Showing posts with label sons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sons. Show all posts

Monday 1 October 2007

Sea Change

He gets himself up in the mornings now without being called, dresses, breakfasts and chivvies me, yawning and still half-dressed, out of the house.

Spending the summer wondering and worrying - had he done enough? Would he lose something that was important to him? Would he be going back to his school or not? All this certainly put everything in context. And then the triumph. He could do it and he could do it by himself!  Somehow in the last few weeks a wall has come down in my son's heart and mind. Whatever was blocking him seems to have melted, I hope for good. He has visibly matured, grown up and become more comfortable in his skin. We went out in September and bought his first suit, navy blue and washable, but very smart. He chose shirts and a tie, shoes that were neither too smart nor too casual.

And all this new positivity is reaping its rewards. Staff are pleasantly surprised and impressed and respond to the new person he is becoming, friendships are maturing and being sealed. There is even a pretty girl in the picture - long red hair and coltish legs, and a part in the school play.

Which all leads me to question ... what really was the problem? Because there is no doubt there was a very real and quantifiable problem and that it started when he was very young. What particular combination of genes and family circumstances led us down the difficult path we have both travelled?

I suppose, in the end, it doesn't really matter. The important thing is to negotiate that path day by day and somehow find a way through until the moment comes when he is ready to take over his life. And I can let him go.

Friday 24 August 2007

The Dreaded GCSEs

It had sat there in the calendar all summer, like a toad brooding under a stone, waiting to trip us up. All plans on hold until the day arrived and we could breathe again, know where we would be next year, whether things would continue as before, or if we needed to scramble around frantically, trying to find a new school/college, or perhaps even a job. GCSE Results day had finally arrived!

We had tried not to talk about it or dwell on it, fearful of anticipating or expecting, skirting around the issue. I know my son hardly slept the night before. I don't exaggerate when I say that neither of us had any real idea what to expect.

We got into the car yesterday morning with set faces, not speaking. What could we say? 

'Don't come with me, Mum,' he said, 'I want to do this on my own. Wait for me here.' 

He got out of the car and strode off across the school forecourt. I got out too and walked around anxiously. Ten minutes later he reappeared and I knew from the big grin on his face that it was going to be OK. Against all the odds and all expectations, after all the years of gruelling parents' evenings, complaints from teachers, letters home, unhelpful professional interference, he had pulled it off when it really mattered.

He has 10 good GCSE's and has sailed back into the Sixth Form of his school. The show goes on. I am a good mother. Actually, I am an excellent mother. And he is a star.

Wednesday 15 August 2007

Little white, lacy, strappy things

My sons are home! The washing machine and dishwasher rumble incessantly, there is never enough milk, bread, cereal or red wine, casseroles bubble on the stove and the mother in me stirs and purrs contentedly, testosterone drifting through the house as their deep voices mingle and merge.

So why, I wonder, did I take a detour on my way to stock up again at Waitrose, to trawl through the racks of sale price clothes in Fat Face, discarding the sensible sweat shirts and fleecy, warm zippy things and finding my way to the little white, lacy, strappy vest top, to be secreted amongst the carrots and potatoes and meat and cheese? Perhaps my mind had drifted towards the Man in the Pink Shirt, currently battling the wind and tides somewhere off the South Coast, no doubt swathed in utilitarian waterproofs?

I suppose I could always hide it under a sensible fleece if I go sailing with him again. Only I would know it was there, surely. After all, if he had wanted a sensible woman, what on earth is he doing with me?

Sunday 22 July 2007

Favourite Restaurants

I've been nominated to write about my five favourite restaurants, so now I'm wracking my brains for special places to eat that aren't my conservatory!


I love visiting 'Porters' in Covent Garden. It's a good place to treat my sons to a special lunch on the rare occasion that we all manage to meet up in London. Good English food - Wild Boar and Sage Sausages with Mashed Potatoes and Onion and Ale Gravy, Steak, Mushroom and Guinness Pie, Beer Battered Cod, all excellent quality, good value, no pretension, a great buzz and not far from Charing Cross and my escape route to the countryside.


When I go shopping in London, I sometimes head for 'The Bluebird Cafe' in the King's Road. Again good quality ingredients, terrific ambiance and lots of interesting people to watch. A light, simple lunch, a glass of wine and a coffee really make the day special. I love visiting the King's Road and browsing round all the interesting shops and dreaming of living in one of the lovely houses in the side streets that would once have been within reach. I have a passion for Interior Design and there are some wonderful showcase shops in the area to inspire me.


