It is because,
said the little girl
We are on the edge of here and there,
and her arm swept out,
A dramatic gesture
A severe expression sat upon her face
A brow furrowed like the lines of dunes
Beyond her.
We stand on the precipice
of what is about to be and
what is possible,
That is why I love to be beside the sea.

LIke a piece of verse

which takes me through layers of thought

and places in my mind; i always

find myself back with you.

And despite not knowing what

version of life is right

i know what i will find

when i get there

as i know now that it is

the feeling that i must find

and not a named destination.

Do you remember when shopping queues
were longer than an aisle , stretching beyond achievement;
A gaggle of people in
Pavement mounting silence,
When spaces between us
could be seen as
Social graces,
Feet on places designated for covered faces forward
on streets now blighted by a thousand feet,
Where disease is replaced by  dis-ease-
Mounting pressure
For sure
As hell I would replace these times with those
(Perhaps minus lockdowns)
But rather live with
Restrictions than irrational forces
Led by minds less thought full
Than thoughtless
Men intent on intentions

Unbound by nature or nurture

-Better to be led by the dying
Than the young with too much money
And capacity to convince a generation
To hate , and be idle

To separate or be left behind

Facing what we are as part of a condition called humanity.

Do you remember those queues

Do you remember the war

What did they fight it for?

He sat there as shallow as a screen 

collecting weight and opinions.

All the same, there was something about 

him, something that caught a corner 

of my mind that’s penetrable, by

a certain type of person in

a certain way, that steals and sways me 

like a drunken woman; eyes foggy 

with the mist of a thousand summer 

mornings promising the heat of 

A silver lining and the rain of a cloudy end.

There was a certain inevitability about the early summer heat. That it would run out. Too much too soon – not like the year before last, when you just knew that it would go on and on and on- and it did. It was relentless and so has the rain been this summer. Like nothing I can remember and granted, I don’t remember everything, but I do remember summertime.

There is something about the summer which remains nested in a compartment of my mind so that I can recall the moments and feelings that I attached to  every one

The weather and the events of that year.

It’s all there, I only have to sit and inhale the air, think of a specific year and I can get it back.

And there is something about summer that I want to get back

Even this one as while it hasn’t been dry or particularly warm, it has been eventful

And some of those events, have just been everyday occurrences but they have struck me as significant.

Like when smallest saw the female thrush pick up a worm from the pavement on our ride to his multi-skill camo this morning, he stopped, turned, and smiled as he told me

Or when I found him nestled amongst all his clothes on the bedroom floor because he was trying to find his Adidas shorts and I felt the end of my patience nestled in my throat,

Until he raised his arm in the air, shorts aloft, “I found them Mummy I did it”

“You did pops”, and I smiled.

There is a kind of sadness in summer,  Lana del Ray called it that didn’t she? , summertime sadness, and I get that now. It can be bright and you can be with your best people having the most wonderful time but there it is, the sadness- lingering on the edge of the moment like a reminder of your mortality.

It takes me back and the nostalgia sometimes blights your capacity to feel now.

Perhaps when there is a now that is stronger than then ,

That will change.

I’m a little bit quieter now,
Not so eager to shout out loud,
Be proud about some thing

To layer it with meaning
Unnecessarily, thickening what was
With reinterpretation.

Compartmentalizing what doesn’t need
To be in a box,
Or on show or the focus of who I am

I just am,

A little bit quieter now.

If I looked at yesterday, it would have your face in it

A reflection in today’s mirror which shines so brightly

You could almost be here with

Your hand raised, clenching a belt;

I shook so hard that I had to have

an extra-large plate of food

I didn’t eat, because I was a good girl

And good girls don’t want

and they don’t feel

 A goddamn thing.

Let’s not pretend that life isn’t  chaotic most of the time

Perhaps we dress it up as order and define ourselves as in control ,and sometimes, for long stretches, days roll over and over and we might feel that we are there. We have reached

At this point though there is the possibility that we might become compacent.

The complacency , nurtures the growth of a backlog of tasks which start as scrawls on the side of your desk jotter and spread to the things to do app on the phone. Eventually, you seek to unify them and end up with things to do, compilation 1 and 2.Which you then attempt to plan complete, giving each day of the week a section of the list in the only way you know how

Often the plans just don’t pan out in the way you imagine they used to – they start to stutter and despite your effort, the navigation through them doesn’t feel orderly

I used to think those days were confined to having small children but over here on the other side of motherhood which I shall call –‘mother to another adult hood’ – those less orderly days can be equally prolific – maybe even more so.

Particularly on those days you earmark for getting things back under control. Like today.

I am blessed with fantastic kids-  they are nice, uncontrived, and not materialistic They try hard to accept what we have and have a really healthy and emphatic view of other people whatever their circumstances or their background, they don’t discriminate.

And I am proud of them.

Still, it doesn’t mean that I don’t like my own space away from them, and as life picks up pace, the thought of a couple of hours to myself on a Saturday afternoon was alluring.

After a hectic morning bathroom cleaning, and bike riding with smallest there followed an hour of gentle cajoling as I delivered what middlest decried as my motivational speech

As I pontificated the merits of swimming lessons, smallest edged out of the room, I was left delivering my pearls of wisdom to a lazing teenager who was sufficiently roused by it to pull herself up from her laying position and say,” well that’s motivated me Mum – I’ll go……”.

“Great but you can swim already” I say

She shrugs and I sigh turning in pursuit of smallest who has found refuge in the garden

I continue holding onto the thought of my two hours in the library and continue motivating

My words performing

Like a life raft amongst the waves of a small person’s anxiety

Which he rode on a wave of persuasion all the way to the swimming pool –

and after half an hour of chasing small bobbing plastic animals up and down the pool he decided, that he “liked swimming again now Mummy”.

Job Done.

Dropping smallest off he asked when I am coming back even before I have left and I answer smiling and waving at his still toddler like face before I head on foot to the library parting with middlest at the doors of her favourite charity shop. We embrace and she said ,”you could come in”, and I replied” I have two hours darlin I need to get some work done. I must be self disciplined “,-she nods and I sneak off , at this point, feeling as if I am being naughty

I have work to do and the library seemed the best place to go to concentrate so I walk in and select a spot where I have a view of a tree and I am not surrounded by people and conversations I can ear wig upon.

I sit and smile ,arranging all my bits; laptop, books , pens and drink.  As I log in I inhale- – no kids, no distractions apart from my phone.

• Which then rings-

 I look down

its eldest –” hi love I am in the library I whisper into the handset” –” oh right he whispers back “–” why are you whispering “,I say –” because you are in the library.” I don’t think it matters if you speak normally”, I say – “oh right” he says, I lean back, aware of the time which is passing more quickly than it usually does- and then I look up

My eyes resting on the waving hand

Attached to middlest who smiles and strides towards me

I smile back and give a smile laugh which teeters on the edge of hysteria

Eldest says,” what is it?”

“Your sister has arrived”

“we are nealry all with you”, he says

“arnt you justI sa”, y as middlest announces that she has come to sit with me

“OK love , its your brother”, I point tot he phone – Hiii she says trying to take the handset –

“Hang On let me speak with him” I say and as she sits down I stand up and walk out to talk to him recounting the irony of the situation that has just unfolded

He laughs and after arranging to meet tomorrow, I slide back into the library sitting down to a smiling-faced middlest who has brought her book with her.

She settles in and then looks over – “is that your drink?”, she says nodding at my drinks bottle – “yes”, I say and she leans in and takes it

I grin widely and shake my head , as I get on with the serious business of making my life a bit less chaotic.

                                                                                                ………….   come play my game ill test ya

Prodigy, Breathe 1996

Liam Howlett · Keith Flint · Maxim Reality.

Sometimes hope is just putting one foot

in front of another and facing another day.

It is learning to be in a moment without allowing

A million other potential moments

To come crashing in on you

Imploding the maybes and scattering

the possibility of now.

I remember, 

I couldn’t cope with knowing what you were doing. 

I wanted to give what I knew to someone else. 

‘cause, if it stayed part of me any longer it would rot my insides 

A sin I held onto , 

that felt like the food you didn’t want in you. 

Small bits of information you fed me on paper that 

Bloated my stomach until 

Like you, I wanted it out. 

The words digested from letters we would write 

To each other. Pages and pages of schoolgirl script 

carrying secrets, we just could not say; 

Like who we fancied, who we hated  

And stuff like that which bit into my consciousness, 

swirled around my mind at bedtime, 

sending me on Monday morning 

in a dizzy state towards her office. 

The little wooden box in the main hall with windows  

that stretched to the ceiling, sprouting from walls so high 

you could not see who was in there, if they sat down. 

Your words spewed out and she jotted notes in her book 

 in the way that she did that gave away nothing of what she was feeling; 

And asked questions, like how long and where 

then she showed me the way out, onto the streets of the school 

where I was left To find my way back to you. 

which it turned out was not easy  

After Miss had spoken to you, 

You turned off down a side alley and I was left on the cold 

Hard edge of our group, a cornerstone of betrayal 

Omitted from the chitter and the chatter of life in Year 9. 

Your mum said thanks though through the intercom 

Of the flats when I went to see you  

resolute in my belief I had done the right thing. 

Then months later you said thanks too 

And I said thanks quietly later  

In my head to myself, when I sat with the bags  

Of uneaten food in layers of clothes,

For giving me the heads up on what not to do  

When you have a problem with eating  ,

And you don’t want anyone to know.

You do not tell anyone 

You don’t tell Miss. 

Middlest created this with her boyfriend. I just love it.

I met a lady the other day who has given up her career in health visiting to become a therapist in alternative medicine. . She described her training as, ‘life changing’ and listening to her; watching her speak, her experience is visceral -for her and for me.

The joy she gleaned from learning about something different and it became the impetus for a lifestyle revision and placing it alongside a neighbours recollection of their career change, the disaffection of careers and motherhood was apparent.  They too had become disillusioned by their role, this time in education and sought to apply their craft in its purest form, through drawing for a living rather than teaching others to do so. made over a decade ago, “the move”, she recounts firmly, ‘was the very  the best thing she ever did”. And as she says this you believe her- struck by the notion of a gut decision, regarding something that she knew was right for her and her family.

Each account has been framed as an epiphany type episode , a decision made in an instant after hearing the latest vagal dispatch of unhappiness. They were not happy , they recognised it, they did something about it. If I listen to my gut then perhaps I could make the change too.

The desire to do the same has overcome me on more than one occasion. The dream to write – not to teach others to do it, has run on throughout my life. But I have never tried do so professionally. One reason is doubt in my ability , the other is the children and the impact it would have if I were to take a job that required me to work outside of school hours. So the dream became a hobby, but going back to my teaching role this year ,the idea has wandered back in. It is my gut feeling that I should take the plunge, follow my desire and hearing the  lifechanging decisions of people in my life,  has made me wonder further about my own choices.

