Lies We Tell Mothers: A True Story

by Suzy K Quinn

  Of course, with kids, nothing is a short walk. Especially when it’s actually quite a long walk.

  ‘The city is so crowded,’ I said as we were bumped and jostled by Christmas shoppers. ‘Hey. HEY! Watch where you’re going, you in the Santa suit – you just shoved my small child out of the way, you twat! Lexi, WATCH THAT CAR!’

  Everyone was young, cool, fashionable and child-free. Some of the girls (and boys) wore perfectly applied, retro-red lipstick in the middle of the day. The middle of the day!

  Who had the time for that sort of effort?

  In contrast, I wore peddle-pusher jeans, white plimsolls and a striped T-shirt. My hair wasn’t long any more, just tidy in layers. There were no peacock-like red or blonde streaks. And I was just, well, older.

  Demi looked like a normal (very cool) dad.

  (Demi: ‘I wore the same clothes I’d worn before we had Lexi. How can you improve on perfection?’)

  Everyone on the streets of Brighton looked great. But spending time and money on your appearance is a young man’s game. The sort of thing you do when you have free time and money. And, to be honest, it all seemed a world away from our love-filled life with kids.

  Twenty-somethings fell out of pubs, clasping festive cocktail glasses and wearing ironic Christmas jumpers. Some drank cups of mulled wine mid-morning. Had we ever done such a thing? It was so irresponsible!

  ‘Are you sure children are allowed here, Mummy?’ Lexi asked in that hushed whisper she reserved for my more mega parental failings. ‘There are no other children. Have you got it wrong again? Like when you tried to take me around that whiskey museum and they said I had to be over eighteen and you shouted?’

  ‘Of course children are allowed,’ I insisted. ‘There must be some other children here. Ah. There. See? That woman is carrying a child in a sling.’

  ‘That’s a baby,’ said Lexi. ‘What about kids?’

  We kept looking, but saw only harassed-looking new parents with very young babies strapped to their bodies.

  ‘I suppose the city isn’t really for kids,’ I said. ‘Even at Christmas. It is quite crowded.’

  ‘Then why are we here?’

  ‘It’ll be fun! Did I tell you about the amazing curry restaurant?’

  ‘Restaurants aren’t for kids, Mummy. We need a park.’

  ‘There isn’t one nearby. Not in the middle of the city. How about the library? You like a library.’

  We continued our difficult walk towards Brighton library, passing colourful ice-cream parlours, cupcake ‘factories’ and brightly coloured, extortionately priced toy shops.

  ‘Mu-um . . . can we have—?’

  ‘No!’

  When we reached the library, it was closed.

  ‘It’s 10 a.m. on a Saturday,’ I raged. ‘Why on earth isn’t it open?’

  ‘Everyone’s probably still in bed,’ said Demi. ‘Sleeping off their hangovers.’

  Unperturbed, we headed to a trendy coffee shop and perched the kids on dangerous bar stools while Demi and I joined the huge queue.

  ‘You can’t have your buggy in here,’ the coffee-shop girl shouted across the tastefully beaten-up wood counter.

  ‘Oh. Sorry. Where should we put it then?’

  ‘In a different coffee shop. This one isn’t for kids.’

  Right.

  Point taken.

  We dragged the kids around for a few more hours, fielding requests for ice cream and expensive Hello Kitty items, and finally it was near enough 12 p.m. to justify having lunch.

  We headed for a fun sushi-train restaurant and watched our kids knock sushi plates off the conveyor belt while we apologised over and over again. And shouted at the kids, ‘BE MORE CAREFUL. EACH TINY PLATE COSTS £3 OR MORE!’

  Waitresses and customers glared at us.

  No one smiled at the kids or brought them crayons.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around, wondering what on earth there was to do.

  The kids weren’t interested in buying artistic Christmas decorations, and that colourful sex shop was obviously right out. Save for a two-minute mince-pie fix here and there, what was there for a family in the city?

  We decided to check out our hotel a bit early. It was a boutique, modern place boasting cool pod-like bedrooms and coloured Perspex everywhere (and a special deal that weekend – hence the choice).

  The reception staff were not pleased to see us.

