 2010.

Feast or Famine

There are several advantages of not having family living nearby…… no over-enthusiastic visiting from mums and mother-in-laws; no loosing your husband to Saturday DIY sessions at the grandparent’s house; no Sunday lunch obligations; no cousin babysitting. Of course the disadvantage list is longer with no free babysitting taking the top three spots. Actually, the top five.

Somehow when our families were settling down everyone had a philosophy of “pick a country, any country” and therefore ended up flung around Ireland and Britain like children playing hide and seek in a large house. Our kids don’t have a single relation living in their own country – grandparents in Northern Ireland, Vietnam and England, cousins in Scotland and Brighton. In our family, we don’t have get-togethers, we have invasions. Take this Christmas – our first in our new house. “Come see us” we offered excitedly in our drunken champagne exuberance of actually owning a family home. And so this Christmas our family festivities are a bit like the proverbial bus – we don’t see them for months, and then they all arrive together.

This weekend my parents drove down from Belfast and my brother’s family flew in from Scotland. And it all sort of whizzed past me in a blur of noise – 6 adults and 5 children shouting, screaming, laughing, pushing, shoving, eating drinking, talking, and eating and drinking some more. And suddenly as quickly as they all arrived, they’ve all gone, leaving the house shell-shocked and me wondering if it actually all happened. The Christmas tree is about the only thing left standing, and even it looks pretty dazed.

Last weekend it was my husband’s brother and all his kids. Next weekend it’s his dad. Christmas is his mum, step-dad and Aunt and at New Year we have 18 (yes… count them with me – 8 adults and 10 children including us) for three days. I feel like I’m on some sort of entertainment rollercoaster where life has become a cycle of shopping, cleaning and changing beds followed by a manic three days of not seeing my own children while up to my eyeballs in whatever breakfast, lunch and dinner I’m trying to conjure up to feed the masses, following by the shopping, cleaning and changing beds again.

Hubby and I have a dream of someday opening a small but quaint B&B by the sea… I’m beginning to loose my enthusiasm. Anyway, must dash… got the beds to change..……