There was , of course, another thought cheering them on. Their role as a mother. Certainly , ‘The Artist’ recalls how the travails of motherhood had put pressure on their time , constraining their availability to work and so made looking for suitable work tricky. They said, “Its like having two jobs and being expected to work both full time, you cant do it”.

“Except”, we both laughed, “you have to!”.

And if you are lucky enough to be a single Mum, you may need benefit support; in which case the expectation is that you do do it. You make yourself available for work. Not an issue for most, however the bone of contention for many, is the amount of hours that you are expected to make yourself available. 25 hours a week in my case, with a child of 5 in school. This is fine until you factor in school holidays- to which my work coaches response is-,”well what about childcare?”

Childcare is , extortionate and taking away the economic implications, there is also the fact that, it is , for some of us , it is just not an option. I brought my children into this world to raise them myself not to have someone else do it for me. I didn’t factor in the doing it independently but that doesn’t mean to say that my child should be made to endure childcare because of my failure (if you want to call it that) in having a solid relationship. In June last year, the work coach and I scrolled for employment vacancies together and suitable roles were limited. All were for 48 weeks a year. Most for 37 hours per week. She looked at me expectantly and I shrugged my shoulders. “I cant do that”, I said stoicly.

“Well you need to be a bit more flexible”, she states.

“Right“, I reply, “or perhaps the rules need to include a little more flexibility for people in my situation”.

The coach frowned and I continued, “You are assuming a stalwart of support and suitable childcare availability, neither which I have”.

Silence and she looks at me and then at the screen. Feeling emboldened I decide to continue,” and perhaps a consideration in the labour market of an increase of part time roles for Mums who would like to do something else other than teach. 

“But you are a teacher,” she argues.

“Yes I know that- but what if I didn’t want to teach anymore?”, I finish feeling flustered (as she is right) , and lean back in my chair.

She didn’t respond and I didn’t expect her to as the question was beyond her role – and it was maybe unfair of me to have raised the issue with her.

Instead , I considered all this and with time running out before I received a sanction, I receded – I am limited and it saddens me that I can’t make the change that I feel my gut is demanding.

Of course change is inevitable and so after speaking to another neighbour about her passion for her job a few weeks ago, I decided to take the plunge and I applied for a job as a community reporter. I pushed aside the maternal worries and sent over my CV with the words, “life is too short to be going to a job you dislike”, still rolling around in my mind.

And i waited. And I thought about what I had done and was excited but before long there was something else bothering me. That something else, slapped me in the face when I heard nothing from the news desk. I was disappointed. Disappointment which highlighted to me just how much I want to write but also disappointed that i could even have considered leaving the kids at a point when they and I am not really ready for me to.

Ok, technically I wouldn’t be leaving them, but I would be making the kind of change that, they, especially smallest would struggle with. I couldn’t do that.

So perhaps that was my epiphany.

I too have grasped the messages being communicated by my vagal nerve. The discomfort of chasing something at odds with what I have, was too much for me to bear and so I have turned around and decided to stop seeking change and sit with what I have.

It might not be what I want forever but its certainly where I am happiest for now.

How many ways can I keep you entertained,

How do I keep the wolves at bay,

How do I keep the balance

When its tipping left to right,

Back towards a far off month

Unnamed,

Where the hope of a new day lies

In a seed of thought, which allows

for just about anything

Below is an extract from a novel I am writing. It is only a tiny extract but any feedback would be greatly appeciated.

The guy came out the back, he was all breathy and enlarged, with pale eyes and blonde spikey hair. His torso looked uncomfortable and overstated on top of tiny legs. He introduced himself to the room and she thought it was a bit like youth club when the leader comes in and introduces them self to the group and tells them the rules. Vi sat looking at him and around the room at all the phone accessories. The guy sat down and put his feet up on the desk. The owner of the shop was on his phone and when he came off, her friend, who she had come with, well he started to chat to him and they got onto pills and billy. Vi was interested now but played the opposite game, looking down as she played with the belt on her satin ravers skirt. She listened to them earnestly, running her fingers over the hole made by the hot rock which had landed on her, on the way back from united dance. She drank the conversation which was leading to when they were going to get the billy. The blonde man intercepted then just as quickly the shop was lit up with the sound of children who had been brought in by an older woman. The children were his and she soon learned that there was another one but he was waiting to get custody. He needed to show he could care for the kid though and so he was looking for a childminder. You any good with kids he said looking at Vi, I go to college she said- and she does billy. There was laughter. You are the Billy freak then are you? The blonde guy asked. They all laughed and Vi smiled at her new title. It made her feel like she was known.

They were shutting up shop and so Vi stood up and waited for whatever it was she was waiting for that would lead her to the Billy. The blonde guy said he would give her a lift. The lift it turned out was going to his flat which was right at the other end of town. Vi had never been to the other end of town before, in her mind or person. It was as if she was gradually irking herself away from her end, where things were private and tidy, to this end which was public and messy. It stretched up a hill and across roads like trails in a warren which seemed to stretch in every direction. Roads she had never heard of except in conversations between people that she listened to, who had once lived there. Till the council had moved them to another road 5 minutes walk from that one. Though it felt endless, the drive took no more than 5 minutes from the shop in his mark two BMW, his kids sitting like undersized kings in the back. She sat in the front, in a chair sunk so low she swore she felt like the third child, her size giving credentials to her growing sense of being under the age for any of this type of activity. She looked out the passenger window as he moved swiftly through the warren of roads, turning abruptly at each junction, as she focused on the flats and the houses all looking the same, the same red brick, the same tile roofs, the same squares of grass area spotted here and there, the pockets of kids hanging out on the pavements and in between housing blocks. The cars deposited on driveways, the bikes leaning up against them, the plastic toy ride along cars left upside down in the grass before tea. It felt as if they drove right to the edge of the town, the very last road, where flats lined the streets sandwiched between 1960s two up two down council houses. A water tower stood at the centre of it all cordoned off by a wire fence. Beyond this you cold glimpse fields of wheat, rows of rows of dancing corn, it looked pretty. Life beyond the road looked pretty. He pulled up to the second block on the road. A four storey high block with 8 flats. The front door was in the middle and as they walked up to it, a woman came out dragging a buggy and a bag of washing.
You alright kids, alright Dal, she said,
Alright Trace Darren replied. Yeh im alright mate. Trace grinned at Vi. Alright, her voice went up an octave and Vi smiled not finding her own alright forthcoming.
Ya all right trace said the eldest kid.
Yeh, Sweetie, you alright., Trace’s voice trailed off as she carried on walking

Apparently, everyone was alright in this road where things felt less than alright. This was it though, where it had all brought her, right here to this place.

“Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if you will ever dig.” by Marcus Aurelius The Stoic http://bit.ly/TheStoicApp

“Flowers may bloom again but children never have the chance to be young again”. Bluey, Cbeebies.

I have read and reread parts of Sheila Heitis Motherhood. Heitis memoir details the journey of her process of deciding whether or not to become a mother. It charts her yearnings and her misgivings and leads towards the ultimate conclusion that she will not have children. I pre-conceived i would find the book tricky to navigate so was suprised when I didnt find it an uncomfortable read. Perhaps that was because i have alreay found my place, made my decision. I have children, three of them and i have lived both sides of the motherhood divide ; the childhood line with all its glory and despair, all the way through to the borderland where they become adults, despite always being in your minds eye your child. Reading it therefore was not a search to somehow provide myself with support for a diffciult personal decision rather just curiosity about how other women perceive Mumhood.
What emerges from Heitis text is the consideration she submerges hersef in. A complete committment to making the right decision for her and her potential child. The argument grows against the background of her own self refelction rather than suggesting that the pitfalls or the difficulties she is having are solely due to how society has made her feel about being a mother. She recognises that her battles are from within- should she be free to do what she wishes or should she bequeath this to allow her child to be happy. I feel that she recognises that there is no case for working and mothering being equal, as the mother role will always out do so the work role in importance and so she bases her decision on this realsiation and decides this is not a battle she wishes to have. She manages to separate herself from societal expectation.

I wondered about my own decision making process in this respect and found it to be quite weak in comparison. As a Mum , I have stayed at home to raise the children and I have worked; I have had more than ample income and more recently have raised them on the meagre offerings of unversal credit.It was never a question that i should do one or the other. With the elder two I did one and with smallest I did the other but not until the pandemic struck was it a conscous choice, grounded by personal experience, to consider if the two merge. A year after making the decision that they do not (see New Beginnings post) I have been reading articles about Women’s battles for equality in the working Mum world. What I have read has fed an internal discussion about the divide between parenting and sustaining a career. I have wondered about how current opinion manifests itself due the chosen relative needs and wants in society, as opposed to what is a consequence of absolute need.

Recent commentary has unearthed again the bitter subject of society’s appraisal of motherhood and the problems this creates for the woman. It settles in part on the impact of choosing to have a child on finances and careers. What is drawn out is the poor state of equality in this respect , exposed by Mother friendly organisations such as Pregnnat then Screwed and written about by many authors, Eva Wiseman and Eliane Glaser of The Observer and The Guardian, standing out in particular.
The explicit content of the discussion centres on the issue of womens equality and as a women, I am all for that of course. The trickiness comes from what we are being encouraged to be equal about. Having a career and a raising a young child, in particular the notion that we should have equal access at all times even when our children are still very young. Activists have termed this a woman centred approach to child rearing , putting the needs of the woman above the child; arguing that if the women is happy i.e able to work and earn with the ease of a single person or the father, then the child will be happy. This is a risky supposition, one that cant easily be measured and which has such great consequences. Does the Mum going out to work make the child happy? What if, what makes the child happy is the Mother being at home? Is having a career perceived as more of an achievement than raising a child well?

The opposite approach, natural motherhood was discussed by Eliane Glaser in The Guardian (18th May 2021) .Eliane argues against natural motherhood stating that this is not compatible with 21st century life. It is no longer possible for us to be present all the time or to provide the kind of care that is deemed as essential for the childs healthy development cited by professionals. It is certainly true that things can be very tricky, though whether it is possible to argue against natural motherhood completely ,without sounding blindsided is doubtful. The main difficulty with the argument is if we opt out of natural motherhood in favour of the women centred approach case then our children, small creatures with developing brains, are going to somehow have to sidestep their biological mechansims and fit in wit whatever it is that 21st century can give to them. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the middle at a point where it feels comfortable for both the child and mother.

It is very difficult to argue against biology, to see motherhood as a contemporary issue that can be aapted for life in the fast lane.

