The last of the great “wedding and honeymoon” posts from me, then I’ll leave you alone with all the romantic shit, ok?
We left last Monday, the 5th of July, on a flight to Antigua – we had been booked to go to Croatia, which remains high on the list for us both, but we had a change of plans. We booked it as it flew from Gatwick thus, if there were any further BA strikes, it wouldn’t get cancelled. We also booked it because we had points and a business class voucher that we knew that if ever there were a time to burn them up, this would be it – a wedding is surely the one time that using those is worth it, yes?
(OK, yes – historically I have a bad track record on this whole matrimony business, but let’s move on from that, yes?)
We had booked a honeymoon room at the Sandals Resort in Antigua. Neither of us has ever been on an all-inclusive holiday in our lives, but we thought that having everything taken care of would be a good idea. It didn’t hurt that Antigua’s down-season is now as well, and rooms were 60% off. We found out that all food, watersports (heh), diving, and drinks were included. When we found out that included alcohol we figured they hadn’t seen us coming.
The place was beautiful.
Tropical and warm (my allergies bailed completely! My Reynaud’s was without a trace!) and gorgeous.
And the first night we were there we both larged it on the champagne and we slept nearly 11 hours. This might seem like nothing to most, but to two chronic insomniacs with toddler twins, this was amazing. Truthfully, we spent a lot of time sleeping – naps, 10-11 hours of sleep a night…it was heaven.
Since we’re both keen divers we got right to it. The first day we were there we had an orientation dive where you basically have to prove that you’re not a total tool and know what you’re doing and earned the dive certifications that you have. We did so under the watchful eye of the Divemaster there, a man called The General who took no shit, did not fuck around, and ran a tight dive ship.
We proved we weren’t total assholes and then went diving with a handful of others, with the assurance that if we didn’t fuck up the dive we’d be allowed to dive two tank dives the next day.
Diving is a curious thing – there is one solid truth that I have learned over my 15 years of diving experience and that is this: the more poncy dive gear you own, the more of an asshole you are. No really. Particularly if you are newly certified and have gone out and bought everything. Do that and you’re guaranteed a spot in Dickhead Hall of Diving Fame. I have had more dives shortened or even aborted due to people mucking about with their dive gear. It’s as The General said himself – he’s been diving with people with a veritable Dell Laptop strapped to their arms, it doesn’t make their diving any better. We dove with people with the poshest gear who were the worst divers, including one woman who crashed into absolutely every single piece of coral in her path, which therefore meant the coral was dead and couldn’t recover. When we go places we bring our mask and snorkel and borrow everything else from the dive shop. This almost without question means we are first in the water as we’re not busy fussing with kit we don’t understand, we just get on with it. So if you’re a newbie diver, don’t buy all the kit. No really. Take it from a long-time diver. Rent and enjoy your dive instead.
The days kind of blurred. If we weren’t diving we were sleeping, hanging out by the pool bar, or relaxing in one of the restaurants.
When I dove I wore a tankini. When I wasn’t diving, I got a bit brave and wore the bikini that Alastair bought me last year. I felt quite brave doing that, a 36 year old woman with her first bikini. I read by the pool. I read in the pool.
And I naturally mis-heard Alastair when he told me I was getting burnt all over, thinking that I needed to top up the sunblock on the front only.
We had sunsets.
We had dinners where we talked and laughed and ate too much.
And that’s not even mentioning the ocean, with it’s sugar beaches and crystal blue waters.
We flew back with the same crew that out with we flew there with, the honeymoon was that short (the BA crew said we were the shortest amount of time on honeymoon in Antigua they’d ever met), but then we have two small people, my folks had to get back, further honeymoon time would both bankrupt us and mean that we’d have to dry out our soggy drinking/sleeping/scuba diving asses, and I don’t have permission for leave from work (hi tough project!) and we had to get back. It was good, though. Relaxing and warm and perfect. I don’t think we’d ever be interested in a Sandals-type of thing again but it was nice to have everything included. In general we like to get to know a place, explore, get ingrained in the culture. Not this time. I confess we spent the entire time on the resort and the dive boat – all we did was sleep, eat, relax, read, drink and yes, shag like bunnies. Neither of us are very good at relaxing and just being, but we gave it our all on this trip.
We’re home now.
And I’ll stop boring you with wedding and honeymoon stories from here on.
And it has all been very, very good.
- S.
PS – the songs kept playing during the reception, and the song we finally got our first dance to was Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight”, as recommended by fellow twin mum Hopeful Mother. Thanks for that, I owe you one!
We’re home after three days at the Sandals Resort in Antigua.
More shortly – for now laundry, more aloe vera gel (why yes I am an asshole and got sunburnt), going through photos, and in one hour hugs from two little people that have been missed very much indeed.
A quick one, as we’ve only just finished the last load of dishes from the party yesterday – 85 people showed up to celebrate our getting hitched, and we partied into the night.
Friday was lovely. After spending the night with my stepmum and stepdaughter in Winchester (the hotel screwed up our reservation and my stepmum managed to wrangle an upgrade, free minibar, free breakfast, and half my money back), I went to a nearby spa and had my hair and makeup done because I’m rather crap at doing such things myself.
I then went back to my room and got myself dressed while the ladies fluttered about getting themselves ready.
Then we drove to Winchester, where the ceremony was due at 1130am on the 2nd of July, 2010, in the Winchester Register Office.
The ceremony was solemn.
It was also mostly about laughter.
And I am in love with the rings.
Nick and Nora were turned out perfectly, as were my dad and stepmum.
And after the ceremony my stepmum – who had the forethought to bring things she somehow knew Nora would want – provided our daughter with a tiara of her own, as she requested.
The entire extended family then went to the restaurant we’d booked for the wedding lunch, the amazing Chesil Rectory, which was built in 1450.
Nick was gorgeous.
And I even got a moment with Nora.
We went home as a family of eight, opened some bubbly, had a Pad Thai and watched the footie. As you do on your wedding day.
The next day was the big, less formal party. We used Alastair’s massive barbecue pit to spit roast six huge pork loins and a million oven-roasted Indian chickens.
She even made the top, which I have kept because I’m so in love with.
I think my gorgeous friend doubted herself, but her cake – a layer of coffee, lemon, and chocolate – was so beautiful and so fabulous to eat that people talked about it all night long and I cannot thank her enough. She is a great friend, an incredible cook, and her little man Harry is utterly dashing in a waistcoat.
The following photos are as taken by the most fantastic May’s also fantastic husband H, as he was on the ball with the photos and I was not, spending my night running around doing dishes, doling out food, and making sure people were ok. I even got a moment for a cuddle with the new man in town, and he’s a real honey, all gurgling baby. I think the party went well – the cake and food was a hit, the alcohol was drunk, people proclaimed it A Really Good Party Indeed.
The party started at 1500 and went on until 0130. The sunlight and screaming children were displaced by adults with wraps and scarves and anecdotes by candlelight.
We even lit off a number of sky lanterns.
The stepkids have gone home now, the guests are all gone, and the party has been tidied up a while now. Tomorrow Alastair and I leave for a few days in Antigua – not very long, but long enough – and then we’ll be back. It has been an extraordinary week, but the funny thing is it doesn’t feel like the anti-climax – it now feels like life as we get to live it. It’s not about being on the roller coaster, it’s about being here.
The house is hot and the briefest flutter of wind sneaks in through all of the open windows, making its way illicitly in the house when it’s not supposed to. My eyes snap open at the feel of the wind and I rub my eyes, rubbing out the allergies. I sit up and slide my feet over the side of the bed. I open the bedroom door and go out to the landing.
“I wasn’t going to come here any more.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
“There was a bump along the way and I got held up. How are you?”
I sit down. “I’m fine. Someone sent me a package of photos of you a few weeks ago. You and I, many years ago. I’m not sure when, the photos weren’t dated, but maybe 15, 16 years ago.”
“What did we look like?”
“We were young.”
“What did I look like?”
“You looked like you were alive.”
“I was, then.”
“I know,” I sigh.
He looks over at me, that sideways glance through his enviable thick lashes. “You’ve changed. You’re older, and you look a lot thinner.”
“There’s no such thing as too thin though, really, is there?”
“I don’t know about that, Buddy.”
I smile at that. That name, that familiar pet name, nearly forgotten in the holes in my memory.
“I am older,” I say with a rueful smile. “Maybe I’ve lived past my sell by date.”
“At least you kept on living.”
“Yeah, about that – when exactly do you actually pass on in death? I’m just wondering because I’m thinking your death is way past its due date. I’m thinking your death and rebirth is the longest project plan I’ve ever come across, I just want to know what I’m up against here.”
“I don’t know what happened there, no. I was…hell I just have no idea, you know?”
“I don’t know. But it’s ok. I guess in some ways it’s nice to see you again. Again again, I mean, considering I got those photos a few weeks ago.”
“Were you surprised by them? What did you think when you saw them?” he asked quietly.
“I thought yours was a life wasted,” I say bluntly. I slap my hand over my mouth. “Oh, fuck, sorry. I said that without thinking. I’m sorry, I don’t think I meant that.”
“I think you did.”
I pause, thinking before speaking this time. “You were fairly extraordinary, you know. I just think you could’ve touched a lot more lives than you did before you died.”
“Maybe I touched the ones I needed to.”