One of the biggest towns in my corner of England is Tunbridge Wells and on special occasions I usually head to either 'Blanc' or 'The Hotel Du Vin'. Blanc is part of Raymond Blanc's empire and the food is simply divine. There is a special deal for lunch on weekdays when you can have two courses for £10. A glass of wine and a coffee on top of that is still an affordable treat. I went there on my last birthday with a good friend whose birthday is the day before mine. We always meet up for lunch in the middle of March.


'The Hotel Du Vin' is a wonderfully luxurious, beautifully renovated building and an oasis in the centre of Tunbridge Wells. Comfortable squashy armchairs, lovely antiques and well chosen accessories make this a special place. The dining room is swathed in white linen, the silver cutlery and glasses reflect light from the French windows that lead onto the Terrace where coffee can be taken on a fine day. I haven't been there for a while, but my ex-husband used to take us there sometimes when he had pulled off a big deal. It was always famine or feast with him, but the feasts were well worth waiting for.


When I was married, holidays were rarely planned in advance but would happen fairly serendipitously. We would sometimes drive down to the Dordogne, hoping that the cottage I had pulled out of a hat - before the days of the Internet- would live up to its promise. They were sometimes surprising. I don't know if it's still there now, but we would always go for a meal at 'Les Glycines' near the caves at Les Eyzies. A simply stunning comfortable small hotel with a lovely garden and a sumptuous restaurant where well behaved children were more than welcome. I remember on our first visit that we took it in turns to wheel our four month old son around the garden when he cried but the staff were so kind and helpful it was more of an opportunity to show off our adorable son. It was there that I discovered white wine Kir and now I always keep a bottle of Cassis in the fridge for summer evenings and remember those long ago summers.

Sunday 8 July 2007

Three Beautiful Things

Sitting at the computer over lunch, I browsed a few web pages and found myself in the Three Beautiful Things blog. It's such a lovely idea, to make a note of the little things that give pleasure and distinction to a day, so I thought about what is making today special for me.



Having the house to myself for the first time for many difficult weeks as my son struggled through his GCSEs. He's gone to stay with his father for his work experience week and I have the luxury of having only myself to consider. The house is clean, tidy and quiet.

Admiring the beautiful tapestry cushion cover that my mother made for me. It is a Candace Bahouth design and full of vivid colours and intricate patterns. Something special connected with my mother that I will always have, even when she is no longer here.

The sweet flavour of the red pepper I chopped into the Bolognese sauce that I cooked today, along with red wine, garlic and herbs from the garden.

It's so important to keep focusing on the good things, even when life is far from ideal.

Wednesday 30 May 2007

Nine Lives

It was a cold clear winter's morning nearly 20 years ago. My then husband rose early as usual and left for the City, leaving me to dress and breakfast our two young sons, then pack them into the Land Rover and head out across country on the school run. I threaded the big car through the narrow single track lanes, occasionally pulling into a passing place to let another vehicle by, slowing carefully to take blind corners, passing farms and eerily silent, misty fields.

I kissed my five year old son goodbye as he ran into school, greeting his friends, exchanging news, rushing headlong into his day, then strapped my three year old into his car seat and turned the car round, back into the quiet lanes, doing a steady 40mph, Radio 4 playing quietly in the background.

The black and white cat came out of nowhere, streaked across our path. I braked hard and swerved to avoid it, just clipping the telegraph pole sitting too close to the edge of the narrow lane. The Land Rover turned through 90 degrees and crashed noisily to a halt on its left side, my son and I suspended by our seat belts, shocked, bruised but unharmed. With shaking hands I switched off the engine, terrified we would explode into flames, undid my seat belt and tried the door handles on the right side, completely disorientated. They were jammed solid. My son cried out, frightened, and I tried not to panic.

It seemed like hours but was probably only minutes before help arrived. Farm workers materialised from the seemingly empty fields, exclaiming, concerned. I managed to open a window, unstrapped my small son and passed him out to them, relieved to have him safe, then somehow extricated myself and crawled through the window after him, eager hands pulling me to safety. They took us to a nearby cottage, called the fire brigade and the police. Someone eventually drove us home.

If the telegraph pole hadn't been so close to the road, we would have avoided the accident. If I had been driving an ordinary car, we wouldn't have turned over. Land Rovers have a high centre of gravity and roll easily. We were lucky. We survived. The cat disappeared into the undergrowth and licked its paws pensively, eight lives left.

