NS December 23rd, 2009

My sister is here visiting and we’ve been busy catching up, going out, preparing for Christmas and just spending time together as a family, hence the silence for the past week. But I wanted to do a quick update for everyone who commented and emailed after my last post, which ended on a pretty miserable note. The Noble Husband went into work the day after I wrote about him losing his contract and was called into a meeting with his boss. It looks like they will be able to keep him on at their offices after Christmas, even though in a different capacity and without overtime. So while his job is secure at the moment, if he can’t squeeze a bit of extra money out of them he will be on a bit less pay then he was before. Still, it’s not as doom and gloom as we originally thought and is a pretty big relief, considering the stark alternative.

Posting will continue to be sporadic and light until after the New Year as not only is my sister here visiting until the 6th and TNH is off work until the 4th, but I’m also working on launching another website, the details of which I will share as soon as it’s all been ironed out and finished up. In the meantime, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and peace and joy this holiday season.

I’d also like to thank you all for reading and commenting on my scribblings in this teeny little corner of the blogosphere;  interacting with you and getting feedback on my writing, not to mention the incredible ‘real life’ support I’ve received, is one of the real bright spots in my life and something I truly cherish. Your readership, along with being listed as a top parenting blog in both the Tots 100 Index and by media communications company Cision in the last few months, has really bolstered my confidence that maybe I really can do this writing malarkey for a living, which is pretty much my lifelong dream. So from the bottom of my newly-Santified heart, I thank you.

Now stop reading this and go be festive and merry! Drink and eat too much, laugh ’til your sides hurt and your pelvic floor feels like it might give, and file away in your heart’s memory this time spent with your loved ones and the looks of contentment and joy on their faces. See you in 2010!

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NS December 16th, 2009

Though I know all about the recession and that unemployment is scarily high (7.9% in the UK and 10% in the US), I’ve been lucky in that no one close to me has lost their job or their house or anything like that. Sure, everyone is downsizing and being careful and cutting back and worrying, but it hadn’t had a personal, possibly profound effect on me until Monday. Because two days ago, while I ran between my bedroom and bathroom in the midst of a violent and unforgiving stomach virus, The Noble Husband (who had the same virus, on the same day) came to inform me that his boss had just called and told him that his role had been terminated at the company he is contracted out to and that after Christmas he is to report back to his employer’s offices where they will “try to find him something but there are no guarantees.”

No guarantees. In January, the worst month of the year for lay-offs, in what is the worst time for jobs in the UK in 13 years. And we are told this while being violently ill and 11 days before Christmas. The timing was impeccable, let me tell you.

I rolled around in bed, writhing in pain from the hot knife of pain in my stomach, while hot tears rolled down my face. I would’ve sobbed if I hadn’t thought it would only make me sick again. I wouln’t have ordered that last set of gifts from Amazon, only hours earlier, if I had known this was going to happen. I wouldn’t have had my hair cut and highlighted, wouldn’t have gone for lunch with my friend on Saturday, wouldn’t have stopped into Costa for all those lattes. Couldawouldashoulda, as they say. What’s done is done.

As I lay in bed that night, drained and exhausted in more ways than one, I began calculating in my head. Even if TNH’s employers were able to keep him on at their offices, he would go back to his base salary and there would be no overtime. Without overtime we only barely (and I mean barely) make it from paycheque to paycheque. The little amount of money I earn each month (a couple hundred quid, at best) pays for our cleaner and childcare, only recently-begun endeavours that were supposed to free up some of my time so I could write, and have some time away from the children to be myself again. It was a luxury, I know, but I felt that after years of living bare bones I deserved it. I deserved a shot at a career too, didn’t I? I deserved a few hours a week without the kids hanging off my legs, whining and crying and with snot crusting onto my trousers, right? And at the time, I really convinced myself that I did. I thought I could write my book proposal, set up a new website to go along with it and kickstart a freelance career, all with the 11 hours a week I had to myself.

Who the hell was I kidding?