The dual thinking around natural vs women centred parenting was a topic I discussed with a friend years ago after a Saturday morning gymnsastics class for my daughter. That morning I sat next to a woman who had her four month baby sitting in a car seat in front of her. The Mum chatted to me and it turmed out that she worked full time while her child was in nursery. At the time I was still at home with smallest and spoke about my plans to go back to work which i was concerned about. “Oh”, she said,”I know – the expense of childcare……..I literally work to pay for it”. “Its not the cost I worry”, about i replied, “I am just worried that leaving him is the wrong thing for him”. She then sighed and laughed, “oh well i know would NOT wnt to be at home looking after a baby all day. They are easier when they are older”. The conversation ended but fired up a chat I had with a friend later. He smarted, “well obviously a lot of women just work because its a means to an end. They want to work and have a kid- have their cake and eat it”. Although I had been shocked by how she had removed herself from the role of being a Mum, my reaction to this was defensive, I tried to shield her status. At the time i was juggling three jobs and raising the elder two alone; I felt guilty at the time I spent away from them – so i argued for her, that often people work to maintain a career and to balance the finaceces. The contradiction in my felt response and verbal defense of this women though sat with me and I have often wondered why despite my natural inclination towards wanting to be wih the children, why did i always do the very thing which caused me and them the most discomfort? And the response I had learned to say , “Well its because you need to dont you….”.

The issue of the cost and provision of childcare has been raised again and again inthe pandemic. Eva Wiseman (The Observer 16th May 2021), comments on how undervalued and underinvested in our childcare system is in comparison to other Europen countries. She reflects there is a need to value the system more as we as women are raising the next geenration of this country and this should not be overlooked. And how right she is although for me there is a fundamental issue with this. The stand of her and many others is based on the facilities being there for our children to be looked after by someone else. Its based upon the notion of woman centred child rearing. Perhaps what is needed is a system for allowing Mums to fulfill this role of raising the next generation in these early years. Providing us with the chance to take secure career breaks for longer periods, so we have jobs to go back to. A system anyway that would to allow us to be with our children without worrying about work all the time or being so exhausted from our dual lives that when we are with our children we see all their behaviours as emotional and inconvenient. Or perhaps what could change is how we are educating young women about Motherhood, so that they don’t grow with the expectation that a women needs to do both at the same time. There is an option to do things seprately.

Wiseman recounts a moment with her childminder where the childminder candidly tells her that the reason her child is crying so much is because she knows that her Mum is going off to work is becase she wants to and not becuase she needs to. This moment has stuck vehemently with Eva who recalls it years later; enough to include it in her column. One wonders about the audacity of the comment and I murmered my support intially, until I considered need and want and i must admit, my allegiances fell to the child. For in this situation, where we take our child and place them in the care of another, particularly when the child is under three ,I feel it is our want that is being satisfied and their need denied. Years later when I made the decision to resign , leading the way was the justification – you can make money again but builing a childs resilience and well being is a lot harder when they are older.

The issue of need and want is raised again by Eliane Glaser. Initially we are presented with a waft of statistics mainly pointing towards the pitfalls of motherhood which again frame the incompatibility of being a mother and working. The statistics I would say are unsurprising, we all know the downfalls.
The article though traverses to framing motherhood in terms of the wants of the mother and appears loosly to suggest that shifting devlopmental theory somehow legitimises the morality of rebranding the role of mother into something a bt more compatible with the 21st century woman. Donald Winnicotts theory appears to be utilised to justify a level of care given, good enough translated as a minimum requirement for the role. Winncotts ideal of the good enough Mother though is as important as his other observations. The me and not me distinction is integral to the Winnicotian tradition, detailing the importance of child learning to be on their own through learning to be with one other namely Mum/Guardian; achieved through a slow introduction to their environment at a pace that they can manage. I think this is key. Winnicott was a innovative thinker and his theories reflected his views that the mother and baby cannot be seen as separate at first, we have very primitive nature, primary maternal preoccupation being his equal to a instinctive state where the baby is the mothers absolute concern and everything should be done to ensure that that her focus is not impeded upon. Work as an intrusion is disruptive to this state.

Eliane ends her piece describing how natural motherhood is pushed upon us my midwives, health visiors or professionals where we , “are guilt tripped into parenting that is not compatible with work outside the home.” She contrasts this with woman centred motherhood which is described as and sold to us on the basis that it is in both the child and the others intersts that they ar both happy. But does this equate to an all out rejection of natural motherhood, does it mean reducing the experince to gymnsatics lady? If the central isue is about equality, then have we gained eqality for ourselves at the expense of equality for the child- through a complete rejection of the very basic emotional needs of the childs developing brain.

Regardless tied in to what can be quite a circular argument are the wants and the needs of the child itself and no mother woud argue that the child yearning for its parent is a need rather than a want. All children learn to be without their parents but how they do it is important. I remember seprating from the eldest two – it was easy because they were ready- what I experienced with smallest was not easy because he was not ready. Which is why Ie made the decision to go back. Did I feel guilt? Absolutely. Maybe but this came from knowing I had not ultimatley given him the time to become ready. I was aware of the difficulties this would cause him problems later on down the line.

Much content appears to suggest that society creates problems, not enough childcare, telling us we should do this do that and the other, but maybe just maybe the problem comes from arguing against something which is innate. Perhaps we are making our own experinces of Motherhood bad not because of what society says or doesnt say or does or doesnt provide but because of how we receive the experience. I did it for years, argued that i should be out at work, worked all hours never saw my children who were always with someone else. The only time we ever felt better was when i stopped, held my hands up and said , i am going to stay at home because he needs me and my older children told me that was all they ever wanted. For me to be at home with them.

I had to make that choice at the expense of my children- expense in terms of childcare and more imprtantly their well being which I find out ten years on was at risk- they hated it but could not put into words what they were feeling at the time as they did not have the anguage for it. They were tired, dealing with all sorts from the day in an environment they were not overly keen on despite the outstanding status. Worse still by the time i picked them up i was too tired to be genuine and so i packed them off to bed with their worries which would have to wait until the weekend.

As a women, or as a supporteer of woman as a male friend once said, yoou nod along and shake your head appropiely to much of this information however there is something else that you are left with. Women succomb to it all because that is what is done. Its like a collective unconscious and then we spend time venting the difficulties and sourcing the root of the problem externally our view of our role as a mother bruised by a collision with our occupational role.A residue of something that emerges, not from the central argument of writing but from the something which leaks into the sentences. This something can be descibed as a shameful unintended conseuence of our response to the probems of working mothers. Its the lack of value which some women place on our primary role.

When I read motherhood by Heiti , in the first few pages i wondered how she was oing to fill a whole book with her comtemplations. By the end it is clear that this is probably exactly what we should all do; be able to consider our role and what it means for the unborn child on this level. Heitis of course looked at the ultimate question if she ever wanted children, i am of course wondering about contemplation for those of us who are making the decision when to have children. It is clear that Heitis conclusion was right for her however anyone who can give that amount of consideration and care over such an important question would undoubetdly make a very caring parent.

The suggestion that we hould rebrand motherhood- so that it can catch up with the 21st century womenn, as if biology is mallaeable, appears odd- almost mechanical. The biological element of mothering doesnt stop the moment the baby is born, neither does it disappaear at 9 months, 18 months or three years. Its kind of there always. Yes there are lots of other people who could and do make good contributons but essentially as the Mum you are the centre of everything for the child. And that is pretty special.

Conceiveably, now could be a time when we start to consider a reorgansation of our perception of the mother role. We have battled long and hard for a change to the system but little has shifted and maybe that is telling us something.If the first 1000 days are so important,then lets help our Mums be part of it physically and to embrace it mentally. Sell Motherhood; its not a glitch or a blip or a gap, its for life and it is the soil of someone elses life.Ultimately, children do not grow in a vacuum , they grow with a primary significant other. Perhaps if we are not willing or able to give the child a few years of our life then maybe we should be questioning if this is the point in our life where we raise one.

We have the potential to generate a more favourable view of being a Mum to highlight just what an importnat job this is rather than societal expectation cultivating an attitude towards Motherhood that appears to have a ” blithe disregard for the indispensible role of mothers in securing any future whatsoever.” (Jacquline Rose, Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty).

I like December especially now that it means not going to work. I feel I can enjoy the end of this year; fading with the light as winter is let in by Autumn. Life sometimes feels a bit lack lustre at this time. Especially this year, when we all teeter on the precipice of another lockdown. We have reached the end of lockdown #2 and have been ushered into a new phase of our countries attempts to slow the spread of Covid.Here in Essex we are in Tier 2 . What this basically means is we can’t do anything more than what we were allowed to do before Lockdown- other than go shopping.All children’s activity centres are still closed as are many other potential sources of amusement for small people.The prospect of being in close proximity to many eager Christmas shoppers doesn’t grab me, so we head back.

This is disappointing for smallest as yesterday he told me he wants “to jump” , to run “ and in reference to the swimming pool “I just want to splash Mummy”. He was basically telling me that he had more energy than he knew he could use in the front room , hence today’s excursion to the Fields.

I have mentioned these fields before as they have been our place of choice throughout lockdown . First as a place to fill time but gradually as a place where time became represented differently. It opened up space where I have made decisions and new angles of life and relationships were uncovered. Without the chaos of the old , life took on took on a seasonal rhythm, emerging as I began to see what was around me.

Smallest seem beleaguered as we drove up to the site where we park. “We already go here Mummy. Loads of times”.

His mood expressed via the bottom lip was tempered though, when he looked out over the field. All he said was “oh” and I looked to take in what he saw. The change was stark .

The hedgerows have been taken back and the fields were already swaddled with the first signs of a new crop, green of course and so in contrast to our last visit, where it was heavy with yellow wheat. The oaks which line the paths had shed and stood in their majesty. He walked on clear paths and then ran and ran. He stopped only to examine the troughs created by farm machinery; staggering its way alongside fields it has serviced.

A nostalgic undertone emerged from beneath a cloud. I remembered the fields of April ,May and June and felt lifted by the simplicity of the memory. Created with no effort, no money; a complete absence of first world reality.

Meanwhile smallest scouted the puddles and dipped in his stick, then very carefully waded through. With each puddle confidence grew until at last turning toward the next path, he jumped and jumped and shouted “mummy I’m jumping” and “I’m splashing look at me”. The afternoon carried on in that vein and by the time we had circled our way back to the car he had a managed to tick all his required boxes for fun. He had run, jumped and splashed – the only thing missing, other children , which he pointed out, “well I can’t go near them anyway Mummy” and “you are the fastest runner”. It is true.

I wondered about the year. Sense by sense we are lulled into the last months. We have acclimatised and our senses have settled on our new surroundings . Birdsong which drowned evenings has dropped a notch and the sound of laughter from the scatted neighbourhood barbecues has disappeared. The fireworks which spattered the skies since November 5th are silent and the trees stand bare , resolute in their preparation for spring. And on a different scale we have accepted the new normal.

