Category Archives: love

The most valued. 

01 Tuesday Nov 2016

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When I mention to people that I work on the ambulances, they always assume that we are forever racing around on blue lights, sirens blaring and jumping up and down on people’s chests until they miraculously come back to  life. 
They think of us like heros, dressed in green, saving lives and turning around hopeless situations. And yes, sometimes we do do that. And it is exciting, and challenging. Most people however, would probably be surprised that in my experience that is not usually the case. Yes, on occasions, we do ride in,  like knights in fluorescent yellow ambulances and bring people back from the dead. But, as any ambulance crew will tell you, it’s not the norm. Even if we do somehow, manage to restart that heart, get those lungs full of air again, in all likelihood it’s just so that relatives can come say their farewells to someone that’s not a corpse. The prognosis after Cardiac Arrest simply isn’t great in the majority of cases. 
So I can honestly tell you that those are not the times that were the most sad, or when I feel that I/we, the family in green, have made the most difference. When I look back on the times that I’ve honestly felt I’ve done something, it’s been when I’ve not really been treating an illness or injury at all. 
It’s the time when I chatted to a man, struggling to breathe his last few breaths, who was terrified and didn’t know what to expect, and so  I sat and talked to him, held his hand, and told him I’d got him. That I was there. That he wasn’t alone. 
It was the time that my crew mate and I picked up an old lady who, due to a horrific disease soiled herself in the ambulance, and, knowing how mortified she was, pretenddd it hadn’t happened until we had the opportunity to clean her up and make her comfortable again. 
It’s been the times we have sat and listened; signposted an exhausted carer to support services. It’s the times that we listen to the overwhelmed young mum and didn’t judge her for her panic when her baby snored funny. 
It’s the times when we build a level of trust and understanding in minutes that the same person wouldn’t have with another person even after years. 

 
Because sometimes the only treatment available or needed, even the most valued, is compassion, empathy and a listening ear  (maybe even a cup of tea!) and you don’t need to be dressed in green with a great big ambulance in order to do any of that. 

Categorically selfish. 

20 Tuesday Sep 2016

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Anyone who has been in my company for more than 5 minutes this past week (even more so the past 2 days) knows that I’ve been a complete mess. On the verge of tears constantly and bad tempered to boot! 

From nearly the first time that I met my husband I’ve known that he wanted to be a doctor. He is one of those people; it’s not about a career for him. He is driven by a sense of wanting to be able to do his best to help people and despite volunteering and then training as an ambulance technician, he has always wanted to do more. 

Anyway, when we got together and decided to move in together it was important to me that he didn’t lose sight of that dream. He took on me, and my boys, and my ex husband, and all my family and it couldn’t, I wouldn’t let it,  be at the expense of his dream. And so last year we agreed that he would work part time to study and apply to study medicine. 

He (along with approximately 64,000 of the 71,000 other applicants) didn’t get a place in a UK medical school when he applied last year and so it looked like he would apply again for next year. And then we saw an opportunity to study medicine abroad and three weeks ago he applied and was accepted. So on Sunday he flew to Bulgaria and yesterday he registered. He is a medical student!!! Yay! I was kind of on a high all day. Yes I miss him, but he was enrolled. He was doing it. He was beginning to live his dream; I was excited by it, enthused by it. Happy. 

Then he called me to tell me he had rented a flat and got a new phone number and was generally doing all the things that we’d discussed in the previous week that he would do, and all of a sudden I just wanted to cry. Not because he was doing these things, but that he was doing them without me. In a moment I felt every single mile between us; and they felt eternal. 

I got off the phone and I had a little cry and messaged a friend who immediately rang me and I talked it out and with my brother, and with my colleague, until I realised that I was ok again. 

And it’s only been a few days, and I’ve spent longer than this away from him loads of times, but because it’s not a short trip, or a holiday away, the void feels huge. 

However, I can’t agree with people who say I’m brave to do this, to commit to making this work. I adore my husband. He truly makes me happy in a way I didn’t feel possible. 

And so I am doing this for me. I am doing it because I want him to feel as happy and fulfilled with our relationship as I do; and I know that if I stopped him from fulfilling his dreams, he might  never feel that. He might always resent me a little that he gave up his own dreams for me. So I’m not brave or good for supporting him in doing this. I am categorically selfish. I can’t bear to give him up forever, so I will give him up temporarily. And I will do everything to make this work. 


