This is a post for Josie’s Writing Workshop. This week, I could have written something for each of the prompts (perhaps because I’m doing some serious nano-wri-mo procrastination), but this is the one that decided to come out. You might have preferred an angst-ridden delving into my past, that you would have got from ‘Past Secret’ or a rant about the image of beauty portrayed in the media, from prompt ‘On Beauty’, or a(nother) rant about the Catch 22 that so many people find themselves in and the need to not stigmatise them for that and to actually help provide jobs, rather than taking them away and punishing people for staying jobless in a shit economy, from prompt ‘Catch 22’ or an emotional rollercoaster of a tale of lost babies and gratitude from ‘The Book of Lost Things’. But this is what you’ve got – a tale about parenting ups and downs and learning not to scream, which is kind of fitting for this blog and this blogger.

Coming up for air

or How I stopped screaming for a day

I know there are parents out there who are able to remain calm all the time – or to, at the very least, appear calm (in fact, I’ve talked about this before) – but I am not one of them. It seems my calmness goes in cycles. I can spend a week or so coming close to how I want to be – calm repetition, counting, ignoring unwanted behaviour, praising the good stuff, using distraction, and so on and so on – then, gradually, I’ll start snapping, then I’ll add in a bit of stomping (yes, often I can throw worse tantrums than my children) and some door slamming. As the calmness disintegrates entirely, my temper crescendos until I’m shouting at every tiny misdemeanour and screeching ‘Get on with it! We’re going to be late!’ almost constantly, every single morning.

And then something or someone will make me realise that it’s all me. The children have not changed and turned into hideous little brats. They’re as compliant or non-compliant as they ever are, though perhaps a little bit of consistency might help them to be more compliant. Frequently, the loss of calm coincides with a busy work period, and so finds me under stress about meeting deadlines, sending work out to the right freelancers and ever finding the time to send out some invoices and see the fruits of all that labour. And when I’m stressed I snap and shout and swear. The latter I can usually keep back, but the former two not so much.

What snaps me out of it can be anything, really – the blog post I linked to above was when I saw what seemed like perfect calm in a mother of a child with similar independence and vitality as Rosemary (you can interpret ‘independence’ and ‘vitality’ how you like). Other times it might be Chris pointing out how very far from calm I am. I might just see it myself. Yesterday it was my interpreting a slightly less exuberant smile from a neighbour as a castigation of my whole parenting ability. Of course, the neighbour was probably just having a bad day and not thinking about me at all, but in my head she was away to call the social services because the shouting and screaming she was hearing every morning were worrying her. And in my head I was thinking that I would be worried too if I heard that from a neighbouring house. I wouldn’t automatically think that this was a woman who loves her children deeply and wants only the best for them and works hard to be a good parent, who happens to be having a bad few days. I’d be wondering if I could offer her some help and wondering if I needed to keep an eye out.

And so this morning, I did not shout. I did not scream. I stayed calm in the face of ‘No!’ and ‘I won’t!’ and ‘I don’t want to!’ I repeated what was required calmly and stated that I would count to three (luckily I didn’t have to state what would happen after three – or, in fact, start counting at all). I made games out of getting dressed. I enlisted Rosemary’s help in getting the breakfast ready, instead of shouting at her to ‘Get out from under my feet!’ I got Rosemary to read to Eleanor, while I cleared up after breakfast. I put music on (Mamma Mia, of course) to get us in the mood for tidying the living room.

And, as we walked happily and calmly up the hill, on time, I thought ‘This really feels like coming up for air’.

I hope that this time I stay above water for a long time – if you hear me screaming, though, please give me a nudge and don’t call social services.

A while ago I said I would tell Josie about my fairy godmother (I can’t find the post where I said this in a reply, but I’m sure I did!) and I’m very pleased to find this week’s Writing Workshop has a prompt that will help me do that (well, very loosely)…

Whenever I am in serious trouble, my fairy godmother turns up to surprise me and to help me out. She tends to manifest as a kind and thoughtful old lady. Let me tell you about some of the times when she has stepped up.