Thinking forward, one thing I most look forward to is doing this all over again (minus the pandemic) .These exact same walks which offer us completely different landscapes through the seasons. Walks where smallest gets what he needs and I the food to wonder.

So , as 21 tugs at the corner of 20 , I wonder whether what we need for humanity has been noticed. Just as I can look at the pictures and see the small differences which transformed mine and smallest perception of our field; can we as a collective see how little changes in each of our lives can transform this planet for all our futures? I am hopeful; but then my glass is always half full.

I wonder what you hope for in the year ahead?

Crazy laughter emanates from the carriage. We have boarded nearest to the engine, at the back of the train. It seems the potentiality of this summer’s day has lifted the spirits of commuters. We take our seats in the middle of the carriage , back facing our destination.

The train is full and a pack of middle aged men in long sleeved shirts and suit trousers are separated, instead sitting in file, next to other not known, smiling city types. Sunglasses decorate their faces hiding eyes as they arch their necks round to continue conversations already established.

A quartet of early twenties hopefuls, making the early commute sit on the opposite side of the carriage to them facing backwards. The omnipotent emotions generated by this, one of their first journeys it’s appears as commuters, still holds enough novelty to generate an air of self- importance. It sends shockwaves through the personality. I cannot see the girls but I can hear them , piercing voices with little intonation giving opinion on news items, it appears to the whole carriage. Their volume increases as the old timers take up the ingroup offer of a polo which gets entwined in a discussion about ebola. “This makes an Ebolo”, a female voice finishes. Titters amongst the group and a raucous response from the males each keen to take up the offer of a mint. I look up.

“Yeh I’ll have an Ebolo Polo”, a clean shaven smiling sun-glassed man jokes.

Laughter circles, racing up the carriage

Encouraged by full smiles, framed with lipstick, compliments are flung towards the females.

“Intelligent and beautiful,” remarks the man sitting furthest from the group, he drops his glasses and smiles holding his stare confidently before sliding the glasses back and returning his head back to rest on the rose red head support.

His friend sitting directly twists round in front – “you flatterer”  he smirks.

“Anything for an Ebolo Polo!” the man replies , smiling.

The females laugh and a kind of parabolic inflation of ego exchanges occurs – “you are so kind thankyou!” the female repies.

“No thankyou – thanks for sharing”, it continues

“Oh not at all- we like to share the Ebolo”.

Laughter rises once more.

My companion on this journey whispers in my ear.

“Would you like a polo?”

“Are you offering?”- I return my face to theirs. We laugh.

Closer

Closely

We meet momentarily.

“Yes”.

The transparency of the moment is framed with laughter infecting faces up the carriage, mouths stretching and eyes dancing to and fro. The lighter side of humanity takes hold and dispels myths of a future of fractious dystopia and just for a moment,

One moment,

We are

United by a polo.

In a deviation from his usual preoccupations smallest has become very interested in the natural world.This started with curiosity about the workings of Volcanoes.

Explaining how a volcano works to a 4 year old is no mean feat. Enter You Tube with its plethora of options to enable a level of understanding suitable for us both.

We selected a 7 minute programme hosted by “Mother Earth”, an animation which by my standards is hilarious and is a mine of information. Smallest is suitably impressed and we have watched this many times over the past week. Subsequently, at any given moment he has found the space to regurgitate his new found knowledge. “Lava is molten rock”, he says. “Yes”, I say. “Pompeii is in Italy”. I nod. “We are bundles of matter” he shouts. “Right”, I say.

Despite his fascination with Volcanoes his main interest appears to be Mother Earth herself. “Why is she called Mother Earth?”, he asks. I explain that we sometimes refer to our planet as Mother Earth, as she is the home of everything that lives and she keeps us alive , just like our Mums do I say . “Oh”, he says and stuffs a(nother) fig roll in his mouth.

Today we left early for our usual morning walk around the Abbey Field. In this journey we decide to walk past the site where the old Gym used to stand before it was knocked down four years ago. It’s been cordoned off by a wall of wooden fence panels, painted in anti-climb paint. We know this because there are signs dotted around on the fence panels with a picture of a Mammoth and the words warning anti climb paint written underneath. Obviously smallest queries the content of the signs and I tell him, explaining that Mamut is french for Mammoth. This sign is for a security company who must patrol the site.”What does it say?”, he asks again and I tell him that it says ‘Mamut’. “But this means Mammoth”, I add. “Mamut”,he says. “Yes, yes it ..means Mammoth”. Preferring the French smallest asks ,”Where are the Mammuts?”

“Pardon?”,I say. Smallest appears to be looking around the site.

“Where are they?” , he has stopped now and he is looking at the derelict gym site. “Oh no they are not there sweetheart they are extinct i say”. It’s just a picture. They are not there. I understand his confusion. He looks puzzled as if to say why is there a picture of a Mamut with a warning sign if there are no Mamuts there.

As we walk home he asks what extinct is and I explain that this is what happens when an animal used to exist but doesn’t anymore – maybe because they were all killed by another animal or even us. “killed by grown ups?”, he asks and I reply well maybe sometimes that happens.

I then continue to talk about the importance of looking after animals and of looking after ‘Mother Earth’. “Mother Earth?” he stops and looks at me. “How do we look after Mother Earth?” he looks at me. I talk about recycling, using less plastic, using litter bins and looking after the wildlife in our garden. All things which I think he can grasp and are relevant to his little life. Not wanting to lose his attention on this quite significant topic, I then rack my brains and drawing on his love of all things motorised, talk about using electric or petrol and not diesel vehicles. He asks why people drive diesel cars and I tell him ,”Some adults just like diesel motors”. It seems a ridiculous point to make. That we just like them. At this point I feel I have lost him – his stick is far more interesting and he’s shooting lava balls at passing cars. I stop talking and start thinking about tea.

Later in the evening we sit and watch the follow up to the Volcano video another Clip about volcanoes followed by a cartoon about the merits of recycling. Middlest sashays into the living room and says ,”what you watching?”, and ruffles his hair. Smallest sighs, “It’s recycling. How to look after Mother Earth.” I smile. There is a small silence,”I don’t think Grown ups are good for the earth. Children are. And Mammuts”.

When you are living in a moment

not yet reached, carrying

your weight in guilt,

not present here . Instead as you will be

When you meet yourself. In the future

All singing and dancing caberet

With a glass half full of milk

deliberating destination

Through a crack in time

in a mind besotted with finding its place.

As you stand surrounded upon it.

Dad has three weeks before has his second vaccination. Then we can go into his house. I can’t tell you how excited I am just to get in there and sit down and have lunch and a cup of tea with him. He has been inside now since mid December. It’s an incredibly long time and it feels far longer. For him though it must feel like an eternity.

To pass the time he has re-established a relationship with Amazon , with whom there was a tumultuous few months where he had changed card details and then forgot his password. The reconciliation came a couple of months ago and since then he has used his time well and sat pondering what to buy and then making the purchase. Amongst other things this has included shaving foam, a coffee pot, a frying pan, herbs, pants, a sausage and a banana. Actually ,the latter was a purchase via Waitrose but I mention it because it highlights his difficulty with online shopping. “Why 1 banana Dad”, I said , as I stood at the front door. “Well I thought it meant one bunch- who wants one bloody banana?”, he said tutting. “And the sausage?” I said laughing. He sighed and looked at it in its small refrigerated package. “No bloody good”, he said.

I have always been close to my Father. When I was in my early teens I moved in with him and we muddled along together until i was 19 and left for University. In the intermediary years we drifted slightly though always remained in close contact, seeing each other two or three times a week. The pandemic though has reaffirmed what we had and cultivated something a little more enduring. It has certainly made me appreciate what he finds difficult and exposed my own struggle with accepting that. It has triggered the beginning of a narrative between us which has allowed us to reframe weakness as difficulty. The difficulties have been silently accepted and supported.- Dads with shopping, washing and cleaning , and my difficulties financially and with settling into my new circumstances.. Subsequently we have come to accept them; now they present no hardship as they are what life is a series of challenges to be overcome with support.

Most importantly though there have been the phone calls which, over the course of the year have got increasingly longer. These days we can easily spend an hour chatting in the evening. There is no topic which we have not explored together, politics, philosophy, psychology, literature, as-well as matters relating to family. The past has been dug over and we have cultivated a different understanding of those years from which the present is growing.. Our shared humour has carried us (and our dislike of the Johnson Government). It’s been fantastic.

3 Weeks Later

I write this having gone into his house for the first time for 5 months. I am pleasantly surprised at what I find; the only evidence of my not having been there is the kitchen floor which he struggles to get to now. Other than that things are looking good – even the kitchen sideboard has undergone transformation. We sit amongst books and papers and chat about Prince Philip and drink tea. It’s all very British one might say.

Before I leave I take a trip to the bathroom. I click the door latch and turn on the light noticing a slight difficulty opening the door fully. I step in and as I turn to close the door I notice an unholy amount of loo rolls behind the door.

When I return to the living room I comment on the rolls . “Ah yes I was going to ask you to take those downstairs Sploddy” he says.

“Right”, I say “erm ok all of them? How many shall I leave there just a couple?”

.”There are 60 there you know”, he says this triumphantly.

“I can well believe that I say – any particular reason why there is so many?” , I query.

“No”, he says -” I only clicked on one. Turns out it meant one box!”

Last night middlest and I sat on our sofa, ready to absorb another episode of IT Crowd. I passed her the obligatory packet of something chocolate and she passed back the drink that she had just removed from me. This removal is ritualistic for middlest and eldest. It begins with them seeing my drink sitting on the side. They ask me if its my drink. I say yes. They pick it up and drink some of it then put it down. I pretend to look indifferent.
This scene has graced the last ten years. No doubt there would be some intricate psychoanlaytic interpretation of this; however even with my tendency to explore, I have avoided this and just enjoyed it for what it is. Regardless of time or day for that moment we are all standing on the same point in time and we laugh.
“Its nice”, she said. She passes it back.
“Yup”, I replied, “it is isn’t it?”
“What’s in it?”, she says.
I read, “Er 36 strawberries, 2 and a half bananas”.
“Ooooh”, she says “very precise”-
“5 grapes and…. what’s this?” I say.
I squint at the teeny tiny writing on the side of the colourful bottle. “1…… Alice Pineapple……what the heck is an alice pineapple?!” I say.
“You what??!” says middlest and she looks at me. “Alice pineapple”, I repeat.
She takes back the bottle from me and holds it up, mirroring my facial squint, “alice pineapple….what even is that?” ,her voice travels up in question.
It does not occur to answer our question with a google search, instead we just sit our faces scrunched up in disbelief at the alice pineapple and its place in our (my) smoothie.
They put so much stuff in here. Middlest carries on staring at the bottle. She stops and sighs and says, “its like my list of homework – why they cant just reference the chapter we need to read and ask us to make outline of it? Why give us a list of points we need to make about the chapter- it just overcomplicates things .I just want to read something without panicking I am focusing upon the wrong thing”.
“Are you saying the smoothie is overcomplicated” I reply.
“No, just that we don’t need a bloomin’ list of ingredients like that… that we can’t even read”, she exhales.
I am not sure of the comparison, I think she might just be venting but I concur – at least with the homework issue. Teaching became more of a faff as the years went by, the focus drifting from encouraging learning to ensuring that they students ticked criteria points in the syllabus. It makes sense to want to make sure that you are covering everything but in reality it took away from just enjoying the experience of learning and the sense of well being this can instil. Too much focus on the detail caused anxiety. When you are teaching students, especially with complex needs, just achieving the former is an outcome but there is no box for that on the syllabus. Learning moved from being an experience to a process.

