Hello, wrote a bit about a day single parenting my 15 month old. The joy and the graft of it all. The juggle, the struggle and the bloody triumph of putting dinner on the table and tucking a loved little child into bed. Day after day, rain or shine. This one is for the lone parents and the single Mothers out there. It's also for all those in failing or coercive relationships:
November 2023:
This pain is so raw it belongs on the counter of a butchers shop, not in this tender body. What I really want is to love and be loved. Put more good out into the world than I take in. I cared about that. About reducing other people's pain. I keep searching for the good in the world, in the day to day but I have to squint these days to see it. And it's small. It's the green light that falls on the leaves in a inner city lane. An unexpected sunburst on the coldest of days when I am on my knees. It is the blind woman in the charity shop using her hand to feel the smile spread across her toddlers face. No sooner had I seen this happen than her husband apologies for her using her hands to find away around the shop. He seems embarrassed and rebukes both this woman and her tiny daughter for making a scene. The "scene" being the woman trying to clear a space for her daughter to try a rocking horse despite having little to no sight. She deftly clears the way for the toy. Takes her daughters hand, helps her aboard and crouches down next to her. Gently she rocks this wooden horse back and forth. Her daughter lights up, her whole face flashes with joy. Her mother knows this because her hand, resting on the child's cheeks can feel the smile spread, the laughter, can hear it. The husband clearly uncomfortable, pulls them both by the shoulder to move them out of my way. I want to scream at him. I want to hug this woman who has raised a baby in a world set up for sighted individuals. Here is the real strength. I want to tell her what I have just seen is one of the most beautiful examples of love and resilienceI have ever seen. I want to do something. I can see the power play in the relationship in the husband's shame in his shortness of tone. I want the best for her and her daughter. It is too much. I am crying. I spent a year learning about the underbelly of unhealthy domestic relationships. Hearing it first hand from women who have lived cohesive control and physical abuse every single day. I had seen enough in the way this man was conducting himself barely concealing his shame and frustration to know that something here wansnt right. And yet, in that moment, everything stopped the child, two maybe three years old, rocking back and forth on the wooden horse laughing. Her Mother crouching down to help her. This is love.
I cry for my own son who I suddenly need to be near. I cry for the absence of my Mother who is no longer here. I cry for all the women who are at the behest of violent men. I cry because this year I have realised just how many that is. I have talked to them spent time with them, heard their stories. I go outside. There is a war on. Everything seems unbearable. The joy, the love the beauty cheek by jowl with unspeakable pain. It's raining. The guy I'm seeing texts me something about wanting some space, he's sorry for the late reply, didnt see my messages come in. Etc etc. I want a hot lunch. He says that he is having a hard time, which he is, and can he step back from things a little, he has a cold he Hope's I'll understsnd. I want to scream at him too- I was made redundant two days ago, I'm not sure where to go for Christmas, my family don't speak to eachother, the roof is leaking, I'm not sure where I'll find the money, I'm waiting on some test results, I am a single parent, I sleep very little, I have the same bloody cold. I put my phone away knowing his pain is valid and mine on top will be too much. I haven't told him much of any of this because it's ugly pain and you can't just go round lumping that on people without coming across as a handful. I try and get off the main road as for the first time in a year I am now crying a good deal. Luckily I find a small lane leading down to some allotments. It's torrential. I consider lying in the hedge. I can't do that, it's odd, I'm an adult woman, im someone's Mum. The main thing to remember I tell myself is that Beau, my son, needs me. That alone pulls me back from the brink. Every damn time. It's enough to ensure I never get anywhere near it, really. I do miss my Mum though. I do miss the idea of having a home. A grandparent wheels a child along in a pushchair. I give an overly cheery hello so they will be extra sure I am having a good time. Just popping to my allotment they'll think. What we can't have is grown adult women who are also Mum's crying in lanes or lying in hedges. Reclining in a hedgerow is not a sensible idea I remind myself. Also people have it worse. Instead I must go home and cook stew for my baby. I want him to like vegetables. This is unlikely to happen if I keep feeding him avocado on toast for dinner. He already delights in beige carbs. I worry about it. I plan to buy a cabbage. Also I should do more about this war. I pull out my phone and start writing an email to my MP as I go. It feels bloody futile but I feel if I get too involved in what is happening in gaza I really will break and curl up in the hedgerow. Then what good will i do anyone. Bloody privalaged position I'm in though, not to be under bombs. I know that. It's okay to cry though I also tell myself but don't fully believe it because there is a war on and children are dying. My phone vibrates, I kind of hope it's him saying that actually he's decided he does want to keep talking to me. It's the vet. The bloody vet. some sort of annual reminder that I need to increase my payment for the cats flea treatment. Fuck, I've forgotten to dispense the cat's flea.treatment. I head home via the greengeocer, medicate the cat, take some paracetamol for my cold and get on with it. Because really, what else can you do. Later that night when Beau is in bed I wuestion whether i am depressed and decide, on balance, probablys not. People who aren't depressed can want to curl up in hedgerows occasionally too right? On a midday Monday afternoon. Also, I think I care too much about everyday things like paying the vets bills, taking showers and giving my child a damn good life. I've seen depression. All my life. I've seen it strip the joy and meat from people's bones and leave them wanting for everything the world cannot possibly give. I can smell it a mile off know how it strikes while joy still hangs in the air. Before you know it is too late. Whatever this is, it's not that but I do wish that somehow I could do a better job of removing unspeakable darkness from the world and giving every human the love they deserve. Shamir once sang "I will always love but never be loved back" in the cheeriest of tones she points out that some people born into this.world will live and die alone. Olivia laing once wrote the same. If to love and connect is what makes us human then some people live a life truly devoid of all humanity. Sometimes that realisation threatens to engulf and overwhelm me some times more than others. Mostly I am glad just to of known love, to of known friendship and Motherhood and to of been the daughter of someone who honestly with every bone in her body cared. Cared for me, for my brothers and for other people. I ignore my phone for awhile. I want to draw out the inevitable end of what had been, until this point, an interesting connection. It's a shame.i think that this person does not.like.me much because if he did it would be so simple. But, as with so many things, it.is not simple..it is manifold.and convoluted and from what I've seen and observed probably a little dysfunctional too. His pain bouncing off my pain. A miserable squash game which none ever wins. I make my peace with it, very, very quickly because I have next to no headspace or time to dwell on it and because I can't afford to. Beau gets my energy that's the promise I made to myself and that I will stick to that ad infinitum. And that's where it goes, the last of my Monday night energy, into chopping up a cabbage and forgetting all the rest. Because the rest is too unwieldy too amorphous and actually I need to remain afloat, to sing him songs and to hang on to my own quiet joy of things like writing and a good telephone chat or meeting with a friend. Or feeding your child a cabbage stew and knowing as he eats it that it is good and hearty and green. I love this kid. It's in the stew. in his warm bath, in the way I lift him up, it's in the naming of the stars and the moon we do together each night before bed. It's in the way you point up to the sky and I tell you "moon...stars!" And the way you laugh knowing that there is wonder here and in the wider world even at this tender age.
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My love is in your cabbage stew
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Overthinker89 · 07/03/2024 10:14
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