Diary of a Desperate Wife and Mother - aged 35...and a half

Reality Check

Thursday

Finn is fully recovered and has gone back to school for the last day of term. I, however am dying, or at least that's how it feels. I got up this morning at 6 and felt out of sorts...within 20 minutes my head was rammed down the toilet. I love my kids, all of them, but between them they have given me numerous colds and sickness bugs, chicken pox, head lice and worms! So this is just another stomach bug to add to the list. At least I can go back to bed once everyone else has left for the day.

I refuse to make packed lunches for fear of contaminating the food and in turn my children. Finn reminds me as I heave at the sight of the peanut butter and jam sandwiches Paul is making for our youngest son that I am supposed to be going to mass tonight with Grandma. I am unsure if I will be up to it, but I will try, although when he insists on discussing Jesus' last supper and tells me in detail what he would have for his last supper I am heaving again so I might not make it tonight. He then adds that he is part of Sunday's mass and asks Paul if he will be coming. Paul isn't even Catholic, but he usually goes to anything the kids are involved in. I see Martin and Scarlett attempt to skulk away but Paul stops them and reminds them that they will be expected at church on Sunday too.

Scarlett announces at that point that she doesn't believe in God and calls her father a hypocrite for going along with someone else's beliefs. She shoots me a glance at that point and I am unsure whether she is citing me as the someone else or if she is simply tarring me with the same brush because although I still choose to believe in God and in general the teachings of the church I mainly go along with these things for my mother. In fact she is the reason all of my children attended or still attend in Finn's case a faith school.

Paul makes me laugh when he tells our daughter that he respects her choice not to believe and if she can convince Grandma that she shouldn't go to church on Sunday he will support that choice. She huffs and throws in a 'fine, I will go to church then' because she knows there would never be an argument to convince my mother that she shouldn't go and it is for Finn as much as anything.

I am relieved when they all go out and leave me alone to vomit in isolation and then I do go back to bed and manage to sleep for a few hours. When I wake I do feel slightly more human and even risk a cup of tea. The TV is on and there is an article on one of the lunchtime women's magazine type shows about first love. They even have a couple on who were childhood sweethearts and then lost touch only to be reunited 20 years later when they fell in love all over again. My stomach lurches as I think of me and Steven and I am unsure whether that is because of the stomach bug or thoughts of Steven, good and bad. Immediately I am thinking of Facebook again and his possible friend request and before you can say confirm friend request I am rushing to the kitchen for my phone. Before I can hit the icon I need there is a knock on the front door. I put my phone back down and upon opening the front door I am surprised to find my mother standing there with a food parcel, yes, an actual food parcel. She reaches forward to push my sweaty hair back off my slight clammy face and then she is in, leading me into the kitchen where it seems she is going to feed me. As I prepare to take a seat on a high stool my phone pings with not one, but two messages. One is from my Dad telling me, warning me that my mother knows I am unwell and she is on her way with homemade soup and a cake! The second is from Paul checking how I am and then apologising for mentioning I was unwell to my Dad when he was on the phone to Mum who was going to stop by. I reply to them both with a no problem, she's here kind of message and with my phone in my hand I am considering my friend request, if there is one, but my Mum interrupts my thoughts when she suggests that I should take a shower while she warms my soup. I do as she suggests and smile as I climb the stairs because although she can be a giant pain in the arse she is my Mum, a good mum, the best mum she can be and she loves me, even as an adult she wants to take care of me and she actually makes the best soup in the world, soup that is guaranteed to make you feel better.

My Mum actually spends the afternoon with me. We eat soup and fresh bread and then a couple of hours later she makes me warm milk and cuts me a generous helping of lemon drizzle cake. We chat about the children, Paul, my Dad and I tell her about the promotion I have been offered, the promotion I haven't told Paul about. She is impressed, but actually says that I should be the manager. I smile at her as I think she is proud of me, even if she doesn't always show it. The thing with my Mum is that she struggles to show emotion and to be demonstrative in the way I am with my kids. I tell my kids that I love them a dozen times a day and I am forever telling them how proud I am, even if it's only that Scarlett didn't tell the deputy head that he is a knob when she lost her phone and he basically told her it served her right for having it at school! My Mum isn't like that, never has been, although negative emotions are easier for her to show like disapproval, but occasionally she says something, awkwardly and with discomfort and those moments, like this really warm me. I think of how proud she was when I got married, proud and relieved as I was knocked up and when my children were born she was beyond proud then. When I went to college and got jobs she considers prestigious, like the travel agents she was proud then, which is strange as she seemed to disapprove of my desire to have a career and move away, better myself, but maybe that was the issue, that those things would take me away, from her, my family and my roots. Like that my focus returns to Steven and that bloody friend request, Steven and all of the things we shared that didn't make my mother proud and all of the things she us unaware of that would make her ashamed, ashamed of me and suddenly I feel sorry and I want to apologise for ever bad and judgemental thought I have ever had about her. I almost choke on a sob as I tell her I love her, that I am sorry and somehow stop myself from confessing all of my sins to her, covering it all up with an extended apology for not being able to attend Holy Thursday mass with her. She looks at me intensely, as if she is about to force my hand to tell her what I am really sorry for, but she doesn't, she waves away my word and gets up to make more tea but not before she leans in and kisses the top of my head.

My mother stays until Paul returns home with my Dad and insists on cooking tea and taking care of me, despite my insistence that I am ok, which I kind of am, although I feel like I have been run over by a truck and my stomach still feels as though it might not be done with expelling its contents any time soon. Paul suggests me putting my feet up several times before telling me to go to bed and rest. He even goes so far as to say that I could write my diary which isn't a bad idea and then he says 'or read one your old ones, I know you like to do that'. If my mother's visit made me feel guilty for the things I have done that might make her feel sad or ashamed that pales when I consider how my reading of my old pre-Paul diaries might make him feel and I decide there and then that I will not be reading any of them tonight, nor will I read them when Paul is around and I will definitely not be checking for friend requests from childhood sweethearts. I spend the evening with Paul and after he has put the Finn to bed and the other two do their own thing we lie together on the sofa, spooning whilst watching a film about some old gangsters that Paul wanted to see and I hope it in some small way confirms that I love him and regret ever making him unsure of that, him and my mother.