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Under a microscope. 

17 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Body image, Emotions, love

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I’ve got a bikini bridge, a thigh gap, what looks like a fairly flat tummy with no stretch marks and a BMI of 18.6. That’s just in the healthy section for those who don’t know (I had to Google it myself); if I lost just over 1lb I’d be considered underweight. I wear a UK size 8. I’m fairly tall. So according to the popular websites and magazines I have all of the ingredients of “the perfect body.” 

This is me fully clothed the way others see me:   
  
I get told I’m lovely and slim by people I hardly know, as if it’s something I should be proud of, but I’m not. If asked to describe my body I would, like nearly every woman I know immediately reel off a list of things and it would go something like this: 

  • No boobs (despite them being covered in thin white stretch marks!?!)
  • I have bingo wings 
  • My teeth are too long
  • I have big feet and very skinny calves
  • I have saddle bag thighs
  • My nose is crooked 
  • One eye is higher than the other
  • I currently have a huge spot brewing on the side of my face
  • I have ugly hands
  • Did I already mention my saggy boobs…?

In fact if asked to draw a picture of my body (I daren’t attempt a face) it would look something like (excuse my appalling drawing skills) this:  

Hardly the image that the magazines would have you believe you will look and feel if you had all of the attributes that they infer that perfect women should aspire to be.  

I think there are a number of reasons for this, not least being the overly photoshopped perfection that we are constantly bombarded with. But also because when we look at ourselves we don’t see what others see; we concentrate on specific areas, like me with my saddle bag thighs; in my head they are huge, but unless I point them out people don’t really notice them. 

And my knees, well, where do I start, I had never really looked at them until fairly recently when I suddenly noticed that they seemed a bit saggy. I’m perfectly sure I’d never looked at them before and thought how unsaggy they were, but all of a sudden I am mildly obsessed with the fact that they might be making their way down my ultra skinny calves to get into a loving relationship with my ankles. 

No one has ever told me that I have ugly hands, I have just seen lots of nicer hands in my time, I’ve also seen lots of worse hands but I don’t compare myself to the ones who’s hands are worse than mine, I compare to those who s hands are beautiful. No one has ever recoiled from the sight of them, except me. 

In all reality who on earth else is looking at me in that kind of detail? Maybe a few, but I seriously doubt that even my husband, who has seen me naked more times than he can probably care to remember, would have written a list of my body faults anywhere near as l did above. My other faults maybe, but not all those specific areas of my body! 

The problem with the way we look at ourselves is that we almost never see the whole picture. We focus in in tiny detail on specific areas that we don’t like, thereby ignoring all of the other stuff that counters it. Like the fact that my  eyes are a nice colour and shape (or so I’m told) which is probably counterbalancing the fact that they are slightly crooked. 

Personally it is very rare that I would look at someone in that sort of detail. Generally I see them as a whole, and that doesn’t just mean their body part shapes or individual facial features, but to the whole including their personality and also their mood and emotions. I’m much more likely to refer to someone as “brown hair, always smiling” than I am to say “tall, with crooked teeth and saggy elbows, you know the one”. And in my experience that is how others see things too. My eye is drawn to the good parts and my feelings a about someone, and not one small imperfect part of them that I’ve examined in detail. In all honesty, who has the time to examine others as much as we do to ourselves? 

So in future, I’m planning on stopping examining myself under a microscope and instead I will try to view myself as I would anyone else, as a whole. 

      A tiny fraction. 

      07 Thursday Jan 2016

      Posted by in Emotions, Friends, love, Relationships

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      I went to see Justin yesterday. I actually didn’t want to. I was terrified. Silly really, given that I’ve been around dead people before, I know that they can’t harm us. But I have never seen a person 3 weeks after they have died, and certainly not after the circumstances in which Justin died. 