Don’t I know that this is the stuff of delusional, pampered houswives with no control over their own financial destinies? Isn’t this exactly the kind of head-in-the-clouds, puffed up thing a writer thinks of herself, especially one with no other discernible way to support herself or her family if crunch time came? I mean, sure, I could go out and get an admin job in some office somewhere, like the one I was in before I left to have my first child and to which I never returned, but it wouldn’t pay the bills. It wouldn’t even come close to paying the bills, let alone food or clothes or anything like that.

Because the reality is that writing this blog doesn’t earn me a single goddamn penny (nor do I want it to) and I’m  sinking my pay into childcare and for someone else to do my cleaning  so I could pursue some half-arsed pipe dream that couldn’t buy us a loaf of bread at the moment.

But while a part of me feels that I was just kidding myself that this good thing could last and that I’d be able to do all I’ve ever aspired to do, another part of me is so incredibly angry and sad. If (and it’s a very likely ‘if’) my husband doesn’t find another job that pays more in the next couple months, we’ll be back to living hand to mouth again and I will have to use every scrap of whatever we’ve got to buy necessities, not niceties. So goodbye childcare, cleaners and coffees…it was nice for the whole two months that it lasted. And I know that sounds so incredibly fucking privileged and middle class and entitled, but god damn it, I had waited for it and worked for it and longed for it and I’m afraid that if I go back to absolutely no time to myself, no time to write, no time just being me, that I may seriously lose the plot. I was only hanging on by a very thin thread as it was — now that thread feels like it’s being wound round my neck and pulled tight.

To make me feel even more like a whiny little princess, when I asked my neighbour this morning if there’s any way I could dry one load of towels in her tumble dryer because we’d all been sick and I had laundry coming out of my ears and my sister arriving tomorrow for her three week stay, she looked at me uneasily and said “Sure, if you can hook it up to your electricity.”

I looked at her, puzzled and said “Sorry, what do you mean?”

She nodded her head towards her husband, who had just gone inside the house, and said “Well he’s not been working in ages, has he? We’re skint. It costs too much money to run the tumble dyer so we stopped using it. Maybe try the launderette up the road?”

I  apologised profusely and told her I hadn’t even thought of the cost of electricity to her and wanted the ground to swallow me whole. I went inside, shut the door and had to fight back tears. Right before Christmas and people can’t pay their electricity bills and others are losing jobs or have been out of jobs for months, like my neighbour. And here I am worrying about having to go back to caring for my children full time and having to scrub my own toilet again and staying up late to write instead of doing it during the day. Boo fuckin’ hoo.

I’ve got my ticket, waiting to see if it will be stamped; waiting to see if we’ll climb aboard the Unemployment Train or merely have to downgrade to Economy Class. Lots of people are already on the train, it will be crowded. People who have lost their homes, their cars, their possessions, their dreams — they’ll all be there. Those of us who haven’t lost anything but stand in limbo with fingers crossed will be there too. But whereas before I didn’t think I’d ever have a reason to ride, I now know that all of us, any of us, could be called aboard at any time.

Welcome to the recession, bitches. We’re in for a bumpy ride.

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NS December 13th, 2009

The Noble Child’s pre-school had its Christmas play on Friday and in the days leading up to it, while I was trying to put together a reindeer costume for her to wear, The Noble Husband and I had some rather interesting discussions about it.  I wanted to put her in a homemade costume, the one recommded by the school (brown shirt, trousers and slippers with an antler headband) but when I mentioned that I remembered the children from last year’s play wearing matching, store-bought outfits, TNH immediately insisted that if all of the other kids who were playing reindeers would be in store-bought costumes, TNC should be too. I sort of laughed it off and thought he must be joking. These are 3 and 4-year olds, after all! Surely people do the bare minimum for their costumes, seeing as there’s not even a guarantee they won’t pull them off, irreperably damage or refuse to wear them on the day.

But alas, he was not joking. Turns out he has strong feelings about kids (in general but especially our own) not standing out from the crowd, especially when it’s something their parents have chosen or done for them. He thinks our job is to make sure she fits in and is as like the other children as possible, especially in these crucial early years when she is learning how to socialise and make friends. The anti-conformity rebel in me reared her head and countered with, “Yeah, but don’t we also want to teach her that buying things that we can easily make or already have is a waste of resources and money, not to mention what it says about doing what everyone else is doing and being overly concerned with others’ opinions?” We went back and forth a few times, with him calling me a “hippie” (not really an insult in my book!) and me bleating “Baa! Baa!” at him.