“Maybe,” I acknowledge.
We sit there and I fold up my knees, tucking my hands under the folds. He looks around the freshly painted hallway at the dozens of photos on the wall.
“You’ve been everywhere,” he breathes, looking at photos of Iceland, of Santorini, of Australian diving boats and South Beach lifeguard huts. He takes in the family photos, too. “Your son looks like you.”
“I think so too.”
“Particularly in the eyes.”
“Yup. I think I’m the only one who thinks that.”
“Do you like it? Being a mom?”
I smile. “You know what? It’s one of the best things in the whole wide world.”
“I could never see you as a parent, but I guess I can now.”
“It’s funny though, it also fills you with fear. I never feared death but now I do – what happens if I die before they can start to remember me? And even more so I am filled with fear for them. No one ever tells you how fearful you become. Every news story makes my heart bleed out through the pores in my feet with fear. I would die without my lovely family, if anything happened to the children, any of them, or Alastair parts of me would break and I would rot to death with loss. Fear, you know?”
He looks at me, pausing, weighing something up. “You’re getting married.”
“Yes.”
“Are you happy?”
I lay my head on the crook of my arms, still tucked under my knees. “No. It’s not happy, it’s not as simple as that. It’s different, it’s better than happy – it’s like a contentment that I can feel in every part of me. People say contentment is a bad thing but to me it feels like a bath. A big giant warm bath that you can stay in forever because the water never gets tepid. A big giant warm bath made for me, with fingers and toes that never go white and a heart that’s flushed out the fear and has only light.”
“And so this is you? This is really you?”
I smile. “This is really me. This is years-of-therapy-me, this is I’ve-let-go-and-moved-on me, this is calm, this is love, this is family, this is a place and a feeling that I am so happy to be in. Honest. And if in the next years I run the twins to swimming lessons and attend school fêtes and continue to work and continue to write and continue to love and continue to work on this pain in the ass house…well then it will all have been for something. I will have been for something. I have four children that I love like a house on fire and a man who I know has my back. Christ, listen to me – I’m like a walking advertisement for psychotropic drugs or something. Life’s not perfect but I love the bones of it, you know?”
“Happily ever after, then.”
“No. More like life. This is life. I am finally living. I think I took my first breath in the recent years and have been weaning off the gills ever since.”
“Maybe your life will be a life wasted, too.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I touched the people that I needed to.”
“Touché.”
We sit in silence, and I hear the silent movements of babies shifting in cots, of a cat coming in the flap downstairs, of the deep sleep sigh of the dog in his bed.
“And me? What of me?” he asks.
“You’re tucked up inside somewhere. You’re a part of me, or maybe I am who I am because of the people I’ve loved, and you’re in that group.”
“Do you think about me daily?” he asks quietly.
“Not anymore,” I say honestly. “You’re a light that once was. We always remember the light, even if over time we don’t turn it on all the time.”
He smiles. “I always liked your honesty.”
“I always liked your bravery.”
“Is your life perfect, then?”
“No. Whose life is? My life, though, has a degree of pulchritude which knocks my breath out. Eyes that sparkle when they’re happy, and I love when they’re happy. The curve of a toddler’s shoulders which still smells gorgeously of lingering baby days. A house riddled with imperfections but with a spirit that I can’t believe. I’m still screwed up, but at least I’m finally me.”
“Have you forgotten who you were?” he asks softly.
“Never,” I saw swiftly. “Every incarnation of me is imprinted with who I was before. And the cocoon is gone, now. This is it. Every part that came before is part of what made me who I am, right or wrong.”
“I never thought that I would see you content.”
“I never thought that, either.”
He nods and smiles in a soft way that reaches up to the corner of his eyes. “Take care, ok Buddy?”
“I will do,” I reply. I feel enormous sadness and yet absolutely right about this. “It’s kind of you to check on me, but you don’t have to do it any more. I’m ok. I’ll be ok.”
He stands, and starts to head down the stairs. He stops and turns to me, his eyes level with mine. “Will I be forgotten?”
“You’re the kind of person that’s impossible to forget,” I reassure with a smile.
He nods and turns to go downstairs. “Sometimes I miss what’s gone. In my mind you’ll always be young and angry and redheaded and beautiful and lost. But I honestly hope the rest of your life is what you need and hope it to be.”
“Thank you. I mean it,” I say with a calm that surprises me. “And in my mind you’ll always be smiling and cheeky and aloof and tilting at windmills.” We take a moment looking at each other, and when I smile a bit his lips echo the smile. “I’ll see you, Kim.”
“No you won’t, Buddy,” he replies, vanishing at the foot of the stairs, “and that’s the hell of it.”
I keep opening this tab to write something and then walking away from it. I meant to write something earlier but got caught up in time (which I always get snagged in, you know). We have a to-do list a mile long. This is perhaps what happens when you decide to host your own wedding reception.
The wedding is this weekend, and as of this morning it was the snowball starting down the hill. I went to work (Alastair is on leave). Tomorrow I go to work for a half day, then it’s off to the doctor’s (hello allergies!) and then on to a waxing of various bits and pieces. Then I’m off work.
Tomorrow night Melissa and Jeff arrive, thereby accelerating the snowball. Melissa turned 18 last week, and she has gifts waiting from us. I’m happy for her – she’s level-headed and sorting out that whole Rest of Her Life deal with aplomb. Jeff’s been struggling in Sweden and so will be here for a large chunk of the summer. I like to think that we can be this stable place for him, this place where he can trust that he’s safe and loved and listened to. I think he knows that, I just want him to always know it in that place in his heart where he holds all things he knows to be true. Both of the kids are very involved in and happy about the wedding, I just want him to know that I’ll always be here for him in the same way I’ve always been. Kids need families. These kids in particular.
On Wednesday the American clan arrive, thereby filling up the house and making the snowball into an avalanche. My Dad and stepmom land and are bringing with them toys, laughter, hope, and 3 dozen bagels. Laugh if you want but the bagels here, they don’t hold a candle to the good stuff from the US. My folks are beside themselves waiting to see “their babies”, as they call them.
I love my family so much it knocks my breath out.
The rest is coming together. As far as Bridezillas go, I’m the polar opposite. I’m so laid back about it I’m nearly comatose – Alastair’s mum asked if she could do the flowers, which I readily agreed to. She then asked me what kind of flowers I wanted and I told her that in all honesty I wanted whatever flowers she wanted to make. Similar lines for the cake – when asked by the world’s greatest baker what kind of cake, it pretty much came with little direction apart from “From the love of god, no fucking fruitcake!”
(As an aside, what’s up, my beloved second home country, with this loving of the fruitcake? Can we work this out, can we get this out of our systems?)
My dress is ready. I have an appointment booked for makeup and hair and, when asked how I wanted it done, I came out with “I have no idea, you tell me what you want to do.” I imagine I must be maddening in the extreme, but there are several things at play here:
1) I have no sense of style
2) I can’t decorate/arrange flowers/do makeup or hair to save my life
3) I’m sure people who can do items 1) and 2) know best and will do a better job if I don’t interfere
4) I’m pretty relaxed about the whole thing.
Alastair’s had some moments of stress but in general we’re all keeping it together. For me, I’m just so happy that the family is all together – parents are meeting parents, all four kids are here and happy, and the sun is out. What’s not to love?
The one thing I did have a strong opinion on is a silly thing – music. The place we’re getting hitched is very near and licensed for weddings, but they don’t have any access to musicians or music save for a CD player, which is being operated by my niece (niece-in-law? Soon to be niece-in-law? You know what I mean.) I have always, always loathed “The Bridal March”. To my ears it sounds creepy and sinister. I have never played it and never will.
I went for something very, very untraditional but which (when I stumbled upon it) knew in an instant it’s what I wanted.
When I walk down the aisle this weekend, surrounded by family, it will be to the song you can listen to here (beside “Music Download” you can click the box that says “Listen”. You won’t regret it.)
I’ve been watching True Blood, the first series. I’m a bit behind the curve in terms of both time and cool factor so have only just gotten into the series. I enjoy it although am tiring of this whole shrieking female needs constant saving by true love-y lusty man who cannot be in the sunlight, but it’s got my attention.
There’s a part to the show that I look forward to, that I relate to.
There’s a part of the show that I miss.
That part is the heat waves of summertime in the South.
When I lived in the US I lived all over the place, courtesy of a childhood as the daughter of an Air Force pilot. With the exception of 8 years of my life in Washington State and Colorado, I spent my entire childhood, teen, and early adult years in the southern Midwest and the south. In some parts of my early years I was in the deep south, the land of collard greens and barbecues and summers so hot you’d melt.
I live in England now, a country which summer has only just woken up and rubbed its eyes in, realizing that it overslept and it’s time to get the heat on. The past weekend we were in sweaters and jeans it was so chilly. I love living here, if given the choice of a sunny browned out Texas Christmas or a cozy overcast and freezing cold English Christmas, I’ll take this side of the Atlantic, thanks. I get to enjoy lush explosions of Autumn colors and my allergies endure the lime green of psychedelic Springs, but it’s summer that has me nostalgic. It’s ironic, in that bittersweet way – I was so keen to get away from those hot, hot summers and now I miss them so much I can close my eyes and think of them with no small amount of gratitude.
