It is
mid August and the summers end looms like a late afternoon shadow. It has not
been a vintage year; a chilly start muddled with downpours, weeks of tedious
humidity and bleak, grey-white skies. This has been a summer to take what you
can when you can, snatching fine days for picnics and river swims, forging
ahead with camping trips – dodgy forecast and all – and dreary mornings
brightened by a visit to the rose garden at Hampton Court, where an
embarrassment of velvety blooms hang heavy and rich with fragrance. Dinners of
fish and chips on the beach, eaten straight from the paper and swaddled in
hoodies; this is what British summertime means. In the last fortnight the
blackberries have come into season, lustrous black jewels bursting with tart
sweetness. Felix is in heaven, his face smeared with claret, berry stained
hands testimony to rich pickings.
When
Felix was less than a year old, my cousin and her family visited from Poland. We had
much to catch up on, and during the course of an emotional conversation about
birth and miscarriage she said something that has stayed with me and which I
think about during moments both tender and tricky. 'No matter hold old your
child or children are, whether three months or two years or five, you always
come to believe that this is the best time. That they are now at their height
of sweetnesss, their perfect ripeness. That this is the moment you will look
back on in years to come and remember as the golden time'. How right she was
and what a gift to a parent it is. It is this selective madness that makes
parenting possible, that offers dollops of sweetness to mask the sour taste of
tantrums, sleep regressions and food strikes. That burnishes reality; enhancing
the good and making the bad fade as if it never were. Every parent believes the
best of their child, seeing through to the core of gold that exists in every
tiny person, glimpsing the limitless possibilities that surround them like an
aurora. Being a mother to Felix has tested my spirit, my relationship, enhanced
and pruned and strengthened, bringing out the truest, most resilient and
resourceful parts whilst cutting out the deadwood. In turn I feed this energy,
commitment and zeal for life back into him, one vessel endlessly refilling
another. A miracle of infinite sustenance.
I write
this final entry just as everything changes again and a new routine is becoming
established. The daytime nap is no more. After months of on/off napping, at
times daily battles and spells of relapse, he has decided that definitely he
does not wish to or need to nap any longer. This has changed the very landscape
of our day, and therefore the equilibrium of life in general. Gone are my two
hour slots of daily writing, replaced by a brief half hour of enforced ‘quiet
time’, enough only for a cup of tea and a period of doing absolutely nothing at
all. For the rest of the day, all twelve hours of it, he is on the move, a
darting, dancing, questioning, playful robin with the short fuse of a tiger and
the emotional fragility of a teenage girl. It’s quite a whirlwind, and evenings
find me too strung out to compose my thoughts enough to write. It’s not the
physical demands that tire me, but the almost constant need for attention, the
eagle eye and elephant ear that notices everything and asks ‘What’s that
mummy?’
Yet just
as Mother Nature adds another burden she takes also something from the load,
sensing that otherwise you may simply collapse under the onslaught. His ability
to play alone, and the development of imaginative play, has hugely improved. He
can be left in a room by himself for some considerable minutes without the need
for supervision. As parents of toddlers will understand this is an immense
blessing, and means you can sneak off for a quick glimpse at your phone, go to
the toilet, or just sit looking into space for a few minutes. For
non-parents-of-toddlers, imagine a meeting that lasted all day, from the moment
you wake up, during breakfast and through lunch and dinner, having to take your
toilet breaks with someone knocking on the door and saying ‘can I come in?’ and
never being allowed to speak your mind, swear, be callous, impatient or give a
bad example (lest it be instantly copied and magnified to the nth degree) In
fact whilst being the best, kindest, most patient, encouraging, stimulating,
loving and selfless person you can be, whilst the boss (or in this case your
child) rushes about creating mess, wanting to simultaneously draw/play
trains/brush the cat, needing regular snacks, meals, water, milk, cleaning up,
hand washes and bum wipes and trips to the toilet or corners of the playground
to wee even though they only just did one ‘but it was only a tiny one and now
there’s more’. Therefore these precious moments when they become lost in their
world of play, that incredible space in their imagination where a little
plastic house can be simultaneously a garage, a moving train that announces its
destinations and just a plain old house are like tiny breathing holes, giving
just enough air that you do not stifle.
Everything
is changing, and everything is about to change. In four weeks time Felix will
celebrate his third birthday, and I can hardly believe that I have been writing
these entries, these odes to our amazing journey, for three years. Soon, our
extended period of intimacy and exclusivity will be challenged, for the term
after he turns three, in his case January 2017, Felix will be at last be
eligible for some free hours of preschool. Only for three mornings a week, and
then only for three hours at a time, yet this will be the first time he has
ever been left for more than a few minutes with a non family member or close
friend. It’s a seismic shift in our relationship, and my primacy as mother, the
chief carer, the main educator, the shaper of the dough that is Felix, will be
in part handed over to others. What a very odd and disquieting prospect, after
so much time being the centre of his world. Not that I’m saying it is not time,
if anything it is long overdue, and yet the thought filled me with so many
mixed emotions. For many kids and parents this enforced separation comes a lot
younger, and whilst this is undoubtedly harder and often more harrowing, having
been so long in harness with each other it seems utterly impossible that this
will not always be so.
Felix is
about to fly a little way from the nest that I have so painstakingly built and
feathered with my own down, the nest that has come to symbolise the unbreakable
bond forged by our many years together as a couple, the nest built on love,
laughter, art and music, and a deep level of mutual respect and admiration. He
is strong, able, and confident, and the time is ripe to stretch those wings. It
is a season of change, and as an unassailable sentimentalist I am already
marking the time before he begins his tiny foray into the wider world. In part
I am looking forward to it, thinking of the time I will have to myself, the
mornings of freedom, the chance to write, organize my life, do whatever I
choose, yet I am painfully aware that the singular time we have spent together,
co-conspirators in the adventure of our own making, is drawing to a close, and
at times the thought of that makes me weep. Oh, the passing of time, the
growing up of the child. Never again can you have any of it back; that is why
it is vital to fully appreciate and experience it as you go.
Every
morning as I open the back door so Felix and I can welcome the day, a robin
swoops down to greet us, red breast flashing against the green of the garden. I
can no longer consider it coincidence, for the regularity of this
daily occurrence spurns chance. It is a small thing, and yet somehow it
represents all that I am grateful for. Every humble pleasure, every speck of
joy, every tiny miracle, Felix, my darling, brilliant, beautiful boy, it has
all been about you. This whole book, this unfolding of myself, this journey of
growth and improvement, this opening of the eyes and heightening of the senses,
this marvelous, extraordinary escapade, it is you who have made this possible.
I love you more than life itself, and I love life very dearly. It is time to
end now. I cannot help but feel a keen sadness, and the tears run unchecked as
I write these words. But comes a season to begin and a season to end; and it is
only the wisdom of age and of experience that helps to show you which is which.
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
THE
END
