The Unmumsy Mum

by The Unmumsy Mum

  I left baby Henry when he was six months old to work at the university, but it was a part-time job. Three days a week: the Holy Grail for working mothers. Part-time work, I was told, would give me the best of both worlds. I think that was what I needed to hear: that I could have it all, that I could do it all, that I could be it all. I have changed jobs again since then (I’m currently doing the writing thing – for a while, anyway; we’ll see how it goes) but I still work part-time, because I’ve settled into the three-day rhythm with the boys.

  Which means I still have it all, right? The best of both worlds? Well, I don’t really know is my honest answer. In many ways, I still think part-time work is the most favourable option for our family – I get a couple of weekdays at home to enjoy motherhood and a few days at work to be something other than their primary caregiver (as I’ve said already, I admire women who are full-time mums but I could never cope with it).

  I like the balance, I really do, but there are days when I wonder if having the best of both worlds is an unreachable ambition. I know there are many jobs nowadays where mums and dads can work flexibly, or work from home, but there are many more where there is no option of getting back for bedtimes, no possibility of altering working patterns, and I have seen so many mums take a step back from their pursuit of promotion to honour their heartfelt instinct that they should spend some time at home, too.

  There are days when I lose my concentration with the dual plate-spinning and I feel massively discouraged by my inability to excel at either role. I wish I could take on more in the work context, but I can’t. I wish I could answer all my emails and chat to important people on the phone without having to wipe Henry’s bum mid-conversation, but I can’t. I wish I could go to some of the snazzy work events in London I’ve been invited to, but I can’t. In the same way, I still feel guilty when I pass my children over to somebody else three days out of five, when James and I both get in too late from work to cook anything other than fish fingers, when at bedtime on a Wednesday Henry asks me if I can take him to the park tomorrow and I reply, ‘Not tomorrow, sweetheart, Mummy’s working,’ and then he asks if I can take him the day after tomorrow and I reply, ‘Mummy’s working then, too, but I’ll take you soon, I promise.’

  So, no, I don’t always think I have the best of both worlds – I don’t do either the work thing or the mum thing at full capacity, but I can’t imagine giving either up and concentrating exclusively on the other. I’m managing a bit of both worlds, and maybe that is the best one can hope for. Perhaps my plummeting levels of organisation and household cleanliness are the realistic fallout from a desire to have it all. Supermum would manage it all, of course she would, but for the rest of us something really does have to give.

  My family comes first – it always will – and work comes a very close second, because work helps me feel more like myself and slightly less batshit crazy. All the other stuff – all the everyday organisational items whirring around my brain – well, that’s all bound to suffer in the process, and I think I need to accept that (or maybe get a cleaner, though I fear I would feel tempted to clean up before the cleaner arrived, such is the state of the shower-scum build-up).

  There are only so many hours in the day, right?

  It is probably for this reason that I found myself waiting four days to receive the PIN reminder for a debit card I swore blind they ‘never bloody sent me any PIN for!’ but which I had in fact received weeks before and written down somewhere safe.

  It is probably for this reason that Sunday afternoon has become the only day I am guaranteed to attempt to cook a meal where the vegetables don’t come out of a tin.

  It is probably for this reason that Fred, my best friend’s little boy, will probably continue to receive a birthday present from me in December when I send a bumper Christmas parcel to ‘combine the two’ (his birthday is in July).

  It is probably for this reason that I find the never-ending piles of toy crap bloody irritating but still kick them under the sofa to ‘worry about tomorrow’.

  As parents, we already have too much on our plate. Our brains are constantly ticking over with stuff: stuff we should be doing, stuff we ought to do more of, stuff we’ve forgotten to do, stuff we’d love to do if we had the time . . . Maybe all we can do is decide which plates we absolutely have to keep in motion: the plates that make us happy, the plates that have become core to our being, and learn to breathe deeply as the contents of the other plates are sacrificed.

  You can’t do it all.

  Though I really do need to buy a bathmat.

