Anyone
who has spoken to me over the past few days knows I’ve had a challenging couple
of weeks to say the least. Words such as vomit, fevers, bed-wetting and head
lice spring to mind not to mention a flat tyre, sleepless nights and cooking
meals that no one wants.
Just
when I’m trying to write my 50,000 fabulous words for NaNoWriMo, I‘ve had to
deal with every inconvenience that having children can bring.
However
yesterday I caught the train to town with my 15-month-old daughter and we met a lovely woman who got on at the same station. We started chatting and as it happens she and her husband, after five rounds of IVF, are sadly unable
to have children.
I then explained the challenges that we’d faced trying to have our second baby, which
resulted in three miscarriages. But at the end of the day we got lucky and my
new best train friend did not. Even so she was incredibly generous and
philosophical about it. I tried to make her feel better by saying, “Well I had
no sleep last night,” and was about to launch into my tales of woe when she
said quite firmly, “Oh that doesn’t matter.”
And
she’s right. It doesn’t matter. At the end of the day all this will pass and I’ll
still have two beautiful daughters to cuddle – even if they’re both in my bed
at the same time, which usually means I end up crossways along the bottom.
After
bidding farewell to my new best train friend, I went to the skin specialist for
a routine check-up. I was pregnant with my second baby when I last saw the
doctor (who also has kids) and this time with baby in tow, we started
discussing quite fondly those kid-free days of our 20s.
It
was the second time in a week I’d thought back to that particular era. Last
weekend my husband and I bought some everyday wine glasses from Ikea because we
keep breaking all the ones we got as wedding presents. The glasses we chose are
quite small, not the huge goblets of my 20s even my 30s. Then I remembered how everything
was oversized back then. I had noodles bowls the size of salad bowls and plates
as big as platters. It was all about pleasure and self-indulgence.
Last
week not only did we sadly change to smaller wine glasses but also smaller
plates in an attempt to eat smaller portions, as we seem to be consuming more
than we need.
The
heady days of our 20s are definitely over. Life is not about indulging ourselves anymore but doing the best we can for our kids. And even though right now it doesn’t
feel like much fun, after chatting to someone who will never know the
difference, I’m feeling a lot luckier than I did last week.
