Pensieve

"Your blogs are like buses. You don't write one for months" says Hubby, "and then they come in threes."

This is of course true. And like Meredic, it's not because I haven't had anything to write about, because I have, but more perhaps that my mind has been so full of thoughts that I just haven't been able to separate them out and put them into bloggy form. One of these prepossessing thoughts is the fact that time has just gone. It didn't ask permission. It just left me standing and rushed on ahead.

Now you understand, I do fully appreciate that I am not yet old really. But I want to know why the last ten years have travelled past at lightning speed, without much thought in the process to the fact that those years were indeed "travelling past at lightning speed", all of a sudden leaving me here in my mid and a little bit forties - with children starting to go off to university.

I mean, when I last looked, I had five children. Only three and a half years ago for instance, just before the yearly round of birthdays started (and the round lasts a while in our house), I had five children aged 4, 6, 10, 12 and 14. And now, suddenly I have an adult of 18 who has just left for university, a 16 year old in his final year of GCSE's, a fourteen year old starting her GCSE's, a 10 year old due to leave primary school in a few months and an 8 year old also heading speedily towards the top end of primary school.

So, more to the point.... where did the last three and a half years go, and why am I so relatively old all of a sudden?!!!

It was a big shock ED going to university. Parents are very strange creatures. We hope, dream and wish for our children to grow up and be successful, and then all of a sudden, when they do grow up, be successful and go off, you feel completely bereft.

No-one prepares you for that feeling of loss. No-one tells you when you are changing the nappies that one day you will actually look back nostalgically on changing nappies. At the time you are so immersed in the daily drudgery, that you get on, you cope and you survive day to day.

And then it stops.




And it's lonely. And sad. You want it all back.

It's not that you want even more children. You want the same ones, but you want to do it again, more slowly. You want to take your time. You want to savour the moment. You want to not tell them off when they throw flour, ketchup and mayonnaise around a neighbour's kitchen in an attempt to bake you a cake with ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. Or at least, tell them off, but not feel so cross about it.... Or to not feel embarrassed because - just because your neighbour has been put out.

You want to capture all the little moments and put them in a box. and look at them from time to time and relive them. In fact I need a Harry Potter style "pensieve". JK is indeed a woman of fine taste.

And maybe, once or twice I would take the "pensieve" back to a day when ED was 6, ESOS was 4 and Sensible was 2. At the time we were living in Northern Ireland, and I used to teach drama in ED's school, just one morning a week. It took HUGE organisation that one morning....

One the particular day in mind, Hubby was away doing important stuff in England, and I was singlehandedly in charge of the brood. It was a chaotic morning... as it always has been in our house, for as long as I can remember. I finally got all organised and dressed and ready to leave the house at 8.30. Hubby ordinarily at that time was taking the children to school en route to work, leaving me, with Sensible to have a more leisurely start. Except of course on the "ONE DAY A WEEK" when I had to put in army style organisation to get out on time.....

So... when the stress levels had risen on this special "one day" to the levels that they rose to on the work day, ED, quite sensibly thought that it simply must be Mummy's work day. After all, Mummy was taking them to school and Mummy was stressed.

As we were leaving the house she suddenly turned back.

What NOW? I thought.

She came back out with my (quite big and heavy) basket, full of books that I used for teaching.

"Mummy, you've forgotten your basket" she said.

I looked at her, and I wanted to cry. I gave her a hug and explained that I wasn't working that day..."

And I saw her at that moment, not as the very grown up and eldest child, but as a very intelligent, but still very vulnerable and very young little girl. And even at that moment I knew that it was a memory that I wanted to savour forever.

I miss you ED.... but I do want you to grow up and have the best possible adult life imaginable..... So have a ball!