  For You, Mum

  I’m writing a book, Mum. An actual book! I’m so bloody chuffed about that, and yet I feel heartbroken as I write this chapter. I’m heartbroken that you will never get to read it. Perhaps I’m stupid for writing it, but there are things in my head that I want to say and, if I don’t get them down in this book, I’m not sure what will become of them. I don’t want them to remain unwritten, even though I know they will remain unread by the person who really matters. Oh how I wish that you could read them.

  On a recent trip into town, I spied a woman of about my age walking out of Gap, and I have never been more jealous of a stranger than I was in that moment. She was holding on to something that no amount of money can ever buy me; she was holding on to her mum. They were walking arm in arm, chatting about what they still needed to buy and about possibly going for a coffee first.

  It was a strange moment, because part of me wanted to look away, to surround myself with the chaos and buzz of other shoppers and pretend I hadn’t seen it. Yet the biggest part of me couldn’t tear my eyes away. It was so special and beautiful that I wanted to shout over to them, to tell them to hold each other tight and savour every minute of every coffee they would have together.

  I wish so desperately that you were here. I long to go for coffee with you, and I don’t even like coffee. You liked proper coffee on a Sunday with the newspaper; maybe I would have grown to like coffee on a Sunday, too.

  I long to link arms and try on clothes together. I long for you to tell me that we should head to M&S first because, if I bought something there, I would get ‘plenty of washes’ out of it.

  Above all, I long for all the unremarkable and ordinary mother-and-daughter moments we will never have. I wish you could come over to chat about nothing in particular, join me on trips to garden centres and help me with the boys’ birthday cakes (I was left unsupervised with Jude’s first birthday cake and cocked up the icing). You would never have used the wrong icing. I wish so badly that the boys could have cakes made by their Nanny Debbie. People often remark that it’s a shame they never got to meet you. It’s so much more than a shame. There is a hole in our lives where you should be. Wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, there is something missing. You are missing.

  Henry asks about you. He’s seen the picture of you on my bedside table, and we’ve had to explain that, despite you being his nanny, he can’t have a sleepover at yours and you will never pick him up to take him swimming. I told him that you had gone to ‘the Rainbow’ and when he asked me, ‘Does she like it there?’ it took every ounce of my being not to sob.

  I don’t believe in ‘the Rainbow’, or heaven, or life after death. Deep down, I know that, when somebody dies, that is it. We keep their memory alive by talking about them but, physically and spiritually, they have gone. In many ways, it would be lovely to believe that you are somewhere watching over me – so many kind people have told me that you are, in an attempt to offer comfort, I suspect, but I don’t believe it for a second. I just don’t.

  Before Henry asked where his nanny has gone, I had thought I would tell him straight but, when it came to it, my pre-planned ‘people don’t actually go anywhere when they die, darling’ came out as ‘Nanny Debbie has gone to the Rainbow with Floyd the Cat and all the other people who were too poorly to stay on Planet Earth.’

  Someday soon, I will have to explain to him that, when I say we are going to Nanny Debbie’s
beach, we are actually going to the beautiful spot where we scattered your ashes.

  It is all so remarkably sad.

  Sometimes, I sit and worry about how you must have felt during those last few months you were in hospital. I was too young to worry at the time – I had schoolwork to do and, when visiting time was over, Dad would take us home for tea. Now, when I think about you sitting alone, it makes me want to go back and spend every minute of those hospital hours with you. You wanted us to carry on as normal, to study hard. At the time, keeping busy was the right thing to do but, all too soon, you were gone, and we couldn’t sit with you any more.

  I’d give anything to have that time again, to sit with you, hold your hand and never leave your side. I was so worried about you leaving us that I never really considered how worried you must have been, how desperate you must have felt, knowing that we would grow up without you. I now understand the feelings a mum has for her children, and the thought of leaving Henry and Jude to grow up without me is simply unbearable. It must have been so hard for you.

