The bearable darkness of being

It's nearly a year since my baby was born. And nearly a year since my mum had her catastrophic stroke. Undeniably the worst, saddest, most challenging, gut wrenching, heart tearing, mind wrecking year of my life. The sheer awfullness of having a 4 day old baby and loosing my mum into the depths of her mind; the sheer struggle of coping with Ruby, two other small children and trying to manage my mum; the sheer terror of this new life and the sheer loss of my old one; the sheer struggle to survive each day and get Ruby through with me was at times, just too much to bear. I have fallen apart and picked myself up so many times I'm dizzy. My two girls keep me motivated, my husband keeps me alive. When it happened, and doctors and neighbours told me my mum could live for years like this, I wanted to actually fall into the dark pit that was constantly calling me. I could not literally bear it.

But, a year is nearly here. It is still awful. It is still a daily struggle. I still have moments where the days are almost unbearable.

But, a year is nearly here. And as much as I hate to admit a cliche, time might not heal, for nothing will heal my loss, but time does make it better. Time calms the terror and finds the hope. Time teaches you to find ways to cope. Time enables you to adapt, accept, acclimatise.

Two things have happened I think. The first is me. My month in Donegal, often alone with my thoughts at night, allowed me to think, and remember, and come to terms for the first time. I had never allowed myself to accept it, because I never had a moment spare to go the dark place where acceptance is. I had my mum and Ruby, and the rest of my family to maintain. But Donegal gave me the space and time to go there, and to come back out into the light that acceptance can shine. I have let go of what was - remembering our relationship, our good times, our love like a precious treasure that will always glow and keep me warm. And I have embraced what is, my mum's condition, albeit nothing like I would want, but still my mum. Ruby is nearly a year and getting strong. I no longer fear for her survival - she is not so dependent on me to stay sane to survive. I can let go occassionally.

The second thing that happened, is that I think my mum has relaxed into her situation and perhaps even improved a little too. This weekend, I can honestly say I loved every minute of being with her. I never thought I would say that again. We hugged, we laughed, we connected. She asked me her first question since her stroke - 'how did you sleep?' And I could honestly tell her I was beginning to sleep well again.

I have written before about her amazing friends - and this weekend, we all hung out, laughed, drank wine and lifted our faces to sun. My mum was upset afterwards for she knew she couldn't talk to them properly, couldn't make herself understood, was muddled and mixed, and couldn't do anything to help, but I told her no-one minds. We all love her regardless of how she is. She has certainly loved us for long enough. I still hate that my mum will never come to my house again. I still hate she will never even go upstairs in her own house again, and potter in her bedroom. I still hate that she can't snuggle into bed with the girls and read them stories. I hate she can't tell me how she is, and ask about my life, and my family. I hate we can't share long days drinking earl grey tea and nibbling chocolates, having lunch in Avoca, or walking the splendour of Mount Usher as we always did. I hate that she can't go out and about with her friends.

But, in a year, I've accepted we must do new things. I can tell her all about my life and my girls and she will still smile. I can bring the girls to see her and watch her face light up. They can snuggle into her bed and perhaps soon, even Daisy can read to her. I can sit beside her and sip earl grey tea and show her pictures of the spendour of Mount Usher. Her friends can come round and share time, wine, memories, laughs and love.

The unbearable darkness has become slightly more bearable. I'll take life as it comes, and as my mum always taught me, make the best of what we have.

Tap Tap

I don't know about you, but 6 years and three children in, I still look over my shoulder occassionally to see who might be coming close enough to tap me on the shoulder and tell me I'm not a real mother, please move along. If only there was a manual - one that doesn't tell me to listen to my inner gut which frankly only tells me I ate too much chocolate and drank too much wine last night, or one that tells me exactly what time I can eat a slice of toast (honestly, one does) and lays out my parenting tasks like a military opertion - with as much loving as that would entail. No, we just have to muddle through, hoping against hope that we aren't on the social services list for mad mothers, and gaining strength in numbers by hanging out (or blogging alongside) other mad mothers, in every form the word mad entails.

