The Unmumsy Mum Diary Page 5

  ‘Jude, no. Stop doing that, you’re making everything wet,’ I pleaded, but the sight of him looking like some kind of feral sugar monster was so ridiculous it made me laugh, which in turn made both the boys giggle.

  ‘Wet, wet, wet!’ Jude chortled gleefully from the back seat, and after concluding that taking my eyes off the road posed a greater risk to the welfare of our family than iced car seats I left him to it, closing the windows in favour of turning on the air con because I was, by this point, chauffeuring two living wasp magnets.

  When James asked how our day had been (expecting that it would have been a bad one, following my apprehension in the morning) I told him that we’d had a great day, with the only negative being that I had fed them nothing but sugar for lunch, which meant we’d have to clean their teeth for at least an extra minute. I would never applaud iced buns and bottled kids’ drinks as lunch substitutes (obviously – if I did, it would make me irresponsible) but every now and again a mum’s gotta do what a mum’s gotta do to keep the peace, and today that is what I had to do.

  Anyway, truly crummy mummies wouldn’t worry about tooth decay, would they? Perhaps I’m only a semi-crummy mummy. If this diary becomes a book we ought to consider that as the strap line. A Year in the Life of a Semi-crummy Mummy.

  Friday 4th

  I have never felt as much of a grown-up as I did this morning, sat around the hastily cleaned dining table for the first ever meeting with my accountant. The very fact that I have an accountant is making me feel all businesswoman-like. I did wonder if I should put on a blouse or something resembling workwear but, as the meeting was at my house, that might have been weird. And to all intents and purposes, the trusty jeans-and-jumper combo is my workwear nowadays, given that my work is being a mum and writing about it. Granted, I do occasionally get paid to write about other stuff, but it never requires me to don a shift dress for a presentation in a boardroom and is instead more often than not executed under the comfort of our sofa blanket. Anyway, not one but two accountants came around today and we chatted about all manner of exhilarating things like expenses, VAT and certificates of residency to prove that I shouldn’t have to pay additional tax for Russian and German translations of the book. Incidentally, it turns out there is no obvious translation for ‘unmumsy’ in German so I have become a ‘Windelwahnsinn’ – I have literally no idea if that’s insulting.

  Anyway, what is clear from today’s meeting (apart from the fact that I should have baby-wiped the breakfast residue from the chairs as well as the table) is that I need to be more organised about how I manage both my finances and my time. Whether this feels like work or not (it doesn’t), I gave up the guaranteed monthly pay slip of an office job to be a writer and therefore, despite my longing to respond to each and every email that asks me to ‘have a quick read of a blog post’ or ‘consider working with X charity’, I simply cannot continue to treat time spent on my laptop as a hobby when it’s putting food on the table. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but that’s how it is. I might trial wearing some shoulder pads under my pyjamas to see if it brings out the businesswoman in me.

  Sunday 6th – Mother’s Day

  Always a strange day, this one. There used to be an awkwardness surrounding it. Whenever somebody asked, ‘Are you doing anything with your mum for Mother’s Day?’ in general work conversation, it used to bring on a kind of anxiety sweat and leave me wishing I could morph into Flat Stanley and escape under the door. Usually, a simple ‘Nah, not much!’ would cover it and I’d swiftly make an ‘urgent’ phone call, praying the discussion would shift to last night’s EastEnders by the time I had finished. The problem was, any level of truthful natter would have opened an uncomfortable can of worms. It turns out ‘My mum’s dead, actually’ is not a workplace crowd-pleaser.

  It’s not that I even mind talking about it – it’s been fourteen years since we lost Mum to the bastard big C and after you’ve said ‘she died’ enough times it becomes quite matter-of-fact. It just doesn’t feel that matter-of-fact for other people, who invariably feel the need to say that they’re sorry/they didn’t know/it must be so hard, to which it is customary to respond that it’s fine/it was a long time ago/I’m not upset. And by this point the YouTube clip of the Ninja Cats which has been providing belly laughs all morning has been turned off as a mark of respect, as people cough to clear their throats and suggest another round of tea.

