February 2015 – Page 3 – M(other) Stories

Doubt

7.00am

The light from the full moon shone directly in through the skylight. It is freezing outside. Its after 3 am in the early hours and I am awake, giving Naoise a shower as he has had an accident in his sleep. I am completely shattered. After drying him with a towel, I fetch growing pain medicine for his knees and a cup of milk. He drinks a little of the milk and I finish the rest of it off. We cuddle back to sleep.

The walk out yesterday was just amazing. Clear blue skies. Shadows. Glistening snow ice. Icicles hanging from railway arches and waterfalls. Frozen mud. Warm sun. Birds chattering. Blissful light on my face.Later at home, I play the video of me walking in the snow. The sound of the snow crunching beneath my feet. It sounds so fantastic inside, inside my kitchen. It is comforting to hear the pace of my feet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjwD2ta9jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiSpGqB3yWQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_4mIFG0q88

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agfpJsxiCWw

While writing this I am playing my friend Tamaki Hagishi’s music, she is a wonderful violin player . It is the piece of music that she recommended to me.It has the influence from various religious and folk traditions to evoke eternity and mysticism. It is very good music and I am sure you will like this one! It is so so beautiful, and peaceful. Perfect for a mother with insomnia. Riho Esko Maimets – Sanctus, by the Villiers String Quartet.

I feel absolutely shattered, my mind feels numb and sore. I recall this feeling of sleep deprivation from the days of staying awake through the night breastfeeding and changing nappies.

I wrote some notes to myself, as I wasn’t sure if I would even have the energy to write this today. I cannot think straight at all. I will elaborate where I can if the words fall into nonsense.

2.33am-2.56 am

Words in the night. Multiple voices. Why am I doing this ? The time in-between. What has walking alone got to do with mothering ? An absence. Need of a break. The wild. The wildernes. Vacancy. Could’nt be outside when stuck inside looking after a child ?

Torturous insomnia now caused by my own creativity.

The breastfeeding film. How to make it ? How to incorporate comments. Different voices. I need to collect all the images of the women breastfeeding their children. Ask Krishna and Jo for some documentary film making advice. Write a script. Be honest. Selective.

The silence of the night. Naoise breathing. Syd talking in his sleep. The silence of the night.

Disappointment in not loosing weight, only three hundred grams down in two weeks. Write it all down. Empty the thoughts in your head, so I can sleep. Need to rest.

What do I remember about breast-feeding. ? Amnesia. Breath. Battery running low on phone. Headache.Do I need images of women breastfeeding ? Could I just use the text ? Can I read their comments or do I need their voices, or multiple, different voices ?

Eyes burning. Hungry. Full moon. Full moon, I had forgotten to look at it. A chaos of thoughts. Hard to order. Naoise grinding his teeth. Syd moving in his bed.

What has the walking got to do with mothering ? I have no pram. Mother load. He is at school. I should be at work, instead I am walking the hills, obsessing about my body and wanting to loose weight. Trying to get stronger. Sometimes there is nothing to understand. You do not need to explain art. Better just to do it.

Head throbbing. Too many thoughts. No clarity. No focus.

Doubting.

I do not carry the weight of a child all day long. A piggy back carry or shoulder carry too and from school. Just a little help now and then. I hear Patrick moving in his bed. Creaking beds. I am thirsty. No point in getting up, I need sleep. Light so light from the moon. Rest. No baby at my breast. No nappy to change. No Abney and Teal, or early afternoon hugs on the sofa. No playgroups. Just before and after school.

Redundant.

I am thinking of me being weighed. The prams in the corridor at the health centre. The door that opens up to the baby clinic, where babies are being weighed. Babies are being weighed to see how much they have gained, how much they have grown. The door that opens up to see the healthy weight advisor is adjacent to the door of the baby clinic. Me, a mother, trying to loose weight, having her loss recorded. Loss in weight.

I hated having to take off all of Naoise clothes to get him weighed, but recording his weight in the red book provided some satisfaction, some clear measurement of the success of my mothering. Not the undressing. Not the playing with toys on a carpeted floor, that was boring and monotonous. I do not miss that. I remember staring into space, trying to keep awake, the pram as zimmer frame to keep me up.

Baby weight = hope for gain

Mothers weight = hope for loss

It is now 3.15 am and I am getting Naoise into the shower. Maybe I am not redundant after all. I still get up in the night to care for my child.