      You see he died of what they assume was a heroin overdose in someone’s flat. That somebody, didn’t call the emergency services, instead they panicked. They set about pretending like it didn’t happen, they cleaned and tidied and they left it 2 days. 48 hours. They did nothing for 2 days. And then they called the police and ambulance. By then it was obviously far too late. In all honesty it probably was by the time they realised that he was dead. 
      Anyway, in my head I couldn’t really get it sorted out. Despite being close to Justin I’d not seen him for months. He lived hundreds of miles away. We’d spoken via text and Facebook and had phone calls but I didn’t see him regularly so I was used to him not actually being there. That made it hard to register that I’d never see him again. That he was gone. Forever. And then the circumstances of his death haunted me. 48 hours. That’s a long time in death. And three weeks had passed since then. I didn’t really build a picture in my head of how he would look, but I imagined that in death he would not be my Justin. The man I have known for nearly 2 decades the man I cared for, who looked after me, who saved me despite not being able to save himself. My mind played nasty tricks on me and it made me scared of someone that I loved. 

      Anyway Justin’s eldest son was the one who made me go. He was insistent that he had to go and see him and he couldn’t be persuaded otherwise. And so after a few phone calls the mortuary said they would let us visit before he got taken to the funeral home (who coincidentally charge an awful lot to go visit your loved ones). We booked a slot and I picked up the boy and his mum and we went together to the hospital and I was nervous and terrified and didn’t really know what to expect. 

      The lady at the hospital was amazing. Caring and loving and sympathetic. She took his son through and his mum and I sat sobbing and holding each other admitting that we didn’t want to do this. And then his son came out and instead of crying he was smiling. He called us in and told us it was ok. And so we all went in together and the minute I saw him I knew i had done the right thing. 

      He looked like he was sleeping. So much so that I almost imagined I could see him breathe. He looked peaceful and calm. Most of all he looked like Justin. And we all laughed at the fact they had clearly taken his dentures out which we’d discussed on the journey there that he looked like an old man without them. And we talked to him and admired the lack of grey in his hair, pondering whether he’d dyed it. We joked about the fact he’d accidentally shaven half an eyebrow off before he’d died and it hasn’t grown back. He told him he should have shaved for our visit and we told him off for leaving us. 

      And it was a whole bunch of things; funny, sad, heartbreaking, comforting, reassuring and cathartic.  None of which is how I expected to feel; but the one thing it wasn’t was scary or distressing. And it helped me to heal. Not a lot, but a tiny fraction. Enough to let me know that in time I will not only feel the acuteness of grief, but the warmth of the light and love he gave to me. That the things we did together and laughed at have not changed in value just because he has gone. And I am glad that I went. 

      Crushed. 

      21 Monday Dec 2015

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      Crushed. I am crushed. 

      The grief comes in waves, great big tsunamis that don’t just knock me over, they throw me off my feet with a staggering ferociousness, ripping chunks out of me. 

      To the outsider perhaps, I have too much grief. Too many tears. But they just cannot understand the connection that we had. The shit that we went through.they don’t know the times that I just had a feeling that he needed me, and I tracked him down, sometimes just to check that he was actually alive. 

      Then today, out of the blue, the ending I half knew was coming but fought at every opportunity materialised . And the finality is almost too much to bear. It’s not fair. How come so many get to live, hateful and cruel and yet you, you who loved so much despite all the reasons not to, weren’t given that chance. 

      And I’m raging at the insanity of a world where evil lives and kindness dies. Where you don’t reap what you sow. The randomness of it all is baffling.

      And it terrifies me, because there was never anything I could do.  And I tried. I honestly did. Me; who’s job it is to help save addicts, albeit not personally, but through my work; I couldn’t even save you. And if I can’t do that knowing how much I cared, I don’t know how I can help others. 

      But I know I need to try. I know that you would want to give anyone the chance to be free of addiction. And if I can’t save you maybe I can help someone else. Maybe it will be their turn even though it was never yours. 

      You told me so many times how proud you were of me, but I want you to know that I am proud of you too; for being you despite of all the pain. For living in the face of despair and continuing to love. 

      Most of all I want you to know that no matter what happened I love you, in our own fucked up way we loved each other despite not being a couple. Despite everything I hope you know I still cared.  

      A new dawn. 

      09 Thursday Jul 2015

      Posted by in kids, Life, love, Mornings, Motherhood, waking

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      It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. A lot has been going on and I just couldn’t seem to decide on which thing to focus on; however this morning it became blatantly obvious. 