  Being a mum is so hard. You made it look easy, even though you were undergoing treatment for so many years. You were a mumsy mum. You had patience, you cooked us nice things and could sew badges on to jumpers and, despite you teaching full-time, I never felt that you weren’t there (bar the odd school-assembly performance when you actually weren’t there, but, all things considered, I’m prepared to let that go). You were – and still are – my parenting idol. You are the closest thing I’ve ever known to a real Supermum, and I’m so proud that the real Supermum was my mum.

  Now, I’m a mum. I’m a mum who’s shit at baking and shit at sewing, who loses her cool over things she just can’t seem to develop patience for. I often think I could be a better mum if I had you here to help me; that being a mum without a mum is just so bloody unfair.

  I try to remember I’m not without a mum, that you are here with me every day. Not physically here with me, not looking over me or guiding me from your VIP spot on a mythical rainbow but with me here in my head and in my heart, wrapped in all those memories I have of such a childhood. I owe you so much – you gave me a quality of childhood that I am hell-bent on recreating for your grandsons. You would love them, Mum. They are such wonderful boys. And they would have loved you. Henry would have loved cuddling you. Jude would have loved sitting reading a book with you (in between trying to hit you in the face – it’s just a phase, apparently). You would have loved James, too. I chose very wisely there. I have always known you would have given him the nod.

  On days when I struggle the most, when I feel like I am just not cut out for it, when I doubt myself as a mum, well, on those days I keep in mind how brilliant you were. I want to do you proud. I can’t promise that my cooking will get better. I can’t promise that I won’t shout (I’ll definitely shout, it just comes out like that). I can’t promise that I won’t make mistakes and I can’t promise that I won’t sometimes be slightly less than a great mum.

  I can promise you something, though.

  I promise I will do my best. You always told me that was what counted, and you were right. I will make sure that my boys are happy and safe and that, above all, they will always know they are loved. I will love them an impossible amount, with all the love in my heart and extra love on your behalf.

  I will give them the extra cuddles you can never give them, and I will tell them that you were the best.

  You really were.

  I’m so sorry you will never hear me tell them that.

  ‘Some days, I look at my boys and it seems surreal that they are mine.’

  Before You Know It …

  If I’d banked a pound every time I have heard someone say, ‘They’ll grow up too quickly!’ I’d have enough money to shop freely in JoJo Maman Bébé. As it is, my refluxy boys have always prided themselves on vomit-staining a new outfit within seconds, and £21 is a lot for a wear-it-once nautical jumper, no? Much safer to go for George at Asda. I digress. ‘How time flies’ is classic parent-to-parent conversation:

  ‘These are the good years, enjoy them.’

  ‘One day you’ll miss these moments!’

  ‘Before you know it, they’ll be at school!’

  Generally, I pay little attention to these liberally offered nuggets of parenting wisdom, but I must admit that there were times early on when I found such comments a bit tiresome. The days when Henry refused to move from his chosen protest location (most memorably, the lift in John Lewis, where he had an on-his-belly tantrum which prompted our fellow lift passengers to press the button early and get out). The evenings when I sat amidst crap plastic toys, discarded food flung from the highchair and dirty washing and had no idea where to begin clearing up so instead glanced longingly at the door, imagining the freedom and calm that lay on the other side. The days when Jude screamed for his bottle (the bottle I always seemed to make slightly too hot) or hung off my ankles, smothering my jeans in his miserable teething snot. On those days, I couldn’t stop myself concluding that, actually, time wasn’t going too quickly at all – there was nothing about those moments I could ever possibly miss.

  I had never really found myself being emotionally caught up in special occasions and early-years milestones. Not because they weren’t special, but because pretty special stuff happens all the time, doesn’t it? All around us, every day. So sentimentality over first teeth, unaided rolling-over and such like has never really been my thing. I was therefore pretty confident that I would not become one of those parents who would dig out the baby photos and say, ‘Oh, look at him! Just look at how small he was!’

  As it turned out, that confidence was misplaced. I have become that person.

  My first taste of sentimental smushiness hit me in autumn last year as the milestone of Jude’s first birthday approached. This state of mind was quite unexpected, not least because I hadn’t felt particularly emotional about Henry turning one. (Sorry, H Bomb, we had a cracking day, but I just didn’t get teary about it.) Yet the prospect of Jude being one seemed to dance around the periphery of my brain for weeks before the event, popping up when I closed my eyes at night (alongside the repeated daily reminders to book a smear test and take the bottles to the bottle bank).