The Land Rover was a write-off. My then husband bought a field with the insurance payout and bought me a Volvo instead. Safe, but a little dull. I still miss the Land Rover though, it had bags of character.

Saturday 19 May 2007

Japanese

"Cool clear water
and fireflies that vanish
that is all there is"
Chiyo - ni

Why Japanese? It all began with computer games and an obsolete games console which my boys all particularly loved. We could only import new games for it from Japan, so we did. Japanese dictionaries were acquired and consulted, games were endlessly pored over, discussed and, finally, played. So I now have a Japanese speaking son. The twists and turns in a life often rest on a sixpence.

He had an interesting and traumatic time there. He fell in love with a beautiful Japanese girl, broke his wrist in several places and was hospitalised, made some lifelong friends, took up smoking temporarily, saw a man throw himself under a train, and lost two stone. He came back very thin and utterly changed.

Sunday 13 May 2007

Japan

Surprisingly for someone who cannot get to Lille, I did once make it to Japan on my own. Perhaps less surprisingly I arrived at Narita and promptly burst into tears and fled to the Ladies loo to recover my fragile poise. My student son wasn't there to meet me!

I had come through arrivals with my big, so thrilled to see you again smile spilling over my tired face, quivering with anticipation and nerves after a 12 hour flight and no sleep. We hadn't seen each other for over four months, our longest parting in over 20 years, and he had promised faithfully he would be there to meet me.

My son was studying in Yokohama for a year as part of his university course. Wild horses would not have kept me away and when my ex-husband phoned one cold, dank, wintry evening to say there was a special offer in today's Evening Standard and I had to book a flight by midnight tonight, I just went for it and made it happen.

I composed myself and went back onto the concourse, studying faces, watching the ebb and flow of passengers arriving and dispersing. I had a mobile number for him but as the Japanese have their own system, I couldn't call him from my mobile and the public phones were worse than Latin and Greek, the instructions were all in Japanese characters and impenetrable to me. Two hours and several trips to the Ladies later, I finally composed myself and plucked up the courage to approach the doll-like Japanese ladies sitting at the rather formidable information desk and asked if they could possibly give me some change for the phone. "Ah, change!" they said, and promptly offered me more yen.

After much pantomiming and consultation amongst each other, finally a phone card was produced in exchange for a yen note and I again approached the incomprehensible telephones. As I stood there puzzling, a porter walked past and instantly seeing my problem, he inserted the card for me, I dialled the number and to my unspeakable relief, my son picked up the phone. He was on the wrong train, heading at great speed in quite the wrong direction.

Apologetic, he finally arrived at the airport over three and a half hours late and the relief of seeing him loping across the concourse towards me wiped away all the trauma in an instant as we kissed and hugged and greeted each other.

Travelling on the wrong train became quite a feature of my stay in Japan. I have never been in a country that is so alien and impenetrable, but with my son at my side I could just relax and enjoy the journey wherever it was taking us.

Thursday 10 May 2007

Strand

A sharp gust of wind blew my hair across my eyes as I crossed the road towards the Royal Courts of Justice. As I brushed it away, suddenly there he was walking towards me.

Smart in his dark blue suit, purple shirt, tie flapping in the stiff breeze, he was over 6' tall, broad shouldered with heart-stoppingly blue eyes, dark flowing locks curling slightly to his shoulders. He saw me and smiled straight into my eyes.

'Hello Mum,' he said, hugging me. 'Lovely to see you. Let's go and have lunch.'

My 25 year old son, on his birthday.

Tuesday 1 May 2007

Birthdays

He turned 16 the other day, the 10lb baby boy I expelled from my body on a whiff of gas and air after a short, vicious labour all those years ago. We gazed at each other, shocked at where we had just been, surprised finally to see each other. Separate. Different.  Other.

To be cradled in my arms, to kiss his downy new-baked head, to hold him to my breast, wince, relax and whisper "I will keep you safe."

Saturday 28 April 2007

I have a date!

He's flying in from Australia. I have to import my dates now! Not just to meet me of course, but on business.

We met on the Friends Reunited website sometime last year. Apparently we were both stranded on the same windswept Northern campus more years ago than I care to remember. We fell into a virtual correspondence when we started to talk about a book he has written, and have maintained a desultory, sporadic 'friendship' since.

