This weekend L had a sleepover with two of her best friends and I had forgotten how much I love the trampling of multiple footsteps up and down the stairs, in and out of bedrooms, and the never ending giggles and hoots of laughter. Even a few years ago, we had a houseful of kids and although there were many arguments and lots of shouting and sulking (not all of it from the children!), there were also some really lovely times where the majority of them would join in together with a shared activity. The wii was very good for that, and it had something that appealed to each of them. I can't remember exactly why we stopped using it - I think the remotes went missing or cables were lost, or perhaps it was just because I was so good at ski jumping, they all realised that their efforts were futile, and that they would never beat me. Whatever it was, it's a great loss. And now they are all older and have better things to do on a Saturday night than spend it with parents and siblings.
When I was a young teenager, we didn't have much of a choice of evening entertainment. I could either sit in the living room next to my parents, with the fire on and watch whatever they watched on the tv, or I could freeze to death in my bedroom and listen to records.
Now we have multiple televisions, multiple rooms, radiators in every room, and as a result, I find that most of my evenings I am alone. Mr C prefers to watch the shows I hate, about gold prospecting or buying the contents of old garages, whereas I like a good thriller, a bit of crime, or listening to the radio. As an emergency services veteran, he says that he has seen too many bad things to take pleasure in watching the post watershed dramas that I enjoy. And I would rather eat my own eyes than watch ZZ Top ripping up the American countryside with heavy duty diggers, or smug Australian customs officers crack open yet another box of marigolds. And L prefers the company of her own friends, on the class group chat, or building farms with them on her latest favourite app, Hay Day. I would much rather she was keeping me company, but given the choice at her age, I would also have taken the parent free option. Maybe some nights I just need to take my book into the man cave and sit alongside Mr C as he unwinds with his dreams of finding treasure or lost beasts or a big bag of prohibited substances.
Big changes in my life have shaken up my familiar routine and home life. For many years I was the teacher and leader in a nursery unit attached to a school, in a small market town in Northamptonshire. There I was surrounded by people and voices and noise and laughter and dramas and discoveries happening all around me. My work friends, three and four year olds and their families filling my day and my head, and then returning home to my family who were all tired and hungry and looking to me for solutions and comfort. My days were full, often overflowing, and plate spinning was an essential skill. Most of the time, I was just exhausted.
And I have gone from that to a life where I get up at the same time as I always did, see off L and Mr C as they go to school and work, and then the day is mine. I feel like I am on top of everything and I am no longer a slave to the clock. I can take pleasure in the most mundane of tasks - I can even enjoy cleaning, cooking, folding the washing and then sit down with a coffee every day at 10.30 to listen to Popmaster, because this is now my schedule. I can enjoy Sundays too because I don't have to fit everything into that day and get ready for Monday morning. And although it may sound very dull, it isn't.
I have always wanted to be a stay at home mum, and never had the chance when my children were small. And now I am down to my last one at home, I am so thankful that I finally get to do it. My money is now gone, but it is a small price to pay. I walk up to meet her every day by the fire station, so she gets to walk slowly and gossip with her friends for some of the way, a little walk on her own, and then I get her to myself for 15 minutes or so, when she is bubbling over with news of her day. And when she spots me walking towards her, she always gives me a lovely little low wave, trying to be grown up, but not able to conceal that she is pleased to see me. And as we walk along the litter strewn path, overgrown with trees and bushes, that separates the main road from the factory units behind it, she crooks her little finger into mine, so that we are holding hands but only just. And I am so thankful that I get this little part of her all to myself, particularly as I know from experience, that it will be short lived and she will fly just as the others have all done.
And the other thing that I get that I haven't had for so many years, probably since I was at University in the early 90's, is time to think, and to write. For so many years, my head has been filled with all the things I needed to do that I never got the chance to actually think, and explore my thoughts. I stopped writing a diary regularly, which I had always done. And dull emails replaced the letters I used to write all the time.
When I first started secondary school, in the 1980's telephone calls were expensive and my parents limited my calls, so my friends and I would write long funny letters to each other, and then share them the next day. Or we would write diaries and take them everywhere with us and read out our entries to each other.
And I no longer had the time or the audience for that, and I didn't realise how much I missed it until now. Because the biggest thing that has changed (apart from losing my beautiful funny and all-round smashing elder daughter T to University), is that I have started writing again.
I am so thankful for the opportunity to do the things that I want to do, rather than just the things that I have to. I bloody love writing!
And although my life is still a circus, with all the dramas and highs and lows that most families experience, I know how lucky I am to have what I have. And to take pleasure in the company of the people I love and the things I love doing. And I am grateful for the years of having a full house, full of noisy shrieking kids, and now of having the luxury of time to enjoy those memories.
On the down side - still no word from Nina Stibbe!
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