  ‘You have children,’ said the French-accented reception man. ‘That will be difficult.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘We have live bands playing this evening. Until one a.m.’

  The mystery of the ‘special deal’ hotel room was solved.

  ‘I did write on the reservation that we had two kids with us,’ I said. ‘And we booked a three-bed room with a cot.’

  ‘A cot?’ The man looked bewildered.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A travel cot. You do have a travel cot, don’t you?’

  ‘I’ll see what we can find.’

  An hour later, following a hysterical meltdown by the reception man (‘I do not know this thing! We do not have it!’), we finally agreed just to use a folded-over duvet on the floor as a kiddie bed. This meant watching Laya vigilantly until she fell asleep – and praying she wouldn’t fiddle with the radiators in her sleep.

  Finally, over the thump-thump-thump of a live band playing ‘Fairy Tale in New York’, the kids drifted off.

  ‘We should have a drink,’ said Demi. ‘Live it up a bit.’

  ‘There’s a minibar,’ I said, trying to muster some excitement. ‘We can drink mini spirit bottles in a dark hotel room, trying not to talk too loudly.’

  Demi dutifully checked out the minibar.

  ‘There are miniature whiskeys,’ he announced. ‘And miniature gin.’

  ‘How much are they?’ I asked.

  ‘£7 each.’

  ‘You could buy a whole bottle of gin for the same price as two miniatures. There’s a supermarket over the road.’

  ‘Fine.’ Demi gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘So you want me to go to the supermarket?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Demi brought back a full-sized bottle of chilled white wine, and I commented on the pleasing high standard of alcohol refrigeration in the big city.

  We slugged wine from the bottle because we weren’t sure if we were allowed to use the minibar glassware. There was no room in the minibar fridge for a full-sized bottle either, so the wine was soon room temperature in our hot hands.

  As we were drinking warm wine from the bottle, my mum called.

  The children stirred, and I felt irritated. Didn’t Mum know we were in a dark room with sleeping children? Why wasn’t she telepathic?

  ‘Surprise!’ said Mum. ‘We’re in Brighton.’

  ‘Mum,’ I hissed. ‘We’re in a dark room with sleeping children and – hang on a minute. You’re where?’

  ‘Brighton! Your dad and I were visiting friends in Lewes today, so we thought – we’re so nearby, let’s surprise you in Brighton and offer some babysitting.’

  I felt very bad about being irritated.

  ‘Thanks so much, Mum,’ I said. ‘That’s really thoughtful and nice.’

  They’re like that, my parents. Very thoughtful and nice. Except when they’re not looking after my kids exactly as I tell them to. Then we have arguments.

  ‘Demi,’ I whispered. ‘My parents are in Brighton. They’re offering to babysit.’

  ‘They’re wonderful,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, they are.’

  ‘So we can go out then?’

  ‘Yes. If you want to. Do you want to?’

  We thought about it. Did we want to go out into the busy, noisy city? Not really. But every parent knows it’s silly to turn down free babysitting.

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ I said. ‘We’d love to go out for a bit. We’re sitting in a dark hotel room right now.’

  ‘Oh, I remember those days,’ said Mum. ‘Trying to keep
quiet. Praying the phone doesn’t ring. What time do you want us there?’

  Half an hour later, my parents arrived and were welcomed to our hotel room with hugs and thanks.

  We handed my parents a warm, half-drunk bottle of wine and told them to help themselves to the minibar – but not to go too mad, since spirits cost £7.

  Then we headed down to the fizzy, exciting streets of Brighton as two child-free people, able to see and do whatever we liked.

  There was so much visual stimulation – brightly designed shop fronts, so many people in ironic Christmas jumpers, bars spilling out on to the pavement and input, input, input.

  It was a lot for our tired brains to cope with.

  And it felt weird without the kids. Like a limb was missing.

  ‘Shall we just have one drink in a nice, quiet pub?’ I said. ‘Then get back to the children?’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Demi. ‘Which pub?’

  The thing with frenetic, creative big cities is that night spots are always changing hands. Nothing stays the same for long, and those places you used to know soon transform into something else.