      I am one of those people who wakes up and is ready to go. I don’t need to slowly waken and set lots of different alarms. Most mornings I’m awake before my alarm even goes off. And I savour those moment when the kids come in for a cuddle and tell me they love me. This morning the youngest told me that he is most comfortable “when I hold him”, which just about melted my heart. Those kids are awesome. 

      So why is it that nearly every day, or so it feels. I end up just about ready to nail said child/children to the wall!!
      Take this morning for example; lovely cuddles completed, I tell the boys to go get dressed. This shouldn’t be a problem, after all last night I laid their clothes out for them. It should just be a case of putting them on, a feat that, on a good day they can manage in under a minute. So why, today, did it take nearly an hour? An hour interspersed with me alternately sending youngest to the naughty step to get dressed, to me screaming at him to just get dressed, only to have him wander in 5 minutes later, wearing a pair of pants and s single sock, moaning that he can’t open the can of soap he just found in his room?!  WTH were you doing in your room, I ask? Why aren’t you dressed? “Because I want to wash my dirty hands” came the reply. Perfectly reasonable you might think, however, there was nothing dirty on his hands 5 minutes ago and now, when he was supposed to be getting dressed, somehow his whole hands are covered in red pen?! So, swallowing my rage, I squirt some soap into his hands and tell him to be quick about washing them and then, GET DRESSED. 

      10 minutes later, he is back, this time he has two socks and a filthy school T-shirt on, that is most certainly not the nicely cleaned and ironed one is laid out for him the previous evening, and instead looks like he has used it to clean off a homeless guys bare feet. “Why aren’t you wearing the t-shirt I left out for you? Why aren’t you dressed? Where did you find that thing?” I ask astounded. To which the reply is that this was all he could find?!?! I damn near rip the filthy t-shirt off his head and walk into his room and pick up the neat pile of trousers and t-shirt I left sitting, prominently RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS ROOM!!

      I send him back to the naughty step to get dressed. 

      5 minutes later progress appears to have been made; well he now has a clean t-shirt on, however now he has a new gripe! Last night in a clearly weak moment which I have regretted from the moment the words were out of my mouth, I agreed that he could have a packed lunch today. This is a rare treat that he is rarely allowed (I mean at his age they get free school meals, why would I do a packed lunch), so you’d think the child would be grateful, but no, not a chance, even the sandwich filling turned into a battle, him wanting PB&J and me insisting he couldn’t. Anyway, this morning he has decided that he wants to swap the contents of the lunch box I’ve made for him as there’s not enough in it!! Arrgghhh, GET DRESSED!!! And give me that lunch box so I can launch it out of the window! 

      The flip side of this is that as he can see me getting increasingly frustrated with his younger brother, the middle one takes the opportunity to shine; he is dressed with no prompting from me, brushes his teeth at the first request, prepares his packed lunch and sits in the front room all ready to go calling out to his younger brother to stop being naughty. Yay. At least one of my children can behave thinks I, prematurely as it turns out. 

      The next time I come downstairs, miraculously the youngest is now dressed and comes out of the kitchen carrying a bag of chocolate, which I happen to know was in the back of one of the top cupboards, asking if he can have it for breakfast. No. You cannot, and GET YOUR BLOODY SHOES ON!!! I scream as I grab the chocolate and slam it into the bin, “no one is having any chocolate in this house ever again!” A perfectly reasonable response I feel! 

      It is then that the middle one, decides to tell me that when he had climbed the cupboards to reach said chocolate, he “may” have broken the door on the cupboard below! Closer inspection reveals that the cupboard below no longer actually has a door, it is more that a door is leant against the cupboard at a jaunty angle, and that the hinges have ripped out so spectacularly that there is no hope of ever securing it again. 

      At this point there is no stopping the rage which I have been swallowing back nearly all morning. Both boys are dispatched to sit in the front room and behave until I’ve made my coffee and we can go.  Do they think this is good behaviour? Do they think I want to give them nice things and a new house if they can’t look after this one? I spend two further minutes berating them before I go off to make the much needed coffee! 

      We leave the house without further incident (if you don’t count the daily squabble over who gets to sit in the front) and once we are all safely strapped in the car, I look across at them both and my heart melts. They are both grinning at me, and the youngest cheekily pokes his tongue out and tells me he loves me. The middle one leans forward to plant a kiss on my lips and a hug round my neck. They apologise.  Peace is restored. 