“….And how did they do it?..”, Middlest holds the bottle up, “Put a whole pineapple in here??”, she is exasperated now .”Maybe its a miniature.”
“Yeh, maybe; I cant believe I’ve not heard of it though” I muse.
“Alice pineapple”. I shake my head and after this delay we press play.

Eldest comes in and seeing the bottle sitting next to me walks over .I look up and he nods his head toward the bottle, “Is that your drink?”.
“Yes”, I say.
“Right”, and he picks it up and sits down on the armchair opposite.

We are watching the episode of IT Crowd where Moss sets the office on fire. We settle into the episode and as we do eldest starts to read the ingredients, “36 strawberries, two and half bananas, 5 grapes oh and a… what is that?…. oh, he squints and stares, ” 1 ….. Alice? no…. 1 slice of pineapple.

Middlest snorts and I open my mouth and make what she describes as a Minecraft potion noise.

I think that I feel

I think that i

I think that

I think

I

Is this the me of young

Or old, me?

Redux

The woman standing at

the crest of the street

Where l live divagating

Or

Or is

Or is this

Or is this me

Or is this me now

Or is this me now and then

Letting

Letting the

Letting the words

Letting the words unfold

Letting the words unfold and

With relief , the comfort of knowing I have always been here.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
   The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
   For those that here we see no more;
   Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
   And ancient forms of party strife;
   Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
   The faithless coldness of the times;
   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
   The civic slander and the spite;
   Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
   Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Private: Tennyson, Alfred Lord

An excerpt taken from In Memorium.

It’s been a while since I have posted. It seemed over Christmas that I might contribute a post about the kind of traditions that we uphold here in our home. The winky snowman that we have as a table centre piece, annoying Santa, who hangs on the living room door, rattling every time the door gets knocked. He has lost limbs and his beard in his 10th year but has managed to retain his ability to irritate . The robins which we place on the tree, one for us all and my sister. Some may recall my sister has passed, so her robin, now 39 years old, has travelled from our childhood and keeps her as part of our celebrations. He has lost his beak. Then there’s Christmas Eve PJs. Cheese and crackers on Christmas Eve. Reading Christmas stories on Christmas Eve. And so many more little things we do as a family.

Last night we sat and we made our resolutions and we looked back at our best bits and my daughter offered me a reminder of how our minds are so different. Very often it seems that we are thinking along similar veins but it struck me throughout the evening how little the pandemic and the lockdown has followed her through to the present. I wondered if perhaps, it’s impact upon others is not quite held in young people’s minds. Perhaps it’s not only the lockdown but people’s inner lives which escape us when we are young. The egocentricity of youth though keeps the young buoyant across rough seas and for this year it has been with good reason.

So I held back in reminding her the full impact upon others and prompt myself, it’s unnecessary to burden the young with too much. Highlighting all the differences in between us does nothing for the present. Or our future. Ignorance is bliss. Just as Santa and Snowman and the Robins are enjoyed without seeing their differences; being in the present without too much analysis is the lesson which I have taken from 2020 , to accompany me throughout 2021 and beyond.

Looking back many of my posts have focused on Lockdown. I wondered if going into the New Year things might change enough for me to take my eye away from all things Covid related. Not to be folks. We remain in Tier 2- one of only three towns in Essex who are not in Tier 4 and with my Dad in the latter, we are back to dropping food at his door and retreating. It’s a bit worrying now. So we went to Walton and were greeted by this.

Life became lighter for a couple of hours and then we returned home for Shepherds Pie. Not forgetting the sublime truffles created by middlest. Praying for a turning point.

open.spotify.com/wrapped/share-592a8577e4fa468d909f48b99021e142-1080×1920

It’s a sad day. Not just because this is the last day of the NaNoPoBlano challenge but because tonight, I sang my last ‘twinkle twinkle little star’, to my son. It’s a funny thing, but after 20 odd years of parenting I didn’t think of this as being a milestone. Quite often though, these milestones are slotted in between minutes, that are hurried and unexpected. And this was definitely the latter. Why the significance? Maybe it’s because he is my last, maybe it’s because he is my loudest or maybe, because he chose this milestone himself.

He lay in his racing car bed, looked at me and said, “I’m getting big now Mummy. No more songs – I can go to sleep all by myself”.

While my throat tightened and I swallowed hard, I also felt the joy that you feel when your child makes a decision based upon them realising something about themself. This is definitely something I have been so much more aware of with smallest. It doesn’t matter how long they have had a bottle or stayed in nappies; or in this case how long they like to be sung to sleep for, what matters is that they feel themselves when the time is right for them to grow. Allowing them the space to feel when things are right, helps them to transfer this knowledge to other situations in life. Making sure they aren’t imposed upon, helps them learn to feel based upon what they experience within, rather than due to someone else’s expectation.

So it’s a bittersweet moment. I am just blessed to have the opportunity to have sung this nursery rhyme in the town where its lyrics were composed, to three beautiful children- who maybe one day will do the same for their own children.

And that’s it from me for this challenge. It’s been a blast and I have really enjoyed reading some amazing and inspiring posts. From the inspirational work of Anyes to the information loaded posts by Steven, the beautiful words of Ra and all in between, I have enjoyed it all. Much love and goodnight 👍

This was a header for a previous post though looking back I don’t feel it was necessarily entirely well placed.

Today though i feel I have found a better space to use it, here in my penultimate post for the month. A month when I picked up the challenge to write 10 posts, (I opted for 10/10/10) and when I found myself indoors mostly- again. I have only been blogging for a short while; it has given me immense pleasure and has allowed me to use some of that brain power which has been redundant since I stripped my life down a few months back. Most of my posts , if not all have featured one of my three children but I felt this time round I wanted to think without them.

So anyway I thought I would write something about what I have learned of life recently. Something that has been useful to me and which I might share, on the off chance it might offer something to others.

Life has offered me plenty of possibilities and chucked some difficulties along for good measure. Some I have walked into and at other times I have turned away. The choice I have made recently though has shown me that life is not as hard if you can let yourself be present. Don’t let past moments intrude on who you are or cast your mind too deeply into the future to check out the impact of the present. In the words of the Chemical Brothers just “let forever be”.

This morning i awoke thinking about this poem it, I wrote it down and then looked back at the original. I realised that my memory of it is skewed and what I thought I had written originally is actually what I think now. So I wrote them both to marvel at the fallibility of memory but also how this can occur in the service of who we have become.

Rules are there to be broken mistakes are there to be made;rules they all make and mistakes we all make and our memories of this they won’t fade. Ez June 1995

Rules are there to be broken,

mistakes, there to be made.

Rules we all break,

Mistakes we all make,

Memories with time will fade.

Esther December 2020

We love Moana here in Alexandra Road. My daughter and my youngest can recite large chunks of Disney’s 56th film and where there is a thank-you , you can guarantee a chorus of “your welcome” will reverberate from one room or another. By far their favourite line from the film is “Boat snack” , which is delivered with impeccable timing when food is presented or just on cue when they sit down to watch it – again.

We were chatting about our different reasons for our obsession the other day. “Middles” was crouched on the floor perusing the snack cupboard (no twinkies here folks) and debating the merits of a Mr. Kipling cake vs several Rich Tea biscuits. I was busy sorting the recycling. Placing the batteries in a old cereal box ready for the battery bank, I contemplated how diverse we were. We all focus upon completely different aspects of the film yet still came together to enjoy it together. My daughter carries on staring at the snacks. I continue my consideration stating how, Middles loves musicals and has encyclopaedic knowledge of all things Disney. Smallest loves Maui and volcanoes and I just love the sea. “So you see love we are nearly all catered for”. “Mmm” she responds.

Oldest though is not quite feeling Moana on the same level. For him , he has learned to love it not because he has seen it but because while we are watching it , we are mostly quiet which, he says, is quite frankly a ‘bloody miracle’.

My daughter chuckled at this and opted for the Mr. Kipling Cherry Bakewell. Good choice.

Forward wind to the next morning, I listen to each set of footsteps emerge from their rooms. There is the unmistakeable clicking of my daughters toes as she comes downstairs and the racing car like pounding of smallest as he descends after her. I hear them settle in the front room shortly before eldest comes down and avoiding the hive of play which buzzes in the living room , I hear his steady passage into the kitchen.

I feel it’s time to join them and so head upstairs leaning towards the day and into the kitchen.I say morning through the hatch to the youngest before greeting my son.

I stop. Standing there , with his bowl and his spoon is eldest. He looks down at his bowl with a puzzled look on his face and I give a stifled laugh.

“Why”, he pauses and frowns, “are there batteries in my cereal?” he looks at me and then down again.

“Er well…..” I begin, “I….” .Before I can finish though , from the living room I hear in stereo a cry,

“Boat snack!”

Last night sitting in the living Room my daughter was reading through some film studies notes with me. We had a thoughtful discussion about John Trubys’ framework for character which was discussed in relation to the brilliant Shaun of the Dead. Anyway my daughter explained how Truby outlines the 3 basic elements of character as weakness, need and desire. I really love it when she’s shares her learning and this in particular was interesting stuff. It did , of course, prompt me to consider this in relation to myself – what is my weakness, my need and my desire? And in turn what would you guys consider your own to be? I wonder if perhaps others that knew us would concur or perhaps they would perceive differently?

Weakness- this is tricky not because I can’t think of it but because of connotations linked to what I will say. I am addict. I have been clean for 18 years but I started to use drugs when I was 13 and so by my mid twenties the addiction was well established. I tend to do things to excess so I have to be careful about having a drink or smoking cigarettes.

Need – to be here with and for the kids. It has proved to be so beneficial taking this year out so far.