I remember the heat rising off the pavement in waves you could almost touch. I remember the screen doors on slamming shut, the small mesh of the screens bending over time and getting flakes of rust in their corners. I remember the sound they made closing, a kind of metallic clash that reverberated when the door wouldn’t shut properly because they never did. The feel of feet brushing along on the hot tarmac, where you’d step with the top of your feet and then rub your feet along in the grass, the cool to the heat.
If you had to go somewhere you edged carefully onto the seat as it’d be so hot. If you were unlucky and had no air conditioning then chances are you’d left the windows open “to let the heat out”, you’d say, as though it had option for escaping. You’d make sure you’d park under a tree when you got to where you were going, just so you could get some shade on the steering wheel, the dash, the seat.
I remember sun tea jars on porches, the Lipton squares dangling from the top like a veil. Later in the day it would be lemonade in a glass with sweat droplets that you’d hold to your face, your neck, your chin and would simultaneously shiver from and love any errant drops that fell onto your chest. Crickets would be singing the afternoon away, their legs possibly the only motion that anyone could bear. The air would be full of bits and pieces of dandelion, dust, and sunlight that you couldn’t shake off. Walk inside and the house would be so dark, your eyes too adjusted to the sun. The day felt like the inside of a Van Morrison song and sometimes you were aware of every single pore of your body opened up in the light.
Children would be outside with various stages of dried popsicle and sticky Kool-Aid. If you had a porch swing you’d sit back into it, using your toes to move the swing backwards and forwards. I remember lazy blades from the ceiling fan, the smell of a barbecue or – if you were lucky – a good shrimp boil all afternoon and into the evening. The evenings were made for lightning bugs if you could still find them, dozily making their way around the yard. There would be baseball on someone’s TV, the sounds of a Budeweiser commercial on someone else’s. At night you’d sleep with just a sheet covering you because if you were like me, you couldn’t sleep without some kind of cover, and you’d lie still under the blanket of heat and enjoy the movement the fans made in the air.
These were the summers I remember. The younger summers held Slip ‘N Slides and sticky bomb pops. The older summers had wine coolers and picnics in the parks. But they all held heat and memories and haze and that beautiful, magical slam of the screen door that I will never forget as long as I live.
I’m feeling introspective right now. It’s not due to being down or sad or anything negative, just feeling a bit inward. Writing that post about my dad has lengthened the tunnel as well. He and I have had a few heart to hearts about the past and about our regrets, what we would do differently, what we wish had never happened. It’s not an unfamiliar feeling to me, this “I wish I’d zigged instead of zagged” feeling. All of which has me thinking about the idea behind forgiving and forgetting and moving on.
Oscar Wilde: “Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.”
I look back on my life and think of mistakes I’ve made, of people I’ve hurt. The list in both categories is substantially longer than one would like. The irony is I try to do what I can to not hurt people, I’d much rather hurt myself than hurt anyone else and have proven to be something of a pro in that area. I think I can come across as quite hard and uncaring, when the truth is I am mired inside by different things and I can’t figure out what it is I really do feel. In those instances the kindest thing to do is to let people go, else they twist and turn in the washing drum of what they perceive to be my emotional machinations. And that’s not the case, but it’s better to let someone think you’re a bad person than a person who can’t figure things out.
Mark Twain: “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
IWhen I was a child I was wrapped in the egocentrism of childhood and words came out as thought, barbed in the way that honesty can be. As a teenager I became angry and moody and difficult and said things designed specifically to hurt. As an impatient and fiery woman in my 20’s who spoke her every thought I struggled with the person I was and was keen to wound, to draw to the quick and ensure a quick death to the relationship. My 30’s came along and I have continued to injure, mostly out of ineptitude, occasionally out of cowardice.
I would love for every person I’ve ever hurt to know that I am truly sorry for it, and that karma will pay me back. But if I’m honest, I hope that people I’ve wounded aren’t thinking of me anymore at all. I hope they’ve moved on and moved up, moved into beautiful and better things and with relationships that leave them sated and happier than they ever could have been. I may hurt people but I never mean to.
Mahatma Gandhi: “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
And the truth is I have long struggled with forgiveness. I could argue it’s a result of my black and white condition of BPD. I could argue it’s because I had an upbringing that enforced that people were either good or bad, there was no in-between. I could say all of those things but the truth is I maybe struggled because I am human, and humans aren’t brilliant at letting things go. You want to forgive and forget but you don’t want the party that wronged you to forget that you forgave them. Wear your epaulets of pain with pride and all that – my human condition may be suffering and if that’s the case then you must recognize it. If you hurt me then I won’t give you another chance to hurt me because I can accomplish that just fine on my own, thanks. If I forgive then it means that what happened is inconsequential.
But it’s as my lovely German therapist told me – forgiving doesn’t mean you condone it. It just means you no longer need to hold on to it.
And she’s right.
She often is.
It’s like taking a hand and running it down the side of a sideboard, taking everything to the floor with it. Why carry shit around with you, when we all make mistakes? Huge fuck-ups, little mistakes, tiny aches, big pains – there’s no point to it. If I want other people who I have hurt to be happy, maybe there’s a chance that someone who hurt me wants me to be happy, too.
Not too long ago I found an old contact on Facebook. I sent him an email apologizing for all that happened between us so many years ago, and he replied back that he was sorry, too. We’ve had very infrequent contact but we hear from each other from time to time and I am honestly just happy that he’s moved on. He’s happy I moved on. And yes, he’s this guy.
That was then. This is now. And I have enough of a history to know that everything that I have done and had done to me can be let go as they happen. It doesn’t always mean it’s easy, but it does mean that my baggage is just a little less heavy.
Lewis B Smedes: “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”
There are many things that I put out here and write about. There are thoughts, feelings, observations, hurts and successes. I talk more here than I do to most of my friends, which means either I am hideously repressed or – more likely – you are my friends in some kind of way. I talk about things I would be paralytic about telling others about.
Here is such a thing.
When I was 7 years old, we were living in Washington and my family was already fracturing. I don’t have a lot of memories from then and I don’t know if that’s usual or not – all of my memories tend to consist of snapshots that I know reside between the adhesive pages of albums in my mother’s home. I do remember this event and it’s not the event itself I remember, but feelings around it. This in itself is unusual because I don’t have a lot of emotions from the past, they’re all wrapped up in my former 8mm feelings.
Back then I idolized my father, I would’ve done anything for his affections. I had a shoebox that I duct taped shut and had cut a slit in the top to keep items. I don’t remember much of what was in there, I just remember a heavy chunky silver identity bracelet that was my father’s (well this was just over the ridge of the 70’s, after all). I kept it because it was like having him there – my father was an Air Force pilot, and as such it meant he was always gone. TDY would beckon and I’d wake up in the morning and he’d be gone. I knew better than to bother him when he was home, too, because he would be tired from all the flying. Moments with my father were few and far between and, likely unhappily for my lonely mom, I had my dad on a pedestal. I just wanted to spend time with him, even though I was the firstborn and I was a disappointing girl, even though I couldn’t in the long haul sustain interest in the things he was interested in.
My local school was having a father-daughter day. Father-Daughter Picnic it was. It was a day to bring your dad to school and have a crappy little picnic at the crappy little school. And the funny thing is, I knew my dad had a terrible temper and could be incredibly anti-social, it wasn’t a good idea to have expectations. But I did. There it is, I did have expectations that my father would go. He committed to going, too, my dad did. Father-Daughter Picnic would have him there.
I was so excited. People would meet my dad and I would have a day with him. This is the funny thing, I remember this feeling. I don’t remember a lot from the past but I remember that. I remember thinking that my dad would be coming with me to the school, to see my friends and my class, to actually spend time with me.
Just before the Father-Daughter Picnic my father disappeared. He had chosen a voluntary trip somewhere doing god knows what. I don’t know why I remember that but I do. My memory is fragmented and missing but I remember the events around this perfectly. An optional trip came up and my father went…instead of coming to my stupid picnic. My best friend at the time, her dad felt so sorry for me that he offered to be my pretend dad for the day.
And this is where my memories go into the third person and I see myself. I don’t feel anything anymore, I just see it. I was jilted by my dad and another dad took pity on me. I even remember his jaw working as he offered to be my fake dad. My real dad didn’t want to deal with this pathetic picnic, so someone with a heart and some sympathy would do. I turned him down and skipped the picnic. I remember acting indifferent. I am sure that’s not how I felt.
My parents split shortly afterwards.
I threw my shoebox, with its precious ID bracelet, into a dumpster.
In life, an afternoon school picnic doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t and it’s petty and embarrassing even writing about it now, nearly 30 years on, when my mouth tastes of corduroy and dust and my heart is nothing like it ever was. But it’s like that, isn’t it? Life, I mean. It’s part and parcel for the small events that you need to hold on to, in order to change the future instead of needing to repeat it.
My father was a terrible father. He was absent, he was angry, he was painful. I was never quite enough to be loved by him I felt, I just wasn’t right. I was awkward and stupid and clumsy and unathletic and bookish and, above all, a painfully white female. He was a dreadful father.
Then.
He was a dreadful father then.
Now he is one of the best dads in the world.
It’s not his money or his access or his travels. It’s not the estrangements in the family or the torn loyalties or the assumed “I’ll show you” feelings. It’s not his stigma or his style or his airplanes.