I was sixteen or seventeen and my boyfriend was driving a friend home. It was a windy road and there was a skid and suddenly we were upside down and I was transported back to a night about ten years before when my dad had turned the car over on the way back from our Christmas visit to Wales. I was convinced we had gone over the Severn Bridge and were drowning (in fact, we’d taken a different route to drop off a hitchhiker and the drips I could feel were oil). But being upside down in a car again brought it all out. Out of the car, somehow, I sat on the verge and screamed and screamed. The next thing I knew an old lady was leading me back to her house and making me a cup of sweet tea. She offered the use of her phone and my boyfriend called his dad to come and get us (or possibly our friend called his mum to come and get us, I don’t really remember that bit well) and we were fine. The car had had it, but we were fine.

Around the same time, Jayne and I had borrowed Sasha’s bike (no idea why!) and decided to use it to cycle up to visit some boy. At one point, we came to the top of a hill and decided that it would make sense for one of us to ride and the other one to sit on the back (or was it the handlebars?). Of course, this didn’t work and we ended up crashing. Right outside an old lady’s house. Out she came and invited us in for (yes, you guessed it) a cup of tea. And she offered the use of her phone and Jayne called her dad to come and get us (I think – again the aftermath is blurry).

While at university and during an Easter vacation when I was supposed to be finishing my dissertation (I only had the damn conclusion left to right and then a final edit to do), I got really ill. All my housemates were off on holiday in exotic places, Chris was away in Washington and the only person available to help me out was my (very recent) ex. He did bring me some soup, though it was Heinz tomato soup and to this day I’m still not sure whether he just forgot that I really, really hate Heinz tomato soup or he remembered very well and was getting some revenge (which would be fair, of course). I couldn’t move – I spent pretty much the whole week lying in bed, incredibly feverish, crawling a few feet to the bathroom to throw up now and then and once crawling downstairs to get some juice. I lost a whole bunch of weight (Chris was shocked to see how gaunt I was when he got home), as I didn’t eat anything except half a bowl of Heinz tomato soup in a whole week. I couldn’t move enough to make it to the doctor’s surgery, which was about two minutes’ walk away. At the end of the week and finally on the mend I did make it to see the doctor, because I needed a note for being late with my dissertation. (This was incredibly annoying, because I’d been writing it for over a  year and had practically finished.) While there I had to get a prescription for my asthma medication, as well. Then I made my way to the chemist to get the prescription filled. The 10-minute walk took me half an hour because I was so weak. I stumbled into the chemist and took my prescription to the pharmacy counter. Obviously, I chose to wait, rather than come back later. There was a chair, but it was occupied already by an old lady. I asked the woman behind the counter if they had another chair I could sit on and she said ‘No’ then muttered quite loudly to her colleague ‘…clearly on drugs…’. The old lady stood up and gave me her chair, saying ‘You look like you’re about to collapse dear, you take it.’ The woman behind the counter then brought out a chair for the old lady to sit in.

OK. So, rather than proving the existence of fairy godmothers, this has probably just showed how nice old ladies can be. But, I’m sorry, I still believe that I have a fairy godmother out there, who helps out when I really need it.

Do you have a fairy godmother?

Please update your blogrolls/links/whatever to the new address: http://www.wahm-bam.org Thank you! The old feed automatically redirects, but it would be nice (if you have the time/inclination/know-how, of course) if you could change your feeds to point to this one (click the RSS posts link in the top, right-hand corner of the blog). Thank you again. (This, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with wanting to get back in the Tots100. Nothing whatsoever.

This is my post for this week’s Writing Workshop. If you click on the Writing Workshop tab at the top of this blog, you’ll see that the few posts I’ve been inspired to write have been sad ones. This isn’t really any different. It seems that I am destined to write depressing, emotionally-charged prose. Perhaps, when I finally get a novel finished, it will be Jodi Picoult’s footsteps I follow in, rather than Nicci French’s or Jane Green’s or Joanne Harris’s. Perhaps I will have to write about pain and death and gut-wrenching sadness. Or maybe one day I’ll find a prompt that inspires a happy post. Maybe.

4. Write a post telling someone in authority the words you wish you were brave enough to say or feel they need to hear.

To the doctor who told a fragile 15-year-old girl in her office that she would need to use proper contraception in future, as she wouldn’t get another abortion for free…

Perhaps you should have read the patient’s notes before jumping to conclusions. If you had done so, you would have known that she did use contraception, and then some – the pill and a bunch of condoms. If you had done so, you would have known that she hadn’t realised that her illness and the antibiotics she was taking could stop the pill from working. If you had done so, perhaps you would have known that a condom split. If you would have done so, perhaps you would have known that she was careful, very careful, despite being a teenager.