      I drop them off and we have a hug and a cuddle, and as I drive away I am determined that tomorrow it will be different. Tomorrow I will be calm. I will not shout, I will be the perfect mum. It won’t happen though, I’ll try, they will try, but they are two mischievous boys and I am an overtired, harassed mum of three. Whilst it may not be ideal, and I’d  prefer we didn’t have the rows in the first place, the fact that we all forgive and forget so freely, that despite everything we all leave with a kiss and a cuddle, feeling loved surely says a lot more about our live than the fact we were at loggerheads 5 minutes before…doesn’t it?! 

      Anyway tomorrow is a new dawn! 

      New beginnings. 

      10 Friday Apr 2015

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      Yesterday  was a big, life changing day. A day that I never really imagined would happen and yet at the same time had become more and more inevitable. Yesterday  my husband and I separated. We had decided to do it 10 days ago, but it was only today that he moved out; at 18:13 on 9th April 2015 I became a single parent of three boisterous boys. 

      I say single parent, even though I know that P will be there for them whenever they (or indeed I) need him to be. Still it’s a place I never imagined that I’d be. 

      Ever since the decision was made on 30th March, my life has been full of firsts. There is the obvious first time that I have ever split up a marriage, and had to tell my children that my and Daddy aren’t going to live together anymore (which, in case you are wondering is heart wrenching) but there are also a lot of other firsts that I hadn’t really ever considered; things like not wearing a wedding ring.  I’ve had a ring on my finger engagement or wedding ring for over 8 years, I suddenly realised that I feel quite naked without it. It’s been off a while now and I still feel like I’ve lost something every time I touch my fingers together. I never realised that I noticed it that much. 

      Last night I had to sort out the internet and tv all on my own for the first time. Given that I’ve spent 10 years deliberately not being able to do that so I’m never asked to, it was a struggle and I’m ashamed to say I gave up and ended up reading instead. 

      Another first is having to ask my husband (ex husband?) if he will look after the children so I can go away on holiday, on my own. 

      Today I am in the house alone. That’s the first time I’ve ever spent a night in my house with no one else in it. No husband no children. It is weird. The house feels empty.

      P and I haven’t had a row in this process. I think we both agreed that our relationship wasn’t where we would both like it to be a long time ago but have been stuck in a quagmire of emotion around what to do about it. We know a couple who are still really good friends despite getting divorced. So much so that they go to the same parties with their new partners and all get along fine. We have agreed that we would like things to be like that. No recriminations, no blame. I’m hoping that we can stick to it. Interestingly since we called a halt to our relationship we have got on better than we have for ages. It seems as friends we get on brilliantly, not that we didn’t before, things had just changed. 

      And so today came another first; I went and did a shop for P, so that he doesn’t starve to death in the next week or so while he gets used to being on his own. I dropped it off at his house and then walked away. It might seem odd to other people but I honestly truly care for him and hope that this is the start of something good for both of us. Life changes. People change. We are different people to who we were a decade ago and that’s no ones fault it’s just the way it is. 

      I don’t know what the future holds for us, but I believe that if you can’t do any good for someone then, like the picture says at least you shouldn’t harm them.  Together we will try to do what is good for our children and also for us as individuals.  Hopefully we won’t hurt each other too much along the way. And I will always love him but maybe it’s time for new beginnings. 

       

      The thin red thread. 

      16 Monday Mar 2015

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      I went to my ex partners wedding last weekend. J invited me months ago and immediately I knew that I would go. It was 600 miles away, no problem, I’d drive, pick up his son on the way, it wasn’t even a consideration really, he invited me, I was totally honoured, of course I was going to go. Nevermind that I’d never met his wife to be (luckily she didn’t mind) nevermind that I hadn’t seen him for months and before that years. 

       J is someone who I’ve known for all of my adult life, we first met when we were in different relationships, both drug users with other drug users. We lived in the same house for a while, him with his partner, me with mine. Then our partners fell out and do we moved on, our paths crossing occasionally. 