  To be honest, in the past, whenever February rolled around and all the ‘show her she’s really special’ Mother’s Day advertisements started popping up, I always had a bit of an internal groan.

  Then, in 2012, I stopped groaning because I became a mother and for the first time in a decade Mother’s Day shifted from being a day on which I yearned to hide under my bed to a day I finally had a part in. I didn’t have to change the channel and instead could drop unsubtle hints whenever those ads came on: ‘Yes, boys, show her she’s really special.’

  Yet while this day of the year is easier for me since I have had Henry and Jude, the everyday feelings of loss and sadness at not having Mum here have deepened.

  Practically speaking, I’m doing all right, and I plod through most weeks just fine; though, it has to be said, I’ve significantly lowered the bar on what ‘just fine’ means (sometimes the bar is on the floor). I have a great network of family and friends to help with all the day-to-day logistical challenges and not having Mum here to help with the preschool run and remind me to water the plants isn’t problematic in any way. It’s just sad.

  Last year when we took Henry to London as a treat I kept thinking of the time Mum took me to London in the summer holidays, just the two of us (my sister had gone camping and Dad had gone fishing). The most frustrating thing about the exclusivity of that trip is that I no longer share the memories with anyone. My awe at seeing the Cirque du Soleil, the entire day we spent simply hopping on and off double-decker buses … I have racked my brain trying to remember where we stayed, where we ate dinner, whether we went to the Natural History Museum or not. I will never know these things.

  Of course, the biggest tragedy is that Mum never knew she was a grandmother. She never saw her daughters become mothers and she never got to stand in a draughty church hall proudly cutting the world-famous chocolate cake she would lovingly have made for her grandchildren’s birthdays. They are missing out, too. Sometimes, when we’re heading out the door and I get that familiar ‘Oh God, I’ve forgotten to pack something’ feeling, it dawns on me that I have lived with a similar feeling for nearly half of my life. There is always something not there that should be there. Mum will never not be missing. She will never not be missed.

  So, yes, I’m relieved that conversations about today no longer make my cheeks flush red or leave me staring at the floor and, though I wish she could join us for a Mother’s Day carvery, I won’t spend the meal absorbed in those thoughts because I’ll no doubt spend it picking up the food that Jude has flung from his high chair and encouraging Henry to sing the ‘Farty Bum Song’ at a slightly reduced volume.

  It’s all the other days, the regular days, which remind me what has been lost.

  For me, for Mum, for the boys.

  Doesn’t cancer have a lot to answer for?

  Wednesday 9th

  Jesus wept. If I thought that taking the boys to a library event last week had been a daring move, I should have remembered that I’d agreed to take them ON THE TELLY. I have just got back from filming an interview for our local BBC news programme, Spotlight, and it was total madness. Thank God it was pre-recorded and not live because, within minutes of filming starting, Jude had smacked a very expensive microphone and we’d all been told off by the sound guy.

  After the initial technical interference, we got going with the interview. The only word I can use to describe it is pandemonium. Henry spotted us all on one of the monitors so kept standing up and dancing, chattering away to himself about being on the telly. Jude, who stayed next to me on the sofa for all of three seconds, s
omehow managed to launch Mummy Pig over my shoulder on to the floor behind the sofa and then began whinging, ‘Pig! Pig!’ in my ear (at which point, Sophie informs me, one of the production team dropped to the floor and commando-crawled behind the sofa to return Mummy Pig and prevent further upset). While all this was going on, I was trying to answer questions like a sensible, functioning adult, ignoring the fact that my untamed children were causing a scene.

  Despite the drama, it was actually terrific fun and I’m looking forward to watching it back. If anything, it would have been odd if the boys had sat angelically still with their hands clasped in their laps. The whole scene of me trying to chat over their disorder was a fair representation of our daily lives and probably a fair advert for the book. Job done.