…oh the joy and feeling judged

6.25am

Throwing stones onto an icy canal is tremendous fun. The stone bounces and skids and makes a very satisfying elastic sound. Naoise throws another and another and another stone.He is also fascinated with the ice in the puddles, this ice is thicker than yesterdays and it will not crack or break however hard or high he jumps onto it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agfpJsxiCWw

We are perpetually late. It takes me a while to wake him, even at the breakfast table fully dressed he is still asleep. By the time you are late, you might as well be really late. The canal was so great for playing that I gave up hurrying him along. The school timetable can wait.

The teaching assistants have a guardsman, golden greeter approach to school. Each morning Naoise class assistant stands with her back to the entrance of the school door. She never greets me in the eye or with her words, just Naoise, I might as well not be there, but I am, he holds my hand and I am here. Her eyes meet his Late Naoise she retorts . I feel her eyes of judgement, and her face screw up upon mine as I reply the canal ice was just so lovely to play with, he was intrigued, and fascinated by the ice.

We are the last to arrive in the classroom, but its ok, it is, its ok. Perhaps I am paranoid, but this woman, this teaching assistant makes me feel so judged, looked down upon. School is a place of both freedom and confinement. School is a place where phonetics rule and the playground calls P-L-A-Y.

It was easy to walk out on the paths and the fields on the tops as all the mud was frozen solid. There is less snow, more ice, reeds and branches, and fish trying to breath under ice. Footprints frozen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy3cri4ye2U

In the night I woke. I could not settle my head back to sleep. I posted an article from the guardian on Facebook so that I can return to read it closely come the morning. Its an article about the ten best books written about mother and daughter relationships. It is always surprisingly comforting to find other friends awake in the middle of the night. My friend sends me a message, her father has died, her mother is very poorly. I tell her why I am awake, I send my condolences and wish her to sleep and some rest. It must be my age, being in my mid forties, more and more friends are being orphaned, they all tell the same shocking story, nothing prepared me for this, I feel alone, I feel orphaned. I feel their sadness. It makes me strive to appreciate my parents more.

I speak to mum on the phone, I am distant and distracted. She tells me that the cold is lingering, that she thinks she has caught Syd’s cold. Mum’s trips to Scotland seem constantly sabotaged, if not by wind wreaking havoc than by illness. It was mum’s birthday last week, dads at the end of this. They are both in their seventies. I treasure them so. I am distant and distracted because I have found the CD containing all the images from The Five Naked Ladies exhibition. I have been asked to find some good quality images for a novelist who wants to include a picture within her book. I am staring at the light permeating through each image, and it’s taking me back to the day that the drawings were made. I keep hearing my friends voice .She has been gone now for three years or maybe four, Ive lost count. I keep hearing the conversations that we had that day, just snippets, and recalling the basket of pastries and the coffee, lots of it, and the cold of the gallery.

I watched a tacky wildlife programme with Naoise called Animals in Love. I was struck by one story about a man who helped to calm a renegade tribe of elephants who had become violent towards humans. They had become violent after a massacre of members of the tribe by hunters. They were suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome. The kindly man rehabilitated the tribe over a number of months. He became very close to them. He won their trust and love.

The man lived on the same reserve as the elephants, after they were re-released into the wild, they would walk to visit him at his home. They would stand and wait for him to come out into his garden and greet them. They noticed if he was ever away. One day he tagically died and on this day by chance all the elephants turned up from out of the savanna to greet their friend. But he had gone. Now every year, on the anniversary of his death, they make a pilgrimage to their friends home, stand and wait in his garden to be greeted. It is as if they are paying their respects. They are grieving. I was aware that elephants grieve for other elephants. When they come across the bones of another elephant they pick up the bones with their trunks and sniff and caress each with loving knowingness. I was moved to tears by the love of this tribe of elephants for one man who had won their trust.

I wait in the playground to collect Naoise. I talk to a grannie friend of mine, she is a wise woman. I tell her about being late this morning, how guilty the teaching assistant made me feel. She empathises with me, she understands the importance of my lateness, my laissez-faire attitude to life. The preciousness of a moment, being in the moment. There are sometimes few joys in parenthood. Skimming stones across the surface of the canal on the way to school was a magic moment and it was worth being late for.

