Well I'm Gonna Anyway

I nestled myself into the nook of a rock on the beach for an hour in the evening sunlight yesterday and read an essay by Anna Quindlen about how doing nothing is really something.

“Downtime is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, kicking at the curb, lying on the grass or sitting on the stoop and staring at the tedious blue of the summer sky. I don’t believe you can write poetry, or compose music, or become an actor without downtime, and plenty of it, a hiatus that passes for boredom but is really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuel creativity.”

By the time I looked up from that page I was so lost in thought that it took me by complete surprise to see the beach before me, bathed in liquid gold, waves exploding on the shore like nature’s own applause. After that I walked along the shore and out onto Pan’s Rock, where I stood and watched the pounding waves beneath me, daring them to reach me on the bridge.

For the second time this week I woke up alone this morning. Dada had snuck downstairs in search of downtime of his own. The Little Dude woke up, climbed out of his cot as usual and headed straight downstairs, closely followed by Big Brother. For the past 2 nights they’ve slept together in Big Brother’s bed, snuggled up like little lion cubs. I can’t believe they go to sleep like that, but it’s a measure of their closeness, not to mention how tired they’ve been at bedtime.

Snapshots of today:

2 delicious hours of downtime in my favourite coffee shop, fuelling creativity with a huge vanilla latte and a slice of something gooey and big enough for 2.

Wearing perfect skinny jeans, bought for £1.50 at a charity clothes swap at our church.

Pairing them with my favourite pair of heels (worn too infrequently) and walking right on by the clothes shops, reminding myself that new threads won’t make me happy, and that there’s something to be said for eking out a sense of style without a budget.

Finding the boys, all three, in the toy shop, and being descended upon by little lads, desperate to share their wares with me, bought with hard-earned pocket money, saved so passionately in their beloved money boxes.

Debating career options with Dada, wondering why it is that God sometimes doesn’t seem to have alot to say.

Wondering what to do, and appreciating the fact of having so many choices.

Spotting more of those suddenly visible threads, connecting now with then and even further back in time.

Musing over what’s been designed, and how the pieces fit together.

Wandering around the garden, wondering what are weeds and what are not.

Finding out that The Little Dude has got a place at nursery school for September, which means Big Brother will have a bit of company when he moves to his new Big School and starts P1.

Letting it sink in that life will change beyond all recognition, with my weekdays suddenly vastly empty until 2pm every day.

Writing school uniform shopping lists.

Explaining the Nursery news to the Little Dude, who wanted to call his Nannies right away.

Listening to him leave messages about how he’s a Big Boy now, and knowing that for the rest of my life I’ll remember his expression upon hearing a congratulatory message from his Nanny, such quiet pride in himself, such happy earnestness for one who is usually such a clown.

Realising it’s not far off a year since my first fledgling effort to write in a more public sphere, and feeling

unexpectedly encouraged a what a difference a year has made.

Checking the goals I scribbled down for 2009, and realising they’ve already been fulfilled. Wondering if I should be aiming higher, or just celebrating early accomplishments.

Hearing myself say ‘I love it here, I like my life, I have good friends and I don’t want anything to change’ and realising I should stop to recognise the goodness of this point without worrying about what might be about to be displaced.

Sending Dada to the Friary to go rock-climbing, still not convinced that isn’t sacrilege but liking the balance in our day, sufficient downtime and a sense of looking out for one another's needs, so much gentler than having to defend them for ourselves.

Boys who play for hours with brilliant new toys, and vowing to only ever invest in Lego products from now on.

I think a new book is chasing me. I’m trying to resist it but it comes, unbidden, into the room, waiting in the corner, patient but persistent. It won’t leave me be. Today I sketched out the ideas so far, just to try to shut it up, and it tumbled forth, start to finish, an outline ready to be written. A title too: A Mile Away From Home. I should have been relieved, thrilled even, to have a piece fall so easily into place, to feel so poised to get it written. Instead I sighed heavily and felt cornered. It’s got me again already, the story that must be told, prepared to tell itself if need be. There’s no escaping it. And now I’ve let it start itself, I suspect the only way forward is to keep going until The End’s in sight.

