Building Blocks: Part 2

Middle One is away. Youngest is at school. It will be Eldest’s sixteenth birthday tomorrow and his phone has died because he dropped it down the stairs last week when he was throwing it in the air and catching it again. Except that he didn’t. Catch it I mean.

But I’m tired. I’ve just got back from taking Youngest to school, having a quick coffee and buying food (yet more) before the routine tidy up and the sweeping and the washing and more tidying and I’m not really right, not since that cold with the dodgy tummy thing last week, but Eldest wants me to go straight out again to get this phone, for his birthday, so I can hardly say no.

We go to Carphone Warehouse and wait in a huge queue and eventually talk to a really lovely guy behind the counter who tries very hard, for a very long time, to get Eldest a good deal. And he does. An amazing deal. So that when we part we are so happy and thankful that this lovely guy shakes Eldest’s hand and wishes him a great birthday for tomorrow and we stagger out onto pavement elated. “We’ve been in there nearly an hour!” I say. “I’m hungry,” he says. So I suggest the café again and to my surprise (again) my son agrees.

So we go to the café and eat lunch and chat and he sits opposite me where Middle One sat last week and he tells me about his life and he is very funny (“It's not that I'm paranoid, it’s just everyone is ganging up against me”) and warm and I think, you know what, they may drive me crackers, I may never get a single moment ever to myself, I might be drowning in all the cooking and cleaning and drudgery, I might have given up my career to be at home with him and his brothers, I might wish I was out of the house more, being a high-flyer, still at the BBC maybe, earning loads of money instead of sporadic bits and pieces here and there with a bit of journalism thrown in and no security and no career path and no pension. I might have a string of ideas for novels and absolutely no time to sit down and write them, but I wouldn’t swap this for the world.

They won’t always be around and these moments, these little trips out together, which seem so small and inconsequential and mundane at the time, they are my memories, each one a little building block that added together I will look back and realize, made my life.

Building Blocks: Part 3

Note to self:


Middle One is still away in France. He's been gone for five nights and will be away for two more. I miss him more than I can say and would give anything right now for him to be wandering around the house getting under my feet, talking about martial arts and announcing that he’s bored.

GCSEs

He throws a tennis ball up and down behind my head. I carry on typing. My temples throb. I press fingers to forehead and glance out the window. The sun shines. The trees sway in the breeze. It looks like an ordinary morning. It’s not. I look at the time on the right of the screen: an hour to go.


“So have you got everything?”

“Yep,” he replies, nonchalantly. But he’s not nonchalant. He is tense. Up goes the ball again and then back down, padding solidly into his palm. 


“Do you want me to test you on anything?”

“Nope.”

“Do you want some lunch?”

“Nope. Can’t eat.”

“You can’t go to your first exam without lunch, it’s illegal.”

“I had pancakes.”

“That was ages ago.”


I get up to go and make him something. He follows me down to the kitchen. He says he’d like haloumi in a baguette with lettuce. I bake the baguette in the oven. I cut the haloumi into thin slices and fry it in a little olive oil with some chilli and some lemon juice and a bit of black pepper. He stands behind me. He is chatting all the while. His nerves are palpable. It makes me remember: the smell of the school gym, scrape of chairs on parquet, the chorus of dry coughs, sweat making the pencil slip down my hand, the sunlight from the summer day outside streaming in through high windows, the fastest hour and an half of my life so far…

We sit outside at the table under the umbrella on the decking. He eats. I’m too tense to eat anything now. He’s ravenous so I’m glad I made him something. He eats every bit. I get him a glass of water, haloumi is so salty, I say, and he agrees. He goes upstairs to pack his bag. I thought he’d packed it already. I start to clear up.

I hear him thundering down the stairs to the hall so I go to say goodbye at the door but he’s not ready. He goes back up. I go back to the kitchen. I gather washing. I fill a recycling bag. I sweep the floor. Again. Still he is not ready. 

He said he wanted to leave at 12.30 so I start to watch the clock. 12.30, 12.31, 32, 33, 34… I want to shout for him to get a move on but I know he’s trying his best. He comes back down and I start to relax. He puts his shoes on. I begin my good-bye speech … just relax, read the questions carefully, try and enjoy it, this is your chance…  but he’s not listening and I don’t blame him.

