Confessions of a Bad Mother

by Stephanie Calman

  ‘OK, they’re hooked. Let’s go.’

  ‘It’s rolling along the track – like Raiders of the Lost Ark!’

  ‘Darling …’

  ‘Look, look: it’s going to explode!’

  ‘Oh ye-eah …’

  We both know the moment has passed. Well, I don’t know about you, but I find the switching back and forth a challenge. When you’re meant to be Nurturing all the time, you can’t just suddenly reboot. If you’re still feeding, it’s too weird; it’s not as though your breasts get new software. And the brain needs time. It’s harder than decimals when new pence came in, and that took five years.

  But we don’t give up. That evening we find Rescues on the Railways behind some poster paints and instead of dinner, rush upstairs. In the afterglow, we smile dreamily at each other.

  ‘Darling?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘How long d’you think before they’ll want to see Saving Private Ryan?’

  So, if you thought sex was a thing of the past, like reading the papers properly, here’s my Handy Table of Sexual Activities for some of the videos you’re already likely to have around the house (NB TV series are per episode unless otherwise stated):

  Pingu – A snog, or, if from the UK, parts of Northern Europe or Australia, foreplay.

  Fireman Sam, Balamory, The Tweenies – Oral sex (for him) or, if from the UK, parts of Northern Europe or Australia, full sex.

  Dumbo, Mary Poppins, etc. – Oral sex (for her), full sex and cigarette.

  Lord of the Rings Parts I, II and III – I think I’ve made my point.

  Sex is just the beginning. A whole vista of possibilities has opened up. Soon, we will be able to do something we’ve really missed, like sleep in till eight o’clock.

  15 The Worst Mother in the World

  September comes. Lawrence has already been to nursery, so it’s not as though this is a challenge. We won’t have any hysterics, like you get with these boys who’ve never been away from their mums. You know the ones: their hair’s always too long and for some reason they wear dungarees. There’s only one teensy problem. He hasn’t been to the school since July, six weeks ago. I say, ‘You’re going to school!’ And he says, ‘I’ve been to school,’ as if it’s a one-off, like going to the opera.

  He’s unbothered, but I feel immediately that I don’t fit in and no one will want to be my friend. Thank God I’ve brought Katarina.

  The other mummies seem to fall into two groups. They’re either dressed for takeover bids and leaving their child with a guilt-free peck on the forehead before departing for the City by helicopter, or they’re coolly shepherding hordes of dogs and older children back into their UN-issue, All-Terrain Personnel Carriers while memorizing the contents of the notice board. Even a child mislaid, or found in the woods with its head down a badger hole, doesn’t faze them.

  ‘Come out, William …’ is the most stressed response I hear. None of them looks weepy, or even nervous. Some of them even roll their eyes at each other and exchange knowing looks. What is that Look? What are we doing here?

  On the way in, the children are to have their pictures taken with their mummies. But at the crucial moment Lydia tries to escape, and as I grab her, the teacher leaps forward and photographs Lawrence with Katarina by mistake. There is now incontrovertible evidence that I Have Help. But as Peter always says when I moan about something trivial, ‘What you need is a Bigger Problem.’ And I soon get one.

  Today is just the first day of a two-week settling-in period, with the new children left for an hour the first time, and then longer each day. An hour, or even two, is hardly enough time to do anything. As a result, for days on end the village is full of women wandering around looking at their watches every two minutes and saying, ‘I must get back to the South Circular,’ like Robert Shaw in The Caretaker.

  ‘Is this really necessary?’ I say to the teacher. ‘Lawrence has been to nursery before. In fact, we’ve moved house, and he went to hospital. He can cope with anything!’

  And sure enough, he coasts along perfectly until the first full day, when I kiss him and walk cheerily to the door. He follows me and clings to my legs, shouting. It feels terrible. I try to be frightfully British. It feels like Sophie’s Choice but I’m trying desperately for Brief Encoun- ter: ‘Separation Anxiety? Nonsense, Dr Freud! I have some shrapnel in my eye.’

