Happy Motho’s Day

Jonah’s spelling can be a bit hit or miss, and his writing looks like a spider’s crawled all over the page with ink on its feet. And he’s never been much of a drawer either, although sometimes I’ll get pages and pages of zeros: “Look Mum. It’s a Googleplex!”
Although recently he’s got into drawing monsters with fangs, and I once had a delightful picture of his bear Boris, complete with blood, fangs and claws – and bats coming out of his head. It was pretty cute, but I do sometimes think my child has a dark aura.

But today, Mother’s Day, they both came running down into our bedroom where we were still sleeping off yesterday’s hangover, giggling with cards they had made. Ava’s had the requisite tissue flowers of nursery school, complete with a spiky drawing of a bald stick person with sticky elongated arms to represent me, with an approximation of her name scrawled with a spiral for an e where she had forgotten where to stop. Jonah’s said ‘Happy Motho’s Day’ (nice use of apostrophe though, so extra points for effort), and an immature drawing that he said was fireworks- but when I opened it up, he’d made a pop up heart coming out the centre of the card. “Thanks for looking after me” it said in passably legible writing, and I had a gentle, motherly weep, because the one thing I can guarantee about him is that he means what he says.

But the other thing about Jonah is that he’s brilliant at maths, ‘off the scale’ as far as his teachers are concerned. Sometimes I think I’d swap his genius for a sunny disposition and a cheery hello when I get home from work, but I’m used to his ways now, and never take it personally, like I did when he was younger. And Ava, all cuddles and sunshine, more than makes up for his taciturn grunts.

He wanted to sleep in my bed last night, something I’ve disallowed since babyhood since he’s boney and fidgety but he asked so sweetly that I told him to go to sleep in the spare room, where I often retire to escape Tom’s snoring and my own 3.00am terrors. I crept in for a cuddle and he barely woke but tucked his arm round me, and then grew restless in a dream so I kissed him and went back to the main room.

But he knew I was there – the blurring of dreams and reality happens so vividly for him – he had night terrors as a toddler where he would walk and move and scream with zombie eyes wide open but asleep, occasionally hitting me, but never waking. He often says he sleeps with his eyes open and seems aware of things happening around him when he appears asleep But he barely acknowledged it this morning staring at the TV as I went upstairs (topsy turvy flat) to make tea, I kissed him and said, “I did come in to you ,” so he knew I hadn’t let him down and he said, “I know, I cuddled you.” And that was it for conversation. But it was enough.