EASTER SUNDAY

Happy Easter Sunday. I am home alone. My firstborn son is trekking somewhere in Thailand, haven’t spoken to him for days. My daughter is holed up with my mother miles away – revising. A short reprieve for her was an Easter egg hunt my mother put on for her but she sent me a text saying “Just had an easter egg hunt but Grandma couldn’t remember where she had put some of them because she did it late last night! So took ages ha ha”. My youngest son is with his father and will be back later today.

So, nothing much appears to have changed since my Easter Sunday post five years ago – the third post I ever did. I was finding having no children at home unbelievably hard and settling down to write a blog post gave me the distraction I needed not to roam the house wailing. I had just moved out of our family home then. Sold the big house and was living in rented accommodation whilst I tried to find something suitable for the four of us. My cat was about to get run over and live in a cage in the sitting room. My children were a little all over the place. I was even more so.

Since then I have written 2,000 more posts and found a house. Looked after my children as best I can and tried to forge a new life for myself. Made some very bad decisions and some very good ones. But. I am still sitting in my dressing gown and Uggs. It is raining. I haven’t started eating chocolate yet but might do at any moment and of course the old skin I felt I had then is even older now:-

“It is a beautiful day. I appear to have missed most of it. I think I must have sleeping sickness – presumably I am still catching up from all those years of broken sleep that are associated with motherhood. All I ever dreamt of was getting a full night’s sleep, so why, now that I can, do I wake up at 6.30am? I then have to force myself to go back to sleep, but not in a remotely satisfactory way. When I finally get up I feel dreadful. My back hurts, my head has a marginally dull ache and worst of all I look 10 years older. It’s as if my skin has taken on chameleon-like qualities overnight and has tried very hard to morph into an un-ironed sheet. A pattern of crumpled lines emerge that take most of the day to disappear. I am definitely going to have to book in for that facelift now I haven’t got a husband anymore. No chance of finding new man unless I sort out my crumpled face. Or, I suppose I could look for a man with an equally if not more crumpled face – otherwise known as a GOB (Grateful Old Bloke).

I also feel mildly sick. I have eaten too much chocolate. I am sitting in the garden wearing my dressing gown and Ugg boots (or “Ugh” boots as they should be known in my case). I look like a garden gnome only even more unattractive. I have talked to the children and they all seem to be happy. They are about to do an Easter egg hunt without me. My six-year-old apparently didn’t want to share his eggs with his grandmother “in case he catches her germs and get’s old”.

Once the children have actually gone, it does get easier. As with most things it is the thought that is generally worse than the reality. I was anticipating deafening silence and empty rooms, but instead there is quiet calm. There is nothing I can do about it anyway, so I might as well enjoy it. Sitting in the garden, looking appalling and smoking is not good. They would be horrified. But I am allowed to behave like a teenager if I want to. I am lost, remember”.

————–

So I was lost.

Am I now found?

Nope. I don’t think so.

But. What’s wrong with being “lost”? I used to believe that being “found” was all to do with being with someone. Finding a new partner. Meeting the “one”. A soulmate. How to meet somebody became top of my “to do” list. But life, I have discovered, doesn’t really work like that. You’ve got to find a way to live your own life first. Of course for many, everything is better as a couple – but that’s not the only way to live – to get huge satisfaction out of what else is going on. Anyway, it’s unbelievably difficult to find somebody to fit into your life with your children – swinging from girlfriend to mother is not an easy task and it takes a rare beast to get that right for everyone involved.

Time is moving on. Some friends worry for me that I should be remarried by now. Sorted. In a new life. That I should be concerned that I’m going to end up on my own when my children have left home. Sometimes I think – what could be better – I can go where I want, be the person I want to be – as Dr Seuss says:-

“You have brains in your head,
You have feet in your shoes
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go”.

The WORST place of all to be, he says is “The Waiting place…”

…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a place to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

“A man grows most tired whilst standing still”
Chinese proverb

So. I try not to wait for something to happen. I try to just keep going and am not so scared of trying out new things. I know everyone says that time is a healer – if you have children it inevitably has to get easier because they do get older and become more independent. Perhaps it’s been easier for me to deal with my 19 year old’s gap year because I’ve had to get used to him being away from an early age. Other friends I know whose sons are with mine are finding it very hard – missing them terribly. Not that I’m not missing him you understand – just that I have learnt how to let go.

“Letting go” seems to be a little bit of a crucial key here – for me, anyway. Perhaps I was a little bit of a control freak about the kids and life and friends and needed to be right in the middle of it all at all times. Maybe now I’ve found a teeny weeny space within myself that allows me to stand firm and let the other stuff sway around you more. I don’t know. I have no answers. I’m no clearer five years down the line as to what life is all about. Just, that, perhaps, living for the moment is the best place to be. I can’t change the past and who knows what the future holds – so I am trying to simply enjoy life and all it’s lovely mess.

“Happy parents, happy children” is my motto of the month.

The think that perhaps I understand myself better now. I am loving having the time today to do all that I want to. Write. Read the paper. Walk with some girlfriends and THEN this evening my house will be filled with noise and people – 11 for dinner. YAY.

I’ve made all the eggs – not a very good photo but can you see the tiny weeny one I’ve made for my 4 month old niece at the front?