It’s him.
My dad is sometimes still emotionally unavailable to me – you can talk about sensitive things for only so long before my military dad has to switch off. He is stubborn and set in his ways (note: Dad, if Nick wants to wear a “pretty princess dress” then in this house, he can!). He is occasionally stuck in a fog of anti-socialness.
But he holds Nora with a light in his eyes that you wouldn’t believe.
He gets on the floor with Nick and plays with cars.
He insists on being part of every feeding and every bathtime and every book-reading bedtime.
He has changed and so have I and if my sister is reading this then you should know that you should let him in, because he is wonderful.
My dad has become like this dad.
Even if my dad’s advice might not always be brilliant. I know my dad would be there for me now. It’s like a grown-up version of a Father-Daughter Picnic, and my dad would show up this time in his flightsuit looking tired but handing out the Oreos all the same.
I took my past and I changed the future – on Thursday I took the afternoon off of my hectic work schedule and Alastair took a few hours off and the two of us went to the children’s nursery and helped with their Barnardo’s pirate-theme Toddle for Tots and being there doesn’t make me better, it doesn’t make me different, it just means we all walked an insignifcant pirate-themed walk (our second of such walks) and that we will be there for them through walks and picnics and school fundraisers. I want them to consider our presence as a given, not as the exception.
They’re not only my chance, they’re his second chance. And if now or in the future there’s a Grandparents’ Picnic Day, I know my dad will be there. I know he won’t miss this one. It’s ok now that he missed all of my events growing up. I regret things in my past (and present) and I know (he has said) he regrets things in his. But he loves his grandkids. They love him. My dad loves me. And I love him.
My dad has become one of my best friends. It only took 36 years to get us there.
When I lived in Dallas I had a neighbor who had a Dalmation. Dalmations, due to so much inbreeding, now are prone to deafness. My neighbor’s dog was such a specimen, and he used to invariably get out and go running and she’d stand outside, shouting for him. When she saw me staring at her one afternoon during such a session she shrugged. “I can’t just stand here and think his name,” she said airily. “I look dumb shouting at my deaf dog, but I feel even more ridiculous just standing here thinking his name.”
I think parenting is a lot like that. You spend a lot of time shouting at Dalmations even when you know that your spotty dog isn’t catching what you’re throwing at him.
Children are cool.
They’re also a complete and total fucking mystery.
Particularly, as seen here wearing her “pretty dress”, crown and sunglasses with only one lens in it, when it comes to fashion choices.
I like that they make me think outside the box a lot, as they do having an impromptu picnic in the middle of the kitchen, after spreading their babyhood Taggies blankets out and raiding their play kitchen.
They both can play very well together and adore each other, as seen here moments before they were furious and Alastair and I were on the ground, wheezing with laughter.
But like all siblings, they also clash a lot – and when I say a lot, I mean every other second. We’ve found that on weekend it’s great if one parent runs an errand and takes one twin with them while the other parent stays at home with the other twin. They behave like normal children. Normal children, who don’t spend every moment plotting how to make each second-by-second existence of their siblings a living hell. Normal children, whom you don’t want to hand to a stranger in exchange for a tin of corn and some mismatched socks.
Nick has gotten over his rough period. He is fabulous now, and I really mean that. The screaming raging temper tantrums are largely past and he’s a charming and engaging little man, a little man with a mild speech impediment. He can’t say the letter “l”, as it comes out “n”. So all the England flags hanging around for the World Cup right now are “fnags.” It’s the color bnack, the color yennow, it’s not a plaster, it’s “canasta”, which makes me worried people will think we are nurturing gambling addictions in this house. He loves to sing and will prompt you 100 trillion times a day to sing “Ba batchi”, which is not a type of springroll as you might expect, but “Baa Baa Black Sheep”. He’s a serious boy with a cheeky streek. He loves the color pink and thinks that trains, buses, lights and cars are the bees’ knees.
(Yup, those are bruises on his head. Whereas Nora has scary joint flexibility like her mama, Nick has the tendency to walk straight into anything that’s not actually in his path, much like his mama.)
Nora, on the other hand (seen here running and yes that is how she runs, as though any minute she’ll either take off into the stratosphere or will leap into her gymnastic floor routine) has become a real handful.
She has picked up where Nick left on in the Toddler Tantrum routine. She is willful, stubborn, challenging, and obstructive.
In short, she’s a toddler. But we got through it with one little one, we can get through it again (she writes, with a lightheartedness that does not quite penetrate).
And yes, I know June is National Potty Training Month. I also don’t care one little bit. No really. I don’t. We’re doing well just as we are, thanks.
I would tell you how very much I love and adore them, but that’s like shouting at Dalmations, isn’t it?
-S.
PS- apparently my site keeps crashing and/or is unable to load. It would explain my stats and my lower comments, and luckily some friends let me know the site is often down. I would say if you’re able to see this then say hi, but then – Dalmations!
I downloaded a few new CDs last night – Glee’s latest, Sarah McLachlan’s new one which I’ve been waiting for some time to get my hands on, although strangely now that I have it, I’ve been afraid to listen to it. It’s there, as though it implies something, this listening to it. My iTunes has been a mess for a while courtesy of a corruption during a download and much of the music hasn’t been working. I spent some time with it last night and while driving in this morning I had the radio on, the music on high. And I thought about things.
Music has always been troublesome for me. I was told an interesting theory by a therapist and that is that people whose lives have been traumatic often have adverse affects from music. One study asked children who grew up in angry, hateful homes to choose some music to relax to. One teenage girl chose the most thrashing heavy metal imaginable, real thrasher basher stuff that makes eardrums bleed and speakers explode. The research showed that those with fast and furious lives and thoughts could choose fast and furious music, because it was the background noise that they knew.
I don’t know what that teenager’s background was or how similar or dissimilar it is to my own, but I know that I have always had negative effects from heavy music. Fast music additionally would grate on me, anything like hard rock or heavy metal or rap would just exacerbate an already overactive embrace of anger. I may not have had fast music as my comfort zone but anger, well…anger I knew.
To that end slow music is my bag. Calm music, soothing music, music that can drift into the back of the mind and stay there, music that can’t control or hold or drive or cling, but just be. I think it’s why I’ve always loved Sarah McLachlan, she comes in through the ear and drifts around the back of the head just there, yes just right there, and you’re set. As a person so historically prone to inner rage, anything with a tempo above a heartbeat could ignite me. I couldn’t even listen to faster music, I needed slow stuff. Happy music was for people who could be happy, not people who could be me. I even have a playlist on my iPod called “Happy” which is full of stuff that I never play but which could charm a Care Bear. What’s most listened to on my iPod is a playlist called “S’s list”, which is full of what Alastair calls “kill yourself music”.
I was driving in this morning and on the radio came a fast, up-tempo song. I turned it up and started to sing along. As I waited my turn at the roundabout, I realized something: I haven’t played my “S’s list” for some time. I haven’t played my “Happy” playlist either, but the last time I clicked on to “S’s list” I found it a bit depressing, a bit maudlin. I found it made me sad. I found I didn’t want to be sad. I found, for the first time in my life, that there’s a difference between being me and being sad. Throughout my life I haven’t had the bitter, violent, angry music because I found more in common with the dark, I found more in common with the bleak. For many years if someone were to ask me what song I would identify with the most, it would without doubt be Sia’s “Breathe Me”. The first line says it all: Help, I have done it again. The stanza “Ouch I have lost myself again/Lost myself and I am nowhere to be found/Yeah I think that I might break/I’ve lost myself again and I feel unsafe” was the story of my life, it was my own self-imposed definition.
After years of therapy, after heartaches and fuck-ups and regrets, I don’t have to impose that anymore. I’m no fool – life isn’t always easy and it isn’t always going to be. I’m not completely fixed and I’m maybe not going to ever be. I don’t have sorrow as a constant companion because I don’t need it. I don’t have self-loathing and awkwardness as my guide and my life anymore because it doesn’t need to be here. I’m not perfect – I look at myself in the mirror and don’t like what I see. Of the 10 kilos that I lost last year I’ve gained back 3 and I find I want to lose them and more, even though I know that takes me back to a state of scrawny. There’s fixed and then there’s Fixed, and I am maybe not yet the latter.
But I am allowed introspection without despair. I can laugh and not be full of myself if I do so. I can have music and laughter even if it’s got tinges of bittersweet sometimes. I can listen to Sia’s “Breathe Me” and love it as a piece of music and a piece of who I was and have been.
And I can put the iPod in my ears and turn on Sarah McLachlan’s new album and I can dance like a monkey to The Maverick’s “Dance the Night Away” because the single greatest thing therapy has taught me is that life is too short to be so sad.
This past weekend my allergies exploded. As in really exploded, to the point where my eyes started swelling shut and then last night they commenced bleeding. I wanted to make parallels to certain Biblical references but my sense of humor has pretty much failed, as evidenced by me crying and holding frozen washcloths to my eyes, asking Alastair to “Fix it!”, as though he carries tubes of allergy medicines in a holster around his waist or something.
