Demanding Times

Sunday, 10th July 2011
Today is the first day in many weeks where Time (always my enemy) has deigned to loosen her sturdy chains around me just a tiny bit. As I write, two small girls (one not mine) are downstairs watching Amercian rubbish on telly, blisfully happy in pyjamas and dressing gown with a small bowl of biscuits at their side, while a clearly exhausted husband still snores in his bed. The cup of tea I have just made and brought up stirred him briefly, but he has returned happily enough to the Land of Nod. He was up at 5.45am (having got to bed at 1am) to take E on her Year 7 trip to France, the highlight of the school year (more anticipated for the reunion with the boys, their former classmates, rather than for the cultural experience, it has to be said). Last night he made bravado talk of not returning to bed after the early morning drop off but cracking on to deal with the mountain of issues piled up on his desk. I for one was pleased that, when it came to it, he took the decision to catch up on some much needed rest instead, and went back to bed. Meanwhile, middle girl G, our living dynamo, is away on her Year 6 Leavers Acitivity Weekend, climbing ropes and abseiling, crawling over obstacle courses, canoeing and hiking. Oh for the energy of the youth: I have woken with an aching back and as much energy as a deflated balloon. Just enough, it seems, to move fingers over a keyboard, at last.

The garden through the window is dappled in gentle sunlight, reflecting on the Happy Birthday banner which hangs forlornly from the summer house, the sellotape losing it's battle with the wasp-chewed wood. Three balloons, equally deflated, hang in a now desultory fashion from the Public Footpath post opposite our house. I must remove them forthwith as there is nothing more depressing than deflated balloons or a vase of dead flowers. Beyond this, there is not too much evidence of the party which took place here for little L yesterday afternoon. Nine friends came to celebrate the imminent arrival of her 9th birthday (12th July), an event far less daunting than in recent years when G and E have also shared the party (G because her birthday is on 11th August when we and everyone else is away, and E because you can't have a garden party in January, which is when her birthday falls) and we have had upwards of 30 children screaming around the place. It was a strange feeling not to feel completely stressed as you attempt to meet and greet, organise party games, get food out on time, provide endless drinks, mop tears, find plasters, light the candles on the cake and sing happy birthday before parents come to take children away, and make sure everyone leaves with the right towel and swimsuit (the party relies heavily on good weather and the water slide) and party bag. No, this year was calm and controlled. We did all the usual races in two teams - running, sack, egg and spoon, skipping - as well as pass-the-parcel, painting plain china mugs to take away, apple bobbing and a treasure hunt. There was swing ball and netball and badminton and a good time was had by all. Certainly as far as L was concerned who, as we waved the last people away, two hours after the party officially ended, she burst into uncontrollable sobs at the idea that her party was over. She had been planning it and looking forward to it for weeks. It is part of the summer ritual. I picked up her skinny little frame, wiped the tears from her hazel eyes and hugged her tight, trying not to think that in a year she probably won't seem like this little girl anymore as Time marches her inexorably out of this blissful stage of childhood into a new era of self-consciousnes and dissolving innocence. Catch it while you can.

It has been a hard few weeks and the passage of Time has left its mark in many ways. The day after I last wrote here it was indeed my own birthday. The day was passed at college (we managed some Prosecco out of plastic cups under a tree at lunchtime) but come the evening we went out for a lovely meal with friends at a favourite hotel in the Peak District, The Cavendish at Baslow. A few years ago we went there for the first time on my birthday and now it has become a bit of a tradition. The drive over is 30 minutes through beautiful countryside and on a warm evening you can sit outside and contemplate a bucolic vista of trees and hills while sipping a glass of champagne. The food is excellent - more refined and skilled than the ubiquitous yet competent pub food so prevalent these days. We are often the only ones in the restaurant, arriving later than most other guests, but we make our own party with animated chat and raucous laughter with the great friends we have made since our move up here eight years ago. It is always a special and memorable night.

Shortly before we left for the restaurant, I had taken a call from my parents. We were in a rush to leave so the conversation was short and a little chaotic but somewhere in there I thought something was perhaps not quite right. I couldn't put my finger on it beyond the fact that my mother didn't seem to be hearing what I was saying however many times I repeated it. It was if she was in her own little world, kind of going through the motions. It was two days later, on the Saturday afternoon that my father phoned, just minutes before we had guests arriving for the weekend. It was the call I had long dreaded, the one where you are told that something is wrong with one of your parents. He was clearly choked and in shock as he told me that my mother had had a stroke. She had not been feeling 'right' for about a week (we had been with them on return from half term holidays, just a week before, and it seemed that all was well then; but she had deteriorated slowly through the week and her behaviour, as witnessed at an event she attended with my mother-in-law the day after my birthday, was a little bizarre. Time suddenly had no meaning to her, she was walking incredibly slowly, she seemed distracted and disconnected to the world going on around her. This is so not my mother, always sharp as a pin and fretting and worrying over the next job or commitment, firmly rooted in the minutiae of her daily environment. By Friday even my father had noticed that 'Mary was not herself' and, spurred on by the observations of my mother-in-law and their trusted cleaner, he took her to hospital. She had had a small stroke of the kind that depletes the brain of oxygen over a period of days rather than one that wipes you out in one fell swoop. Damage has clearly been done - she has lost much strength in her legs (I had to help her out of the bath) and she cannot write like she used to. She has lost interest in reading (she was an avid bedtime reader) and she feels exhausted much of the time. The drive and motivation are gone for the time being. It seems she has had another small stroke at a previous date on the other side of her brain - a fact which, looking back, makes sense of some small changes I had noted in her (oh, the frustration of living so far away). Her cholesterol is through the roof (stress induced) and is now being controlled. She, the woman who told everyone else how to look after themselves but would never apply (or heed) the same advice to herself, has had a wake-up call. It could have been far, far worse and I am at least glad that now she is being looked after too. I had always muttered that, despite being the youngest of the remaining parents, due to her inability to relax and sleep and her endless worrying about things, that she may well be the next one to go. Literally worrying herself to death. It has been a hard lesson for her to accept.

So I went down and spent a weekend with them, my brother having been down the weekend before, and helped and supported as much as I could. Leaving again to head back north was one of the hardest things I have had to do. My father, at 83, has been doing a marvellous job of looking after her but I could see the strain and worry was getting to him. How I wish I could be closer to spend precious time with them and help relieve some of the burden.

The next two days were filled with a desperate cramming for an exam I had on the Wednesday, my concentration and energy fuelled solely by adrenaline. The day following the exam I was fit for nothing. I tried to do some desultory jobs around the house, a domestic wasteland abandoned in the heat of other pressing matters. I have been living with builders since the beginning of April, a situation I am deeply weary of. The whole place is a filthy mess, almost no room untouched by plaster dust, filth and unfinished jobs. Our possessions are piled up in every bit of free space so the whole place looks like a dump. I live with bad language and Radio 1 at volumes that make my head spin. I have to plan my movements around the movements of the builders, unreliable at the best of times. Their van continually blocks my drive and I am forced to leave my car in the lane while my study (a teetering pile of unlooked-at paper) remains a hideous monument to my lack of time to get on top of things. I tried to treat myelf to a bit of Wimbledon - the highlight of my summer - but again, circumstances conspired continually against me. But you know what, dear Reader? I will stop there for now, before this post becomes wearisomely long, and I will pick up the threads another day.