It is 4.50 in the morning and I am lying in bed, awake for no explicable reason. At home with no-one but the dog and a querulous cat, I could do anything I like. I could get up and cook eggs or watch tv or dance expressively in the kitchen. Instead, I lie here wondering if I can still get away with bright clothes and trainers and whether I should stop dyeing my hair. I hover over Not Really/ Am I Grown Up Now and Be More Prue.
For various reasons educational and professional, we, the fam unit, will not be at home much over the coming months. I am not ready to call this a permanent state. Uni, sixth form away, work that pulls back towards the city. Life is changing shape. It is uncomfortable. I can feel my heart, swollen against my ribs. Perhaps that is what’s making my red jumpsuit a bit small, a bit less appropriate. Will home still be home if we are not all in it?
Looking up at the ceiling from where I lie, I can see the ghost of a patch of hardened green gunk from where Billy threw his Christmas goo as high as he could aged 7, and it got stuck and never completely came off. I know the exact place where I can find his baby writing on the skirting, declaring his and cousin Samuel’s existence. In the cupboard under the stairs sit May’s boxes of wool from the pom-pom years and her Beavers uniform with all the badges. In the kitchen, the mini disco lights are still clipped onto the shelf, hopeful.
Later today, I will pick the apples for pressing and boil up the plums for jamming. The mince in the fridge still needs turning into bolognese, just for the freezer rather than the plate. I will wonder what to do with the crook-necked squash that they turned into an homage to Yayoi Kusuma. Clothes are strewn over their rooms, old things discarded in readiness to move on, sort of in piles and yet not really. I find (but not before the mice have) under their beds, sticky plates with toast crumbs, empty sweet wrappers, coffee now a shiny veneer on the inside of cups, raggedy old soft toys, stacks of books. Lives in the thick of living. I remember it, suddenly, that whoosh of youth, how you keep moving, in a breath, from one life into the next, a movie montage. Of course they are going. It’s the thing I most want for them. To be out there, hearts forward, thinking, loving, laughing, dancing, doing. Of course I want it. It’s just.
For years, I wondered what you were supposed to do with the dead hours of 6-8pm. The teen boredom to fill with Neighbours and homework morphed into college pints in the pub. Time picked up its pace; drinks after work or was there time to go home and change before the show? Jump-cut again and aha, here come the babies, kids’ tea-bath-stories on repeat. Then driving, driving, late clubs after school, ferrying kids to each other, to versions of their future selves. Boom! Twenty, thirty years pass and cocktail hour is back. The Negroni has a point.
Christmas floats into my head. Why am I thinking about it now? I never plan Christmas, at least not till it’s almost too late. But in the stillness of the house, I understand why. Of course, I already knew it was not the presents or even the food, the good games or the bad crackers. The point of Christmas is that it is something to come home for. They will come back, with dirty washing and weird hours, to leave crisp packets down the back of the sofa and wine bottles under the sink for some mystery fairy to recycle.
So home changes shape from a place to leave to a place to come back to. Less, but back. They are where they should be. We are where we should be. Perhaps I will wear the red jumpsuit at Christmas.
I’ve a lump in my throat reading this. So much of mothering is letting go, right from the moment they latch on. Our love as mothers is tinged with sadness about the letting go. My two left home a long time ago and I still miss their messy, smelly, sticky presence, their needing me, the feel of their hands in mine and their breath on my face in the middle of the night. I also miss that version of me, the young mother, the provider of everything, the anchor to their little bobbing boats. We are never not mothers, but this is, I’m finding,the hardest bit of mothering to inhabit.
What a lovely piece Jo. So much poignancy. I relate to it all. (Keep wearing the jumpsuit)