I've been meaning to start blogging again but life keeps getting in the way!

Sometimes I feel like I’m watching my life from the perimeters. I notice the details; such sweet-natured boy companions, skittering along beside me,  my thrown-together look, a hapless mix of make-do-and-mend but with enough in the way of wacky accessories to look vaguely styled. So many other details conspiring to present a person and a life that is wholly mine. But sometimes I feel like a character in a story being written by someone other than me. I like what I’ve seen so far, but there’s no telling how it ends.

There’s SO much to say and so little time to say it. I feel like we’ve transitioned to a higher gear, where life thrums along at a faster pace and if I stare out of the window trying to capture the view I only end up dizzy. There’s little time for the reflective moments that fuel blogging.

And when I sit here, heart full and fingers poised to spill the secrets of my day into the blogosphere, I find I’ve no inclination to share it.

I can’t even summon up the interest to analyse why that is. “It’s my flow, and you don’t argue with the flow,” someone said to me this week, in reference to a thing they’d written, a detail of which I’d queried. I felt like I smiled all over in recognition of the truth of that. I’m in a flow these days, and you don’t question the flow.

That leaves me feeling as though I’ve nothing to say but this space waits for me, ready to welcome me back to my little nook of the internet as and when I find my voice.

In the meantime I’ve got only snapshots. Broad beans growing like weeds. A head full of plans for the garden. A bucket awaiting beetroot seeds. Pacing around the garden in sky-blue crocs, watering the flowerbeds with an old empty wine bottle. Running, and marvelling at the way it chisels away at babyfat. Abandoning the healthy eating and enjoying three peanut butter sandwiches and two bags of hula hoops. A heart full of hope for the promise of good things, tantalisingly within reach. A fervent prayer for guidance, and a small measure of angst as to where this all is leading. Dropping my phone in a public toilet. Again. Giving up tea and coffee. Finding I’m drinking more coke. A depth and tenderness to my interactions with the boys. Quiet pride in who they are, joy that comes from knowing them.

I finished my book and it left me feeling free. Exorcised is too strong a word but I’m loving the joy of dropping responsibility. It’s out there now, on other people’s task lists, and until such time as it comes back to me I’m enjoying the distance between us. I have a new idea but I’m letting it sit a while.

I feel like I’m always in a flurry of activity. Ideas, possibilities, intentions, all  tumbling around and making me feel sometimes-impossibly busy, and yet there’s almost nothing to show for it, at least not in terms of income right this moment. So often rushing, too.  But good at making time to walk slowly through the woods or on the beach, talking about how God can be everywhere at once and listening out to woodpeckers. I feel like I’m putting things in place, laying pieces of my heart in carefully crafted ways, like sticks of kindling in the fire grate. Building up to the moment when there’s enough to light a fire, looking forward to holding my hands against the warmth caused by the blaze we’re building.

I cried unexpectedly this week – happy, powerful tears springing forth against my will as I told a story that is my only real secret. “Someone help us here, someone must have experience with this,” said a friend, looking around a circle of relative strangers and yet deep friends, and I sat on m hands and took deep breaths and wondered where to start. In the end I left the details out and spoke without a sense of what I’d say. But I think I saw bones that had been left for dead stand up and turn themselves, for a second only, to thoughts of dancing. We talked about outcomes and conditions and I said something unintentionally persuasive about how we’ve got everything wrong and have been sold a lie about how happy we’re supposed to be. My concept of good news has been radically shaped by an unexpected encounter with the bad news. I’m not afraid of bad news anymore because I know it leads the way to a deep engaging with the good. You can’t know good without first knowing bad. Afterwards I felt unburdened, and I pretended not to notice while a friend watched me closely with an expression that I couldn’t read but it made me feel somehow validated.