Did I ever mention that we’re polar opposites on certain issues? It’s a barrel of laughs at times, let me tell you.

After our somewhat heated exchange I thought about it some more and the next day I buckled when I walked past the party supply store and saw a child’s reindeer costume in the window for £10.99. Surely 11 quid is a small price to pay if my daughter is happy and fits in with the other kids, right? I’d hate to be so stubborn and smug in my personal convictions that I would ignore her wishes or make her upset. So I bought it and then, on the morning of her play, we laid the costumes out and asked her which she wanted to wear. She chose the original, homemade outfit, mainly because the store-bought one was “too itchy” and “fell off her head lots.” I was remarkably mature and refrained from gloating (or bleating) in front of TNH. All we both wanted was for her to make her own decision and be happy with it and that’s exactly what she did. And as it turned out, most of the reindeers were in similar outfits and if she’d been in her store-bought costume she’d have stood out more.

The whole thing got me thinking, though, about how to handle situations like this in the future. Right now she’s only 3 and so it’s not really going to crop up that often, but it will, sooner than I think. She starts ‘big school’ in September and it’s only a matter of time before the next opportunity for assimilation. It’s going to be quite a balancing act, helping her to fit in without encouraging her to be a mindless herd-follower, or at least building enough of a foundation of individuality that her confidence in going it alone or against the grain isn’t compromised later in life, after she is free from the intense peer pressure that the school years brings.

What are your thoughts and experiences on how to achieve the right balance?

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NS December 7th, 2009

Subsequent to the last post published here, which was from an anonymous guest blogger and was a continuation of a meme involving writing letters to our 16-year-old selves, I decided that I’d like to do one myself. But when I tried to think of what wisdom I should impart to my teenaged self, I realised that the one I’d like to give the most advice to is my 11-year-old self. So if you’ll excuse this bending of the rules, read on.

___________________________________________________________

Dear A****,

It’s been two years since your younger sister died. Your mother still cries at random intervals and at others closes herself off from everyone around her, retreating into a shell of grief, rage and sorrow, the blackness and depths of which you will hopefully never experience yourself. Though you grieve too, know that her grief is different from yours –  all-encompassing, far-reaching and infinte. You alternate between helplessness and uncertainty — wishing you could do or say something to soothe her burning heart — and self-righteousness and anger, feeling that your childhood is merely being gotten through and survived rather than treasured and observed. Be patient with her. She still loves you. This will make you stonger.

You struggle to know your place in the family now that  you are no longer the middle child but the youngest. Every time you argue with one of your parents you weep afterwards, either with regret that you upset them further or with a bitter indignation that you should be worrying about their feelings instead of your own and tiptoeing around the hole in your family where your sister used to be. Allow yourself to be selfish at times without beating yourself up with guilt; you’ve faced some harsh realities in life already and selflessness isn’t a prerequisite to being a good person, especially when you are a child.

You will think that your older sister is perfect and that everyone wants you to be more like her, with her straight As and ‘nice’ friends and involvement in school activities. You will not do as well in school as she does, mostly out of laziness and partly out of boredom, but a) don’t think you aren’t smart just because you don’t have perfect grades and b) don’t mistake good grades for a goody two-shoes — your older sister is one of the most fun, funniest and most generous people you will ever meet so don’t think you have nothing in common with her or that you’ll never be friends. She will eventually become so dear to your heart and such an invaluable confidante that you couldn’t imagine your life without her.

You are starting to realise, even though it’s not really discussed, that your parents are having money problems. Both of them are working, and will continue to work, part-time jobs on top of their full-time ones in order to give you and and your older sister the things you want and need. You will cry when, next year on your birthday, your dad gives you a card made from a brown paper bag with a picture of a stereo taped to the inside with a note from him promising that after just a few more payments, it will be yours. You will keep that card forever and look at it whenever you think of what it means to sacrifice for love. It will also quell the rampant consumerism that threatens to completely take over many teens and sow the seeds of minimalism and ‘making do’ that you try to live by later in life.

