A Moment in my Day

Just occasionally, caught off-guard in a rare moment of calm during a hectic day, I am able to experience life with such clarity that it is almost painful.

I was sitting today with the Very Small Boy. We were in the garden, perched side by side on the back step, laughing together at the slurping sound he was deliberately making as he drank his juice; his big brown eyes filled with delight. I put my arm around him and we looked up at the crisp white sheets on the line, flapping optimistically in the breezy autumn sunshine. The Small Girl and her friend, The Girl Next Door, were laughing and chasing each other through the neighbour’s garden. I smiled at their squeals of delight and closed my eyes, savouring the warm sun on my face as I breathed in the buttery sweetness of baking flapjacks drifting out through the open door behind us.

When I reach the end of my life, it is moments like these, I realised, that I wish to remember. For we all experience the momentous things: life, birth, death, marriage… But what really shapes our lives are the little things that happen in between – beautiful, fleeting moments that catch us off-guard; threatening to slip by, unremembered.

Life in the Fast Lane

“Why do you always accelerate towards speed bumps?” asked DH the other day as I was driving us back from Sunday lunch at the pub.
“What do you mean?” I replied, puzzled
"You accelerate towards them, then slow down suddenly, then accelerate off again really fast” he said, before adding thoughtfully “you always do it”

I can’t say that I’ve ever noticed this peculiarity of my driving, but I was thinking about DH’s comments during a recent run, when I realised that I run in the same way I apparently drive: with short bursts of speed, going all-out wherever possible before slowing down, exhausted, completely unable to pace myself.

The summer holidays have come and gone, passing in a slow blur of languid activity and frantic listlessness. For the whole eight weeks, I was entirely committed to focussing on the looming prospect of Big School. And so I was slightly thrown when the Small Girl, in pristine uniform and pigtails, her school bag almost as big as she is, quietly accepted her new status as schoolgirl, and settled happily into her new routine of lessons, packed lunches and playground drama. Perhaps, after all, it was destined to be a bigger adjustment for me than it was for her.

“So what happened in your first assembly this morning, Sausage?” I asked her on the walk home from school, a few days into term.
“The Archdeacon came to talk to us!” she replied.
“Oh lovely – and what did he say? Did he tell you a story?”
“Yes, about Baby Cheesus” she replied quietly, frowning.
“Baby Jesus… and what did he do in the story?” I prompted

The Small Girl thought for a second, before replying “he came to Newbridge and fixed a hole in the road!”. The she skipped off ahead to peer at a snail making its way slowly along the pavement.

There is no inherent reason why I should feel such a huge sense of urgency about everything I do. The only conclusion I can draw is that I am constantly spurred on by a persistent anxiety that sits in the pit of my stomach and is as disquieting as it is groundless. Because I really have no reason to feel anxious - if you had asked me ten years ago where I hoped my life would lead, I would have described almost exactly the life I have today… all I have to do now is teach myself to slow down enough to actually enjoy it.

The Girl With Tears In Her Eyes

I packed the car early on Friday morning, and after breakfast the children and I (DH was planning to join us later) set off for Kingscourt and Nanny and Grandpa’s house. DH and I had been invited to a work colleague’s wedding in the North, so we had planned to go via his parents’ house, leaving the children with them overnight.

The car journey was, as anticipated, somewhat challenging. Ten minutes into the two-hour drive, the Small Girl began to fuss relentlessly:

“Mum, are we nearly there?”
“No darling, it will be a little while longer yet”
“Oh… can I start lookin’ out for Nanny’s house?” she countered
“It’s probably not a good idea to start looking just yet” I replied, already feeling exasperated.
“Can I start lookin’ out for Nanny’s car then, Mum?” she asked, her voice starting to sound mildly hysterical.
“NANNY!” shouted the Very Small Boy in agreement.

I turned up the radio and began to sing along, in the hope of distracting them.

“Muuuummm! Stop singin’!” whined the Small Girl, with a very good approximation of teenage exasperation.
“Oh – don’t you like my singing?” I replied, sounding hurt.
“Well it’s OK… except for the words” She paused, before adding decisively “and the tune.”

When we arrived at the wedding the following day, I was feeling understandably nervous at the prospect of not drinking. I have to admit that, having only decided a couple of weeks ago to turn my back on alcohol, the idea of enforced sobriety whilst all around me were rolling drunk didn’t particularly appeal. And for the first few hours of socialising, I did miss that reassuring glass of wine in my hand. For one thing, it would have distracted me from missing the children. But in the end, I decided, remaining sober was simply a matter of having slightly less fun the night before and significantly more fun the morning after.