      Roll forward a few years and I was in hiding from my new partner, the father of my son, I was living in a refuge and I was desperately unhappy. I was alone, and withdrawing from heroin and I needed some kind of human connection and there, when I was most desperate, I bumped into J, walking down the street. It was as if I was drowning and someone had thrown me a lifeline. I believe that he saved my life. Not in a literal, physical way, but emotionally. I had spent a considerable time in emotional hell and he appeared and he put no pressure on me and he was there when I was alone and lonely and desperate. He was exactly what I needed at that point in my life. 

      Life rolled on, we stayed together, we made bad choices, we took a lot of drugs but throughout this time he was the rock that I hung my life upon. He was gentle and in truth he soothed my soul. He treated and lived my son as his own. We weren’t the best parents but we tried our best in difficult circumstances. 

      I’m sure that during this relationship, my family thought that we were making each other worse. But what they didn’t realise is that J was the one rooting me, stopping me from going over the edge. I like to think I did they same to him. I have to admit that without his undoubtable love my son wouldn’t be the child he is now. 

      After few years life changed for us. J went to prison for a significant time and my life just kind of escalated off the scale of chaoticness. J tried his best from behind the prison walls to get my life back on track, he arranged for people to take me to NA meetings, he wrote to me about change about how life could be different. I never truly believed it. I ended up in prison myself. Somehow, even in there J managed to convince the authorities to let him call me. He spoke to me from his prison to mine, told me that this was an opportunity, that it was the best thing to happen. I didn’t believe a word of it. 

      I got out of prison and moved in with my Dad. I realised that I needed to move forward and I cut J out of my life. Looking back, I was vicious to the one person who had been there for me. At the time it was survival. 

      As I was getting better, J was left alone. His life continued in a spiral of drugs and crazy women. Occasionally I’d bump into him, or actively seek him out to make sure that he was alive, ok. I felt guilty that my life was getting better whilst his stayed the same. 

      So it was fantastic to hear that he had finally managed to extricate himself from our old lifestyle. That he had met an amazing woman and planned to marry her. And most of all that she was sure enough in their relationship to want me to join them in their celebration of their marriage. I’d have understood it if she hadn’t but it meant a lot that she did. She understood the link between us and didn’t feel threatened by it. She had no reason to, life was different now to 14 years ago. 

      There is an old Chinese proverb that  says an invisible red thread connects those destined to meet, despite the time, the place, despite the circumstances. The thread can be tightened or tangled, but can never be broken.  in life we meet up with people, they might be there for a while, they might go and sometimes they may reappear at times when they either need someone or you do. J has always been one of those people in my life. That is why I drove 600 miles to celebrate his wedding.  I will always consider him one of my closest friends, I wish for him and his new wife all the joy in the world. They both deserve it. 

      Next to Godliness.

      17 Tuesday Feb 2015

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      It’s been a long week. I’ve worked some long hours recently and as a result Paul has been taking on most of the household and childcare duties. The problem with that is that we have glaringly different ideas of acceptable levels of tidiness in the home, and in dress codes for the kids. In my world odd socks are not appropriate attire, (unless it’s 6am and the only other option is no socks at all), in Paul’s world this is not only acceptable but also to be encouraged. Equally, my idea of housework is to actually do housework, his is to hide whatever he can and get the kids to hide the rest.

      I’ve got my niece staying with me at the moment, she is two days younger than my eldest and I love her being here. Not only is she company for the eldest, but she is fun and I can pretend I have a daughter without all the hassle of actually having a daughter!! I get the good bits, the cuddles and the girlie chats, without having to 1) give birth, or 2) nag her about the amount of make up that she wears! Anyway, as you can probably guess, life is hectic in my house at the moment!

      As the cleaning fairy appears to have given up and left me to my own pathetic devices, I spent a few hours yesterday evening cleaning and tidying up the downstairs, (I mean honestly, no one sees upstairs so why bother?) it actually looked presentable by the time I left home this morning. It would never have passed an inspection by my nana, but hey, if someone (God forbid) visited unexpectedly I could probably pretend I was yet to tidy up and apologise for the mess!

      Anyway, I’d mopped and swept the floors, tided up and washed up, put the washing on etc. I went off to work safe in the knowledge that the house looked ok (ish). I received a few missed calls from the eldest during the course of the day and when I rung him back he said he’d sorted out whatever he wanted in the first place. He also asked if he and my niece could go out on the bikes. No problem, says I, be home for tea. It was raining, I told them not to make a mess.