 Writing something work-related I paused mid-tapping of the keyboard and stared out the window as the pieces fell into place. I noticed themes, scribbled through the pages of my life. Threads picked up without me even noticing, woven through to now in ways that from one side look beautifully crafted. But I’ve been looking at the back, seeing only ugly knots and straggly ends.  It made me sea-sick, to look from the other side, but ever since that glimpse I’ve been pacing from one side to the other, comparing the mess with the masterpiece.

It’s 6pm and the sun streams explosively through the house, pouring through the open kitchen doors and windows and splashing in pools of light and hope all over the floor. I can’t get over it. Less than 4 months ago it would be pitch black outside by now, and we’d have had 2 hours of darkness already.

Instead, although it’s bath-time, my head and heart are distracted by the turquoise, cloudless sky, and my feet get that unmistakable itch. It’s the urge to abandon the usual routines of evening, such a comfort in the winter months, and play on the beach until the light fades, or ramble over the rocks above the bay, watching out for porpoises and greeting spring lambs along the way.

The boys’ body-clocks are thrown haywire too. A CBeebies presenter sings tunelessly about it being bedtime, and I watch surprise and confusion ripple across the 2-yr-old’s face as he glances quizzically out the window. “Is it nearly bedtime?” he asks, his face upturned to mine, his unknowingness poignant and still so sweet.

Nannie planted broad beans with the boys. They seem to have grown exponentially, just since breakfast-time. They stretch upwards from their pots on the kitchen windowsill, threatening to overtake us, Triffids-style.

Talking of growing things, the sunlight seems to have fast-tracked the boys out of their winter clothes. They grow like weeds. Trousers that seemed to fit them yesterday hang at half mast around china-white ankles. I can’t keep clothes on them of late, and I laugh out loud when the 2-yr-old staggers into the kitchen, a soggy mess of ice cream cone in hand, his lower half inexplicably undressed and thrust at me, with a wordless demand that I wipe up the errant drips of ice cream trailing down his skinny legs.

They grow in non-physical ways too, and I find myself dizzy at the changes that each week seems to bring. The three of us walk hand in hand towards the beach and people stop and comment, always mistaking them for twins, or just remarking at their cuteness. They glower at the unwanted attention and I play it down. I glance from one little head to another, so easy to confuse, and for a panic-filled second I wonder where the babies are, and who left these strapping handsome boys here? Life seems so civilised now that there’s almost nothing that they cannot do. They’re independent souls, but fused together with a bond that leaves me speechless every day. They’ve begun the uneasy separation from one another that nursery or separate friends brings about but I don’t relish the thought of big school for one and (hopefully) nursery for the other in September, after the summer of rediscovering themselves as one another’s best friend on the planet.

As they grow I realise with a feeling not-to-far-removed from sea-sickness that we’ve left babyhood far behind. Some days I don’t think our family is finished yet, but as we morph into a more civilised stage I feel a sense of horror at the very thought of going back to nappies, buggies, bottles and the accoutrements of a stage that we seem to have slipped easily away from.

The 2-yr-old rose to the potty-training challenge, shaming me into the realisation that it was me who was reluctant to take the plunge. He clambers up the stairs and pokes his head around my bedroom door while I am getting dressed. “Mummy, I did a wee and a poooooo...” he says, teasingly, and my heart sinks for a moment, until I realise he doesn’t mean he’s had an accident. I follow him downstairs, bemused, and discovered he’s responded to the call of nature by sitting on the potty without a word to me, doing his thing, and then tipping the potty contents with absolute precision into the toilet bowl. He was in nappies six weeks ago and has been dry at night for 3 of those. He is a genius, no?

This week’s been hard. Dada feels the pressure of workplace shenanigans that hold both unrelenting hope and scary unknowns in equal measure, and I’m filling in gaps and mothering boys often single-handedly while running a household and trying to grow into the shapes I need to be.