He unzips the contents of his bag and checks everything again. Then he zips it back up. Then he does the whole thing all over again. I start to tense up. I look at my watch. “I.D. card,” I say, brightly. 


“Check,” he says.

“Clear pencil case,” I say. 


“Check,” he says.


“Bottle of water,” I say, “without a label on it!” 


“Check,” he says. 


“You know the room number?” I say. 


“Check” he says. 


“Well… I think that’s it, then.”

I start the pep talk again… you’ll be fine, good luck, just keep calm… He still isn’t listening. He opens the front door, he’s nearly made it out, then he comes back in to the hall again. He opens his bag, checks everything all over again. I count to ten in my head. Again. 

And then he’s gone.

At the hairdresser:

“I don’t want my hair too short,” says Youngest watching his older brother having his hair cut. “Long hair is cool.”

“True,” I say, “but it will grow. If you hardly have any cut off I’m just wasting my money. And short hair is cute." I ruffle it on the top of his head as if to prove it. "And you’re still only nine.” He looks up at me. I smile. 

“I’m ten next week,” he says, holding my gaze, looking worried. 


“So what's better, Mummy? Cool or cute?” 

I hesitate and then, “Cute,” I say. And he is happy. 


For now.

The wrong rodent

What makes one furry rodent more lovable than the next? It’s a question I’ve had cause to ponder this week, ever since Emily died.

 
I’m just colour coding Eldest's GCSE exam timetable at my desk in the office (I’ll come to that in a minute), when Middle One bursts in to tell me. He is distraught. You see, Emily is his gerbil, or rather, she was his gerbil. 

And I am expecting Middle One to be upset about Emily's death, when it happens, because on Saturday night when we were playing Scrabble with friends (it’s a crazy life we lead), he came into the kitchen with a panicked look in his eyes and a catch in his voice to say Emily wasn't moving. We rushed upstairs to see and it was true: she wasn't. But it was a false alarm. She was asleep. Just very asleep. She didn't look good when she woke up, though. Her eyes closed, her fur ragged, and she shook as she moved. A bit like me on a Sunday morning after one too many. 

So, I ring the vet first thing on Monday, as I promise I will, to order more expensive gerbil antibiotics (£25 last time for taking a tiny scrap of a thing to the vet) but by the time he calls back next day to say the order is ready… Well, let's just say Emily has no need for the antibiotics by then. 

But that's later, back to Monday evening, after I've rung the vet and while I’m colour coding Eldest’s exam timetable. His GCSEs start next week and I’ve tried in vain to encourage him to do it himself but he says there’s no point because the school has given him a printed sheet and I say writing them down in your own colour coded list and putting them up on the wall with Blu Tac and then ticking them off as you do them, it’s all an important part of the process, and then I think: who for? whose process? and I realise that's my way, not necessarily his way. So I just do it myself. Which makes me feel heaps better.

And that's the moment Middle One comes in, upset, to say he found Emily lying in the corner of her cage and when we go to look she clearly is dead this time. Stone dead. So we tell him (except we say it more kindly than that). And he doubles over on his bed, his head in his hands, rocking back and forth emitting this terrible heartbreaking wail, all hoarse and cracking because his voice is breaking, because he’s thirteen. Which makes it even sadder somehow.

I am expecting him to be upset but I am not expecting him to be as upset as all that. So it does seem a little unfair, you might even say insensitive, that this very same night - the night his precious rodent has just died - he is kept awake by other rodents living in his wardrobe. Whoever came up with the expression as quiet as a mouse has clearly never heard one.

