Today I was one of “those mothers”

I got halfway to church before it dawned on me all Iona had had to eat for breakfast was a flapjack left over from yesterday’s baking.

I did not have the will to fight about what she wore, so while I myself was showered and dressed in clean clothes, she was misshapen, dressed in a wrinkly lilac dress, with a sparkly red cardigan over the top…oh, and a dirty face she hadn’t let me finnish wiping.  Her choice. But I realized it looked as though all I cared about that morning before I left the house was myself.

I was the mother with the child running wildly around the coffee shop, while I held my place in the heaving queue, sounding somewhere in between desperate and resigned as I attempted to keep her under control.

I was the mother with the pram…trying to find a place to sit, blocking people.

I was the mother that didn’t seem to show much sympathy for her child when she fell on the pavement…you would have thought the child had done something wrong with the irritation that spilled over.

I was the mother who had no real plan for the day….who randomly decided to drive 30 minutes out of town….using precious petrol….because she needed a Starbucks….she needed that familiar international setting….she needed to sit there and smell the familiar smell..and remember happy times….knowing it looked like a superficial extravagance……a luxury she surely couldn’t afford….surely her priorities should be elsewhere…..but she did it anyway…dragging her two bemused and unaware children along with her.

I was the mother who let her child eat sweets and cake at a birthday party, and did not insist she have anything proper to eat before crashing into bed.

I was the mother who was honestly not bothered who saw her uncovered in public today or who was offended while her 5 month old baby did the on/off thing while feeding.

I was the mother who was not quick to notice her daughter playing by the door….where her little foot got trapped for a moment…and did not run to her fast enough.

I was that mother today….the one we often come across…the one we judge…the one we look down on….the one who’s actions cause us to question her priorities…..and label her….as one of “those”.

There is a storm in our lives at the moment. It will pass….but for now…I am experiencing what it feels like to be that mother…the one doing her best to mother while a tornado whirls around…watching things get dropped, broken, and lost. Not quite holding everything together….but standing as strong as she can….and weathering it..praying that too much damage isn’t done.  Hopefully coming out the other end stronger…

I am beyond confident my own storm will pass….and much good will come of it…while i know others live in a constant storm..that they are not sure will ever end.

My daughter is growing every day.

She talks so much. She says words like “actually” and when I look at her face I can actually see her little mind thinking….

It seems like has so much of a sense of the world. Who her friends are, which ones are boys and which ones are girls….

Every morning she asks “where are we going today? and then where are we going after that???”

On the way home she cries “i want to go to another place”

She never wants to stop…but she will often say “i’m tired now”  She seems to be so self aware.

She runs around and screams at the top of her voice…but also sits and plays quietly with fuzzy felts and jigsaw puzzles.

She has pushed boundaries, She’s tested limits….she’s had her moments.

She says “no I don’t want to” “stop don’t do that mommy!” and “I want it!!!” and throws herself in a heap if she doesn’t get to do what she wants.

Nightime comes…and I tell myself, “she should really just be able to go to sleep now on her own…she really should” I toy with starting a sticker chart…I have bought some story cd’s and lullabies for her to listen to….yet each night I usually end up just laying beside her….nursing her down..just like I did when she was a tiny baby. So much has changed in her short life already…but bedtime looks much like it always has done. There are variations..there are the nights when she’s had her fill, but hasn’t fallen asleep and she wants me to sit there and hold her hand for what feels like an eternity. There are nights i get frustrated…where I get harsh, where I tell her she just needs to go to bed and stay there!!! Sometimes I sit on the other end of the room….caught between leaving and causing a huge upset, and “giving in” by drawing close to her. I sit there…and she lays on her bed… restless…unsettled…until finally, I go over there…lay down, put my arm around her…and then…five minutes later…she’s fast asleep…the battle is over…and I’m nearly asleep myself. As I look at her angelic face…i wonder why I was stressing so much..these days are numbered.

today I said goodbye to a friend.