  And truth be told, there isn’t really such a thing as a quiet pub in a city on a Saturday night. Just a slightly less noisy pub.

  We opted for the Basket Makers, which is a traditional sort of place with cigarette tins nailed to the walls. It was rammed, with a three-person-deep queue for the bar.

  ‘Was it always this busy?’ I asked Demi.

  ‘Probably,’ he said. ‘But we were too young and drunk to care.’

  I kept waiting to bump into someone we knew, but there was no one.

  ‘I hope the kids are OK,’ I said. ‘It’ll be weird if they wake up, seeing my parents there. They won’t know what’s going on.’

  ‘I miss the kids too,’ said Demi. ‘Let’s go back and watch them sleeping.’

  At 9.30 p.m. we decided to call it a night.

  ‘You’re back soon,’ Mum said when we returned to the hotel. ‘Didn’t you have a good time?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘It was all a bit frantic. We’d rather go out to a nice quiet pub back home. Or a friend’s house.’

  When my parents left, Demi and I toyed with raiding the minibar and making some sort of cocktail invention. After all, we’d saved quite a bit on our ‘half a night out’. But truthfully, all we really wanted to do was go to sleep, wake up early with the kids, and head home.

  Yes, home. Our real home. This place wasn’t our home any more.

  As loud music thumped through the hotel floor, I realised where we are is so much better for families. People smile in the street and say hello. Our neighbours bring us plant seeds and fruit cake. We can leave the front door unlocked and the buggy in the garden and not worry about it. No one rushes around or throws up on the pavement. The post office has no queue.

  In the city, we’d been ‘Pretty Womaned’ every time we brought the kids into a cafe.

  ‘No, sorry – we don’t have highchairs. Fuck off with your baby.’

  Brighton definitely wasn’t home any more. I didn’t feel connected to the city at all. This was the life we used to have. But we were different now.

  ‘We don’t fit here,’ I told Demi.

  ‘No,’ said Demi. ‘But that’s OK, isn’t it?’

  ‘Better than OK. It’s great.’

  The next day, we packed up and drove home.

  Life had changed. Forever.

  It wasn’t a question of waiting until the kids were a bit older then slotting back into our big-city, party lifestyle.

  We were different. Life was different. There was no going back.

  ‘Did you like our little city break?’ I asked Lexi.

  ‘It was OK,’ said Lexi.

  ‘Which bit did you like the best?’ I asked.

  ‘Nana giving us chocolate.’

  ‘What?’ I blinked rapidly. ‘What? When did Nana give you chocolate? You didn’t see Nana – surely? You were sleeping.’

  ‘She woke us up,’ said Lexi. ‘And said we could have a midnight feast from the minibar.’

  ‘Midnight feast!’ Laya concurred.

  ‘What sort of chocolate?’ I asked, trying to remember the minibar prices. ‘Was it triangle-shaped (£5 Toblerone) or round (£10 Ferrero Rocher)?’

  ‘Round.’

  I quelled my outrage at Mum giving out chocolate at bedtime and patted Lexi’s soft little hand.

  ‘Well, we can have chocolate at home now.’

  ‘Will we move back to Brighton one day?’ Lexi asked as we pulled into our driveway. ‘Like you said?’

  ‘When did I say that?’ I asked.

  ‘You said when your books did well, we’d move back to Brighton.’

  ‘I did used to say that,’ I remembered as we headed into our house. ‘But I was wrong. The city isn’t the life for us any more. This is where we belong.’

  The kids went out and played in the garden.

  Demi and I planned a roast dinner. We picked fresh blackberries to make a crumble.

  Everything felt peaceful and quiet and easy.

  Life . . . It felt great. More than great.

  It felt happily ever after.

  TRUTH – WE WOULDN’T CHANGE IT FOR THE WORLD

  Christmas was on its way, and I decided to clear out the last vestiges of our former life. All that novelty, studenty party crap I hadn’t had the courage to chuck out before. The stuff I thought we just might use again.

  I gave the kids and Demi huge bin bags, and we went around the house bagging up anything that hadn’t been used, hung or unboxed since we moved.