And just when I think I'm really not very good at this (last week my 6pm phone call to a friend went like this: 'is it ok to open a bottle of wine before the kids go to bed?' My friend replied, 'well, what are they doing?' to which I confessed they were eating chocolate and watching TV. 'Oh you're way past wondering if drinking before their bedtime is ok!" she replied) my cohorts in co-parenting (for that is what friends are), boosted my confidence by confessing their own wayward ways. There is nothing like someone else's badness you make you feel good.

On Friday night, during a much needed girlie night drinking wine (it was after the kid's bedtime!) my friend and I decided to watch our favourite girlie night DVD. Oh come on! We are grown women but admit it - we all love a teenage vampire! After fiddling with the controls for a few moments, she announced she was off to get her daughter up. "But she's been asleep for two hours!" I gasped. "Yes," she said, as she carried her sleepy 8 year old into the room, "but she's the only one who can work the DVD player."

Did that make me feel good or what! Then, at a lovely afternoon tea with some other girlfriends the next day (it's been an amazing rare, but gorgeous friend-filled weekend) my child pyschologist friend - who for years has been guiding parents on how to bring up their children, confessed she's too confused and traumatised with her own two children to follow her own advice. "I used to be a parenting expert until I became a mum," she wailed as we all smiled and consoled her with the reminder that we had never been parenting experts. And maybe that's the point. We do the best we can..... with a little help from our friends. Thank you mad mothers everywhere for living in my world.

Family Friends

When you become a parent you don't think that your children will start having an influence on who you become friends with. But they do! One of my best friends is the mum of Daisy's best friend. How weird is that? Because Daisy made friends with a little girl in playschool, Ruby has Liza as her godmother. And now as Daisy ends her first year of school, I realise that some of the mums and dads I say hello to every morning - and who I will share time with for the next eight years - have slowly become friends. One a really good one. I never expected to make close friends at this stage of my life. Thought that was all done years ago.
I have always admired and envied my mum's circle of friends. As long as I have been alive, they have been around. I called them 'Auntie' and they shared every momentous and mundane moment of my mum's life, and by association, mine. They know me as well as anyone. Apart from the fact that 'The Girls' (as they still call themselves 40 years later) met every other Tuesday night for over four decades, they also chinked drinks and wrapped arms around each other at every significant event in their lives - children's births, divorces, parties, celebrations, bad days, good days and all the dramas and dilemmas that mark everyday life. There were days when they kept each other afloat and I always wished I had something similar.
But I didn't. Or so I thought. Sure I don't have the close knit circle, but I have something else. At my 40th I was pregnant so I decided to have a birthday lunch with my best girlfriends - a disparate group who I realised had also shared every moment of my life with me - just not all at once.
I realised I had a friend from every part of my life, and together they had chinked drinks and wrapped their arms around me for every significant event in my life. But, life has a funny way of keeping the circles intact, like a swirl, making circles within circles. One of the first phonecalls I made after my mum's stroke was to her best friends. Their devastation was profound and gave depth to mine. Over the last nine months they have kept me afloat. I text them, I ring and ask for advice, they call in to see me when I'm up with mum, and our lives now entwine once again, the love of my mum our common language. My mum's friends have become mine, friendship stretching generations. And as my new layer of friendships develop around the lives of my children, I hope the circles continue to spiral and my girls too will know that my friends are there for my life and theirs.

Arming them for life

Slightly bereft at having to chuck my much-used colour coded planning chart in the bin, I wave goodbye to my family. Left alone with my girls and a vacant diary, I feel the emptiness only a great time of love and laughter can leave in its wake. Every year, my mum and dad, my brother’s family, and me and mine all converge from our various corners of UK, Scotland and Ireland for a mass gathering of Kirk capers and quality extended family time. Of course, they’re not extended family to me, they are an extension of me, my family before I had a family.