  In full view of the Teacher, the Classroom Assistant and the Student, I am crying before I reach the hall. Lawrence follows me; I bring him back. Three times. Finally they peel him off me like leg wax and I stumble away. I’m all the more humiliated because I’m the only one. I tell Mira back in north London. Hers go to a place where they don’t even let you in the door; you have to dispatch the child at arm’s length, like plutonium. She says: ‘He was probably set off by the others crying.’

  But, no: it’s just me and him. They say he stops soon after I leave, and he does. I know, because I double back through the cloakroom and listen. Even so, at the end of a torturous week, the teacher calls me to one side.

  ‘It might be better if someone else brings him. Katarina perhaps?’

  I feel as though I’ve just been sacked.

  In the end we take turns. I’m half relieved to share the burden, and half determined to show I’m not so inadequate I can’t take my own child to school. There is one more thing. The teacher mentions that Lawrence has kicked the Head. I ring up, expecting him to be expelled.

  ‘He’s done what?’

  ‘I am sorry …’ she begins.

  ‘You’re sorry?!’

  ‘We had to take him to the staffroom for a little while.’

  ‘How’s your leg?’

  ‘Oh, I’m fine!’

  ‘I feel terrible.’

  ‘Now, you mustn’t. We simply took him aside for a little while, till he calmed down.’

  Jesus.

  ‘I’m really sorry. I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Everything’s quite all right. It’s very nice of you to ring.’

  At least I won’t have this trouble with Lydia. She can’t even talk yet, and she’s already trying to sit on the mat with the others. She’s like an automatic car; I just have to let my foot off the gas. That night she picks up the ray gun Peter brought me years ago from Tokyo, his idea of a romantic present. She waves it and says her first clear word: ‘Bang!’

  In the Nativity Play Lawrence is going to be a shepherd, another Learning Experience for me because I wanted to be the star of everything and always assumed my children would too. But he doesn’t mind. He has one line which Peter is helping him to practise.

  ‘I’m the Angel Gabriel. I’m bringing Great News! What is it?’

  ‘Biscuits!’

  The play is fine, but the holidays wear us out. Getting dressed, sitting down for supper, starting supper, finishing supper, going upstairs at teeth-time, getting into pyjamas, getting into bed – everything is a battle. Peter and I keep snapping at each other, and it doesn’t blow over. We’re like two repelling magnets. I wish I’d never got married, or had children. In my notebook I write, I feel like Oprah Winfrey in The Color Purple. My spirit is broken.

  At bedtime on the Monday, after three really bad days, I tell Lawrence: ‘If you don’t put on your pyjamas, I’m going to walk down the road and stay there. I just can’t stand it.’

  ‘Don’t go, Mummy!’

  I am now officially the Worst Mother in the World. But I still wish he’d just put on his fucking pyjamas.

  On the Tuesday I bribe him with biscuits to leave for nursery on time, and afterwards, he shows me his entry in the Golden Book: For coming into school every day with a smile.

  ‘That’s lovely, darling! Well done!’

  So the school gets the Jekyll and we get the Hyde. But I am a bit proud.

  We go to play with with his friend Milo from Treetops, which Lawrence thinks is for his benefit, whereas it’s for mine, because his mother Lucy is t
he only person round here I can tell when everything turns to shit. She’s no more outwardly in control of things than I am, and has a new baby as well, but also enough energy to make flapjacks. Her kitchen smells of golden syrup. I take refuge there, and ask her: ‘Why are children so fucking difficult?’ And she says: ‘God knows. Have another flapjack.’

  And this is strangely comforting.

  The boys play their favourite game, Crash Bang, and no one is wounded. I even manage to get my two out of there without meltdown. Then as soon as we get back, Lawrence starts screeching and hitting me. At bedtime I ask him to put on his pyjamas and he spits in my face. The books say Don’t reward bad behaviour with attention, but what about when the children reward each other? He’s winding Lydia up. And when she does something naughty, he gives her attention, loads of it. Well, you know what? Fuck this: I’ve had it. In a calm moment, or at least a brief gap between rows, I send him into the hall and shut the door. Almost immediately he calls out that he is sorry, comes back, finishes his dinner and sits on my lap for a bit of I Spy Diggers.

  So I’ve solved the Great Parenting Problem! All I have to do is Never Engage in an Argument, Never Lose My Temper and Never Raise My Voice. And you know what really pisses me off ? All the books say that: all of them.

