Blowing Out The Candles

Birthdays make you think don’t they? Beyond the arbitrary marking of time passing, the little traditions we observe of gift giving, messages penned in cards and making a wish as you cut your cake, all lend themselves to kick starting thoughts about the past, changes that have taken place since previous birthdays and aspirations  for where you might be heading in the future. With both my birthday and a milestone birthday for my daughter being celebrated within the space of a week, there have been a lot of thoughts floating around my head this weekend. 

A year on since my ‘fabulous fifty’ celebrations and I find myself writing this 50^th blog piece and thinking of all that has happened since I began blogging last July. What began as an anonymously safe space to log my thoughts like little diary entries of my midlife musings, now has taken its own shape and direction, openly as me for all to see. The content of a great deal of the posts formed the basis of my book and to have written and published a book would have been something that I saw as unobtainable a year ago. With many negatives that I could have dwelt upon, writing has somehow become my lifeline, my positive action and escape. It has often been my nostalgic route too, dredging up glimmering moments from the past to give them a fresh opportunity to shine again.

Such thoughts are quite apt this evening as I think about the significance of the next few days. Tomorrow we are going out for a family celebration of my daughter’s 18^th birthday and then two days later will be joining her in all that she has planned for her special day, as she officially joins the adult population. No longer my little girl in a pink tutu dress, running around the garden. No longer the Rainbow, the Brownie, the Guide, full of ideas and keen to help in the running of activities. Now instead, she is a grown woman with opinions and a drive to complete tasks that she sets for herself.

I find myself welling up as I write this. I have blogged before about the role of parents when your children are adults and how that is often hard to define. Much of who I have become over the last twenty-something years has been inextricably linked to being a mother. Choices I have made within my career to fit around childcare arrangements and the way that I tried to accommodate both home and work demands. Choices I made with my husband through the years about purchases, holidays, moving house and redesigning our current home, to provide what we felt would work best for the good of all of the family within the financial parameters that we had. Often quick to help out my children, to facilitate their hobbies, to provide transport to and from their social engagements, it is easy to become the ‘yes person’ to their requests.

Then, initially unnoticed, they begin to need you less and less as they become more independent. Then the day comes along when it hits you that you are no longer the central figure in their lives, no longer run ragged by the daily to and fro of school, clubs, appointments, work, dinner, bedtime and starting all over again the next morning. Some days this revelation feels like the positive success story that it is – you brought up your children well enough for them to be functioning independently within the world. Some days though it can leave you feeling without a purpose and yearning for those times when you held their hands to cross the road and you stamped your feet to keep warm as you stood in the park, pushing them back and forth on the swings for just a few minutes more.

It is all about adjustments. I have had a lot of adjustments to make at different points throughout my five decades. Some have taken longer than others and some have needed more support than others. I worried about my children the first time I left them with a childminder and on their first day at school. I cried when they went off for their first residential school trip, out of their sight of course, but nevertheless I cried. I panicked that they would not be okay the first time they walked to the shops or went to play with friends in the park on their own. I was both proud and a little sad on their first day at High School, dressed in such a grown-up uniform. I wished I could have had all of the pain of injections and X-rays and illnesses as they came along, so that they would not have to endure it. I hoped all would be okay and their nerves would hold whenever they had exams or tests at school or for their hobbies.

I had no control over any of those things and at the end of the day, I have no control over what will come next for them through their adult lives. So I have to adjust to that and accept the truth of it. Yet, whatever age they are, they will forever be my children and I will always want the best for them and worrying about that just goes with the territory. It is part of the job description of a mother and that’s fine by me. There are 18 candles to blow out on the cake this week and there may well be a few tears to wipe away at the same time, but I shall be proud to do so as we all sing ‘Happy Birthday.’

To Dance with my Father Again

I’m not sure I’m ready to write this as I sit this crisp, cold autumn morning, thinking of the subject matter. This week sees the 6th anniversary of my Dad’s death and I have spent this weekend trawling through old photographs which has been a bitter sweet experience. It became obvious that I don’t have many photos of my Dad and I suppose there were several reasons for this. My early childhood pictures were mainly of myself and my brother, or some included my Mum - I suppose that Dad was behind the camera. Later pictures rarely had him feature as he was always more comfortable in the background of events. That all said, it was therefore a treat to find the few snaps that we did and to glimpse the hidden memories from the past.

An unassuming man, Dad worked hard to make our lives better and mostly left us to follow our own interests, just as he was free to follow his own interest in athletics and walking. When you’re a child you don’t think to ask your parents how they are feeling or what they would like to do. You just spend your time demanding things from your parents without any consideration of their wishes. Yet, looking back, we did spend many a Saturday ‘helping’ Dad at his athletics club, so perhaps he did have time for himself.

For many years Dad liked a beer or two, or maybe more, on a regular basis. In the days when he was still teaching it was acceptable for staff to pop out for a pub lunch and a swift pint on a Friday lunchtime, before returning to lead lessons in the afternoon. The educational landscape has changed dramatically since and there wouldn’t be time now to get to the pub and back, let alone consume anything and let’s leave any moral issues about alcohol consumption by those in positions of authority to one side! Back then though, Friday saw the teachers lunching at the pub and seemingly having a more positive work-life balance than current times, and still supporting their students to achieve good results.

Our Sunday habits involved walking and a pub too. Dad would take us out for a walk, usually to spend time in a park, whilst Mum cooked the Sunday lunch. I remember with fondness sitting outside the pub with a bottle of coke and a packet of crisps that we had added salt to, from a little blue bag. After returning home and eating our roast dinner, Dad would doze off on the sofa - sleeping off the beer and roast potatoes!

The few photos that we did find were mostly linked to athletics and walking. Dad with his stop watch in hand, ready to be official timekeeper at a race meeting at Battersea or Crystal Palace, or a few with him in his full running outfit at the end of a race - clearly not looking his best. The walking pictures were usually from our family holidays on the Isle of Wight. We used to joke that we could only go somewhere exciting if we could walk there first! Often we would walk 5 miles or more to our destination but that was all part of the experience - climbing styles, avoiding nettles and cows in a farmer’s field, trying to negotiate a cliff path that was perilously close to a sheer drop! 

As I grew older I know that I felt closer to Mum, than Dad. Perhaps that’s s girl thing? Girly shopping outings as a teenager replaced by conversations on common ground about married life and then childbirth and raising toddlers. These phases are where I didn’t think to include my Dad more.

All too soon, he had suffered a stroke which brought on dementia and it was too late then to ask him meaningful questions. Adopting the role of carer with him, those were the times when Dad was in the room but spiritually elsewhere. Memories were often discussed with close family or friends at this time, with Dad sat alongside, out of a need to try to include him and in the vague hope that a shared memory would bring him some comfort or respite from his daily anxieties at the time.

There’s a line from the show ‘Blood Brothers’ referring to the character’s mind going dancing. Perhaps by this time, Dad’s mind was dancing, or in his case running a marathon. I wish I could remember a time when we had danced together though and think of the song lyric with pangs of regret. So, make the most of your time: sing, dance, laugh, walk up a hill together and take photos to share - not of stuff, instagram meals and landscapes, but of people who matter, all of them.