Bittersweet obsolesence

It’s been an enviable few days, catching up with old friends and family, from one of the bridemaids at my wedding who is ready to pop with her own baby (now born) a decade and a half after mine, to my sister, who’s tiny little one arrived three weeks early, but whose delicate perfection belied that this could ever be a bad thing.

My own children spoiled me rotten on Mother’s Day, perhaps the first time they have truly recognised it, with a homemade cake and cards, as well as Ava’s sweet movie initiative, where she hand printed tickets and turned thier updsatirs playroom into a camp bed cinema for me to have a quiet and much needed Sunday afternoon doze while they watched a film. 

In all, I’m feeling more appreciated, and at peace with the world than I have done for a while. Partly it’s becasue, having seen both my own mum and my step-mum over the past few days, I’ve found that I have more appreciation for them than perhaps I ever have before in my life, having spent the greater part of my adult life feeling a bit short changed for one reason or another. Partly it’s becasue I’ve found a bunch of mums locally who are more up my street – the cool mums from Ava’s class who, it turns out, are fun, intelligent yet up for a laugh, and subject to the same stresses and strains as any mum whose oldest child is six or seven and they have one of two even younger. I can commiserate without, actually, being in the same boat anymore. With hindsight, I know exactly how much work it is.

Today, I have a job interview, and I have the luxury of being relaxed about it, knowing that if this one doesn’t work out, I have a number of other options on the table. I feel ready to get back out there and robust enough to take whatever comes at me on the chin. I am well rested, and that makes all the difference to how you face the world and how it appears to me.

Before then, before I head back out and rejoin the 9-6 masses at their identity carving day jobs, I can reflect on what this time has meant to me – like the poem, the last time, I really and truly believe I have witnessed some ‘lasts’, while many of my friends are witnessing their children’s firsts – the last time Jonah climbs a tree in the park; the last time he hangs out with his primary school friends after school so many now, are moving away to catch secondary schools in the suburbs; if not the last tantrum, then at least they are fewer and further between. He has become reasonable, and that has been no mean feat. His school report at parents’ day yesterday was, academically glowing.

For his social well-being, I’m grateful I have had the time to get the ball rolling on an educational care plan before he faces secondary. All these things take time, and I know, once I get back to work, that will be thin on the ground.

So, I feel we’re all in a better place, since I’ve been off. Ava’s gradual trickiness has been increasing – so in some ways, I’m glad I may have the opportunity to escape being the day to day recipient of her frustrated vitriol. I think the tough times are coming for her, as she grows up and it’s better I can play good cop, and let a paid up childminder take the flack for nagging about her homework, and piano practice and brushing her hair.

In the meantime, I’m spending Thursday living it up at Shoreditch House with Reprobate Kate who’s turning 40. It feels, in some ways like the end of an era that has been, like so much in life, bittersweet, and as hard as it has been joyous. In some ways it feels as if “lasts” are coming for me too, like the opportunity to take long boozy lunches, which has been petering out since my twenties. Life is moving on apace, as the heights of my own children, and the growing numbers of my friends’ children attest, and I need to get a move on myself or risk becoming increasingly obsolete.