  Sunday 13th

  This morning we walked into town, all four of us. I had to do the ‘ramp versus the stairs’ race out of the subway, which entails me running up the ramp with the pram while Henry and James take the stairs – we are coerced into doing this by Henry almost every time there is a ramp and stairs split and it’s become something of a tradition. Today, I properly went for it – so much so that Jude nearly got whiplash from his pram straps. In fact, I got so carried away that I won by accident, leaving Henry devastated that he’d been beaten. I did initially wonder if I’d been really mean, but he will have to come to terms with defeat eventually – we can’t do the slow running and the ‘Ahhh, you’re just too fast!’ charade forever. Anyway, this thirty-second burst of cardio informed me that I am ridiculously unfit. I had a sweat on and could barely make it up the rest of the hill, so I am adding ‘get fit’ to my ongoing list of Things I Really Ought to Do but Probably Won’t Ever Do Because I’m Lazy.

  The purpose of this jaunt into town was to get the boys’ feet measured, so the first stop was Clarks. The plan was to get in, get measured and get out. I always feel that there is an unspoken agreement radiating between myself and the Clarks shoe fitter. When he or she looks up, mid-fitting, and says, ‘Can I get you some shoes to try today?’ and I say, ‘Oh, we’re not sure yet, we might have a think and come back,’ they know full well that we’ll shoot a token glance over at the plimsolls before slinking back out of the door, armed with the measurement but no shoes. That’s OK, though, because we’re British. We both know the score and the etiquette is to pretend that neither of us knows the score.

  Today, unfortunately, we had made the mistake of telling Henry that we were going to look for some slightly sportier trainers. After our fitter had given us the verdict on Henry’s shoe size and moved on to measure Jude, Henry piped up with, ‘And next we’re going to the sports shop!’ When the assistant didn’t acknowledge this information first time around, he continued at a slightly louder volume, ‘Do you know, we’re going to get me some trainers from the sports shop!’ To which she flatly replied (without it sounding at all like a question), ‘Are you.’ Busted. However, our perfectly-legal-but-slightly-taking-the-piss abuse of the measuring system was counterbalanced when we did actually end up buying a pair of shoes for Jude, who we’ve discovered is now a SIZE SIX – he’s been wearing a four and a half for months. I am a terrible mother.

  Next up was a quick trip into Debenhams to look at toasters (Selective Parent Amnesia, we meet again). Just as we were deliberating over whether we need a four-slice one (we really don’t have the space but it does four slices at once; total breakfast game-changer right there), Henry announced that he needed ‘a really big poo’. He did as well. A really, really big one. I was in the toilet with him for a quarter of an hour and then I couldn’t find a loo brush. Shy of pulling on the red help cord in the disabled toilet, I didn’t know how to draw attention to the state of the pan without causing a disturbance, so I’m ashamed to say we gave it one last flush for luck, washed our hands and ran.

  At lunchtime we picked up some pasties and headed to the cathedral green. The sun was shining, the boys were happily running around and, just for a moment, it was bliss. Then I caught sight of Jude’s incredibly bulgy nappy. By ‘bulgy’, I don’t mean just a bit on the full side – I mean it was hanging halfway down his calf. I always swore I would never let my children’s nappies get that bulgy because it’s unsightly (and rather lax) and yet, there we were. On further inspection, our worst fears were confirmed when we realised his bodysuit was slightly damp. It subsequently transpired that we had both thought that the other had changed his nappy before we left home, so at least we are jointly accountable for today’s shoddy parenting. Tomorrow is a new day.

