Friends and Daughters

The older I get, the harder it seems to be to make new friends; I certainly have an abundance of acquaintances, but somehow we all seem to find it hard to really let anyone in. So often, as grown-ups, fear of tarnishing the illusions we work so hard to create prevents us from letting our guard down. Our children, our marriages, our homes, our finances: we never truly want to admit to anything being less than perfect.

I decided on a whim this week to take the Small Girl to London with me for a couple of nights. The Very Small Boy is big enough now to cope with my absence for short periods, and I thought it would be nice to have some much-needed time to concentrate on the Small Girl, whose needs so often get sidelined with a fussy toddler around. I was also keen to re-introduce her to some of my oldest friends (whom she has met before but couldn’t really remember), some of whom now have children of their own (whom I had never met but felt I knew, having heard so much about them).

We landed at Gatwick, where Granddad picked us up after a surprisingly easy journey (without the need for unwieldy baby accessories or complicated entertainment, or even check-in luggage). The Small Girl was thrilled to see her Granddad again, particularly as he had invited Uncle Queue and his girlfriend to dinner that evening: “A dinner party, just like on Come Dine With Me!” as she put it excitedly before passing out exhausted on the sofa.

The following day, we made our way out for a playdate with two of my friends and their daughters. I was overcome with emotion to see the friends of my childhood with daughters of their own; their own little versions of themselves. And back in the streets where we grew up, our daughters spent a day getting to know each other, and we slipped with the ease of familiarity into talking about the things that really concern us: the way that responsibility has taken away the freedom of our youth; how we are all struggling to retain a sense of individuality as mothers; why it’s so frustrating trying to meet new friends when everyone maintains the pretence of infallibility.

I am extraordinarily lucky that my dearest friends remain those who have known me practically all my life. As a group, we shared all the triumphs and losses of growing up; all the firsts, the fears, the frustrations, the dreams. As adults, we have experienced all of life together: all of love and loss, bereavement and motherhood, careers and aspirations and disappointment. They are brave, strong, intelligent, articulate, women and the only people (apart from my family) who I can truly be myself with; for only they truly know me.

That night, after going home and putting our daughters to bed, we went out to meet the rest of The Girls (those who still live in London; there were a couple of notable absences) for dinner and drinks. And for that night, I ceased to be a mother, a wife, a grown-up. I was just a carefree girl again, high on life: out on the town with my friends.

Jam and Leprechauns

It was St Patrick's Day last week: our third in Ireland. We’ve been here long enough now to know what’s required for the occasion (affectionately referred to as “Paddy’s Day” by our friends and neighbours), and so we headed into town on Wednesday to watch The Parade. On display were the usual bizarre array of “L”-plated tanks, deafening vintage cars and apparently sane adults dressed as Leprechauns.

Touched by the way people seemed so enthusiastic to embrace the opportunity to celebrate what some might consider to be something of a characature of themselves, I realised that despite having lived here for a respectable amount of time, I still haven’t quite managed to figure the Irish out. Post “Celtic Tiger”, almost everyone lives in new-builds on identical estates and houses are uniformly furnished with laminate flooring and leather upholstery; everything shiny and new and gleaming. And it seems slightly incongruous to me that people who insist on living this way are so willing to don silly beards and wigs and paint their faces green to celebrate their heritage.

The following day, we set off for a short break on the south coast, DH having taken some time off work. Heading to a self-catering apartment, we stopped to buy some groceries on the way.

“Let’s pick up some jam” said DH, throwing a loaf of delicious Irish soda bread into the trolley.
“Good idea” I agreed, and having located my favourite raspberry jam, I placed it in the trolley next to the bread.
“What flavour did you get?” asked DH.
“Strawberry” I lied, and pushed the pot out of sight underneath the broccoli. DH only likes strawberry jam, a preference I really should have respected, but for some reason my small act of rebellion gave me a childish sense of glee. And besides, I thought, for once it would be nice to put myself first.

We had a lovely few days, the Small Girl loving the hotel pool and I loving the vulnerability of the Very Small Boy, all wide brown eyes and chubbiness, as he had his very first swimming experience.

“What would you like for breakfast today, Sausage?” I asked the Small Girl on our last morning. “You can have cereal, porridge or bread and jam”.

She insisted on cereal, so she and I (the Very Small boy having eaten his porridge at the crack of dawn and DH having managed to avoid breakfast for three days) sat down to eat.

“Mummy, can I have some of that?” asked the Small Girl seconds later, pointing to my delicious buttery bread smeared with lovely sweet raspberry jam.
“Of course”, I said reluctantly, as I sliced it in two and gave her half.

As she tucked enthusiastically into my breakfast, the Very Small Boy, who was sitting on my knee, reached out a chubby little fist, grabbed the remaining half of bread and jam and crammed the entire thing into his mouth. And all that was left for me to do was take a soothing sip of coffee as I looked down at the forlorn crumbs on my empty plate and marvelled at how a pot of jam had come to signify so much.

