My August continued the trend of my year - it was filled with firsts as the journey of experiencing significant life events in the absence of my beloved Daddypie went on. Weaving through 4 life events void of his physical presence, influence and support tested the resilience I convinced myself I had built up in coming terms with him not being here. I was shown however, how fragile my cloak of acceptance was during those significant moments. The month kicked off with my birthday, on the 1st of the month. Having a birthday at the beginning of the month helped me enjoy a conscious period of annual reflection reserved for the year I just lived. Reaching an age milestone especially in the context of grief made an interesting and uniquely poignant look back. My 44th year started in the midst of the world around me opening up post the first 2020 lockdown. A beautiful summertime with some super hot days and the dance of summer in full flow. 44 ended 2 lockdowns later and in many ways grief created my own very personal lockdown. I have had no desire to be social or out there. The world has not been making much sense to me and I have craved silence and stillness, which I have been fortunate enough to be able to honour myself with in many ways. Yes life goes on and I must work and be around life to a certain extent, but everything else extraneous I have dropped and that has helped my process immensely. I have continued to dance with the quiet and stillness because it feels so good to be able to hear myself thinking, to have the space to feel my feelings and to consciously act and decide what I will meaningfully engage in and with.
The summer holidays I remember of years past and from what I have seen looking around me are polarising times - some mums love to have the kids home all other time, for others it is really challenging to have to have full time mumming happening; and then of course for those mums who work, the summer holidays can be such a bind to negotiate and make for bucket loads of guilt because of the eternal juggle to find balance which is extended through the long summer days and niiiiiiggggghhhhhhhttttssss. I have LOVED these summer holidays - such juicy long times to have my little Nialah at home and around the place. She finished her GCSEs at the end of May and after the May half term, has had time off. This was one of the blessings of lockdown life, this is the earliest that year 11s have ‘left’ school and I was and have been 100% here for it!
I remember the varied summers that I have had with the girls growing up from teaching a few days a week and having my daddy to look after them, to having long full days for the whole summer when I had a kids club that would start at 7 in the morning until 6pm. The years I had a yoga studio and had to balance having sometimes several other kids to look after and try and keep quiet whilst a yoga class was running upstairs. To the horrible soul destroying, guilt ridden years of working full time at an office job - those were the years I lost the girls to technology for a while and I was devastated. The themes throughout have always centred on the fact that regardless of a mother’s set up, married, partnered or single; the onus and responsibility around fixing the kids up for the holidays and especially the super summer hols falls squarely on mummy dearest. I am not sure where that implication was created, especially in the days when women are expected to work to help meet the financial needs of the family, how did this expectation not create an equal and opposite expectation that Dads would also be equally implicated in childcare?
My second indirect milestone experience this month was exam results. Nialah and her fellow year 11 class of 2021 got their exam results earlier than was the tradition of past years; they came in the middle of August just a couple of days after the A level results were released. The last two years of school for this year’s year 11s have been the most uncertain and unpredictable. I imagine an experience only equaled by this year’s year 13s. Both these groups of young people began the first year of exams with minimal tuition and sketchy plans to make up missed materials. From what I observed, it seems the belief that going back to school after lockdown would be straightforward so that exam year would smooth things out. That as we know did not turn out to be the case. I have watched Nialah taking exams and tests since February, consistently, every week with no let up in order to provide enough evidence for teacher assessed grades. When I think about the level of commitment and consistency she maintained throughout those weeks my heart burst, overflows and glows with pride all at once, this especially because amongst all of that, she was finding her way through levels of grief. Grief at losing her only male role model. (She has told me that Grandad was her dad as far as she was concerned.) Grief at her sister not being at home during all the turmoil due her stint of leaving home. And then the loss of the usual way of doing things. One of the fallouts of lockdown has been the collective unconscious loss of the old order, the expected events of life not unfolding as they always have done. So for example I don’t imagine that anyone is overly enamored with the prospect of taking exams at the age of 15/16 but from at least the age of 11, everyone is expecting that that rite of passage will be theirs in due time. Because that has been just the way of things, forever, since the introduction of O Levels in 1951. Last year’s year 11 had done the majority of their preparatory work, and their exams were taken away in the home stretch. This year, it was a will they won’t they game until very late in the innings when it was a definite won’t. The unpredictable nature of events was a test in itself and then the strange alternative that was left in place of exams didn’t leave much room for pondering their absence, but it was a loss nonetheless. Here’s to hoping that the next step of the educational ladder goes a little more smoothly.
The exam results were indirectly my milestone. I wasn’t the one who was going through the process and taking on all of the direct stress of having to perform and adapt, but as a mum being in the position of support, it was all too real to both observe and also be a beacon of calm. I feel because of the general societal lack of reverence for motherhood, we tend to sell ourselves short and not fully recognise the significance of the relentless contribution we make to the lives of those we care for, dismissing it as some sort of petty bystander role, or what we ‘should’ be doing, when what we do in fact is front and center, even if we are a supporting actress and not the lead lady. We are pivotal to the success and maintenance of the myriad of moving parts that are a family. My biggest sense of loss was the kick that Daddy would have gotten from the results that Nialah achieved, especially as they were (as is the state of things now) in numbers and not in old school letters. He would have asked lots of questions about what letters the numbers were supposed to be, and why they have changed, and he most definitely would have declared Nialah a genius. I missed having those chats with him and having a laugh about it. I missed Nialah having the experience of her Gdad making a fuss of her and proudly sharing the news of his genius granddaughter, or The Best as he called her.
The other thing that happened, which was a first for me without Daddy, but also as a mother, my babygirl got her first job! Can you imagine the shift, the pride, the confusion and the relief that on a Friday night, both of my girls are out working. I have the house to myself until 10pm - whhhhaaaaattttt!!!!!???? I make a point of encouraging parents of younger children to cherish and enjoy every moment of their little ones because I remember the times when I was finding it hard, wishing that the girls were further along; that they had started school, that they would be more independent, that they would be…..whatever the next thing was. At those times, I had no idea how quickly it would pass. How fleeting those precious, beautiful sacred moments were; if I had, there is no way I would have held those thoughts, because now, I would be so chuffed to see more of the magic than I saw, to take in more of the details, to be more present and to breathe it ALL IN. But hindsight is 20/20………...