The biannual trip to the dentist was very stressful. Naoise was distressed and kept throwing himself at the door, desperate to leave NOW. I’m going, I’m going to walk out the door, he proudly states. I had just stopped the children from killing each other by placing each on seats at far ends of the waiting room, and now I am battling with Naoise to take his hands off the handle of the door. I ask, I sweetly request, I demand. Still he clings on with stubbornness. I ask him if he is scared, and does he want to talk about it. All he wants is to get out !

He hated the fluoride paste that the dentist coated his teeth with on his last visit. He clearly remembers it. He cried and cried after the last visit, he was so irritated with the coating. Perhaps he was allergic to it, who knows. The dental receptionist is staring at me. Glaring in disapproval, as is the oversight pink faced man. Syd tells me to calm down mum. His demands for calmness do the exact opposite, and I snap at him. I am completely stressed out, Naoise is being very challenging. I accidentally scratch his fingers as I physically remove each from the grip of the handle. He is now howling with pain. Howling, and the receptionist is scowling and grimacing at me. Perhaps I am paranoid, but again I feel judged. I feel like telling the receptionist and the man to Fuck Off, instead I stare back at them.

I collect Patrick from work, its a very cold day, we call by the supermarket to buy tea on the way home. Naoise helps me carry the basket around the store. He is being good. He is being very good, but this doesn’t last long. He has another tantrum in the car and gets out of his carseat, and refuses to get back in, he is mortified, enraged, after I gave Syd have one of his chicken samosas. He is now having a standoff with every member of his family. He sits on the floor of the car and refuses to get back into his seat unless I buy him another samosa to replace the one that Syd has eaten.

I pick him off the floor and start walking home with him on my shoulders. I cannot stand being trapped by his behaviour in the car any longer. Half way home, Patrick pulls over to offer us a lift, and he agrees to sit back in the car. It is icy cold. I now feel like running away. Running far away. I cannot stand being a mum sometimes.

The evening has started badly and continues so. Everyone is stressed and tired and fed up.

Motherhood is one exhausting negotiation. Ironing out disagreements. Preventing frustration boiling over into anger. Calming testosterone, cooking dinner, cleaning, cuddling, running baths. Trying not to shout at a teenagers bad attitude, failing and shouting shut up. Then apologising for my mean behaviour. Progressing through a routine of things that have to be done for the next day. The evening is a tumbling domino of disappointment. There is little joy.

I find a letter in Syd’s bag. I often have to fish around in its depths to find school correspondence, it is rarely offered up. A boy in year ten from his school has tragically died overnight. I speak to Syd, he knew him a little, he was in the year above him at primary school, I check he is ok. He says he is. I am shocked. I am shocked, I think about his parents and family, his friends. I think about the suddenness of his death, the closeness in age to Syd. Far too young to die, far too young.

I give up on the day. I feel brittle and broken and exhausted. I tuck Syd in bed, with an extra duvet and blanket, he is listening to the football transfer news on his radio. I apologise for my neglecting him, and for shouting, he says his sorry’s too. I take a bunch of books and read to Naoise in bed, and fall early to sleep.

Jumping on ice

6.50am

Jumping on the thin ice with the children. The sound of the crack, watching it grow across the crisp of the puddle, then jumping again.

The snow has almost but all gone, but in places, on tops of hills and sides of slopes it clings still. The top of the snow is all icy, as boot meets its surface there is a satisfying crunch through the top layer. A pocket of air exists between the lay of the snow and the top of the grass, for mice and vowel to scurry.

Bleakness pervades the landscape around the reservoir. A few sheep, no birds. A large regimental stone wall holding it all in and falling at a forty five degree angle away from the top path. Giant sized stone steps lead away from the corner of the reservoir to take away excess water. A stone pier with a decorative turret reaches out into its depths. Patrick makes up scary stories about ogres being imprisoned within the turret.

I eat a banana and decide against throwing its skin on the ground. Banana skins take forever to deteriorate. I stuff it in my pocket instead.

One of the children chases the two lone sheep, fun but cruel, he is duly reprimanded.

Naoise is being stubborn and is standing two hundred yards away awaiting a parent to collect him. Patrick eventually concedes to collect the cold looking child. It was this behaviour that caused an argument last Sunday. I think that he genuinely gets tired and must feel the sharp of the cold as he is so slender and tiny. Naoise has beautiful fine bones, he is an elfen child. Robust and strong but light as the wind. Wiry. Wiry like his sheep farming grandfather from Tyrone.