I’ve been back to the doctor today after ringing in sick to work – I worked all day, but the dribbling swollen eyes meatn driving is out of the question, so home I’ve been. The good news is I had a doctor who has prescribed something that (knock on wood) appears to be working. The even better news is I saw a female doctor who sympathized so completely with my raging and horrific eyes that she told me if these meds didn’t work she could hook me up with steroid treatment. I have been hurting so badly that I would consider anything to get better, including but not limited to bathing my head in acid in an attempt to get better (hey whatever works, right?) so I have no problem considering steroids. This morning I had to use both hands to pull my eyelids apart and there are giant burst blood vessels in my eyes, beefy shots are the least of my concerns. What I am concerned about is crying like a baby due to the pain and the fact that the big day is a little over two weeks away and right now there is no amount of photoshopping that can be done to improve my looks.
It got so bad that Alastair took us all off to the seaside on Saturday prior to the big game, to let the sea air help with the pollen. It worked, and all of us had fun.
(I am uber-proud of that photo, I admit.)
In other news, I finally stopped bleeding. Seriously. I was looking at standing still and creating my own Red Sea for a while there, but the bleeding has stopped. Or it stopped only to start again two days ago, which I have discovered is just my period. Only it’s not really like a period, it’s more like a query in time, a “Should I do something about it? Nah?” type of event, the bleeding is so light. Is this the Mirena finally having a positive effect? Time will tell…
I’ve been busy downloading songs. You lot are fantastic in some of your suggestions, thanks for that. Some of you chose some seriously obscure shit, so finding them all has been hard work for a blurry, bloody-eyed chick. But I’ve re-discovered a lot of songs I’ve forgotten (Chicago – my first concert ever! Come On Eileen – fabulous!) As for the playlist, it’s everything you’ve suggested, everything our other guests are suggesting, and lots of faves of our own.
We’re a little over two weeks away now, and getting things ready for the day of the wedding, the big barbecue, and the honeymoon (which currently due to work restrictions, I’ve managed to finagle a measly 4 days. It’s enough – we’re using our last airmiles and an upgrade we got and going as far away as we can on it. We’re off to Antigua…for 2.5 days. What I won’t do for some sun, eh?) We are getting there (and have some 30 bottles of wine in our bedroom to help remind us of what’s to come). Menus are sorted, clothes for all of us but Jeff and Alastair are done, and I have to get off my ass and do something about the hair and makeup because I’m useless with stuff like that (also, the lady who wanted to charge me £200 to do my hair and make-up? Are you high? Are you proposing to do my hair in 24k gold? Are you aware that I have 4 children and a nursery bill to pay?) but progress is being made, like this:
Alastair is building a giant barbecue spit, which will be spit-roasting porcine come the day (I believe it’s called “slow-pulled pork” or some other meat term like that). We’re trying not to stress about the upcoming things to do because it’s supposed to be fun and lots of elements of it are (like us clearing out our freezer by eating our way through it, something else which is also mildly stressful as I’d like to lose a million pounds prior to the big day but hey ho). All in all, if we survived Mirena and can survive pollen, in-laws at war should be the least of our concerns, right?
Oh yes – and something else I should mention. This little blog o’ mine turns 7 tomorrow. I’ve been blogging for 7 years now, which I think officially makes me ancient and one of the long term ones. I feel kinda’ chuffed about it, if I’m honest. It’s like watching my life go off to school now.
I sometimes think that there’s a code that people with kids learn, something akin to a secret handshake or just the telltale evidence of a smudge of finger paint on the hems of our jackets. In our house it’s the joke of CBeebies theme songs – you imagine walking past a fellow parent on a dark corner under the amber glow of a fluorescent lamp. The other person smells vaguely of baked beans and jacket potato and may or may not be bearing a badge that reads “Number 1 Mum!” on the pocket of her handbag. You assess her and get the code ready.
“Do you know it’s Springtime?” you say low under your breath.
“Hear it in the windchimes,” comes the affirmative, and you know that the operative you are dealing with is indeed a parent.
The comments about search engine hits to my site intrigued me earlier this week. I am floored that so many found this site via my IVF posts, just like I’m floored that this site is one of the top Infertility Blog Sites out there as well. When I look at my life, IVF was a huge part and an insignificant part. It was everything and nothing. I think sometimes that it’s like what they say about childbirth – you go through it and suffer but then promptly forget the pain. When I read my archives from the IVF periods I can’t remember most of it. The posts are detailed and troubling, full of things like leg cramps and discomfort and bananas and spotting, all with a line of desperate fear and surging hope running like a thread that connects every post to the one before. If I search my memory I remember the strangest things – buying the first set of bibs that I ever bought. Being offered a seat on a full tube as my stomach had popped and I was clearly pregnant as opposed to presenting the clear signs of curry binges. I remember the big things, too, like screaming in pain in the bathtub as I suffered kidney infections and contractions and midwives tiptoing around me, their faces full of concern as the NICU was prepped in the background for a pair of preemie twins. If I look back further I remember the tubes and vials of injections that needed to be mixed, I remember the endless excuses for work to get to the clinic for scans, I remember the wanting, the constant fucking hoping, that came with each and every cycle.
I remember it all and I have forgotten it all. It is huge and important and it is a blip. IVF gave me my dreams on a plate and yet it is my dream of the past. I was asked recently what the twins will know of the IVF treatment and the answer we have is simple: Nothing. We discussed it and I know this sounds crazy and unlike me, the one who brushes her heart off her sleeve on a daily basis and parks it on a platter before the world, but we think that the role that IVF played in creating the twins is (from the twins’ perspective) not relevant. It doesn’t matter (to them) how they got here, what matters is that they are here. What my body went through to get them is part of my past, it doesn’t have to be part of theirs. We know that fertility treatment is a common enough experience particularly in our part of England, which has the highest twinning rate in the country courtesy of such treatments, but if there is a chance that they could feel strange or unusual or different or uncomfortable because of it, then why tell them? I would rather they not have to wonder about the details, to not have to know that their creation was a chance, a long shot, a sodding fucking miracle of two crappy eggs that created the greatest children in the history of the world, that a technician with latexed hands gave rise to two of the single most important people that I’ve ever had the privilege of getting to love. I would rather they simply assume they were created and carried out of love, because they were.
Last week a consultant was needed for a portion of the work I’m doing. He was in and out in a week, a nice man in nice ties and nice suits as nice consultants often are. The first day he came in he was super early and full of bounce and cups of coffee.
“Blimey you’re here early,” one of my guys exclaimed while happily taking his cup of proffered caffeine.
“I’m staying in the area all week to work. It’s like a holiday! I am able to sleep past 5 am!”
“Sleep issues?” came the reply.
“5 month old twins,” he replied with a grin, “I’ll bet you have no idea!”
I sat back in my swivel chair and looked at him, nursing my coffee. I smiled, my hands laced around the corrugated cardboard. “It gets easier,” I say, violating my sacred rule to not give advice to twin parents. “When you get one on a schedule the other soon follows.”
My team – previously unaware I had twins myself – look at me.
“You have twins?” the consultant asks with surprise.
“I do. They’re two and a half, so I remember those early days,” I say, even though truth be told I don’t really remember them all that well.
He smiles and nods at me in an appreciative way. We compare smaller notes – sexes, ages, if they were preemie or not, all of it the common parlance of parents with multiples, the “where are you from?” intro questions that Americans who meet up ask to find common ground, the “horrible weather, isn’t it?” that the British align themselves with.
Later the consultant and I meet by chance by the lift. He smiles at me and we talk more of twins. We then wait for the lift to arrive in companionable silence. The doors open and he stands back to allow me in first, and he follows suit.
He looks at me, as though weighing up whether to take a chance. He nods to himself, deciding to take that leap.
“London Bridge Fertility,” he says, looking at the lift panel and pushing the button.
I smile a little bit and feel a part of my heart tug in a way I hadn’t felt in a few years, not since standing at a kitchen counter injecting myself, not since laying on a hospital bed counting follicles. We don’t tell people in our real life that we’ve had fertility treatment because we’re both fairly private, but something in this feels different, perhaops because after this week I won’t see this consultant again and when he goes my reveal goes, too.
“Woking Nuffield,” I reply, looking straight ahead.
“It was our first round lucky,” he says, still looking at his feet.
“It was our fifth and final,” I reply.
He looks over at me. “A lot of heartache, that.”
I smile and look at him as the doors slide shut. “Yes and no.”
Yesterday afternoon Alastair’s brother and sister-in-law were burgled. We found this out when we logged into Facebook and saw photos of their house, and how it had basically been ransacked. They took all the goodies, including laptops, jewelry, Playstation, Wii, the lot.
I’ve had my car broken into a few times (and once I was stupid enough to leave my briefcase in said car break-in, thereby losing my laptop, phone, wallet, and yes my passport, all while I was in a foreign country. Very clever, no?). I’ve also had my home burgled before. It’s a depressing and horrific state of affairs which, even if you’re covered under insurance, still feels awful. Being robbed is bad enough, but the worst part of it is the very basic thought that Bad People Have Been In Your House Touching Your Things. They may have had dirty fingertips. They may have been the kind of people that would harm you if you caught them in the act. The truth is though, the fact that someone came in your inner sanctum is bad enough.