  ‘The Great Truth you were seeking was right under your nose,’ says Peter, in his Zen Master voice.

  ‘Shut up. Just shut up.’

  Squirrels are vandalizing the bird-feeder. They come round in gangs and one keeps watch while the others force the lid off.

  ‘Bugger off!’ I shout at them. ‘BUGGER OFF!!!’

  ‘Bugger off!’ shout Lydia and Lawrence. ‘Bugger off !’ They repeat it a few more times, then Lawrence says: ‘I think that’s enough now.’

  At breakfast he asks: ‘Is it night-time in Australia?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re so clever, Mummy!’

  The tantrums have mysteriously stopped. He comes home every day that week with a sticker for being Extra Good, and more or less at that exact moment, the same mysterious force turns Lydia into The Child From Hell. Outside the flower shop, while Lawrence is buying me a bunch of pink carnations – Aaaah – she stamps on a pot of hyacinths. I shout at her and, crying with rage, she does one of her faints. When she comes round, she resumes whining, and whines all the way home. (This makes Lawrence even sweeter.) After forty minutes of it I throw her in her cot, which I figure is better than hurling her out the window. Then I put the radio on and try to think about the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement, or Monica Lewinsky, or the weird mark on the carpet that looks like the prostate gland. I cannot stand this any more. I make a cup of tea and suddenly realize it’s gone quiet. And there’s no sign of Lawrence. I rush upstairs, holding my breath. When I peer round the door, he’s under the bed retrieving Lydia’s teddy slippers. She is standing in her cot, smiling. He says: ‘I’m just going to fetch these to Lydia and I’ll be right back.’

  Over our debriefing that night I tell Peter: ‘The boy’s three, and his parenting technique is better than mine.’

  ‘I’m not saying anything,’ he says slowly. ‘Not a thing.’

  And he has inherited his father’s gift for spin. When I shove him in his room for hitting me, he sweeps everything off the chest of drawers onto the floor.

  ‘That’s quite naughty, Mummy,’ he admits. ‘But it’s quite good as well.’

  ‘Oh, yes? Why’s that?’

  He gestures at the top of the chest. ‘Because now this is all clean.’

  I tell Katarina all our ups and downs. Without immediate relatives on hand she is someone to boast to, and when it goes pear-shaped she usually has a strategy. She has begun teaching them to count and is now teaching Lydia to say, ‘May I ?’ She gets the hang of it straight away.

  ‘May I spill my milk?’

  ‘May I jump off the table?’

  ‘May I smack you, Mummy?’ When she does do those things, I tell her off and Lawrence says: ‘Good, Mummy!’

  ‘Lydia!’ I say. ‘Stop hitting me!’

  ‘Come here, Mummy,’ says Lawrence. ‘I’ll deal with Lydia.’

  ‘Aah, will you?’

  ‘I’ll kick her head off.’

  Later he asks: ‘Did you get angry with her?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Sometimes you get angry with children when they’re naughty, but you love them just the same.’

  ‘No!’ he says vehemently. ‘I never do!’

  When I find a hairband in Lydia’s pocket I ask, ‘Can I borrow it?’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘But we can fight over it.’

  There is an upside, however, to her stubbornness. ‘The stubbornness that got us over the border and out of Lithua- nia,’ my father used to say, although he was born in Stamford Hill. That weekend we go to the woods, and she falls on a nettle. After a brief whimper, she wraps a dock leaf round her hand and carries on. The emigrating DNA combines impressively with Peter’s robust, outdoors genes. His was the Dad that went Down the Gambia with a Thermos, mine the one for whom roughing it was a hard seat at the Edinburgh Fringe.

  But can I cope? I’m glad I made notes during this period, because before, when someone told me their child had screamed for over an hour I didn’t believe them. But here it is: Lydia screamed for seventy mins this a.m. Finally Peter put her in her cot and she stopped. She’d been to sleep, been fed. What the fuck was the matter??? I feel like the father of Woody Allen’s character in Radio Days: ‘How do I know why there were Nazis? I don’t know how a can opener works.’ I don’t understand anything.

  ‘It’s all too difficult,’ I tell Peter.

  ‘You need to get out more.’