      I picked up the younger two and got home around five. I walked into the front room, all was well. It was when I got to the dining room that I started to notice that things weren’t quite as I had left them. The mop and bucket were sitting prominently in the centre of the room, there were a few bits of mud on the floor. The dustpan and brush were on the dining table. Nothing much. A bit annoying but 2 minutes of sorting it out and things would be fine. Then I walked into the kitchen. Ah, the kitchen. It was a sight to behold: first off the bin was open and there were about 50 sheets of kitchen roll covered in some sort of black gunk. There were also the remains of some sort of doughy cooking, which I quickly identified (from the half empty bottle on top of the pile) as burnt pancakes!

      I cast my eyes over to the cooker hob. It was covered in smears from where someone (only eldest and niece were home) had obviously made a mess when cooking and had wiped up rather ineptly. The work tops shared the same coating of smeared food. The draining board contained a huge pile of semi clean pots, pans, glasses, and bowls. It was piled up like a game of jenga, ready to topple at any moment! Actually in the sink was a massive over sized sponge, covered in mud and the wall, cupboard door and floor had splashes and slightly muddy puddles. I felt my hackles rising. I’d cleaned this place. It had looked ok. Why did they do this? I was annoyed.

      And then I realised something. I was getting annoyed but actually I was looking at this all wrong. I was looking at the mess, what I wasn’t seeing was what is was evidence of. Instead I was seeing it as a bad thing, they had ruined all my hard work, but in reality it was evidence of many things and none of them were bad.

      It was evidence they had been cooking, that they had tried to cook something that they had never done before. And they had failed, and continued to try. They had also recognised the mess and had tried to sort it out, because they knew that would make me happy. The smears on the cookers and worktop were evidence that they had attempted to tidy up.

      The muddy puddles and splashes were from where they had tried to wash the mud from their bikes, they had tried to make me happy and in the process had probably made more of a mess, but the intention was good. And I was proud of them. They had also given me evidence that they had been out of the house, having fun and not watching TV or playing XBox.

      The huge pile of jenga style washing up proved that they’d not only tidied up their own mess but they had also tried to tidy up the breakfast things I hadn’t had time to wash up before I left the house.

      Sometimes, people may not always get things right, but the sentiment behind what they do can mean even more than the action itself.

      If cleanliness is next to godliness, those two kids will never be His right hand man, however. In that moment they were Angels to me.

      The clock is ticking.

      03 Wednesday Dec 2014

      Posted by in cold, housework, kids, love, Mornings, Motherhood, waking

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      It is 6:21am. I know this because I have looked at the clock every couple of minutes for the past 3 hours. Sleep, it appears is not for the likes of me. I mean, I don’t have 3 boys to get up, dressed and ready for school, a full day at work, then a social event this evening. I don’t have a college course that I’m 3 weeks behind on, and an exam next week….oh shit. I do. And somehow I need to fit in actually spending time with the kids, Christmas shopping and housework. No sod it, the housework can wait.

      So, I’m lying in bed (it’s now 6:26, in case you are interested), trying to build up the courage to emerge into the freezing bedroom. I’ve been building up to it for some time, however gave only managed to achieve one shoulder and an arm out of the covers in order to type this.

      I can hear the kids are up, well awake, only the eldest is up and off downstairs to the freezing bathroom for a shower. The younger 2 are in their room, not yet arguing (praise the Lord) and so, lying here in my snug warm bed, I feel quite maternal and in need of some hugs. In a minute I will call them and get them to come and cuddle me in my bed. In my head everyday, this is a special time, a time that I will look back on with joy and find memories. Perhaps I will, perhaps I will forget the squabbling of who kisses Mummy first; who gets to lie next to Mummy; who Mummy loves most; perhaps these snuggles are not for me to remember fondly, but for them to remember? Who knows, perhaps the passing of time will fade the memories of cold feet and hands on me in the cuddles, the elbows and the squabbling?

      Perhaps it won’t. Either way I know in my heart that these moments are precious. That soon, like my eldest, they will be too old to want to snuggle me.

      Now roll on those cold hands, I hear footsteps.