There was absolutely no hint of a more intimate agenda on either side, so I was rather taken aback when he emailed recently about his forthcoming trip and proposed that either we meet in Brighton for lunch on the day he flies back, or that we 'throw caution to the winds' and that I fly over to join him for a week in his tiny apartment in South-West France. A beguiling thought indeed and it did bring a smile to my face. Imagine!

Prosaically, I am working that week and my son will be in the throes of his dreaded GCSEs, so it has to be lunch in Brighton this time round. It could be anything or nothing, but that is the intriguing thing about my situation.

You simply never know what will happen next.

Sunday 8 April 2007

Happy Easter

A glorious Easter weekend and I have two tall, dark, handsome young men in the house, oozing testosterone and amiability. Did I say I also have shingles? Apparently the virus that causes chicken pox lies dormant in the spinal cord and reactivates when the immune system is down - just when you are about to go on a trip!

Luckily it's not man shingles, so I have spent a satisfying weekend in the kitchen. We have had roast chicken with proper red wine gravy and roasted root vegetables, steeped in olive oil, garlic and herbs from the garden. I have even made stock from the bones for vegetable soup. Rhubarb, also from the garden, has been stewed and I have made a chocolate and almond cake.

I have been for short walks in the countryside and have sat in the orchard with our pet rabbit and the cats playing tag, drinking tea and eating too much cake. Today will be spent with the Sunday Times and a roast leg of lamb studded with garlic and rosemary, potatoes dauphinoise with carrots and broccoli and more red wine gravy, followed by chocolate pudding with whipped cream.

I never said it was all bad!

Thursday 5 April 2007

Into the Void

I don't think I really expected to be alone for so long. I am, after all, an intelligent, attractive woman. I think I have a lot to offer. Other people seem to manage it quite well, but it just hasn't happened for me. There have been skirmishes. I have scars.

Of course it's not easy, coming from the back of the pack, trailing damage and baggage, and it probably doesn't help that I live in the back of beyond, in established couple territory. The price you pay for being in the catchment area of a good state school. Not that they are all living happily ever after, but with house prices being sky high, and the astronomical cost of divorce for those with good careers, most of them have too much to lose to cut and run. But that's fine. Marriage and family are the glue in society.

I did wonder, when it all fell apart, if I should hot tail back to London and take my chance there and if it had been just me, there would have been no question. So I stayed but time passes, children grow up and leave home, my youngest son will leave school within the next three years. What then? I have made a life for myself here, I have some good friends whom I cherish, a job I enjoy that fits in with my family commitments.

Do I step into the void, older, perhaps wiser.  Alone?

Sunday 25 March 2007

Pink Bag

I still think I am going to Lille next week - can it really be next week? It seemed so much more appealing when it was next month. This is beginning to seem real! So, I went shopping yesterday in the nearby market town which contains just one shop selling travel bags. Not a lot of choice there then. But choice makes me come out in a cold sweat, so perhaps that's just as well.

I found a lovely dark pink Kipling bag and despite the scary price tag, I had to have it, even though it cost nearly as much as my Eurostar ticket. It's so perfect and just the right size for a weekend away. The alternative would have been my 15 year old son's black school kit bag, complete with visible name tape. Not perhaps quite the image I'm looking for as I try to open my world up a little.

Today was spent washing, ironing and packing - not for me though but for my son. The reason I can get away for a couple of days just before the end of term is that he is going to CCF camp with a group from his school, so I get to holiday, too. Even if I don't go away when he does, and I rarely do, it still feels like a holiday as it's so unusual for me not to do the Mum thing. My oldest son turns 25 soon and I feel as though I've been doing this forever, although it changes all the time. Now I usually go out and about without any children on me at all, but once I couldn't move without all three boys hanging onto my skirts, often protesting vociferously. Who else was going to look after them? Even when I was married, my husband was in the City and had a mistress and was rarely home. No, I didn't know about the mistress until far, far too late. Silly me.

So being a single mum was always the way it was, I just don't have the illusion that I have a husband and that my sons have a proper father. My ex-husband came down from London tonight to take our son out for supper, because that is what he thinks being a good Dad is all about, and sporting fundraising posters for his local church in the back windows of his smart new car - good for the caring image. I handed him the leaflet about ASD which the doctor my son and I saw last week gave to me. A sort of potted version of the problems that my son and I face every day.  


He always made me feel that I had failed as a mother, that I just couldn't cope as well as other mothers. That it was all my fault.