Our day comprised of swimming before breakfast, playing on swings and hiding in woods at Dada’s workplace (free chicken nuggets and chips for lunch thrown in), a bit of down-time and then running through the fountain, throwing pebbles into rockpools, and taking forever to choose ice-cream before settling on the same flavour they choose every single time. It never ceases to amaze me that no matter how many cones we buy, or how many combinations of extras and toppings that we order, there’s always change from 4 bucks.

The 2-yr-old pulls his best silly face, inches from mine, while I’m fixing him with the you-better-start-behaving look. “Do that make you happy?” he says, grinning like a crazed monkey until I laugh involuntarily, and I realise no-one has ever made me laugh as much as that kid does. Similary I can’t think of a person who has touched my heart as tenderly as his brother does, with his earnest words and capacity for conversation.

I taught myself to climb a tree today, with my 2 intrepid explorers in tow. We must have perched up there for 20 minutes, spying out to sea and pretending to race horses. “You guys are adorable,” said a workplace-friend of Dada’s as he passed us by and noticed us lingering in the trees, and I wondered what we look like to other people, what they see and how that compares with what being us is really like. There’s another thought hidden in here about duplicity but if I’ve learned anything from blogging it’s that I need to hold back a little more. Which brings me to why I’m back, after a brief spell of virtual silence. Lots of reasons, and I’m glad for the sense of time and perspective that my non-blogging days have restored. I was stealing time from my boys to document their days which seemed all out of kilter, and I had developed an inexplicable habit of reading blogs aimlessly, wasting time that could be better spent in a hundred different ways. I can’t say how often I’ll drop in, having acquired an altogether healthier rhythm without the daily blogging fix, but it occurs to me that if nothing else my blog has recorded my journey into mamadom in ways that no baby book ever could. It seems a shame to end that record now, when the wonder of their childhood is only really getting started. So here I am, back, with a sense of caution and a redressed sense of what a blog is for. I’m not giving pieces of myself away this time, and I’m saving 90% of what springs to mind for other writing opportunities, but I can’t leave the story so unfinished, so here starts yet another chapter.

... no-one's at home. I'm hanging up my blogging boots! Fear not, grandparents; the boys' adventures shall continue in another form, especially for you, but other than that I'm signing out. Bye bye, blogosphere!

I keep trying to remember the kinds of childrens' stories you can tell off the top of your head. But there seems to be a lot of sinister detail in everything from Hansel and Gretel to The 3 Little Pigs, and I have boys who are super-vivid dreamers. If you read them Aliens in Underpants at bedtime you'd better be prepared to go on alien watch at 3am, so wolves huffing and puffing and wicked step-mothers are all out. Anyway. I was making up my own version of the 3 Little Pigs during bath-time and The Boy's imagination was going haywire and he was getting VERY animated at the idea that he has a Mama who can Make Up Stories In Her Head All By Her Own Self. And then he declared himself to have a brilliant idea, and uttered this sentence, which I ADORE for how perfectly it captures the essence of what he sees as his parents' strengths:

"You and Dad could teach us everything you know! So Dad could teach us how to drive cars fast and you could teach us how to read stories! Wouldn't that be a brilliant idea?"

I concurred, and then asked what he could teach me in return, and there followed the most lovely monologue about all the many things he knows about, including trucks and Wall-E and Woody and aeroplanes and cars and running really fast. So that's settled then. We're going to spend the rest of our lives teaching each other everything we know. Not too sure what he thinks I've been doing all this time up until now though?

'Along the way you bump into people who make a dent on your life. Some people get struck by lightning. Some are born to sit by a river. Some have an ear for music. Some are artists. Some swim the English Channel. Some know buttons. Some know Shakespeare. Some are mothers. And some people can dance.'

Mama: Boy, you are ADORABLE.

Boy: Does that mean 'I love you and you're a bit funny sometimes?'

Mama: Precisely.

Boy: I thought so.