They are not pet mice, they are pests who have recently moved upstairs from the kitchen. We’ve been leaving traps for them in Middle One’s room because we have something of a mouse infestation, as regular readers will know, which we thought was resolved with the recent purchase of an ultrasonic device that drives them away, but turns out merely drives them upstairs to the comfort of Middle One’s wardrobe, where they've made nests using Emily's bedding inside some old trainers. You have to admire their resourcefulness. And of course we couldn’t put another one of those ultrasonic thingies in that room for fear of upsetting Emily - but I guess we don’t have to worry about that now…

So, Middle One comes into our room at around midnight to say the mice have woken him up and then he comes in again at three for the same reason… and then at five… until finally we despair and move him into the guest room where he quietly sobs for his gerbil, all curled up and alone in that big double bed, as the mice party on in the back of his wardrobe with not a care in the world for poor Emily.

Not cool.

I am not cool. I am old. I look ridiculous in my new dress and my cooking is not as good as I think it is. I know all this because my son told me, my Eldest son, to be precise.

It’s hard to go from being desperately needed “pretty mummy” not that long ago, to the object of disdain - sometimes. I should add that. It’s not always. It’s only sometimes. Most of the time he's lovely. And it's particularly not when he needs help with homework… or wants new clothes… or paint from the art shop… or to talk late at night … or when he proffers his forehead for my kiss… or at the front door when he’s about to leave…

I understand. I think. My Good Old Friend, in the playground at school, she says he has to pull away from me to find himself, it's his age, she’s read a book about it. As his nurturer, his primary carer, and a woman, rejecting me is a right of passage: becoming a man… something like that. It doesn’t mean he won’t come back. I know it’s true. I know deep down he’s still the same.

He may say “shoo!” when I walk in to his room to check he’s doing his revision. He may say that I’m living in a “bubble of my own narcissism” at the hairdressers when I’m about to spend £20 on his haircut (he must have heard that line somewhere…it’s rather good).

Actually, when he said that, as we were waiting, just after I asked him what he wanted for dinner and he replied that he hates everything I cook and doesn’t need to eat most of the time anyway (he knows where to put the knife), I lent towards him and hissed quietly into his ear: “Don’t you dare speak to me like that. I’m about to spend 2o quid on your haircut and I drove you here and I went back for your hoodie when you’d forgotten it, because it’s cold, and I am this far away,” and I held up my thumb and forefinger to indicate an incredibly small distance, “from walking out of here and leaving you with no money."

And he got it, to give him his due, he knew I meant it: he apologised, profusely, straightaway, as well he might. He looked terrified. I’m sorry, he said, I’m really sorry, I just feel angry and I don’t know why (I know why, it was because it was lunchtime and he hadn’t eaten any breakfast). It took the wind out of my sails, to be honest: that apology. I couldn’t be cross anymore when really I wanted to carry on being cross for a bit longer. I had to gulp my anger back down. Because I understood.

I remember what it is to be fifteen and to feel… well… to feel cross and to feel things, words, coming out of your mouth and not being able to control them and wanting to backtrack and really needing someone to understanding and be tolerant and let it go, at least sometimes. So on that occasion, I did. I do. At least, I try.

And I know sometimes I am cool because he asks me about music and film and fashion, even about my work occasionally, and because the other day I found him listening to Bob Dylan and I showed him the film of Subterranean Homesick Blues on YouTube. You know the one, with all the words on pieces of card, that he throws away as he sings them in the street. And he watched it, nonchalantly, like he wasn’t particularly interested in anything I liked. And then later, a few days later, I saw Middle One watching it in the office. “Have you seen this!” he said, “it’s so cool! Eldest showed it to me.”

And I know sometimes he thinks I look ok, too, because of the look on his face when I ask his opinion, just before I’m going out somewhere, asking for trouble, like an idiot, when he doesn’t say I look stupid and old and there isn’t a grimace, only a slight nod of the head instead.

And I know he mostly likes my cooking because he eats it and because he says he does, which he knows pleases me, which is why he was tormenting me about it.

And I know he has to grow up and on the way he has to hurt me, sometimes, and all that jazz. But still, it’s hard. Because I love him so much.

A mouse's tale

There’s the vile smell of dead mouse in the house. It’s emanating from somewhere in the kitchen but has no respect for boundaries. Inexplicably, it’s particularly stomach churning by the front door and there’s a strong nauseating waft of it every time I approach the top of the cellar stairs with my arms laden with clean laundry.