One night later this year, when you’re at a sleepover at one of your close friend’s house, she and two other close friends will confide a deep, dark secret to you. They will ask you for your help and you will know what to do. You will hold them as they cry and understand when they retreat emotionally, because the messenger often gets shot. You will talk to child psychologists and police officers as their abuser goes to trial. You will receive a threatening phone call from him before he begins his prison sentence, which will have you looking over your shoulder for the next ten years.

In your teenage years you will watch two of these friends struggle to understand their sexuality and confuse sex with love and acceptance; the other will go through severe anorexia and body dysmorphia and you will have to unplug her treadmill before she passes out in the midst of an exercise frenzy. This will be your first taste of what sexual violence does to girls and women, and of the severe consequences that last a lifetime. You will get angry. Don’t be afraid of that anger; hold onto it but learn to understand and control it — it will lead you to a passion for social justice and activism for women and, aside from writing, will be your life’s calling.

The writing, the writing, the writing. You have just started writing poetry in the journal your parents gave you for Christmas. It sparks something urgent and indescribable in the depths of your soul and you will spend countless hours in the years ahead with a pen gripped between your fingers and your back hunched over a sheaf of papers and, later, a keyboard. Your classmates, teachers and family will soon start to tell you that you’re good at it and encourage you to write more. This will result in speech awards, poetry and articles published in the school paper and, eventually, eulogies for two of your friends at their funerals. You will dream of writing a book that touches and inspires people, of having such a way with words that people get lost inside them, moved to tears or action or both. You will discover that you want to see the world and change it and will begin planning your global travels and humanitarian work. As it stands now, you won’t have quite made it there on either count but don’t let that deter you. Both are great goals.

Pretty soon you will begin going to parties and drinking and, when you are about 17, experimenting with drugs. You will have an absolute whale of a time and make some great memories, but when someone at a party offers you a powdered white substance on a mirror, turn them down. Walk away and never look back, because you come so close to losing yourself to it. You’ll know it’s time to stop when you do it in the morning before class, pawn your jewellery and cry when you run out. Learn how to have a good time but don’t ever let yourself creep out on that ledge again. Many people aren’t so lucky as to talk themselves down.

If you think life is all doom and gloom — don’t. In 10 years’ time you will be married to a wonderful Englishman and living in London. Yes, THAT London, and it will be as fabulous as you could possibly imagine. Five years after that you will become a mother for the first time and begin a new phase in your life. Two and a half years after your daughter arrives, you will give birth to your son, unmedicated, in your dining room (yes, it will be planned that way!) and it will be the most intense, primal and spiritual thing you have ever experienced. Don’t be afraid or embarrassed of this — it will change you and give you physical and mental strength you didn’t know you had. After you’ve done that you will feel you can do anything.

You will find mothering challenging, exasperating, depressing, thrilling, fulfilling and about five thousand different kinds of wonderful. You will beat yourself up when you err or lose your temper or fail to live up to expectations you have been conditioned to believe must be met, but don’t waste the energy. You will love your children and do the best you can with what you’ve got and, really, that’s all that matters.

Be well. Look after yourself. Have fun. Be a child. Never stop caring about others and never stop using your voice, in your life and in your writing, to try to affect change. You may not think they matter, but they do. Oh, how they do.

Love,

Me (30 years and five-and-a-half months)

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NS December 6th, 2009

The following is a guest post from a blogger whom I greatly admire and genuinely like, even though we’ve never met. She is one of those people whose personality comes through in a very honest and real way, even on the computer screen, and endears pretty much everyone who comes into contact with her. She has inspired many bloggers with her creativity and encouragement to practice and perfect our writing but to not get too caught up in that quest for perfection. This lovely lady has written a letter to her 16-year-old self, following a meme started by notSupermum. The contents of that letter are below. To protect her anonymity, I am not publishing her name or a link to her blog so if you want to comment on this post you can do so here, she will be reading.

________________________________________________________

Hello friend.