I had to finally do it. She is actually physically leaving tomorrow and I had really been putting it off up until this point. It was one of those goodbye’s I had really not been wanting to face. In fact the reality that it was happening had not even begun to sink in until recently. I would quickly brush by her in the corridor after dropping Iona off for nursery and say hi and a “talk to you more later soon” type thing…and then suddenly realize halfway back to my car that actually…she’s leaving..and I really should be taking every opportunity I have to be with her, but i suppose doing that would mean that it was actually going to happen. It would mean acknowledging the reality, instead of remaining blissfully in denial.

So yet again, I felt a colossal lump in my throat….as she hugged me today I felt a familiar inner fight to stay composed and not let the gush of tears flood out. For saying goodbye to friends is something that never ever becomes easier. With every goodbye, I feel the weight of so many goodbyes I have had to say over my lifetime. I feel it so keenly. It is something that cuts me deep inside. Yet…in the pain, there is this amazingly rich feeling…for to have experienced the friendship…has been such a valuable experience.

When you have had a friend who has been there for you…who you have been able to be honest with…who has appreciated you for who you are, and who you have truly enjoyed spending time with, laughing with, and crying with…you feel as though you are losing a huge part of yourself when they go. I think part of the pain is this feeling that….this friendship is being cut off prematurely…and that it won’t get to continue…and that we will miss out of each other’s lives from now on. Sure we may keep in touch…but what has been up until this point, is ending….and there is a fear that the present reality of our friendship will simply fade into a memory.

I remember my summer mission trips. How at the beginning we didn’t know anyone, but by the end of the summer we all felt like the greatest friends that ever were, or could ever be….we felt a bond so strong, and our goodbye’s were incredibly sad and dramatic (we were teenagers) As I sit here the memories of several goodbye’s are flooding into my mind. I remember how I felt each time….and how sad I was…and I remember the friendship, and what it meant to me at the time. Even though I have had to say goodbye so many times….I would not be who i am today without the friendships that provoked those painful partings.

Some people I have kept in close contact with. Others not. Some friendships were for a season, others friendship could be picked up after years of silence and continued on without missing a beat. Over the years, the circumstances in which friends are made have changed significantly. I know I have changed a lot…the kinds of people I mix with have continued to vary over the years…yet..what hasn’t changed is the feeling I have when they leave, or I leave. That sadness..if anything, it has just become deeper…It’s like a wound that is being reinforced. I suppose it feels like that because so many of my favourite friends have been people i have had to leave, or who have left me.

There is this part of me that just wants to know that I have a few close friends around that will be there for the next 30 years of my life. Friends that will be there day in and day out. Friends I will see nearly every day and hang out with at the weekends…friends who by default…are there. in the mundane, and in the crisis. Certain friends you have love a drama…and will come flying out of the woodwork if they sniff a crisis. They are what I call dramamongers….they are all high drama about things…but once your life gets boring again..they lose interest. Save the drama…I want a friend who will listen to me even if the most interesting thing I have to tell is what I cooked for dinner last night.

So anyway, today I said goodbye to my dear friend Anna-Lisa. I will say that I am determined to make use of modern technology and continue being her friend. In the past I have been the one to mostly do the leaving. So having a friend leave me is sort of a new experience. My heart goes out to her as I can empathize with much of what she will experience in the coming months and I hope to remain a constant available contact, (even though I’m not in the flesh) for her to talk to and vent to anytime. I will enjoy hearing about the little things as well as the big things. I am hugely excited for her new life to unfold for her in China and I look forward to hearing about the new friends she is making. I’m sure she will make many because she is a wonderful unique person.

She has always been a good friend to me..even though in some ways….it’s only been recently that I’ve fully appreciated her. She was one of my first “mummy friends”  I watched her breastfeed her third daughter throughout my first pregnancy so she was a great role model in that regard….she normalized it for me. As my own daughter has grown, I have observed the way she is with her own daughters and I’ve been challenged and inspired. She was the first person I told in the Uk I was pregnant with Judah.  She has been a good solid all around every day friend, as well as an angel in a time of crisis. I’m very sad to see her go…but I will do my best to hold on tight….because friendships are so valuable…they make us who we are. I would write more about her…but it would make it seem like our friendship is ending…and I refuse to even go there.

Bring on the Skype!