Desire – to fulfil my writing ambitions and finish the book I recently started writing. To perhaps be in another relationship one day.

Last night I thought about the last time I went to a gig. It was with my daughter for her 15th birthday last year. We both enjoyed it however for her it was particularly special as it was the first time she saw Dodie live. Dodie is her first music love. Memories of the night have not faded, unfortunately not just because of Dodies’ performance. On the way home someone took their life, by jumping onto the track that our train was travelling along at a high speed.

We were in the train all night talking to passengers and the driver of the train. The driver , it turned out was an ex-serviceman and this was not his first suicide experience. He explained the process that would hold us here for a few hours and him for a month at home. His tone was somber but it cracked when someone asked him how he coped. “Music”, he said “I am a musician”.

I sat holding my daughters hand and watching the other passengers, occasionally chipping at their conversation which was slow and stunted. Everyone revealed something of their nature that night, myself included, some of it good , some of it sad.

When we got home we lit a candle for the person who died. We didn’t know anything about them but we both felt the despair of someone so unhappy and scared that their actions that night were the only option for them.

This is the poem I wrote shortly afterwards.

Back Track

This was the day that run on time.

On this present tour you are in between five enemies,

acting now in the service of the train operator,

Here you can only muster the occasional control,

As when push comes to shove,

and in the absence of either,

you are ordered to stare into the face of death,

and wait for its hold to slow us down.

How many times have people sought the tranquility of the track gauge?

Like a stinger thrown down,

a persistent thought, a heavy sadness straddles the track.

In tonight’s delay, our shared experience,

Cast us into a cell, where we share our crimes

Him for his infidelity,

Her for getting drunk with her teenage daughter

Him for being so drunk he cannot remember

And her , for her lack of support,

myself, standing on the outside of who i am.

It is hard to imagine why you, so delicate and wise are here,

Your presence is an anchor,

You allow a vestige of times normal velocity

running life towards a station on the main line

in waves of emotion heralded as the Driver and

His guitar walk off the platform to only he knows where,

After the train took life from the track.

I feel very basic right now. Stripped to the most primitive of emotions. Some days even raw. On these days I seek to protect myself. Not hide, just preserve the very building blocks of what I am. Taking a career break and renouncing all of my study for a year has given me a lot of space to ‘be’ in.
I had an emotional childhood which led me into a very distressing adolescence. While I am at home this year, enjoying time with my youngest before he heads to school next September, I have decided to try to put together these years into a novel. Not a memoir, as I didn’t want to bring myself too close to what was. A novel i felt would help preserve some of the distance I have created.
As a means of filling in some of the gaps I hauled out a box
today full of poems, diary entries, stories and pictures which I created during these years. There is a lot of material and I sat down late this afternoon with the intention of going through it all. I lasted 45 minutes and only scratched the surface of the contents. I realised then that it was too difficult and took me away from where I am now and to a place , which from my reading today , seemed I had forgotten an awful lot about.
What I did find though ,that I could read was a ream of poems some of which I read and re- read this evening.
They have sat there unseen by anyone since I packed them up when my eldest was a small child. So around 15 years.

The girl who I was then wasn’t really heard, so I thought I would give her a voice here and post what she felt 25 years ago.

This poem is called , The last laugh is on me.

The last laugh……………..

Expectations,
Running high- in my eyes,
But in yours I see doubt.
You believe, you say
But do you see
there is a seed; planted
Way back
Waiting to germinate-
Ready to explode
Nurtured by achievements,
Each one better than the last,
Each one smothers doubts breath.

I know it will remain unsown,
For now
Silent, hopeless,
Till that day
When you, no doubt
(But you will)
Your own integrity.
For what you have done
Is judge
And that my friend
Was a mistake. .................is on me.

My response to this now?

Well, I think that is in the title of this blog post.

The UK sits in the centre of where 6 different air masses meet which accounts for the breadth of weather conditions. Where we live in the south easterly corner, 50 miles from London, we experience probably the best of the conditions thrown our way and certainly the warmest.
Not only is the weather in our favour here in Essex but so too is our proximity to the coastline. For me anyway, this is of paramount importance; I am a beach lover and I have raised my children to appreciate all things with a coastal
link . Interestingly , I have noticed recently that it instils in my youngest, a state of calm which we chased today.

I pondered where to head. 

We are 2 hours from Cromer on the North Norfolk Coast. Here you experience chilly winds but good surf conditions and the greatest fish and chip shop on the planet. No. 1 Cromer. Heading south , we are also 2 hours from Brighton a city of acceptance where you can be yourself as you trail the quirkiest shops and a host of traditional pubs. I needed somewhere nearer , wasn’t really up for Clacton-on-Sea or Walton and high tide meant we weren’t getting on to Mersea for another hour. There was a certain urgency to us getting out on this day. Lots of emotions flying around and as a Mum you feel when you need to disperse these quickly for your children,in the absence of them being able to do it for themselves. So this week people we chose – Harwich.

Harwich is the UKs second busiest sea ferry port and lies south of Felixstowe port, visible from where we went today. It is suggested that this is where the Mayflower was built before she travelled to Plymouth. From here the Pilgrim Fathers made their voyage to Massachusetts in the U.S.
Although there is no confirmed record of this , keen to redress the perception of Plymouth as the origin of the Mayflower , local historians have identified the Mayflower as being designated in the Port Books of 1609-11 as being of Harwich Essex. It doesn’t seem an unfair conclusion given that her master, Christopher Jones was also born and married in Harwich.

Anyway, Harwich is steeped in this history and we made our way past the commemorative quay today looking at the signs and boats in dock. 

We ended our walk at the beach – of course- to have a snack and play.

As we sat there the little chap wandered off to explore, i marvelled at another day of well, good weather, outdoor play and just felt incredibly blessed to have this space around me where I can take the children and blow away any cobwebs.

We drove back, the line of the horizon so clean it shone. The sky immaculate, our heads clear.
The light from where we headed dazzled and smallest said “That is beautiful mummy”. And it was. More so because when a four year old says so it, touches something that you can’t quite put your finger on but you know it to be the purest truth.

So with our mission accomplished, we arrived home taking inside what we had achieved and shared it with the others.

Mersea is the most easterly inhabited island in England and is around 10 miles from my home town of Colchester.

It’s a small island, home to approximately 7000 residents. At low tide it joins the mainland but at high tide ,water separates the Mersea Islanders from us all.

Everyone I know has forgotten the tide at one point and ended up stranded for an hour or so before the tide has drifted out. Me included. I managed not only to hold myself back but the 12 students I had on board the minibus, hired to take them on an outdoor adventure. Getting stuck wasn’t part of the itinerary granted but hey, I felt it added a certain je be sais quoi to the day. I aim to please……

Anyway, as I mentioned in my previous post, with the whole lockdown 2 swinging by, I have been planning various field trips (literally) and other excursions, as part of our daily exercise allowance. Fortunately this time round there isn’t a specified mileage (probably not wise to travel to Durham though Mr. Cummings) so Mersea was top of my list. This is not least because Mersea is always my go to spot and has been since I was small. Now I have some small people of my own – well ok technically one as the others have passed my eye line- I have carried the tradition forward and on Sunday smallest and I drove out at low tide.

It was beautiful. Gulls flickered in the morning sunshine, the beach hummed with conversation (clearly i am not the only one with a big brain 😂) and the open beach offered plenty to occupy us. We got stuck in mud, buried our feet in the sand, collected shells and got stuck in more mud. It definitely set us up for the week.

And it’s left me thinking ; if that was the only decent weather day we get this time round, then it was a morning we will always remember.

No I am not referring to the new era for Americans who I am very happy for ( had a celebratory Fish ‘n’ Chip supper here at our house for all of you). Neither am I referring to the less than 2 months that Boris and Co. have left to somehow, establish a deal with the EU. No I am, of course referring to the start of the daily walk as part of our exercise allowance throughout #Lockdown 2. I am very excited (ahem) to be planning a return to the wheat and barley fields in Halstead (exciting stuff!), minus the wheat and barley. So probably better referred to as the mud fields. May even throw in a few beach walks. How I have missed it……..!!!!

I should add though that I am very grateful to be living so near to places that can offer a bit of respite from the gruelling task of staying indoors. No doubt there will be tears and tantrums but you can bet your bottom dollar they won’t occur when we put on our coats and wellies and head out for a walk.

I have done it so many times the real challenge is to stay in the proverbial saddle and keep posting once the excitement wears off. Once December …

I guess, I’m on my way

This lockdown has honed in on many nuances of the day which haven’t registered previously. Like how frequently my kids interject mid sentence/conversation , providing a more , well interesting finish than was required.

Steve: Helen could do with someone to do the weeding. She would pay – I was thinking of asking – £10?

(Excited shouting from the living room tumbles into kitchen)

Sarah: Me, me I can do that, I am very good at it , I can create character; I am good with accents and actions.

Me: Weeding, Sarah. Not Reading.

Sarah : Oh. I can do that too.