Shortly before making my excuses and retiring to bed, I sat idly near the band, watching the wedding guests on the dance floor. And suddenly I felt incredibly touched by the small details: an old couple dancing intently but frowning with serious concentration; a group of carefully groomed young women (their dresses complex, their hairstyles more so), tripping over their heels and laughing self-consciously; the Groom’s awkward movements as he danced with his bride, trying carefully to avoid stepping on the dirty hem of her beautiful dress.

I suppose to the casual observer, I must have looked like someone who’d had a few too many, but my tears really had nothing at all to do with alcohol. I was just a girl who was overwhelmed, suddenly, by the frailty of humanity, in all its beautiful vulnerability.

Extremism

“I don’t know why you do it to yourself, Darling” remarked DH as I set off in the drizzle at 8.30am on Sunday morning for a run. As I pounded along the country lanes, a straggling assortment of farm dogs snapping at my heels, I wondered what he had meant. To me, it made perfect sense because I’ve made up my mind about this: I will become a runner, and I will therefore go running three times a week, regardless of the weather, the ridiculously early hour or the fact that I happen to have a nasty throat infection.

“Fair play to ye!” called out a pyjama-clad woman tending her front garden, as I sped past feeling slightly surreal (probably on account of my temperature).
“It’s got to be done!” I gasped grimly in reply, and I meant it: since having the Small Girl four years ago, I have wanted and needed to tone up and lose some weight. Once the Very Small Boy settled at Playschool and I had a little time, I decided to throw myself into the business of Getting Fit.

As I made my way, red-faced and breathless, back through our estate towards our house, it occurred to me that I am a person of extremes; whatever I happen to be doing, whether it’s cooking Sunday lunch, crocheting a throw, getting fit or simply going for a few drinks, I do it to the extreme – and with a single-mindedness that occasionally borders on the obsessive.

“Well, I’m running a lot, and I’ve lost a stone”, I told Granddad on the telephone this week.
“Mummy, which stone did you lose?” piped up a Small Voice in the background, reminding me that, fanaticism aside, it is really best to try not to take oneself too seriously.

Still, I’ve decided – and this is quite momentous, even in view of my current puritanical inclinations – to give up alcohol. Because as with everything else, when I’m doing it (which is admittedly rarely), I’m usually overdoing it. And since I’ve decided that I’m Being Healthy, I might as well take things to the extreme and give up that unpleasantly seductive poison altogether.

But I wouldn't have made the decision unless I absolutely meant to see it through: when I make up my mind to do something, there's no going back. That's the unexpectedly useful thing about being an extremist.

Cupcake Massacre

“What does a horse say, Pootle?” I asked the Very Small Boy one afternoon last week as we browsed through his animal picture book.
“Beep beep!” he replied enthusiastically.

I was attempting to distract him while the Small Girl decorated a cake. A plain sponge, a spatula, a tin of chocolate frosting and assorted pots of sprinkles, and half an hour later, we had a monstrous, toppling mound of chocolatey goo for her to take to Playschool the following morning to share with her friends.

“Mum, am I four yet?” She asked me, loading a spatula-full of chocolate frosting into her mouth and then wiping her sleeve across her face.
“No darling, you’ll be four tomorrow –when you wake in the morning, then you’ll be four and after Playschool, all your friends will be coming over for your party!”
“Yaay!” she cried, leaping up and down, and I beamed at her infectious enthusiasm, despite my growing dread at the prospect of having my lovely house taken over by hordes of screaming preschoolers.

The party the following day was incredibly hard work; besides baking several types of cupcake, I had undertaken to create a “Finding Nemo” cake, as well as providing sandwiches and snacks and party bags. And then there were balloons to blow up, presents to wrap and party games to plan. And that was before the children arrived: screeching and running and throwing and shouting and trampling bits of sticky cake into the floor. But of course in the end, all that mattered was that the Small Girl had a fabulous time with all her friends, dashing happily about in the sunshine and stuffing themselves silly with sweet treats.

Some time later, after all her guests had left and the Small Girl sat happily in the kitchen playing with her presents, DH was sweeping bits of wrapping paper and used paper plates into the recycle bin as I chiselled cupcake remnants from the kitchen floor.

“That was hard work!” he remarked.
“Yes well… at least we only have to do it once a year!” I replied.

Then we both turned with slow and dawning horror in the direction of the Very Small Boy who, oblivious, was standing by the patio door and staring out to the garden where he’d seen a neighbourhood cat.

“Neigh!” he cried, pointing to the cat. And, nodding in quiet agreement with himself, he continued to watch until it leapt delicately over the fence and disappeared out of sight.

A Small Girl is Born

Until I fell pregnant, I had often wondered, as I suppose we all do, whether children would happen for me. Whether I would meet the right person, and when I did, whether we would marry. Whether I would be able to conceive, and if I did, whether my child would be healthy. I remember vividly watching mothers with their children, and longing for that natural and careless love that they seemed to take so much for granted; the casual intimacy that only a mother and child can share.