Talking about it last night, you realize just how impractical you can be when it comes to property. Alastair’s sister-in-law had all of her jewelry stolen because, typically, she had it in a box in her dresser. As you do. As I do, in fact. I don’t have lots of expensive jewelry but I do have some shiny things and yes indeed, they are in a box in my dresser in the bedroom. This is because that’s where you keep things, you don’t typically get dressed and then think “I wonder what necklace would match this, I’m going to go into the garden shed and dig it out from under the weedkiller, see if I have something that brings out the blue in my shirt.” I decided I will have to move the jewelry though – I was thinking of piling it in the bathroom under my tampons (no thief would want to go through a basket of feminine products) but then realized if it was in the box of the hated fiberglass tubes that I wouldn’t want to go through them either.
Although Alastair’s never had his home been robbed he has had his garage broken into, and been around his family when they had an incident. Years ago he went on holiday with his father and stepmother in France. They all rented a house together and spent several weeks in the middle of nowhere. He was telling me about it last night.
Apparently during the stay their stepmother suspected they’d been robbed.
“The garage door is open and the lawnmower’s missing,” she said urgently. “We should ring the police.”
“Why would someone steal a lawnmower in the middle of nowhere?” came her answer. “Particularly an old rusty one?”
She then decided to take investigative matters into her own hands and was searching the ground outside of the garage. When asked what she might be doing, Inspector Clouseau replied: “Looking for evidence.”
It turned out she was looking for cigarette butts. This, because the French smoke. This, because clearly all burglars smoke.
My imagination went into overdrive, and I pictured the scene.
So while a burgler was casing the joint, wearing his black and white striped T-shirt and his beret at a jaunty angle, he decided he needed a nicotine fix. He took out his pack of Gauloises – certain that due to his Frenchness he would not be caught – and smoked incessantly while plotting to emancipate an overly used piece of ride-on agrarian maintenance equipment. When he saw the family leave to walk to the village to stock up on garlic, stinky cheese and baguettes they would tuck under their arms like rogueish natives, he saw this was his chance.
“Zut alors!” the robber would have said. This because every French textbook ever teaches us that the French, they use “zut alors!”, which is akin to us saying “golly gee willackers” or, at a stretch “aw, shucks”. Apparently the English speaking world thinks the French are stuck in the 1950’s wondering where Wally and The Beav are, with their expletives to match. The truth is I’ve known many native French speakers and not once has someone ever said “zut alors”, not even when I offered to pay them to say it, so presumably the textbooks try to teach non-native French speakers to say “zut alors” in order to make us sound like assholes to the natives.
So back to the robber.
“Zut alors!” he would exclaim, stamping out the last of his cigarette. “Zees is my chance! To hell weeeth my Citroen! A deux chevaux ees too fast, le bastarde, all I need is 3 ‘orsepower!”
He would tiptoe into the garage, looking only at his fabulous prize of a 20 year old piece of shit lawnmower. He would silently slide onto the seat and, upon finding the key in the ignition, could be heard to happily exclaim “Sacre bleu!” (that other old French adage they teach us that the French say, in between drinking coffee out of bowls and smearing Nutella on their fish dishes). “Eet ees mine!” He would then power up and gleefully ride into the sunset with his prize, all at a stately pace of 5 miles per hour and leaving a clean swatch of freshly mown Pronvence hillside in his wake.
The truth is the landlord of the property later said when called that he’d taken the lawnmower to mow his other properties and would be returning it later.
When Alastair rang his brother and sister-in-law to see how they were doing last night, he had a brief conversation and when he hung up, he turned to me.
“They’re getting pissed,” he said.
Fair dues. When you’ve been burgled, there’s nothing to do but drink.
-S.
PS – French stereotypes in this post are used to inpart the hilarity of searching for cigarette butts and not because I think that every Frenchman walks around looking like Marcel Marceau and plotting to steal appliances. Honest. Now the Swedes, on the other hand…
We love this house. I love this house. This house is 100 years old and something always needs working on. When we bought it, we got it for a shockingly (relatively, this being England and in particular, this being Southern England) low price as so much work needed to be done on it and we fully intended to do so. We lived in it for two years before the twins’ arrival pretty much necessitated changes, and we finally got off our asses and got in gear.
I love hearing how people think our home is beautiful. I think our home is beautiful, but then I’m biased. I am often intrigued when I hear people say that our house is posh, though. Posh? Us? Me? I think not. The truth of the matter is our house is something that is in a constant state of renovation and the people renovating it are Alastair and I. We blew every last pound of the savings we had accumulated for years in hiring builders to extend the house and add more rooms. They left each room skinned with plaster and that was it. The rest has been and is up to Alastair and I. We’re not poor but we’re certainly not rich, and as such we spend a lot of time finding materials that aren’t expensive and trying to put together rooms which are simple but lasting. Plus we’re weird, and our tastes reflect that, too.
This weekend we hit the hallway. This has been a peeve of mine for some time. Lemme’ ’splain.
This was the hallway in early 2008, prior to any building work commencing.
It wasn’t great. Dark. Narrow. Fugly cheap tiles. A half-bath had been fitted just inside the front door, which, you know, is just where you need a toilet. Someone had extended the house in the early 80’s (thereby ripping out half of the original softwood floors) and this hallway was a part of it, but it wasn’t done well as the floor sloped down towards the door.
The stairs twisted halfway up, coming to the landing where the two and a half bedrooms were. The stairs were old and rickety and the staircase was covered in 1980’s carpet that I hated (but then I don’t like any carpets, so there it is).
We hated the hallway.
When the builders came, we knew that the hallway would change.
First they put in a new staircase.
This led to a new landing upstairs.
The stupid front-door toilet room, the one I would always think of as The One I Miscarried In, was taken down.
And then it became a big hallway.
But we didn’t do anything with it as we had more pressing matters. For a while the hallway – half broken tiles, half decrepit softwood floorboards – was covered in large pieces of cardboard with some throwrugs over it. Over time I went crazy with it and so laid some cheap laminate down.
I did a terrible job though, but as it was only ever meant to be temporary we just lived with it.
Until now.
As I wrote about, we recently got a new front door in.
We also put in a new front door bell.
It looks like something that Wile E Coyote would rig up, but it’s actually an old school bell that Alastair rigged to a large, old-fashioned battery. He will soon be joined by our other find, a Victorian butler’s bell box, which needs to be attended to before it can go up.
So we stripped up the laminate and laid down some plywood.
We floated the floor.
Repeatedly.
Until it was level. Level enough to begin, as we did on Saturday.
Now I’m no stranger to tiling, as you can see from this photo two years ago.
We hit it, using some tiles we stumbled upon on sale two months ago because a supplier had over-stocked.
And kept going.
Although I was the one who did the laying down of most of the tiles (thereby winding up with tile cement in places I don’t want to talk about), Alastair had the tough job of cutting all the corner tiles to fit, which basically means you end up with a soaking wet T-shirt from the tile cutter and clay water winding up in places you don’t want to talk about.
We did have help.
We tiled all day yesterday and much of today.
With me periodically pausing in my paint-splatted and tile cement coated clothes to educate and inform.
And today we finished.
Tomorrow we grout and tidy it, we still need skirting boards and I have to create a screen to cover under the stairs, the stairs and walls need painting and Alastair is building a coat wardrobe inside the front door, but for now we have a new floor, a lovely floor, a beautiful floor, and I am happy indeed.
Since I’ve been crazy busy, I thought I would cheat upload some of the search items that people have been using to get to my site, most of which make me laugh:
i’m uncomfortable with a pelvic ultrasound Honey, no one likes them. Lie back and think of England. If that doesn’t work, lie back and think of David Tennant.
burst out laughing at his tiny dick Now that’s just mean. Laugh inwardly. Inward. Karma is a bitch and, frankly, if you bust out laughing it sounds like you might be, too.
shannon lush dashboard cleaning Have you seen the state of our cars? I’d go with dreadful with a side of dreadful. To put it in perspective, I dropped my phone under the seat earlier this week. When I went looking for it I found a handful of melted Skittles, a few pistachios, £3 in change, and newborn-size nappies. I kid you not. Lush dashboard cleaning my ass.
housewives who offer sex for fixing the That search string didn’t finish (it’s character limited) but when you need stuff done in the house you’re usually willing to go a lot further than a bit of how’s your father (she says, as the hallway tiling has begun.)
how to tell a friend they’re not stupid Hi. You’re my friend. You’re not stupid. Want some coffee? A chance to solve pi?
is a mirena coil the sign of a whore? If it is then paint me red and flap my labia. I’d have thought a mirena was a sign of a responsible woman taking her reproduction and hormonal changes in control, but you say “whore”, I say “tomato”.
fucking a stranger i just meeted Wait, was meat involved? Did you mean “meated”, like you had sex with someone just after launching the patties from a Big Mac on them? I hate it when that happens. Cleaning up the special sauce is a bitch.
because at the end of the day One of my favorite expressions. Honestly.
lets cook slush maker crap Yes let’s! I’ve brought my slush maker, did you bring your crap?
upsy daisy Yes. She’s here. And I have to refrain from adding “the little whore” under my breath every time I see her.
waitrose cashmere toilet roll Waitrose is posh, but I had no idea it could be that posh.
things witches can do on saturdays Saturdays are busy times. Not only is it Brillo-pad-to-the-cauldron times, you have to re-stock newt’s eyes, get ready to dance naked under the moonlight, and light a few joss sticks. Knackering, that.
suck your brain envious people I think you mean “Eat my shorts with a a side of Schadenfreude?”