And perhaps you would have done your job and asked her if she was sure about her decision. Perhaps you would have checked that she had had counselling and made sure that she wasn’t being pressured into a decision. Perhaps you would have just shown a bit of compassion instead of judging someone harshly based on your own assumptions. Perhaps you would have expressed your sorrow at what she was going through, instead of treating her with hatred and disdain. Perhaps you would have just looked at her and seen that this was not a decision being taken lightly. This was not someone regretting a one-night stand and desperate to get back to parties and clubbing. This was a young girl torn between her natural instincts, her educational ambitions and the advice being thrown at her from grown-ups around her.

Were you in this position unwillingly? Was it part of your training and you had to do it against your principles? Or did you choose to be the doctor who interviews women and girls scheduled to have abortions to check that they know what they were doing? If you chose it, was it out of some sadistic inclination? If you didn’t choose it, were you unable to put your own feelings and beliefs aside for a moment and empathise?

Where are you now? What kind of doctor are you now? Do you have a good bedside manner or do you continue to patronise and degrade? Did your time in that role teach you empathy and concern or did it take it away?

I hope that, so many years down the line, you have learnt and grown and that, should another 15-year-old girl come to you in this situation, you would realise that everyone is different, that everyone’s situation is different and you would listen, ask questions and, at the very least, read her notes.

Please update your blogrolls/links/whatever to the new address: http://www.wahm-bam.org Thank you! The old feed automatically redirects, but it would be nice (if you have the time/inclination/know-how, of course) if you could change your feeds to point to this one (click the RSS posts link in the top, right-hand corner of the blog). Thank you again. (This, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with wanting to get back in the Tots100. Nothing whatsoever.

This is only my second go at Josie’s Writing Workshop. It seems that she always moves me to write about death and people who are gone. So far, anyway. Maybe next week it will be flowers and chocolate and fairy tales. (Please? I’d like to write one without crying bucketfuls.)

My Gran believes in Heaven. She believes Papa is in heaven, with my Grandad. She believes that he’s looking down on us. She talks to him. She believes she’ll be joining him some time soon.

I wish I believed that. I wish I knew that, one day, I would see him again. And not just him, but all the people I have lost, over the years. And the animals I’ve lost. And the babies I’ve lost. Sometimes I imagine Papa arriving somewhere and bumping into those children I’ve lost. One of whom is somehow now grown. The others who are still young, though not as young as Rosemary and Eleanor. I imagine him taking them under his wing. Having a beer and going out dancing with the older one, as he no doubt would have done the second she (or he) was 18. And I imagine him watching the rugby with his dad. And now and then having a peek to see what we’re up to down here, over here, up here, wherever it is.

But mostly I know that he’s not up there, down there, or anywhere really.

But he is still here. He is here, in our hearts, in our photos, in our videos, and in our memories. He is here in the stories that we tell our children, our friends, our readers. He is here, with all the people he ever touched, and boy were there many. He is here with his family, with his friends, with his drinking pals, with the blokes he used to work with fixing up old buildings, with the many lost souls he was wont to collect. He is here, with his granddaughters, even the one who never got to meet him.

Just as Miffy is always here with me, though I never knew him in this life. I only ever knew the memories of him, but he is still a huge part of my life. Miffy, who was so anti-smoking that he banned matches in the house, so that my mum had to carry a burning twist of newspaper from the boiler to the fires around the house, to light them. Miffy, who insisted on quiet at the dining table so that he could read. Miffy, who bought almost every new Penguin that came out each month. And read them all.

Just as Mary is always there with Eva, even though she never knew her. Mary, who loved jazz, dated Joss Ackland and wore high heels and perfume. Mary, who worked in an estate agent. Mary, who drove a red mini and knocked a motorbike rider off his bike when going round a roundabout. Mary, who travelled to America to visit her brother on the QE2 and wrote and illustrated an amazing book about the journey.

And so will Papa always be here.