It’s the Small Girl’s birthday tomorrow, and as ever at this time of year, my thoughts have turned back to that strange time in India, in the run-up to her birth, when I was poised on the brink of motherhood, realising life would never be the same again, but not really knowing how. Restless days, time dragging slowly past: swimming in an empty pool beneath the languid sun, reading in our little apartment, in the rocking chair DH bought me, bare feet on cool marble, basking in the cold rush of air from the a/c unit, waiting…

She was born in Bombay, of course, and twelve days early. My wonderful obstetrician, plumply exuding wealth in her glamorous sari and bright lipstick, insisted I have an early planned cesarean – not only was my baby breech, but there was a length of umbilical cord wrapped worryingly about the neck. Far from the birth I had imagined, it was the first time I experienced the distinct feeling that the life inside me was a little force of its own, and the first time I truly realised that in many ways, having children is all about losing control - and where possible, doing it graciously.

The birth itself remains one of the most strange and surreal experiences of my life. The irony of checking into one of Bombay’s top hospitals was not lost on me: in a country where very many women in my situation would have lost their baby (and possibly their life), here I was being prepped for my operation in a private room with a marble floor, a flat screen television and my own en suite bathroom. Once I was wheeled into theatre and given a spinal block (DH in his green scrubs gripping my hand), the anaesthetist retired to the side of the room, feet up, to read the Times of India while my glamorous obstetrician drifted in to deliver my baby and chat to patients on her mobile phone, held to her ear by a gowned nurse.

I was thrilled that our baby was a little girl; she was tightly swaddled and brought over to me. The first time I set eyes on her, I couldn’t believe that this was my baby; this tiny little bundle with a shock of black hair, who looked nothing at all like me, a little life ready to bloom into a real person and already shattering all my preconceptions about her.

We’ve been having beautiful, hot sunny afternoons recently here in Ireland. Always, feeling the sun’s warmth on my skin reminds me of India. We went for a picnic the other day, the four of us swathed in sun cream, enjoying the luscious green grass and the cloudless blue sky. I was sitting cross-legged, staring into the distance, dreaming of India, when the Small Girl came ambling over and sat herself down on my knee. Casually, I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her sunshine hair, and the realisation came to me: this is what I longed for, all the childless years that came before.

The Princess With The Dirty Face

The Very Small Boy woke early at the weekend, his sleepy wails permeating my peaceful Sunday morning dreams. My heart sank; it was 6.15am.

“I’ll get him, you go back to sleep” said DH, getting out of bed and sighing resignedly.
“Oh! Thanks darling” I muttered, and rolled gratefully into the warm space he left behind, pulling the duvet up over my ears and drifting back serenely towards sleep.

Five minutes later, I heard the small pit-pat of bare feet on the bedroom carpet, and the Small Girl crept into bed beside me and lay down, all curly blonde hair and intense green eyes.

“Mummy?” she asked
“Yes, Sausage?” I replied sleepily.
“Did I have a good sleep?”
I looked at the clock: 6.27am. “Not really darling, it’s still very early. Let’s go back to sleep for a while.” I put my arm around her and tried summon peaceful thoughts.

“Mummy?”
“Yes, darling?”
“Can I have pancakes for breakfast?”
“Of course. When we’ve had a little rest”
“Mummy?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Pancakes!” She demanded impatiently, a small finger prying my eyelid open.

I gave in; we got up and went downstairs, where we joined DH and the Very Small Boy, who was sitting in his high chair eating his cereal (“Bye bye!” he sang cheerfully to each spoonful before it disappeared into his mouth).

As I set to work whisking pancake batter, the Small Girl ran off to find her Cinderella dress so that she could eat her breakfast in character. She currently has something of a Princess obsession, which means that we have to endlessly act out various Princess stories, she playing the Princess and I the Evil Queen, Ugly Stepsisters and Prince, all in rapid and exhausting succession.

“Mummy, you be the Wicked Stepmother and you tell me I can’t go to the ball and I have to stay home and do the housework!” she demanded breathlessly after she had finished breakfast.
I sighed. “Why don’t I just put the movie on instead?” I suggested wearily.

“Yaay!” she cried, dashing over to the sofa and making herself comfortable. Then, wiping her syrupy face on the sleeve of her Princess dress, she flicked her other hand in my direction and demanded “Mummy, you go get my crown!”.

And as I trudged back upstairs to get my sticky little Princess her crown, I wondered how I could ever have thought that my children would belong to me. Because right from the minute they first drew breath and uttered their heart-rending newborn cries, those two little people have owned me entirely.