“a satisfying shag” Why hello, you’ve come to the right place.
women pillow fighting in dark socks I am not sure where you’re going with this one, but if you were pillow fighting while wearing dark socks then dear god I hope you weren’t also wearing sandals.
42 No no – I’m 36. But thanks for making me feel old.
toddler behavior “likes to push boundari Nick, get off Mama’s laptop!
does alastair love teresa Is this like the Pythagoras theorum? I love Alastair and I love Teresa (hi Teresa!) so ergo Alastair must love Teresa?
pps – what’s the world needs now is love That it does, so I’ll stop making fun of people’s search terms now.
-S.
PS – If you read here regularly and you came here via a search engine term, can I ask how you got here? Pretty please? With hormones on top? I’m so curious.
No really. I am a dork. I’ve always been so keen on reading that I remember the summer I was 12 there was a reading competition at the local library (which I also volunteered at because I love to alphabetize). In one month you had to read as many pages as possible. Now I’m not only a nerd but I’m a competitive one and I threw myself into the competition with vigour that would shock you. I came in first. To put it in perspective, the boy who came in second read something like 384 pages. I came up with an incredible number, not only in its unusualness, but in the sheer total it was. In that month I read 11,111 pages. Really. I am that much of a geek.
I had a girlie expedition this weekend. Without toddlers. Without make-up. And without feeling in my fingers, but more on that later.
We went to Hay-on-Wye to see the Hay Book Festival. That’s right, you read that right. We went to see an entire festival about books. Books. Books and books and more books.
(Give me a minute to compose myself here.)
Right then. I went to the Hay Festival
And I went with these two lovely ladies, Hairy Farmer Family Wife and Nuts In May (she’s a very happy, cheerful person. She’s also anonymous out here, so I’m symbolizing her happiness below).
It was fantastic. Books are fantastic. Authors who are there with their books are fantastic, if by “fantastic” I mean “writhing with envy that they are published thereby living out my dream”. I was a bit late getting there so missed my first gig, which was to see David Eagleman, but I saw plenty of others. We even ran into a number of non-authors, like Rob Brydon (forever in my mind as Uncle Bryn).
I also literally crossed paths with The Man Who Would Be the Leader of Labour, Ed Miliband, or at least he will be leader if he defeats his somewhat more creepy brother David.
I also bumped into (again, literally) a rather rainy, water-logged Robert Winston. I wanted to weep copiously and hug him fiercely to my bosoms and thank him for his enormous contributions in his pioneering work in IVF. I wanted to pull out my phone and show him the wallpaper on it, which is a photo of a sleeping Nick and Nora. I wanted to tell him I owed him everything but, short of having him autograph a test tube, I thought maybe he was over weeping and hormonal women like me thanking him for his reproductive breakthroughs.
Signing books was Quentin Blake, the man who did the fantastic illustrations for the Roald Dahl books. It was lovely to see him, although strangely I did see a dad who jumped the queue, exclaiming “I’ve been here for an hour! My kids need this!” Brilliant, mate. You’ve not only jumped the queue in front of other kids, but you’ve used your children as collateral in a lesson they will now know as “Gee kids, you can make excuses and act like an outrageous asshole just to get what you want!”
And I got to see an interview with one of my favorite authors, Kazuo Ishiguro, whose book Never Let Me Go haunts me to this day (and I just got my hands on his book The Unconsoled, which I think will further haunt me).
HFF and May saw Kazuo with me, and later the three of us also sat in on an interview with Giles Coren (whose new book I need. Need, I say, need!) Giles Coren is known as the man who wrote the angriest email in Britain, due to an editor removing an “a” before a word. I don’t know about that, but I do know that we were nearly pissing ourselves with laughter. He’s one frenetic, hilarious man.
Then HFF and I saw a performance by Beth Orton, which has to go down as one of the strangest concerts I’ve ever seen. She kept getting lost and saying “Sorry, I’m so fucking unprofessional.” Um…ok….
I had hired us a tent for the night from a company called Tangerine Fields, which supplies tents and air mattresses and important things in my land like flushable toilets.
Our tent was roomy and lovely, with our own little sleeping pods to snooze in. HFF and May got to the site before me, so had chosen their pods. I was pleased with their choices, as my pod was to the left of the tent door and surely an insane non-literate (hence their presence at the festival) psycho would almost certainly not turn left and get me first, right?
She might kill me now, but HFF is a fair example of just how bloody cold it was sleeping out there.
What can I say, it was a bank holiday weekend in rainy Wales, of course it was going to be cold? I hadn’t really realized just how cold it would be, though. I once stayed in the Ice Hotel in the Arctic Circle, northern Sweden. I remember being so cold I honestly thought that the end of the world had come. Inside my polar sleeping bag (which lay on top of reindeer skins inside a molded ice sculpture of a Viking boat) I thought I was undead I was so cold. The side of my mouth was stuck to the side of the bag courtesy of moisture and I had curled up on my side like a prawn during the night, and found I couldn’t then unstretch courtesy of the pocket of freezing air that had pooled in the bottom of my bag. Although I was in no Viking bed, this visit in Wales was no different and at some point in the night I stuffed all my clothes in the bag with me and was attempting not to freeze to death.
I couldn’t stay long the next morning, so once I peeled my frozen form out of my sleeping bag, had some coffee and a breakfast bun with the girls, I did a few things and then hit Ikea in Bristol, as we have a gardening corner to get ready (should the sun ever actually come out, that is.)
I picked up some Stripey Horse books for the twins and I got a few books myself, namely the new one by Shappi Khorsandi and I caved and bought Patrick Ness’sKnife of Never Letting Go, even though it’s listed as a kid’s book (for comparison I am currently reading Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey, which I am loving).
Books. Books, the meaning of it all. Books, which I shall go back and see next year if my able ladies are keen.
The lights are fluorescent and lend an unkind pall over everyone in the room. I am on an uncomfortable folding chair that makes a noise whenever I move, so I endeavour not to. On the other side of the room is a fold-out table, complete with a large silver urn bottomed with a black tap, the kind that would unleash deadly thick black coffee, coffee stronger than Samson, coffee which has percolated and then rested until it’s something that will eat through the lining of the throat before punching the caffeine jolt through your cortex. Beside the battered urn is a tower of styrofoam cups, the thick kind that squeak in your hands.
I get up and walk to the table, my feet hitting the linoleum as I go. There are other people in other chairs as far back as I can see. They too are waiting. They too have debated the table and the coffee.
I survey the table. A flimsy aluminum tray of cookies sits nearby. The cookies are bland and unexciting, as unexciting as the coffee. My hands hate being idle so I arm them with a cup of molten java, add a dash of powdery creamer, and as an afterthought grab a few of the cookies and go to sit back down.
I am intercepted by a woman wearing a blue suit complete with shoulder pads and a pair of winged 1950’s glasses. “Shannon?” she asks.
“Yes?” I reply, juggling my cookies. I hate being caught with cookies. I hate cookies.
“You’re up. Follow me,” she says, and without checking on my reply she turns on her heel, certain that I would follow her. Considering that my only other option is to sit on the crap folding chair, I follow her. We head into an office where she shuts the door, gesturing for me to sit in a chair. It’s a chair identical to the squeaky folding chair that I had just been on, and when I do sit on it the squeak is satisfying in its consistency, if not a little humiliating.
She opens a file and reads. I make thumbnail marks in the thick styrofoam, runners that I try to line up evenly and fail courtesy of a curved thumbnail. I wind up leaving half-crescent marks in a semi-regular pattern, which makes me feel oddly dissatisfied. I debate drinking my coffee but don’t feel brave enough. The cookies remain uneaten in my hand.
“Are you going to do anything with those?” she asks, not looking up.
“What?”
“The cookies. Are you going to eat them?”
“I don’t know,” I reply truthfully. “I don’t think they appeal.”
“Oreos?”
“No, they’re Hydrox, I think, not Oreos. Faux-reos. You know, if you unscrew them and stick them back together the fake icing isn’t as good and they fail.”
“Ah.”
“You should consider Nutter Butters. I miss those.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. We have Digestives.”
“Yeah, but as far as I’m concerned those are only used for cheesecake crusts. Anyway, I don’t know why I took these. I don’t like chocolate or sweets, really.”
“They remind you of home.”
“They do, that.”
“So what’s next, Shannon?” she asks, finally looking up.
“You tell me. I’m just here. I didn’t want to die.”
“No, but you didn’t want to live, either.”
“Yes I did. Well, no, not always. But in the most part, yes. And I definitely had brilliant reasons to live. Why am I here, anyway?”
“This is your assessment.”
“I see. Not an instant qualifier one way or the other then.”
“Most aren’t.”
“That’s all right then.”
She reads a while and I play with the crumbs in my hand, moving them between the creases. She looks up at me. “Are you happy?”
“Right now? I’m neither. I’m waiting. Waiting is surely neither happy nor sad, it merely is.”
“Were you happy?”
“Very.”
“Did you make other people happy?”
“You’d have to ask them. I certainly tried. I certainly loved. If you love, then that must count for something, right? Do you have a rubbish bin?” I ask, looking at the crappy cookies in my hand.
“Sorry, no.”
“Wow. This is hell then.”
“Very funny.”