  We threw out the branded Jack Daniels shot glasses, the pineapple sunglasses and the giant plushy St Patrick’s Day hat. We threw out old CDs and mix tapes, music magazines and novelty inflatable chairs. My beaten-up old backpack. Anything that didn’t fit our life right now, out it went.

  No longer did we straddle the great divide between youth and parenthood. We knew exactly who we were and who we wanted to be.

  We drove to the tip in our big family car, and the kids had fun chucking novelty party goods in the big metal containers.

  I watched the final remnants of our pre-child life join the big piles of rubbish. It was a relief now, letting that stuff go. Clubbing until the sun came out. Child-free brunches at 11 a.m. Interrailing holidays and backpacking around Asia. It was great at the time, but it wasn’t who we were any more.

  We didn’t miss it.

  We were far too happy.

  ‘Mummy,’ Lexi asked as we looked into the cavernous metal skip, ‘are all these things dead now?’

  ‘They were already dead,’ I told her. ‘They’ve been dead for a long time.’

  Parenthood comes with suffering.

  First there is letting go of what is. The ripping-apart of the old life, never to be sewn back together.

  I will never again spend a day happily getting drunk in a field, with no responsibilities or cares of what will happen tomorrow. I will never again wear anything tight around the stomach. I will never trek across Thailand with only a backpack, wearing teeny-tiny shorts and covered in neon full-moon-party paint.

  Then there is the hard work. Waking up at the crack of dawn every day, seven days a week. Cooking three meals a day for little people. Washing aforementioned little people and cutting all those fingernails and toenails.

  Finally, there is the acceptance of what is: love, service, happiness, community, friends and contentment.

  We can’t stay young forever. Kids mean growing up and, as painful as that can be, it’s good for us.

  Demi and I had suffered. We’d been forced into a life that felt terrifying, exhausting and relentless. But we had grown.

  Life, which had once been solely about us, now revolved around kids, a house and family. And do you know what? Once we stopped fighting it, we found more happiness than we’d ever known.

  As Christmas approached, Demi and I reminisced about our parenting journey.

 
We were so far removed from those youthful, child-free people who’d lived in Brighton and played the Dolphin Derby on the pier every weekend (probably while holding a pint of cider). We didn’t look the same, do the same things, or feel or think the same way.

  Now we lived in a family home in the countryside and spent time walking slowly while answering the many necessary questions of small children.

  ‘Why is that tree there? Why do I have to hurry up? Why can’t I run out in front of that fast-moving removal truck? Muuuuum. Mummmm. Answer me! It IS a sensible question, Mummy!’

  You know the sort of thing.

  Of course, things weren’t perfect. Not by a long chalk. Laya had diarrhoea at the school Christmas fair, for example, which was bad.

  If you’ve never been to a school Christmas fair, I have one word for you: don’t.

  They are chaotic, sugar-fuelled events full of screaming, overexcited kids demanding parents buy second-hand 1980s board games (‘Build a Better Burger’ or ‘Perfection’, anyone?).

  Suffice it to say, it’s not easy to reach a toilet when you’re swimming in the choppy waters of sugar-fuelled children.

  But perfect is boring. In all the chaos and (sometimes literal) crap of parenthood, we enjoyed ourselves and embraced the family-friendly festive season.

  This Christmas, I was determined to do things properly.

  We had emerged from house renovations and newborn chaos, toddler chaos, more newborn chaos, more toddler chaos and now finally had time and energy to DO Christmas with a capital ‘D’ (and O, it turns out).

  We would have a high old festive time as a family and turn our home into a glittery, sparkly seasonal delight, complete with fresh holly from the local woods, handmade paper chains and cookies hung on the Christmas tree.

  The kids would love it. So would we.

  On Christmas Eve, Demi and I woke to the screams and hoots of two small children, leaping around the place.

  ‘It’s Christmas Eve, Laya!’

  ‘Christmas Eve, Lexi.’

  ‘Magico!’

  ‘Magico!’

  ‘What are we doing today, Mummy?’ Lexi asked. ‘It’s Christmas Eve. Magico!’

  It was indeed magico.

  Demi and I both had the day off. A day of family fun awaited us – and, better still, we were really looking forward to it.