I was in the pool this morning by 7.30am, stretching limbs that do too little in the way of exercise these days. "This time is as much about relaxing as getting fit," I excused myself, clambering out of the pool and sinking into the jacuzzi before chasing off the last of the bronchitis in the steam room. The other women there were complaining that the water was colder than usual but even if it was I couldn't care. That's SUCH a good way to start the day.

By the time I was home Dada already had everyone dressed and ready to go, so we took him to work before the nursery school drop-off, and already at the time of the morning there was a hint across the sky of what was to come. I tried valiantly to work this morning but the time / identity pressure is a tricky one to wrangle and I didn’t make much progress. Then it was pick-up time and we detoured on the way home, gate-crashing the end of mums and toddlers at the irish school. Coffee and chat and decorating biscuits and such a sense of being welcome and known, and then singing in Irish and checking out the treasure of the state-of-the-art toy library bus before heading home for lunch. By which point the sun was splitting the rocks so we packed the lunch in our trusty nappy bag and headed for the beach. We trekked across the sand, aiming for the bridge out over the rocks. By the time we got there we had become Diego, Dora and Boots, and the bridge was our ship, and we were running late. We made it just in time to eat lunch on the sun deck and then we sailed away to Scotland, apparently, before returning to harbour. More trekking across the sand and then an impromptu game of jumping off the life buoy stand. The Little Dude was fearless, balancing precariously on a ledge, with an assured, instinctive feel for his own centre of gravity. The Boy was more cautious but just as adventuring in spirit. I tried coaxing him gently into letting go of my hand, but he was having none of it. “Jump!” I shouted in encouragement, and he sort of stumbled half-heartedly off the edge, both hands in contact with something stable all the time. “That wasn’t jumping!” I said, to which he replied with a customary roll of his eyes and said “No, it was falling in style!” and I laughed so hard I thought I was going to split my sides. Back to the car for our now traditional flask of hot chocolate, and now we’re at home with one bundled up cosy snoozing in the car, and the other languishing on the sofa.

I love days like this; I feel poignantly grateful that I’m the one sharing my boys’ days with them, and so, SO glad for the gloriousness of a beach in sunshine after so very many months of hibernation.

It’s not a fabulous film. I wanted to love it but I just couldn’t. It's like they were aiming for Forrest Gump but fell short.

Champagne in the post, a joke between friends. Laughing that I instinctively placed it in the fridge, expectantly, awaiting a reason to celebrate.

Rediscovering tea made in the pot, served in bone china cups. In family wedding china, no less. Bringing the precious into the everyday, making memories in the forgettable parts of daily life. Making a habit out of setting a tray and carrying it through to the playroom. The tray is distinct, a present from my Mum. I resolve to buy the accompanying china. Must start with the milk jug; currently the yoghurt pot full of milk is letting down the ensemble. Savouring the care and indulgence of tea like this, so much better than clutching a luke-warm mug.

Highly-strung boys. Unsure how best to accommodate their tiredness. Thinking a few days away would be nice. Pondering the possibilities for Dada’s week of leave that must be used up.

Invoices to be sent! Laughing at my lazy-ass ways about that, marvelling that I have income to claim for the month, that exceeds the hopeful budget we’d aim for, if I was making an effort.

Need to make an effort. Work to be followed up. Half-heartedness; energised by the realisation that I can earn a crust like this, but conscious that I have not a single formal hour of the week in which I am not responsible for the care and wellbeing of a little person. Stuck a little between a rock and a hard place. Suspect the best thing to do is keep moving, keep up the momentum, tackle the time challenge as and when they hit.

Throwing an egg at my husband in a public place. Being applauded. Laughing, embarrassed afterwards, and having to reassure little souls who don’t see much egg-throwing between their parents. Explaining that throwing eggs can sometimes be a way of showing affection. Anticipating trouble to follow. Promising an egg fight in the garden in the summer.

Making lists of intentions. Chimney sweep. Dentist. New fire grate. Storage solutions. War on plastic junk. Paint. Decent gloves all round.

Knuckling down to an evening of work, by candle-light, tea tray to hand, of course.