Patrick shows me a film that he made. A long shot of him walking to collect Naoise. So simple. Love is in the fetching, of the turning around and going back. Of excepting the stubbornness and the carrying.

Patrick told me that the dear child was crying I was cold, I was cold, when he reached him. I am envious of the film he has made, but he agrees that I can post it here as long as it is acknowledged as his.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu8ZZBmd0v8

It is always so cold on the tops.

The route back through the ancient woods follows a steep path with hazardous drops to one side. The sort of steepness that makes you feel a little queasy if you look down. Trees hug and cling to the sides, grass grows and in the summer bracken. The children run, they are as agile as mountain goats. There are mine shafts blocked up by holed metal to peer into. Behind one shaft you can seed that a canary yellow safety hat and jacket have been left.

Trees have been blown down, root systems with large clumps of soil hug the sky and trunks are perpendicular with the downwards of the steep slopes.

The sky is so so blue. The blue of a spring on its way. All of us stop on the bench and sit in the sun, feeling the heat on our skin. It is blue and it is warm. The sun, the sun. I feel so happy at this moment.

One of the boys sits, and collects clumps of the long dead grass. He wraps the grass around and around on itself. He looks to be creating some sort of figure from the clump. He is totally absorbed in the process. The sun shines down. He gives the art to me. I hold the woven clump in my hand. I promise to take it to my studio and keep it there.

In the morning Naoise helped me make an apple crumble. He had been requesting one all week long. This crumble will be our contribution to the Sunday meal that my kind friend is treating us too. Its just so lovely to be cooked for, cooking for a family gets so boring, it can feel like just another chore.

Naoise tries to slice the apples with a blunt kitchen knife, I entrust him with the sharp cooking knife. He is slightly suspicious about me allowing him this responsibility. He wonders what daddy will think. Daddy will think that it is dangerous. I reassure him that its really ok, that its safer to use a sharp knife than a blunt knife and that he is very good with tools, that I think he will be fine. Naoise cuts each piece of apple with care and precision.

He wears the owl cooking apron that I once wore at the same age as him. On the front an owl with open eyes, on the back the same owl except he is winking.

The oven buzzer sounds beep beep beep beep …..beep beep beep beep

White

7:05 am

Everything was white,

I had a miscarriage,

Everything was white,

I had a miscarriage in my dream,

Everything was white,

But although it was only a dream it felt very real,

Everything was white,

I could feel the physical pain of the miscarriage,

Everything was white,

In some cultures white is the colour of death and mourning

Driving out of Hebden Bridge on the steep of the Haworth Road,

Woods give way to the high moorland,

where you can see the whole of the Calder Valley fall below,

Deep snow, lying in clumps between the bog grass, the sun shinning, magnifying its white beauty,

I spot a bird of prey hunting, its easy to catch your dinner in the snow,

The bird swoops and glides,

My finger taps the window at the back of the car to indicate its position to Naoise,

Where, where…….there, there, he fails to find it

We pass the cat rescue place, where both my cats were adopted,

They were sisters, and we named them Frida and Zelda,

Frida was cheeky and playful slightly smaller than her sister

Zelda was cool, a hunter, an exceptionally attractive supermodel cat with large killing paws and claws,

I have been deliberating whether to get a new cat,

But it needs to be very young, preferably a kitten,

Its my replacement baby,

I want to mother a kitten,

We search the charity shops of Skipton for unknown treasures,

Naoise finds a stash of old film cameras and spends a long time sat on the carpet of the shop exploring their functionality,

We eventually separate him from the cameras and look elsewhere,

I am trying to find a tea pot, but the search has eluded me for over a year,

In the department store, after spraying perfume on wrists and exploring seventy percent blue cross clothes items,

We look at white polite teapots,

I refuse to buy these blank canvases of domestic boredom,

A teapot has to at least command the attention of a table with a pattern, an emblem, a colour, something,

The sunset on the way home is glorious, its getting lighter in the evenings, not dark till five now,

The moon is almost full in the sky,

Patrick makes mushroom risotto, Naoise refuses to eat a thing, overtired perhaps,

We watch a film, slump on the sofa, drink red wine.

The oven buzzer sounds, thirty minutes have past……