She looks up and breathes out of her mouth. “Now then. You have two kids.”
“Yes. No, four actually, but two from the perspective I think you’re talking about.”
“What would you do if someone hurt one of your children?”
“I would hunt them down and make them pay.”
“We frown upon that kind of thing here.”
“Fine. I frown upon Sudoku, but it doesn’t stop it from happening.”
“Have you hurt people?”
“Yes and I regret it terribly.”
“Do you regret?”
“Naturally.”
“About what, Shannon?”
“Currently about picking up this coffee and these cookies but in a broader sense most definitely. I wish I’d relaxed more. Stopped and smelled the flowers and that nonsense.”
“Tell me your best attribute.”
“I love. I have loved. I have loved with everything I am. I will love forever.”
“What do you have to offer the world?”
I don’t flinch, even though I feel like that scene with Rachel from Blade Runner. “My heart. My heart and two little people that I gave birth to.”
“Let’s be real, you didn’t give birth, they were C-sectioned out of you. And you didn’t even create them.”
“No, someone with a degree in applied sciences created them. But they are of me. They are me. They are the best parts of me. Always.”
She stares at me. I feel every moment, every fluorescent bulb and every inch of the chair.
“Tell me why we should take you?”
I think. I consider the styrofoam, the hope, the fucking cookies and the love of a set of twins and of a man who makes me mackerel.
“You shouldn’t. I have fucked up again and again throughout my life, always regretting each and every mistake. But you should know that I am more than a cup of crappy coffee. You should know that if you break me in half what’s inside smells like Play Dough and Hello Kitty and baby shampoo. You should know that I learnt from my mistakes and made all new ones, but center in my heart were two little people and two older people and one man, because I want what’s best for them. Always. Forever. Everything else is secondary. I want for them because they are my heart.”
I wait. It’s always about waiting. And when you feel like I do, there’s coffee to keep your words company while you wait.
Newsflash, you might moan, rolling your eyes at the screen. You’ve been well short of healthy for a long time missy.
The truth is some elements are getting better – last week I shook hands and said goodbye to my fabulous German therapist. I wanted to hug her but hugging isn’t something you really broach with a mental health specialist, seeing as how I freak out about any hint of suggestion of sectioning. She declared me mentally well, or as well as I can ever be. In return I printed out a Mental Health certificate from the web, tried to meditate but found myself thinking about latest episodes of Outnumbered instead, and got in touch with my mother. None of those things mean I’m fixed, but then no one is perfect, right? And after 5 years of psychotherapy I figure the bell has gone ding, I’m all done now. And I feel ok about it. I feel good about it. I feel…healthy.
At least mentally.
On the EDS front things aren’t going so well and I’m headed back to the specialist. My joints are degrading at a faster pace than I thought they would do and osteoarthritis is making itself at home. An ankle that I twisted three years ago now aches so badly sometimes that I am close to tears. On a rough day my hips will roll around in their joints and one of my shoulders has started to fail, too. I re-injured my damaged wrist a week ago while trying to dig a hole in the garden and using a trowel – when I struck a stone the vibration was so great that you could tune me to play Ode to Joy on. I was out of commission using the wrist for several days. This is in addition to rapidly decelerating sense of space, and I am flying into walls and flinging body parts against staircases with ruthless abandon. The further blow is that I’m not healing properly – small injuries just won’t go away. I nearly snipped off the top of one of my fingers last week while gardening (see how hazardous Mother Nature is? I’m paving over anything green from now on.) and it’s just not healing closed. I now have a nodule on top of my finger where the cut skin has decided to not heal. I’ve named it Dinky.
You feel betrayed by your body. It’s like being inside a body you can’t control. You have loose joints that get out of hand and no amount of lecturing them will put them back to rights. When you see elderly people creaking along you wonder what their life is like, what their pain feels like, why they need to walk so slowly. And then when you have it at the (relatively) young-ish age of 36 you get a little confused by it – is how you’re feeling what you’re supposed to be feeling when you’re old and grey? Shouldn’t I still be sprightly and gay? I feel…unhealthy.
I saw my lovely specialist about Mirena last week.
“Hi Shannon, how are you?” he asked, shaking my hand.
“Not as well as I was the last time you saw me, you know, when I was anesthetized and just before none of you would let me sleep the sweet sweet sleep that I could have had.”
“Ah. Mirena not great?”
“Let’s just say this, Doc – I love my new bladder. Love it. I can urinate for England, I love the thing. But Mirena and I need to break up.”
“OK – ”
“I’m over it, Doc. Over it. I am still bleeding 8 weeks on, and it’s not like real proper bleeding, it’s ‘Hi, I’m Blob, I’m going to be your subterfuge bleeding for the day’ kind of bleeding. I can wear a tampon but I’m now so rough in there you can file off corns with my interior, so I am resorting to pads which make me want to stab myself and I’ve nicknamed my vagina ‘The Pumice Stone’. That’s not even taking into consideration the sore breasts and sweet mother of chocolate I have mood swings that make Cruella DeVille look like a Care Bear, and not one she just skinned, either.”
“Right, so – ”
“And I have gained a kilo and not only that but I could’ve hurt someone for some chocolate one day last week. Do you know how weird that is? I can’t stand chocolate, Doc. Not a bit. And yet I could’ve subjected entire foreign nations with old Bananarama videos just for a whisper of mocha.”
“So not happy then?”
“No, not happy.”
“Well I reviewed your file and the reason you’re probably still bleeding is because of the fibroids.”
“The – what? What? I have fibroids?”
“Didn’t you know?”
“No.”
“Didn’t I mention it?”
“That one’s pretty much a pre-requisite for me to know something.”
“Oh right. Well I positioned the Mirena above one fibroid and just below another one. You might be bleeding for a long time.”
“Bitchin’!” I replied, proving that apparently when faced with awkward news I start channelling truckers from the 80’s.
“With fibroids you may bleed for a while. Let’s have you come back for a check up in August, if you’re still bleeding we’ll see what we can do.”
Fantastic. So if I’m still bleeding in August then I will have been bleeding for 6 months straight, and a Mirena only lasts for 5 years. So 10% of my Mirena experience could be hell.
The final candle on the cake is the fact that I was looking at the back of my arm a few nights ago and realized that some of my moles have changed shape and have naughty edges. Off to the other specialist now, too. I feel bad for Alastair, sometimes – he fell in love with me but he fell in love with a clunker. I’m like a DeLorean – speedy and impractical in every way. But unlike a DeLorean, I can’t see how to go up from here. If I’m halfway through my life which – let’s be practical – I am, then what’s ahead? Will my joints turn to jelly? Will I have them replaced and be like the bionic woman who sets off every airport metal detector?
And don’t even get me started on the hay fever.
-S.
PS – I am still answering questions here, if you want. I have another week of here (and in September I am sharing a room at the fabulous Butlins in Bognor Regis with this lady for the awards, so roll on gossip sessions).
Summer has finally arrived to the UK. Ok, technically it’s Spring still, but you get my drift. We had a weekend of glorious, incredible weather that topped out at 30 degrees. It was nice while it lasted – it’s down to 12 degrees by Wednesday with a weeked of chilly rain coming. This is of course what was going to happen – it’s a bank holiday weekend this weekend, and I am spending one of those nights camping. So of course the summer was going to disappear.
While we did various DIY, the twins enjoyed being outside. Being as glow-in-the-dark white as they are, they were sublocked to the hilt. They did things together like quietly reading books in deck chairs.
They also spent time reading with us in the shade.
Although the sandbox has been in full swing, their other favorite came out this weekend. The paddling pool was filled up and both babies spent ages in it. It’s funny though – it seems so small now, this paddling pool. Before they both used to fit in it completely and now it really is more like something to dip your feet in.
The little man continues to be a challenge. We’re working on things but it’s not always easy. He’s impatient, angry, and petulant. He’s also a doll when he wants to be. I know that he needs a lot more from us than his sister, and we try to deliver.
I saw some success the other day though. Nick was carrying two toy cakes on a plate, trying to balance them. The plate would wobble and the cakes would fall off. The third time this happened he started to melt down over it, and I got on the floor opposite him.
“Careful, Nicky. Careful. Hold it flat. You can do it,” I urged. “I’m here to help, and you can do it.”
He continued walking with the plate, and as it started to wobble his face changed to fury. I reached out my hands and helped him balance it, and his face relaxed. He came up to me with the plate and looked at me, his face blazing with a smile.
“Happy birthday to you, Mama,” he said, offering me the plate of cakes.
Baby steps. We take baby steps here.
And in return we sometimes reward them with partially hydrogenated reconstituted potato rings, otherwise known as Hula Hoops, and which must be eaten off the fingers.
I know I do some things that people disapprove of (Hula Hoops likely included in that list). But there are days when the sun shines and you’re offered fake cakes on your fake birthday and playing with a bucket in the paddling pool is the absolute best thing in the world, ever. And above all we have two little people that get to be little people. They are children in absolutely every sense, from the annoying to the amazing to the frustrating to the hopeful.
I would do anything for them, and in return I think they make me a better person.
Particularly when they dance while wearing fairy wings.
-S.
PS-since you asked. God. It’s like all you care about is shoes or something.
(Is this where I tell you that I have a fabulous new pair of Carvelas I got for £20 and I have stepped out in those bad boys today?)
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