Husband says there’s no point pulling the kitchen to pieces to look for it. We tried last time and had to give up concluding that the poor creature met its demise behind the fridge. It’s warm and completely inaccessible there because the knackered old fridge is built in to the cupboards in classic eighties style (don’t get me started). I’d like to look under the food cupboard where we found mouse droppings last winter but that too is screwed down. Husband says there’s no point looking at all. We should just give up and put up with it until it goes away.

“Living with this smell is child abuse,” says Eldest, “and unhygienic. You shouldn’t make us eat in this kitchen.” He has a point. I take to leaving the back door open as much as possible, even when it’s freezing. I buy pots and pots of hyacinths to try and drown it out. I boil up strange medieval-style concoctions involving honey, lemon and vanilla pods and leave them by the front door so they're the first thing the children smell when they come in from school. Friends begin to give our house a wide birth. Husband’s weekend jogging companion declines the invitation to wait in the hall. Lovely Friend over the road refers to it as “your dead rat.” It goes on and on.

I moan about it to everyone. I write about it on Facebook. The smell evolves. It morphs from rancid rotting manure, to high old fruit and nappies. It is our constant companion. It seeps everywhere. It contaminates everything. It makes me loathe the house. The days turn into weeks. By the middle of week three I crack. “It’s definitely under there! under the food cupboard! Unscrew the base! Now.”

“Now?” says Husband incredulously. It's evening. He has only just plonked himself down on a comfy chair in the living room.

“Yes. This minute! Get the screwdriver. I think it’s under there!”

Reluctantly he abandons his slump. He comes into the kitchen and immediately and effortlessly lifts the bottom of the cupboard out. It wasn’t screwed down.

“It wasn’t screwed down!” I yell.

“No, I didn’t screw it back last time,” he replies, while shining the torch underneath.

I wait. He makes a sound. It is something between a gasp, a sigh and a cough but it is also unmistakably the sound of someone coming across the remains of a very decomposed mouse. It took him seconds to find it. I could kill him. Or I could laugh hysterically.

Which would you do?

Easter escape to Sweden

Silence.

There is actually silence as I sit at the table typing in a log cabin by a lake in Sweden. To my left, through the long windows that dominate this lovely room, silver sunshine dances across water. The lake is surrounded with conifer trees, occasionally interspersed with rocky outcrops. The water is a perfect Swedish blue. There are perhaps two or three other wooden houses like this one but they are far away across the lake, only apparent from their little lights at night. It is truly stunning.

But wait, there are noises: wind gently blowing in the tall pines, a snap from a log on the fire, a rustle as Husband turns another page of his book. How so quiet? Have we buried our three noisy boys in the woods? Certainly there have been moments when it’s been tempting over the last two days, when they moan or bicker or fight in the back of the car… But no, now there is actually peace. Eldest sleeps on into the glorious morning. Middle One lies in his bunk playing on his Nintendo DS. Youngest, below him, silently places stickers in his sticker book. It’s nothing short of an Easter miracle: a very rare moment of family calm - and the reason we came.

You’re going where for Easter? friends asked. Sweden, I said, for four nights, to stay in a cabin in a forest by a lake, not far from Gothenburg. It will be perfect, the space and the view from the cabin, the city only twenty minutes away for when we get bored and want coffee and a cinnamon bun or a mooch round a museum. You’ll be chipping the ice off the lake! they said, or finding a dead tattooed woman in the woods! But we’re here now and there’s neither, in fact, it’s wonderful. It’s everything I dreamed it might be, and I have dreamed about coming to Scandinavia a lot. Not quite sure why… Actually, yes I am.

It started with furniture catalogues when I was a child, clever blond-wood shelf systems and sparsely designed chairs, all Swedish or Finish or Danish, and was later consolidated by Carl Larsson’s illustrations, the Swedish painter/writer, whose children’s books I came across years ago when I worked for a publishing company. I took my favourites - charming domestic scenes from the 1800s, cozy interiors, picnics among silver birches - every one an idealised tableaux of family life, and framed them. And then there was just this vague notion that Sweden would be beautiful and clean and empty and quiet, a bit cold in April perhaps, but still the perfect antidote to hectic life in south London. And so it is.