  I found myself wanting to sniff Jude’s hair and drink in his babyness. The rational part of me knew that, post-birthday, he would be just one day older than he had been the day before; but he would be a one-year-old, a walking one-year-old with teeth and those cruiser shoes whose price makes your eyes water when you get to the till. Once they have turned one it’s the end of the proper baby bit, isn’t it? People start referring to their kid’s age in years (‘He’s one, right?’), and I feared I might forever feel tempted to reply, ‘Well, he’s fourteen months/seventeen months/twenty-two months, actually.’ I mean, how long can that go on for? ‘Yes, he’s 219 months and living in halls at university. Yes, he’s well, thanks, still on the fiftieth percentile in the red book, weighing 168 pounds.’

  James gave me a look of mild amusement mixed with unease when I told him I was sad about Jude turning one. This was unchartered territory: his never-broody wife was demonstrating clear signs of broodiness and, at one point, he did feel it necessary to assert, ‘Yeah, but we’re not having another baby, ever.’

  Tempting as it would be to wind him up by looking wistfully at baby bootees and suggesting hypothetical third-child names, the fact of the matter is I’m pretty certain I don’t want another baby. I think that’s precisely why I’ve started to feel a bit delicate – it has dawned on me that I’ve completed the baby bit. For good. Like a level in a video game.

  Level Baby: complete.

  In many ways, this is an achievement to high-five. I certainly won’t miss the pasta-encrusted highchair, the reflux and the incessant 5–7 p.m. whingeing that makes me want to bash my skull in with the LeapPad. I won’t miss the need to cart around multiple bags filled with parenting equipment. I have never been the world’s biggest fan of the baby bit, and it wo
uld be insincere of me to suggest that I’ll miss doing three-hourly feeds or that I will sob over their tiny footprint paintings.

  Nevertheless, it is the end of an era. Jude is already looking so grown up, and experience tells me it won’t be long before he starts lobbing lightsabers at my head and asking me to pull his finger. In no time at all, we’ll have to potty-train him, introduce him to big-boy pants and go through the whole trouser-wetting rigmarole once more. I did calculate, though, that, by that time, we will have started approximately 1,825 mornings with the changing of a shitty nappy, so, even though there will be trouser-wetting incidents to come, I will still be doing a victory dance around the lounge when the final nappy has been disposed of.

  Meanwhile, his big brother (now a dab hand at the art of lightsaber lobbing and timely fart execution) has progressed to another level by starting pre-school, which has further intensified this sudden rush of nostalgic reflection. Time and again, following testing days at home with Henry, I’ve muttered, ‘Roll on, school!’ and now I’m not so sure that I meant it. This year, he will start proper school, and the thought of my Henners, my Henry Bear, my baby heading into the classroom with his uniform and his book bag already makes my heart hurt. I will no doubt return home from his first school drop-off and cry over baby photos and (sorry in advance to parents of new babies I meet later this year) it will make me say things like, ‘Oh, she’ll grow up so quickly!’ and ‘Enjoy this time!’ because I will selectively have forgotten all about the John Lewis lift incident and find myself craving the days when I could gather both my boys on my lap and sniff their hair without them protesting.

  There is so much more to come, of course. More good, more bad and, undoubtedly, more ugly. (I’ve had hundreds of messages from parents of teenagers telling me that I ain’t seen nothing yet, and I can well believe it.) I know I’ll have years of school runs and sleepovers and anxiously waiting up before they fall through the door pissed on alcopops, but I also know they will never be as dependent on me as they are in these early years. I’m kind of a big deal to my boys right now and, while clinginess drives me to the point of despair, I’d be lying if I said that it isn’t sometimes really nice to feel needed. While, in many ways, the prospect of their increased independence is quite liberating (hello, weekends away while they stay at Grandad’s), in many ways, it is also quite sad.