Being Mum

My Boy and Whippet

It's been twelve years - twelve years today to be exact.
The ultimate Mother's day.
I remember vividly what I was doing at this exact time all those years ago.
Feeling completely and utterly lost.
I had had a long birth - three days and after an emergency cesarean and all the excitement of  finally holding my baby boy, introducing him to the rest of the family, I was suddenly left alone.
I stared out into the far night from the third floor hospital window searching down onto the car park, trying to make out where my husband and Mum were, desperately wanting them come back and not leave me alone in this place. I wanted to go home now.
My brain was not functioning and thinking about what had happened was far beyond me.
My baby boy was not even in the room to remind me of my very changed circumstances; he was in the nursery under the watchful gaze of the midwives so that I could get some rest.
But I couldn't rest.
And I couldn't stop the tears from falling either.
I was just too exhausted.
I wanted my mum.
It didn't occur to me at all that I was a mum as well.
I went from being me to being more than just me, but my brain took a while to adjust.
(It still does from time to time.)
It was sometime early in the morning the following day (though to be honest all the days and nights had melded together and I had no idea 'when' anything was) that The Boy was wheeled into me for a feed. I can't say my heart leapt.
I was mildly curious.
I think I was also disappointed.
I expected there to be this sudden rush of love at the mere sight of him and this magical transference of knowledge allowing me to know what it was I was expected to be doing - no such luck in either case.
I think I panicked a bit about that, then dismissed this mother love thing that everyone had ranted on about as just tosh. I had felt no rushing feeling of love when I saw him. I was just devoid of anything.
However, that is not something you should admit to, so I didn't. I made what I thought were all the right noises. I did as I was told. I smiled and held him as directed. But I felt untouched by his presence.
However, my curiosity grew in spite of myself, my tentativeness with him lessened as he lay in my arms heavy with sleep.
I relaxed.
He was small and wrinkly and really rather skinny and long and sort of squashed looking. His skin was loose but so soft. His shock of dark hair surprising and he smelled good.
He was so real.
I lay that night in my bed with him just resting beside me. In utter silence; and I just watched. I didn't talk to him. I just lay there curiously assessing him.
You see there is this thing called mother love, it is very real but it can as easily take you unawares as much as it rushes straight at you.
For me it was all unawares
The slow burn of passion had started, I just didn't know it.
It grew on me.
Entwined itself about my heart.
Indelibly stained my whole life.
I was a mum and nothing in the whole of my life would ever be the same again...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BOY!

Rats on stilts....

There is a history of badly behaved dogs in my family, it's a fact I am not desperately proud of but a fact it is. Our dogs are not endearing either, I mean whippets aren't everyone's cup of tea are they? To us they are perfect, to others - well most say they are horribly skinny, shivery dogs but I think the best descrioption of them was something I overheard  in Wales such a long time ago now...

It was on a beach picnic in the mid 1970s there was me, Mum, my sister and two of the most badly behaved dogs ever. In their defence we were there first on the beach and it was quite empty to begin with but as the morning wore on and the sun became hotter and hotter, more and more families came to join us.

Now our two dogs Robin and Jay were northern whippets and like all whippets enjoyed sloping off to hunt whenever Mum’s back was turned. They were quite incorrigible and Mum had no control at all. From a distance she could see that her dogs were misbehaving badly. Instead of hunting up the grassy slopes away from the beach those two rascals had hit upon the best game ever - nicking everyone’s sandwiches and peeing on all the sandcastles and running like stink when people found out. It was pure heaven - for them!.

When you can do something really, really well you can’t help but show off and these two could run and it was so lovely watching them – although when I pointed this out to Mum she quite disowned them and said they weren’t ours. She rammed her sunglasses on more firmly, dug her nose more deeply into her magazine and studiously ignored the dogs.

I think this had a lot to do with the fact that there were two ample ladies in nylon flower print dresses looking disapprovingly at the dogs as well.

Creaking in their comfortable stripped canvas deck chairs one pursed her lips and said to the other: “Look you at those two dogs over by there – ooohhh, they look like rats on stilts!”