I Need a Screwdriver, Not a Husband

You can probably tell a lot about someone from the junk you find strewn about their kitchen. After dropping DH off at the bus stop last week (he was on his way to Israel for a business trip), I decided to get the Small Girl and the Very Small Boy to help me conduct a morale-boosting spring-clean (we were all understandably upset at the prospect of a week without Daddy). I surveyed the objects on my kitchen windowsill and silently contemplated what they might say about me: half a pomegranate, a soggy carrot-top sprouting in a saucer of water, a colourful handful of beads from one of the Small Girl’s broken necklaces and a pot of gold enamel paint I’d been using for some project several months before.

“We’ll be fine, darling” I had said reassuringly to DH earlier. We’d all been standing at the breezy bus stop, waiting for the airport coach: the silent Small Girl miserably anticipating Daddy’s departure, her Very Small Brother (who currently has a fixation with buses) shouting “BUH!” at the top of his voice and waving indiscriminately but with great enthusiasm at passing vehicles.

“I hate leaving you… but you will remember to put the bins out tomorrow won’t you?” DH had said, illustrating perfectly that delicate balance in marriage between romance and chores.

“We’re fine!” I had reiterated. “Now, have a good trip… and call us when you get there!”.

The Very Small Boy had thought that this farewell was just about the most thrilling thing that had ever happened to him: the combination of close proximity to a bus, an opportunity to wave, and then Daddy on a bus, waving back sent him into frantic paroxysms of excitement, whilst his sister, tears sliding down her face, sat silent and miserable in the car all the way home.

Whatever else you say about me, the fact is I’m pretty resourceful. And it’s probably just as well, because as soon as DH boarded his plane to Tel Aviv, everything seemed to fall apart. The telephone suffered what the phone engineer described as a “catastrophic failure”; the stairgate (which is very much required with a Very Small Active Boy about), fell off; all the clocks in the house suffered a systematic malfunction (making me continuously late); our ancient boiler system ran out of oil, leaving us without heating.

“Oh you should have told me!”, said a friend, looking at the prone stairgate the following day; “I would have sent my husband round to fix it for you!”.

“Well, actually what I need is a screwdriver”, I muttered. “Not a husband. I could fix the gate myself if only I knew where the screwdriver was…”

But in the end, we had a perfectly pleasant week, filled as it was with playdates and fun activities so that the time passed quickly. And it didn’t really matter that everything fell to pieces because by the time DH returned, the bins were empty, the clocks were ticking, the heating was on and the telephone was working. We’d even managed to eat the pomegranate, re-string the Small Girl’s necklace and plant the carrot-top in a smart new plant pot of its very own.

Another Year

It was my birthday last week: seemingly, another year has passed, and yet I barely feel older than I did when I met DH in my early twenties. Although growing older has never really bothered me (not having particularly enjoyed being too young to know any better), the gentle havoc it wreaks on my appearance is admittedly starting to irritate slightly.

“Mummy, you look like a weirdo!” shrieked the Small Girl one night, sitting in the bath with her Very Small Brother and clapping her hands with glee at the sight of my panda-eyes as I took off my makeup.
“Thanks Sausage!” I laughed, “I suppose I do look a bit strange…” I wiped off the last of the day’s mascara and gazed at my bare face in the bathroom mirror: pale, lined and sagging slightly around the edges.

When I was a teenager, I used to make myself up to look as old as possible - eyeliner and lipstick lent me a convenient mask behind which I could slip unnoticed into certain undiscerning pubs well before the legal drinking age. But ironically, these days makeup is more about disguising the effects of age and giving myself the appearance of youth; hiding the lines and covering the dark circles in an attempt to look young and fresh-faced. (Which of course never works out the way it’s supposed to, because trying to apply makeup whilst holding a whingeing 25lb baby and pretending to be a toucan is like trying to juggle with cats – a noble idea but not terribly practical).

“I look old” I said to no-one in particular, peering into the mirror the night before my birthday.
“But darling, you look much younger than you are!” said DH cheerily, putting his arm around my shoulders.
“Really? How much younger?” I demanded.
“Well… at least five years!” he replied. And with a sinking feeling, I realised that even if I were five years younger, I’d still be in my thirties.

“Hello, lovely birthday girl!” said the Small Girl the following morning when she got up, before bursting into a hearty rendition of “Happy Birthday To You”. This cheered me up no end; to her, birthdays are simply about Being the Centre of Attention, and Eating Lots of Cake. Perhaps, I decided, I ought to take a leaf out of her book.

“Want to have a birthday tea with me when you and Baby Pie get back from playschool, Sausage?” I asked her.
“Yaay! Yaay!” she cried, jumping up and down and waving her arms in the air.

So it was decided: while my two lovely children were otherwise occupied, I spent my birthday morning buying cake, crisps, sweet treats and pink juice to share with my two Favourite People. And for once, I didn’t even bother to put on my makeup before leaving the house.