I arrive back home from dropping off my youngest this morning and was met by my daughter who was in tears. She told me that she did not want to be in that silence. It is ,”too quiet in there Mum” she said and sobbed on my shoulder. She was referring to her class at college which she has told me, after each of the three sessions that she has so far had, is unspeakably quiet. Literally. It is so quiet that you dont want to speak. Not that his has put her off trying- she has come back from class with mounting stories of her attempts to speak in the space which she refers to as the ‘unspeakable place’.Today though this is a silence she does not want to be in. The thought brings tears and we sit and hug and she cries and we chat.She is overwhelmed with the remberance of her brother having had a seizure the day before last. She was alone in the house and so she was first on the scene , a scene which she responded to exactly as I had told her too previously and from which she was able to get him the right care and keep him safe until the paradmics arrived. What she has been left with though was a memory of the sounds of the tonic clonic moan which, for those that have heard it can be quite alarnming. For the rest of the day and all of yesterday she spent the day talking to her friend – all day; doing work and playing games all while on face time and only when she had to go to bed did she finally hit the power off switch on her TV and end the call. She didn’t want to hear the silence because of what might come out of it but this morning faced with the prosect of the Silent Film Class, a door opened in her mind and let in what she did not want to think about.
It made me think that it is remarkable, the power of the mind and what we will do to fill in a gap that might let in a thought unknown , or perhaps a thought known but not wanted. Either way the mind has a propensity, a duty even to protect and provide an escape from something tht might be a bit unbearable.
15 years ago now, I received a phonecall from my brother in law- well it may have been my Dad but someone to tell me that my sister was going back to hospital three days after giving birth. She had a headache and was confused and the doctor was concerned. I remember thinking “ah maybe that is why she was not that bothered by the picture that my eldest son had drawn of her and her growing family”. What I did not think was that the last goodbye had been the last. A week later she passed away. She was diagnosed with Acute Hemorrhagic Leukoencephalitis, an inflammatory disease of the brain. I remember being told that the hospital had only seen three people presening with this diagnosis up until this point, one had passed and the other two had been left completely incapaticated needing 24 hour care. No – one could help.
Her passing left a space which I have wondered about recently,a space which has been occupied by many distractions, none of which have allowed me to be able to clear the path ahead and make good emotional progress in life. Instead the feelings of grief swim in and out of my days cornered by defenses that usher them out.
I refer to her death as leaving a space but chasm probably better describes the gap that was created. Her passing opened up a hole so vast it reached across by life span, where memories will not be formed and childhood moments that make us, will dissolve without her to help preserve them. A gap where our children have grown apart where their lives would have joined and where I grew a life which is far removed from the one I inhabited in her life-time. I have filled the time with training as a teacher, youth worker and now therapist and of course bearing a son, her nephew, who will never know his Auntie. Less tinged with emotion, its also a space where global events have occured which would have impacted us differently but which we would have experienced and reflected upon together.
This gap in my life went on unprocessed and as we know, if you have read my previous entry , when lockdown began the additinal space that this event created was a bit too much to bear. It was confusing, noisy and chaotic and offered no respite, but and there is a but, as it continued i found it a useful place to be and so decided in the end that I wanted a bit more of it- that perhaps now was the time to actually sit myself right in the middle of it and take what it had to offer.
It has been wonderful, enlightening and so far i have achieved more with all the children in four weeks (and 6 months if you include lockdwn) than in the previous four years, since the youngest arrived. There is routine, laughter, lots of time together, we eat together and conversation flows from each room , between floors. Its been tough financially but the merits of being at home are priceless.
What has been more difficult to bear, is that as time goes on since my resignation, the things which I remember as bothering me but which I didnt want to think about, have slowly crept forward; my sisters death being one of them and I visecrally find myself reacting daily to moments of real space where i have been confronted by panic and sadness. In all my years and all my exeriences I have never paniced which is quite remarkable given, so this is novel and quite honestly, scary.The frequency is becoming infuriating.Sometimes the feeling that there is nothing or no-one to hold onto is unbearable. It takes me to a place where a primitive anxiety lies, which in the words of Esther Bick feels as if, “With every separation and discontinuity (in knowledge of the object, for instance) [is] another unknown dimension, the fall into space”(Bick,198:150). Bick proposed that the infant when unheld in this space, will search frantically for something to hold onto to prevent this fall and I feel as if the work that I have undertaken teaching and caring has prevented me from such a descent. Now, by choosing to put my career on hold, this space is too vast for me to cope with and the panic is the fall into space I have avoided. I am reminded though, of Donald Winnicott whose proposition of the potential space which exists between mother and infant is crucial, to allow the child to grow and cope with the space that stretches out before them in life. This potential space is how we learn to be with ourselves , by ourself.I am encouraged by this concept, feeling that here and now I have my own potential space and although not with my Mother I am with the famliy I have created. Without the previous distractions previous defenses are disarmed and I have the chance to learn to be again. It has felt slightly disconcerting that I have regressed again however perhaps this is where I am meant to be. Shelia Heiti in Motherhood notes that if we are brought back to the same situation more than once, despite efforts to build a different life, perhaps this is our destiny. This is where I am today – feeling that my attempts to cheat on myself with an alternative persona are a denial of where and who I am and I should not be ashamed that I am a mother and a mother alone.

And so I think back on today and I am overjoyed to see that being given space is not interminable to my daughter;where I will stretch the space over years and be unable to find anything to hold onto or will hold on for too long, she with good wisdom embraces the bad feeling she ignored yesterday, then does what we do when sufficient conditions have been created in early life – we reach out and give our fears back to our parents and let them digest it for us.

A bit like the bird who part digests its food for its young – part digesting childrens emotions when they are young, is so important. It allows them to be able to process their feelings for themselves later on and not rely on the effortful and ultimately damaging diversions which many of us create for ourselves.

I have been suffering with a cold. I worried for a day it might be covid and suppressed coughs in my throat. I began to wonder what would become of my children. What would become of the little chap. There is no one to help. It worries me now ; more than the first wave did. I feel vulnerable not because I am high risk but because the consequences would be catastrophic if I were to become ill and then have to be hospitalised. It doesn’t bear thinking about- but of course that I don’t want to contemplate it , is exactly why I should be thinking about it. The unbearable should always, always, always be sat opposite and looked at. Any attempt to mask it will only transform it into something far removed from its original cause. That is when time grabs hold and pushes you along, like a dinghy boat on an open sea – it’s easy to get dragged out and not so easy to find a current home.

And so I think of how much I am the centre of their live’s and how much normality, for them depends upon me.

It’s difficult to grasp but now our day to day lives are in synchrony I feel the full realisation of it, as perhaps I have not not done before.

I leave the thought there.

For now, that is all I need to consider and the only thing the children need me to do and be is right here.

Tonight Boyd frowned as I entered the room. I stood at the door and smiled as he crunched his body further round the other side of the table and squished his face into a question.

“Go into the kitchen??” he squirmed as he spoke.

His hands rested on his fire engine. “Well the thing is I need to eat my tea lovely and Sarah too. You know as you say here earlier?” I smiled in reply.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news” he stated.

“Oh right what’s that” I said.

“This is not a table”. His eyes fixed on me as he delivered this, solidly and without hesitation.

“Its a road” he said and sighed.

“Go into the kitchen please Mummy”.

Whatever will be will be,
No forcing the issue now,
North south east west,
Whatever’s best
Will surface with the turning tide
And on it , hope will ride truth in
and a sense of what’s been a fatal flaw of this plan,
Will lay bare on sand
And
As the water retreats,
Purpose outwits pursuit.

My 16 year old daughter has been the silent victim of this family’s experience of lockdown. I use silent victim loosely, as silent she mostly isn’t and victim is not the word you would use to describe someone who, on a daily basis sings her way around life; especially since lockdown was initiated. She has referred to this entire four months as ‘quarantine’, and has obliged without protest.

When I announced the lockdown to the children, her response was one of curiousness,

“are you telling me this is a situation which means I have to sing while washing my hands and I get to stay in doors and do nothing?

I said , “well yes basically.”

Her reply, “Oh my god this is brilliant.”

And indeed it has been brilliant to her. The fact that she has missed her GCSEs, which she has worked so hard for is irrelevant. Even her friends didn’t feature hugely at first. instead the silence that hung over the street she used to nurture the creativity which she has stifled to allow room for revision. Paintings, singing, papier-mâché,sewing,singing, drawing and er …singing all featured heavily. Mer – May; her and her best friends strategy to get through the month of May, allowed expression of her internal catalogue of mermaids , which she had apparently been housing for a rainy day. All 31 of them.

In short she has excelled at locking down.

The difficult bit has been accepting going out. Meeting friends at a distance was accommodated due to the local public fields vastness, making bubbling doable. But shopping in Primark? For underwear. Not such a relishing prospect. Underwear shopping is not high on her list of joys at the best of times but on this occasion it was met with bigger resistance, an eye roll and a sigh and a dose of teenage silence which coming from my daughter is a sign of definite uncertainty.

“It’s one of those situations where it’s best you are there”, I say , “And anyway we need to get you out”.

“Do we?”, she says “I mean do we?? Really???”

“Er yes?” I answer.

I assure her that this will be a quick trip and she has a mask (she loves a mask). “Won’t be a drama”, I assure her.

My daughter is a theatre student, she has her comfort zones and a list of essential places to go. In this new world the Primark undies section is not one of them. It never was to be fair but in an age of uncertainty she prefers to be on the side of er and quite honestly she says – “I don’t want to be you know seen underwear shopping with my Mum??” This I think is fair enough but I seal my persuasive spiel with, “No one will see us – we will be in and out in a flash.”

We walk and arrive in a very non-chalent fashion. We go to the underwear department.

Then she drops her water bottle, minus the lid, on the floor.

I think, ‘ok maybe not in a flash….’

She looks mortified.

“It’s ok”, I say we will tell someone and then we will get to the till.”

We both scan the department ; me for a staff member her for anyone she might know. She goes pink.

I hail a friendly looking chap who asks me where and looks at Sarah who goes pinker. He scurries off and I go to follow.

Well done come on then love – “I can’t I have to wait for the cleaner”, she mumbles.

“Ah”, I say. “Right”.

“Seriously Mum”, and she stifles a giggle. I smile and turn the other way.

People traffic is building Sarah is glowing and few minutes pass in what feels like about half an hour.

Then……in a loud impeccably clear voice the friendly guys voice rings out over the store.

“Can a member of the Sparkle team please attend lingerie there has been a spillage. Can a member of the sparkle team please attend Lingerie?”

People turn to look at lingerie to see what the sparkle team are attending to.

“Are you kidding me”, says Sarah?

“Ah”,I say.

I smile.

She, infected easily by my reactions purses her lips and my smile spreads.

Another ten minutes passes before a member of the sparkle team appears and on the approach also smiles , not as we would like to believe in response to all this but because it is his job to literally sparkle. And so he does and we twinkle away to the tills and make our way smoothly out of the shop 45 minutes after we entered the store.

Feeling palpably relived we walk in silence. “In and out?” my daughter jokes. “I could not have written that,” I remark. At least we have the underwear.”

Perhaps her initial resistance is another characteristic of her generations better intuitive capacity , you know the same capacity which has been urged in us all to ensure that we don’t encourage another spike in cases of Covid-19. Its funny as the young have been cited as a potential reason for the rise in cases across Europe due to their apparent lack of control and a need to see friends. Reflecting today I wonder if i had listened, then perhaps we would not have spent such an unnecessary amount of time in an environment which could be reviewed as an unnecessary risk. Perhaps the response to “Do we?” should have been “well not really”.

It’s possibly, another example of how their generation thinks a bit more clearly. From issues ranging from the Environment and Race to the importance of underwear shopping in a pandemic – I think it’s fair to say , they win hands down.

“They sacrificed instinct to phoney ambition” Kate Tempest , Holy Elixir.

Our lives have become steadily intertwined so that even now, I await his determined footsteps thudding down the staircase at 6.00am. I have even moved the kettle to my bedroom to limit the sounds which might be attractive to a three year old at this time. As I write this, his feet circumnavigate mine and he mumbles, peeks and sighs at my pen to stop dancing; as if wishing to resume the dance of reciprocity we left off from last night. Instead , he stops and tells me, “I know you cannot play but can you get my ‘brooming’ car from the table. Of course I can.