You’re not in a good place right now are you? Sixteen and already you know far more about the world than you should do. You are still such a baby although you would hate me for saying that, and I know you don’t feel like one. You feel like no-one understands you, and you’re right, they don’t. That requires you opening up to people and that’s something you’ve forgotten how to do.

I need to get one thing straight to you ok? Not all men are like the one you have just escaped from. Sex is not about being made to do stuff you are too young to understand. Sex is not about violence and not about manipulation. It’s going to be a while before you realise that, but you will. In the meantime you need to get some counselling and fast. What you have gone through in the last three years cannot be erased from your memory by force of will, or by taking your revenge on every guy you sleep with by being manipulative and obsessive in return, or by abstinence which will later feel like the safer option.  You have been battered my sweet girl, physically and emotionally and those scars are going to take a long time to heal – you need some help dealing with this. Oh and get your jaw looked at. Because shit head dislocated it and it will click when you eat for the rest of your life.

I know you feel like you’ve already suffered enough crap to last a life time but you need to prepare yourself honey because you have a bumpy road ahead. So have your fun, try and be a bit kinder to those poor boys that cross your path, but the drinking, the lying to your parents and running off to nightclubs in big cities? Go for it. You’ll never do it again so you might as well get it out your system. Just stay safe ok.

Once things start getting crazy you’re just going to have to hang on for the ride and trust you will get through it – which you will, and you’ll emerge stronger and grateful for the lessons you’ve learned. There’s not a lot you could do to avoid any of it, but to try and save you a little pain at least, here’s what you need to know.

Your parent’s marriage is coming to its end now. That’s ok, I know you’ve been waiting for it for a long time and although the little girl in you is so sad, one day you will look back and see that this was the best thing to ever happen to your family. But your mum’s new ‘friend’? You might as well learn now that she is a hell of a lot more than that, it will be less of a shock when you find out accidently. Don’t worry though, she is lovely and you will make your mum blossom and find peace in a way you never could have imagined. They are soul mates and needed to find each other – you will wish they had done so sooner.

Your dad is going to meet someone new too soon. She will make your life a living hell but you need to know that no matter how he acts your dad loves you and is so proud of you. You will lose him for a while but he will find his way back to you: he has his own lessons to learn and as much as you will wish to spare him of the pain he has to come, it will change him for the better.

Now the really bad bit: pretty soon you’re going to start feeling very poorly. It’ll start with a long hospital stay this year so don’t bother revising for your GCSE’s, you’ll miss the lot. In fact, I’d write off all formal education in your mind for a while yet, you’ll feel less disappointed when you have to let go of all your plans and dreams – you won’t really get better for a long time. At first you will think you’re dying, and then when the tests come back clear you will be scared that you have lost your mind because people don’t believe that you are really ill. You will be horribly afraid and in more pain than you ever thought it was possible for a human being to bear, but you will be ok. Honestly. I know it hurts honey but you need to try and keep moving around – you will get better a lot quicker if you do. Above all know that this is NOT in your head or some terrible punishment from God for your past. You’re just wired up a little differently. You will get better at coping with the pain and the fatigue. One day it will hardly bother you at all and you will get to pick up your life again.

Here’s the good news. In less than two years you are going to meet the man that will change everything and who will carry you through all the bad stuff. Everything else may go a bit tits up but this will be the one thing in your life you can rely on. So do what I know you will do, grab him with both hands and don’t let go. There will be much laughter, and a fairytale wedding, and a baby boy that will take you on a whole new crazy journey but bring you more happiness and more healing to you and to your family than you ever could have hoped for.

One last thing: I know you don’t know what to do with your life, but let me tell you girl you were born to write. So start now. Don’t be scared about failing because you won’t, although you’re going to have to accept that you will write some crap at times. And paint more too – I know you think you’re shit but you’re really, really not, and your insecurity and doubts are a horrible waste of your energy and your talents. You still struggle now, you still struggle with a lot of stuff, and have days where you feel worthless and that you should never write another word, but you’re getting there.

Above all, just be patient with yourself. You are headed for great things, I am sure of it. We may not have got there just yet but hell, we’re still young. There’s no rush.

Love,

you aged 27 and 11/12ths.

P.S. Sleep child, at every given opportunity. Believe me, you might as well make the most of it.

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