Papa, who had done a little too much wetting of the baby’s head when he went to register my name, so that I was called Natasha instead of Tasha. Papa, who painted clouds on my bedroom wall in our first house – clouds that are apparently still there. Papa, who went and did the shopping every day at the local market when we lived in Spain, struggling with the language. Papa, who cooked the most delicious meals. Papa, who helped nurse his mother-in-law through her last few cancer-ridden months. Papa, who drove to Bristol and back every night to take Mama her special raw-food salad when she was in hospital waiting for months for Eva to be born. Papa, who held the tiniest Eva in his hand and watched her grow from a few pounds into a wonderful woman. Papa, who drove to Weston-Super-Mare, got drunk and slept in the car and then lost his licence, when he found out his wife had been unfaithful. Papa, who looked after Eva on his own for a few months. Papa, who took his wife back and forgave her. Papa, who took an overdose of pills because his wife wanted to keep seeing her boyfriend. Papa, who survived and stayed and gave up drinking. For a while. Papa, who tried so hard to help his wife through her years of hypermania. Only to be kicked out and served with divorce papers. Papa, who still looked after her, when she would let him. Papa, who slowly let her back into his life, as she got better. Papa, who would dance the hours away to live music in the Vic. Papa, who would take me to the Albert and do the quiz with me. Papa, who held my hand and rolled my cigarette (far too fat), when I came out of hospital having lost my third baby, and a fallopian tube. Papa, who stood up and talked for me at my wedding, despite being incredibly nervous and shy about it. Papa, who took Wesley for long walks and dogsat for us when we went away. Papa who loved our dog like his own. Papa, who built our kitchen, laid our floorboards, painted much of our house and found friends to do what he couldn’t do for free or at incredibly knock-down prices. Papa, who plastered the walls when he’d had a few beers and left some of them quite uneven. Papa, who stayed home with dog while his granddaughter was being born and came to visit in the morning, bringing me a Guardian a novel about Cryptic crosswords and a huge cuddle for his daughter who was desperate to hold her baby, but had to wait. Papa, who took Rosemary to Stratford Park and got chased by a swan while I did some work after I cried at not having enough time. Papa, who spent far too much time in and out of hospital during his last year. Papa, who had to lose his dignity and let his daughters wipe his bum and feed him medicine. Papa, who, despite being so ill himself, got up, walked into town and bought a condolences card when Chris’ Nanny died, to make sure we got it before we left. Papa, who went and had a stroke while we were in Scotland at her funeral. Papa, who died before I got home to see him again.

And so Papa will always be here.

And that’s what I believe happens when you die. And that’s what I tell Rosemary. And that’s why I tell her things about her granddad. Happy memories. Sad memories. Funny memories. Memories that, though they are not hers, she will share with her children one day.

So that Papa will always be here.

This is my first attempt at Josie’s Writing Workshop, though I think about doing it almost every week. In fact, this one combines a prompt from this week (1 Tell me about someone from you past who you lost touch with and who you often think about.) with one from last week (4 Imagine there is another ‘you’, living in a parallel universe.).

You were 21 in August, not long after Rosemary turned 3. What did you do? Did you have a big party with all your university friends? Did you have a quiet dinner with your mum and your dad and your half brothers and sisters and your grandmothers, raising a glass to your grandfathers, no longer with us? Were you stuck at home with a crying baby, trying to finish an Open University assignment? Did you spend it in the arms of someone you love? Did I call you to say Happy Birthday? Did I bring you gifts and make you cards?

Was I a good mum to you? Did I cuddle you when you cried and show you what it means to love? Or did I leave you with your grandparents while I went out to have fun and get an education? Or did I manage to do both? Did you come to university with me? Did I read you bedtime stories, then hit the books? Were we on our own? Did I shout at you too much? Was I your friend? Did I help you with your GCSE choices? Did I tell all about contraception and how it doesn’t always work? Did I tell you to never have sex until you had finished your education, just in case? Did you listen? Or did I tell you to live your life as you saw fit and to love when it was your time and make your own decisions? Did I teach you to be strong and stand up for yourself? To always know what you want and what you should do? To never allow yourself to be subsumed by another’s wishes and desires. And to never make a life or death decision after getting yourself drunk on half a bottle of Malibu?

Did you come to my wedding? Did you come to meet your sisters after their births? Or were you maybe even at their births? Do you come to their birthdays and shower them with love and gifts?

Are you happy? Were you happy? And what about the me in that universe? Is she happy? Was she happy? Does that even matter?

Dear Adelaide, I will never forget you and I wish I could have got to know you, like I am getting to know my little girls. I hope that there is a universe out there where you got to know and to love life. And I’m sorry.