Later, on a walk to the car from our home, I join his narration of our surroundings; the smelly lavender house, the house with the lady who takes photographs for important newspapers, the alternative family house, the house with the rainbows, the other house with the rainbows, the house with the lady I met at baby massage, the seashell house and the house with the fellow, ‘red arrow lookout’ man. This guy we met early in lockdown, when looking (funnily enough,) for the red arrows. I , on this occasion (as if there were many) saw them , he it transpired did not. Finally there is the house with, well another rainbow.

On this particular morning we languished along the uneven pavment lining the increasingly busy road which slopes down towards town. My little fella held my hand and in the other directed his bin lorry; across mountains and through ravines, over volcanoes and past monsters, with the ease of a three year old mind. He stopped as we near the corner of the road to which we are heading and looks down. Stooping to get a closer look at the pavement, in his default mode he shouts , “Ohhhhh look Mummy ooooo Snails”.

“Oh yes”, I marvelled and met his amazement, as indeed there were two snails which appear to be moving very slowly toward the very busy downward slope.

“Where are they going?”, he asks passing me his bin lorry. Grasping his hands together he crouches and says, “oh are they a Mummy and a baby snail?”

I squint and it appears indeed that this pair of travellers to the untrained snail eye, are an adult and a child so, “yes” I confirm, this is a Mum snail and her child.

They slide in linear formation , rather concerningly towards the very busy downward slope. True lemming style I silently muse. “Gosh”, I said, “they are going that way.”I point to the road. Picking up my concern – and the snails, he proceeds to place them on the wall of the man who didn’t see the red arrows, garden.

As if considering how they might feel about such upheaval, he places them together and says, “there- now you are next to each other. They will be safe now Mummy.” He promptly takes my free hand and we smile at each other. “Good job chap”, I say and we continue tot he car.

I am pleasantly glowing at the sense of empathy he is demonstrating through this one small act and it occurs to me that this is something which I have been exposed to increasingly throughout the pandemic, alongside the growing realisation within of certain moralistic values unrealised prior to lockdown. There appears to be a growing sense within people, of the importance of being with and helping others. On our street there has been a definite increase in sociability but more than this there is a jarring sense of empathy within me of not just wanting to help others, but needing to. A need which I am more and more certain particularly thoughout these weeks and months, has driven certain episodes throughout my life, although up until now I have directed it away from home. Now though and on this day in particular, there is a sense that this drive if you like, has been speaking to me for some years and has been in the ascendant since my youngest child’s birth, fighting for survival alongside its phoney enemy: the career.

Later, standing alongside the little chap in a field of wheat ( after many months of walking in said fields), I examine, with my new expertise, the grasses to determine which they are. “I think”, I say with some confidence to the little chap, “we have rye grass and sedge”. Yes Sedge Mummy. We smile at each other. He promptly shouts “chase me” and I do so tiredly but knowing its OK because lifes urgency is not really there right now.

Running after him, I become aware that my feelings of late are leading somewhere and whatever the enemy presents in servitude , the instinctual side of life is winning over, subtley but with a reverence only biology can muster.

The evening swings round and I listen back to a speech by Rabbi Sachs on Radio 4s Today programme. He conveys the need to be with someone and to live with others and draw upon them for support, beliefs which are blended with my own earlier realisations. I think starkly about how often we forgo our children as humans, our own children to achieve stability in our finances and careers for a future that is so far off and indeed, might not be. It reminds me of the words of my new Bumble friend (lockdown discovery) who says – “its never worth it.” Teaching our little ones that people are the most important thing, starts by letting them know that they are the most important thing so they can feel first hand the impact that this has on others. Teaching them that they are important- but as long as we can have a career and things as well is the current status quo and no doubt for many it is just about surviving. I get that. I too am David Cameron’s definition of a JAM citizen. But, for both parents to be absent for long periods is becoming more and more difficult to justify for me, particularly when I have spent the last three years exploring the importance of synchrony and regulation of our emotional state with primary relationships. I have struggled to let go – I cannot forgive myself or forget the pain of separation from him. The biological propensity to be with him is far stronger than my desire to be a successful member of SLT in a school.It has been made even stronger through this lockdown , which has demonstrated how very little we need on a daily basis to actually survive and to be content.

And so I resign. I resign so for the next year so I can be with him, I can nurture him watch him grow and ensure he is ready for school. I am a single parent to three children. I have very little income and I do not have any assets. I have built up a career and some might say that I should pursue this, that this decision is irresponsible but knowing what I know now and thinking about the future, my childrens future, I think to myself is it such a great sacrifice to live in relative poverty financially for a year in order to give emotional security for a life time to children? I think the answer is unequivocally no.

I feel to do otherwise is essentially being somewhat like the mother snail we witnessed this morning. Leading your child with the absolute best of intention into the business of the world with the goal that you should both get to the other side in one piece. Perhaps with a bit of space to think things through, that journey can be made with a little less risk to well being; by having a bit more time together and waiting for the choice to be taken away from me rather than making a choice which I will never be at one with.

So like those snails my boy and I sit on a wall and observe. As life begins to pick up after lockdown we, are staying at the same pace. We look forward, with the knowledge that we have what we need within us to make it through this year and after that he will have the resilience to cope with what ever he finds on the other side of that busy road.

_{Without you I would not be here. You saved my life when I was 17 years old. 23 years later you have saved me in a different way}.

There was something in her voice I knew;

If I could make a bed with words-

Tattoo soft inscriptions around this body and hers

Fill up the duvet case and wrap it around

Sink slowly into my meaning

I would. There lies comfort in

A woman who can understand lyrics

Interpreting, slowly as I read

Not swerving to question

but leaning into my interpretation

Wrapping the words around her

as they slide off my tongue.

In January I stood in my kitchen drying up. I moved to the radio and turned up the news which was reporting on a Coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan Province in China. Contemplating this I moved into my office and stood for a few moments inhaling and as I exhaled I distinctly remember whispering to myself , “this is going to be something that will effect us.”

I am sure that I am not the only person who stopped to consider the likelihood of this being a problem here. I am sure many will have had a similar moment in response to these early broadcasts but I am struck how many times, there has been a moment in my life, which stands amongst the thousands of others in a day yet manages to outdo the longevity of them all. A fleeting moment which carves itself into the architecture of my memory and has formed the foundation of the years which followed. Is it intuition – I like to think so but certainly it’s odd how we pick up on words and conversation and they reverberate in our days, long after they are heard.

In the first weeks of lockdown I could not fully grasp what was going on; although I understood and took all the recommended precaustions the actuality of the situation, even as Lockdown commenced, just didn’t seem to register. I existed in a vacuum , desperately trying to get through each day , one task after the next, trying to juggle my work and looking after three children. Days became structured around the time when we could go out for our exercise, which , each day was becoming harder to turn into something novel. I relished the small victories but just getting through until the third week was increasingly more difficult. The days hung over me and each move was framed with tears. I was angry, tired and lonely. Tired of the youngests’ constant activity and angry with the eldests’ constant inactivity.My daughters chattering failed to stove of the need for company and in amongst the silent breakdowns I hung myself out to dry.

The air though was clearer and the call of the crow became a familiar comfort in sound. The wood pigeons followed me from my childhood and became the new day breakers instead of the rattle of diesel engines. Shouting starlings accompanied the lowering light and a flock of seagulls kept the rhythm of the day in check circling to let the evening float in. Their comical cries kept the memories of the beach flowing and with this memory I allowed myself the hope that this would soon all be over.

Months later I declined the invitation from my radio to turn on time instead I left the silence playing , enveloping my day as I created new spaces in the house to accommodate our different needs. The front door wasn’t opened in 3 months, instead it was barricaded with surf boards and a shoe shelf to allow a bit more running space for the little man.

Slowly , incredibly slowly, days grew a structure and within this the tears subsided and new relationships were unearthed. These relationships extended to outside the home and the street became a place where you could walk through and get social nourishment rather than an opportunity to be fuelled with rant and cortisol.

Perspectives changed and despite the physical parameters of life shrinking, the future opened up. Days were fulfilling and nights were a time for sleeping, uninterrupted by the overspill waste, piled up from an unfinished day.

So the prospect of it all starting again doesn’t fill me with the kind of dread that I felt all those months ago. Granted this is still an unknown and it doesn’t fill me with joy but …… and this is a big but, I can do this – we can do this. Let’s use this opportunity wisely like so many of us have done and fill the days as we did before but this time let us really consider how this down time can be used to improve ourselves through our relationships with others and through exploration of old hobbies and new.

I don’t want to appear pretentious because what I say is the result of having little but finding out how happy I am with that. Tapping into the spiritual side of being and seeing how rich we all already are , if only our minds were cultivated to think that way. This isn’t about money or access to lots of people or having your own home. What we can do for ourselves and each other is class free, race free, and gender free. We just have to learn to look at things a bit differently – like the guy in Groundhog Day, take what you have and do something with it instead of searching for something more outside of what is available right now. At least then you can find a bit of satisfaction at the end of the day.!

If I could have felt my pregnancy how I feel it now. It was as if my mind could not meet with my body. The pregnancy accelerated as I struggled to be part of it. The eyes did not focus and what I saw was milky white as if I was frozen inside; my mind paralysed to the reality of my situation. I felt it odd , considering it was my third pregnancy, but it may as well have been my first. I treated it as if it were a given; I think I was treated as if my experience would be easy. I wasn’t just a Mum but a Mum of two older children and so I had accumulated experience mapping half my life time.Then came labour.

The tightening of the insides and the analgesia of the pause made the pregnancy hang on. Teetering on the precipice, as precious life made renewed efforts to grasp his mother.

The false self lost its hold and I cried; I mourned our failed relationship, howled at the rejection and humiliation experienced and was still receiving in the midst of the chaos.

So now single working and struggling with life I find comfort in hope and realise that it has been hope that has been the real sustenance of my life.

Only now can i relax and really think about what I am. I am a Mum I am a Mother.  

.

Thinking is an art. The kind of thinking where we think, let thoughts wash over us , evolve and evoke. Our experience is often the result of predetermined action and so to lose that habitual planned existence feels as though we are wasting our time. Perhaps letting go of planned time we could meet unplanned contentment.

I am a teacher who has worked with disadvantaged young people to support their well – being for the past 15 years.As a teenager I dreamed of becoming an journalist and having my work published but at 19 I started a family . When the now biggest had both started school I fell into youth work and subsequently teaching and welfare support. I use the past tense as during the lockdown I made the decision to leave my job and take a year out to care for my youngest child.

Here is a space I have created to let go and find something different.. Conversation about motherhood, work and life in general. About constraints and limitations we impose and the beauty of being in touch with human nature.

It is a space where I go back to childhood when nature was woven into days spent with the freedom experienced in 1980s Britain, through adolescence, to its consequence.

Memoirs, essays and poetry bring to life what has gone highlight the now and exploring who, rather than what I have become.