  ‘You mean go away, because I’m such a bad mother.’

  ‘No! You need a treat. You wanted to go to Paris with Claire. Go.’

  ‘I can’t leave the children. It wouldn’t be right.’

  ‘What’s “right”? Denying yourself any pleasure in life?’

  ‘I had a biscuit yesterday.’

  ‘Right, that’s it.’

  I go and get out my passport, where I see a photo of a brazen, unfeeling woman. But Peter has arranged to leave work early on the Friday to collect the children, so I have to go. Besides, they are already drawing their impressions of the train.

  The Eurostar is redolent of possibilities. I am a film director going to Rome to cast my new epic; I am a spy taking the night train to Belgrade to steal a microfilm; I am an heiress travelling to a secret assignation with the sexy lawyer who used to live in our road; I am – crying.

  Claire gets on at Ashford. We have champagne and peanuts and I feel suddenly better. And I discover how much you can pack into a weekend without children in it. We buy lots of affordable, nice clothes, and have breakfast, coffee, lunch, tea, drinks and dinner – all without having to leave suddenly because of a squabble, or to rush home to change poohey clothes. Finally, Claire takes a picture of me having breakfast in bed: ‘Just to prove you’ve done it.’ It is my Eiffel Tower.

  16 I Am Not Alone

  Summer is here, and we’re heading for the Empty Quarter. We don’t have the confidence or the energy to go abroad. Anyhow, we know that no package has been invented that takes care of a three and a two year old, while letting the adults read a book. I look at a Mark Warner brochure and reread the prices four times because I can’t believe them.

  ‘Why don’t they tell you this in postnatal? Never mind breastfeeding.’

  ‘What about that place Fiona went to? How much was that?’

  ‘Forget it.’

  Fiona is my new friend at school. She always takes her family on wonderful holidays, but then her husband works long hours so they save about £4,000 by not going out during the year.

  ‘It was one of those resort things with a children’s club.’

  ‘Which we can’t afford.’

  ‘And …’

  ‘What?’

  �
��Sophie was just under the age limit, so they only managed to get rid of Tom.’

  ‘Nightmare. Still, we’ve always got the park.’

  ‘What, for six weeks? What shall we do? Oh, I forgot. You have a job. See you in September, then.’

  September will be a Momentous Month. On the up side, Lydia is starting nursery. On the other hand, Katarina is going home to Slovakia. She may not be able to return. Don’t panic.

  ‘DON’T GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’

  ‘You’ll be fine. Can you let go of my leg?’

  In the beginning it was Maureen who stood between me and madness, now it’s Katarina. Sometimes, at around seven, I come downstairs and find the children in bed and the table set with candles.

  ‘Even if you’re only having a takeaway,’ she says, ‘it will make you feel nice.’

  She’s turning herself into an excellent cook, graduating from slightly scary stews with Berlin Wall dumplings to aromatic stir-frys and home-made chicken nuggets, which Lawrence and Lydia make with her in an eggy assembly line. She’s a keen viewer of Graham Norton and Eurotrash, and has ‘got’ English culture totally. The only thing she’s missed is ‘Noo-noo’, her word for ‘front bottom’, being the vacuum cleaner in Teletubbies, but then I missed that as well. She has taught the kids ‘hovno’ and ‘hovienko’, Slovakian for ‘pooh’ and ‘little tiny pooh’. And picking up that they’re in danger of copying my less than clean language, she gets them to practise ‘Domcek!’, a substitute expletive which is Slovakian for ‘house’.

  ‘It’ll do you both good to have a break,’ says Peter. He’s right; we’re too similar. Intelligent and imaginative, but proud and too easily hurt. When we start getting PMT at the same time, he retreats upstairs with his car magazines. Witnessing her disappointments with boyfriends is intolerably painful, like watching my younger self. That summer her father dies suddenly, just as mine did, and we have that in common too.

  On the day of her departure, we take her to Victoria Coach Station. Lawrence cooperates, but Lydia won’t hold my hand amidst the huddled masses, and when I tell her off, faints and does a wee on the concourse. At least it undercuts the emotion of the occasion. When I find Peter, he is standing, with husbandly foresight, next to the Pick ‘n’ Mix stall.