This year they all came to me to be captivated by our new house and capitulated to my organisational orgy of planned activities (red), sightseeing (blue), culinary caterings (green), sleeping arrangements (purple) and picnic sandwich fillings (pink).

It was fabulous. For a week we all lived as maybe society originally intended – all together, sharing time and tasks. My girls loved showing their grandparents their new toys and dance moves, and I loved showing my parents our new furniture and surroundings. We picnicked, we walked, we beached, we parked, we playgrounded, we laughed, we talked and we ate. And then my brother arrived with his troupe and our family enlarged like a heart heaving with happiness. For three days, five kiddie cousins learned about each other. Friends enough not to be strangers, but strange enough to be exciting friends, they ran around the older generations like buzzing bees on a spring day. We all smiled at their energy, their imaginations, their spirit; new friends in our old family. And maybe I smiled most of all. I mentally added three more bullets to my children’s ammo belt of life. To watch my two girls absorbed in such intensity, besotted with six year old Ellie (who as an older girl is an object of pure adoration), while playfully joking with Tom and Alex, their twin boy cousins, for three days they were happily lost to me as they familiarised themselves with their family, courted their cousins, and built a bigger platform for their step off into life.

I smiled because I always visualise a belt around their waists you see, an invisible belt of ammunition for building their confidence, their happiness and for self-defence as they battle their way through life’s little wars and woes. Their dad and I are the lazer guided missiles, keen and catastrophic in our ability to defend and protect, the foundation blocks on the platform they will leap from in time. Their grandparents, uncles and aunts are the hand grenades to be lobbed to devastating effect, their love providing building blocks for the girls on their first steps up in life. Their godparents, cousins and friends are the bullets, quick fired and sure, all stepping stones so they can reach as high as they can. The more ammo they have – the people who love them, and care about them, people to teach them and guide them, and play with them, the better armed they are for life.

So I smiled because the firepower of family is fierce. And in the next day or so, our family extends further still, as a new cousin is born. Another bullet on my girls’ ammo belts. Another person to love them and be loved.

Getting by with a little help from my friends

Picture the scene. You had a demented night with your crying, teething baby. Your reluctant toilet-training toddler has thrown the potty across the room and used the carpet instead. There is poo on the walls, Weetabix on your new shirt and wails of despair coming from all three of you. You want to run out of the front door screaming, but instead of reaching for the latch you reach for the phone. It’s time to cash in on one of your life-lines, and call a friend.

Now I know I’m making the following statement fully aware there is no actual scientific evidence to back it up. But I’m going to save somebody lots of money on research because I know I’m right - humanity would have dried up millennia ago if mothers did not have good friends. Having a baby is hard enough. Without friends to guide, steer and carry us through the experience, it is near impossible. Most women just wouldn’t survive motherhood without good strong friends, and civilisation as we know it would be extinct.

Friends in need really are friends indeed, and there is no needier a time than after you’ve had a baby. But of course, like most things in life, friends come in two varieties – the good and the bad.

Everyone has a bad friend, and every mother has a bad mother friend. They’re easy to spot. They’re the ones who automatically launch into a monologue about the prim perfection of their beastly beloveds, who never actually ask how you are, and manage to look immaculate and preened even when they’re “frazzled, darling.” (I’m of the firm opinion these people actually have full-time nannies and therefore do not have to wash pee off the stair carpets, hide their roots under a cap because they have no time to go to the hairdressers, or wear sweatpants because there is pesto pasta on all their other clothes.) My advice is to ditch them quick! Let’s face it, when you’re feeling fat and frumpy, the last thing you need is Posh Spice landing on your doorstep.