  Monday 14th

  14:04

  Why I self-sabotage my chance to be productive I’ll never know. I moan constantly about having no time to work and yet, today, when my mother-in-law is out with the boys and the house is beautifully quiet (i.e. technically prime working opportunity), I find myself watching a documentary online about a serial killer in the US who ate all of his victims. To be clear, I didn’t google ‘cannibal serial killers’, it came up in a BuzzFeed article, ‘19 Seriously Scary Documentaries that’ll Scare the Hell Out of You’, and after ‘having a quick look’, one thing led to another, and now that I am twenty minutes deep into an eighty-eight-minute documentary, I’m kind of committed.

  14:27

  Shit balls, I’ve just remembered Henry was supposed to take some family photos into preschool about a fortnight ago for a family-tree display and if I don’t take them in with me tomorrow morning I am going to be blacklisted and/or people will think that he has no family. The problem is, nobody prints photos any more, do they? I can’t just go and pull a few snaps from the family album under the bed because there is no such album – everything is digital. I’ll have to go to town. (When I’ve finished watching the cannibal killers documentary.)

  Saturday 19th – Glasgow’s aye Write Festival event

  Today was my first bona fide literary event and, though it went all right, I didn’t feel like it was the most natural environment for me. Perhaps that’s a good thing, as ‘life begins at the end of your comfort zone’ and all that jazz, and this certainly wasn’t my comfort zone. I sat on the stage, listening to fellow parenting author Chitra Ramaswamy read one of her chapters about pregnancy, which was so beautifully written that a kind of horror crept over me. I could see all the faces in the audience smiling at her serene description of the baby sloshing around in the womb and I started to wonder which of my chapters I could read aloud to follow that. Not the one where I admitted to having called my baby a dick, that’s for sure. Panicked, I selected the chapter about mum guilt, which I think went down all right (it’s hard to tell – I kept my head down as I described my guilt over the time I shouted, ‘What the fucking hell is wrong with you?’ at baby Henry). Anyway, before I knew it, it was over and time to go back to the airport, which is where I am now sitting.

  There’s something about time away from the kids that always makes me contemplate having another one. Perhaps it’s simply that whenever I’m missing the gruesome twosome my brain focuses on all the good bits, of which there are oodles, of course – I just tend to find that the crappier bits keep any broodiness in check. But it’s not entirely in check right now. In fact, I’m sitting here in the departure lounge, staring at somebody else’s newborn, thinking, Perhaps we could have just one more? I shan’t tell James. It will no doubt be a fleeting feeling anyway.

  Wednesday 23rd

  I woke up to a tweet from a random woman telling me I shouldn’t have had kids if I wasn’t going to enjoy their company. Usually, comments like this would prompt an eyeroll and a ‘bore off’ but I was already feeling pretty delicate, having had a bit of an episode last night. I don’t know if ‘episode’ is the right word for what happened but, to be honest, I’m not sure how else to describe it. I don’t know why I’m feeling embarrassed writing this, but I am – a bit like when you go to the doctor and feel awkward about saying that you’ve been ill.

  I had a bit of a breakdown. I lost it. And I don’t mean I got riled at the state of the living room
or lost my patience at Jude’s angry-octopus impression mid-nappy-change, I mean that the stress of the last couple of weeks (or months, maybe) built up to such a level that it had nowhere to go and I just kind of crumpled, sobbing and then staring into nothingness while James made me a cup of tea and said, ‘Fuck.’ We both pretended to watch the telly for a bit before he said, ‘What is it, babe? Tell me why you’re so upset.’

  So I told him. I told him that I am struggling to keep up with everything. That I am struggling to keep up with anything. That I have been kidding myself that I am making the whole blogger-turned-author-slash-freelance-writer gig work when I can only commit to it two or three days a week. That I am shattered but can’t seem to stop waking in the night worrying about the absolute pig’s ear I am making of all aspects of my life and that, even though I laugh and say, ‘The juggle is real!’, I’m not laughing on the inside because on the inside my brain is so noisy all the time, and I want to stop it screeching, to switch it off, but I can’t because brains aren’t like that and perhaps I need to go on some kind of meditation retreat – only I haven’t got the fucking time.