Good friends on the other hand know exactly what you are going through, and know that most of the time, what you need is to vent your frustrations on a listening ear, a hug and a strong cup of tea (chocolate biscuits essential). A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words, because they have been exactly where you are now. They know the harrowing harangues of a mother on the edge of reason; they understand that the witching hour (the one before the kid’s tea when hell usually breaks loose) is called so because you turn into one; and most importantly, they know that you are still you, somewhere underneath all the guilt, anger and frustration. Luckily they also know that you just can’t help yourself when you harp on endlessly about how wonderful your beautiful babies are, and smile in agreement.

There is a reason why pregnancy is referred to as ‘being in the club.’ Because mums join together in support and sanity of each other, and you don’t need to be life-long friends to help out. Mums seem to instinctively know when another of our tribe needs help. You see it every day: when someone gives you a reassuring smile across a crowded shop when you are trying to tame a screaming toddler; when someone carries your tray to the table in the café while you push the buggy and get the high chair; when someone lets you ahead of them in the toilet queue because they know every second in that queue is fraught. And when you lift you head above the swirling waters of early motherhood and take deep breaths again, you too become the smiler, the tray carrier, and the queue waverer. Because you where there once and know how it feels.

Every time someone I know has a new baby, I wait a week until the mothers have left, and arrive armed with her dinner for that evening. I make her tea and listen to her talk about her child as if she was the first woman to ever give birth to a beautiful baby. I make her a cup of tea and clean up the dishes before I leave. I even offer to do the laundry. And when they inevitably thank me I smile and tell her that someone did it for me, and she will now do it for someone else in the future. Because that’s what “being in the club” means. Because that’s what friends do.

We roll our eyes in camaraderie at tales of potty-training fiascos, we nod in agreement at the latest discipline techniques and we cheer enthusiastically when baby eats her first pureed pear. We offer advice when it’s asked for, offer our shoulder when needed, and offer a tall glass of chardonnay when essential. Eating buns in sympathy with her distressed lack of weight loss is also fairly standard.

While parental partnership certainly can get you through the dark days and share in your pleasure of the delightful days, there are times, when (sorry men,) friends are just better. We get each other in ways perhaps that men, who no matter how ‘new-age’ or ‘metro’, whistle off to work leaving you at home with a neurotic breakdown and a grizzling monster just don’t – or can’t – understand. One man had it right though and no truer word was spoken. “I get by with a little help from my friends”, sang John Lennon. I certainly do.

(Published in Modern Mum, Autumn 2008)
(c) AKG 2008

Wonderful Women

Last night I laughed until I cried. I wept and screeched like a banshee and hooted and howled. I laughed in a way that only women can make each other laugh. From the belly and from the soul.

It’s so easy to moan. Really it is. Some days I make it an Olympic sport. I moan about the house. I moan about the weather. I moan about money, or lack of. I moan about my children. But today I’m not going to moan. About anything. Not one tiny thing. Because last night two girlfriends gave me a tonic that will set me up for days.

I don’t see them that often, but true friends don’t have to. We can pick up wherever we left off, and we know that should we need each other, we’ll be there. Absolutely. Friendship is a bit like a plant. Sometimes it’s in full bloom, fragrant and bursting with energy. Other times it is dormant and quiet. But it is always alive; living, breathing and growing. Last night we were in full bloom. One has just danced with cancer, but thankfully has now left him stranded on the dancefloor. The other has things in her life that would darken many a lesser person. But these two magnificent women brought only sunshine last night and we laughed and talked till the wee hours. That’s what I love about women. We can be talking about death and the depths of our despairs one minute and be clutching each other in laughter the next. There are no disparities between the two, because as in life, they are inter-linked.

Family is the blood that pulses round our bodies keeping us going, keeping us warm. But friends – good friends – are like the air we breathe – they invigorate us and stop us suffocating on life.

According to the African proverb, women hold up half the sky. Indeed we do. But many women I know hold up half the sky with one hand, and brush a rainbow in the sky with the other. This is a thank you to the wonderful women in my life. To the girls that keep me a girl no matter how old we get, and to the women who are a place I call home.