Divorcing my Children

My husband is away this week. He is in India visiting a quite remarkable school nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas.

There is part of me that hates him being away. I want him home with me. I want him in my bed at night. I want him bringing me my cup of tea in the morning. And yet there is part of me that doesn't mind at all because it is the passion he has for doing things outisde of what most would consider the norm that makes him the man he is - the man I love.

It is this passion that has shaken our lives up so drastically recently. He is starting a new job and we are moving from the home we have lived in happily for the last ten years. Ten years of stability and suddenly we are starting over in a new place with new opportunities and new challenges.

Without a doubt, the one thing I will miss above all else from this part of my life is having my two eldest daughters around. They both have homes a short walk from mine and I spend a lot of time with them - running, swimming, shopping or having them just drop by for a chat or inviting themselves to dinner! They help me out in all sorts of ways and I love their company. I know that the relationships will adapt and evolve to suit the new situation but I will definitely miss the 'availability' of them.

Despite living independent lives, both daughters still have possessions in the family home. Of my other two grown up daughters, one is about to finish University and one is about to start. They both have a significant amount of their belongings stored here too. As we will be moving to an area of high property value, we will inevitably be downsizing. This has made it necessary for my girls to claim and take responsibility for as much of their own stuff as possible.

We joked that it was like a divorce as we sorted through the DVD and CD collection working out what belonged to who. Divorcing my children actually turned out to be a lot of fun and quite therapeutic. We  amicably divided and also sorted out a mighty pile that my eldest, Liberty, was able to sell with Music Magpie. I was absolutely delighted when she bought me a present out of some of the proceeds to thank me for the sacrifices I made from my part of the collection.

My present was Volume 1 of a wonderfully dark, interconnected collection of short stories in the graphic novel style by writer Neil Gibson. I have never fully embraced the comic book culture but this particular book entitled Twisted Dark is incredible. It explores the worst aspects of human nature in a punchy, hard hitting yet digestible way. Beautifully drawn, clever narrative, edgy... I just love it. I don't imagine it will convert me to a lover of all things 'comic book' but I am definitely wanting more Twisted Dark!

Another sizeable collection that needed to be dealt with was Liberty's Warhammer fantasy miniatures - paints, craft tools, miniature figures, scenery, the entire Lord of the Rings partwork with most of the figures still wrapped in the cellophane. Back in her teens, she had spent many a happy hour painting the figures - and she was good at it.  A steady hand, meticulous attention to detail and the odd tutorial at the nearest Warhammer Games Workshop and she was achieving a very high standard - a standard recognised when she won a ffty pound gift voucher in a painting competition. The money was immediately ploughed back into the hobby which ground to a halt about the time she got her first serious boyfriend! The collection has been in my loft gathering dust for years and it was time to put it back into her hands. The lovely thing is, her interest has been rekindled. She has no desire to play Warhammer or even to keep the figures once they are painted. The joy is in the doing. She has started painting them then putting them on ebay to sell. She is doing well. She's never going to make her millions this way but she has the pleasure of painting, the slight thrill of seeing how high the bids go and most importantly... they are no longer in my loft.

My house decluttering continues as I wait for my husband to return from his adventures in India. I am almost at the point where I want to empty each room as though we were moving out and then (after a clean and freshen) put back ONLY what we want in our new life. That way, there will be no surprises when we move out for real.

Almost.

Dustbin of Love

Although I have only been married to my current husband for a little over two years, I have known him a long time.

We were students together at Bristol University back in the eighties, where he lived on the floor below mine in the first year Halls of Residence. There was never any romantic interaction between us (with the exception of a half hearted attempt to plant a drunken kiss on my equally drunken lips after my 19th birthday celebrations - a kiss which I expertly deflected with a sharp turn of my groggy head) but we had a special connection.

He was a guest at my first wedding.

He bought me a wedding present from my list - a galvanised steel dustbin. Inside was a bottle of Moet and Chandon champagne.

We lost touch for many years. I went about being a wife and then a mother while he sailed the Atlantic finding work in exotic locations and eventually settling in the Caribbean where he ran a successful business, married and became a father.

I never forgot him. I often wondered where he was, what he was doing and if remembered me.

With the introduction of wheelie bins in the late eighties, my galvanised steel dustbin became redundant. I could not bring myself to part with it. It was too strongly attached to a happy memory, not of my wedding itself, but of my tall, bearded, gangly friend arriving late and looking like a dustbin man in a suit!

Over the years, my special dustbin accompanied me on many house moves and performed many different 'containment' tasks including storing chicken food during a brief period of chicken keeping.

When my dustbin giving friend and I found each other again and fell in love at the turn of the millennium, he was quite surprised to see that I had kept his wedding gift to me - this small connection to him that had silently witnessed my journey through motherhood, depression and divorce.

The dustbin is part of our life together now as husband and wife and has continued to prove its usefulness. When we used it to collect moss that we were raking from our lawn, our little girl could not resist the temptation to climb in and make herself a cosy nest in the soft springy green stuff. I did what I always do since starting this blog - I got my camera.

As she made herself comfortable in the battered old bin, it was hard not to think of that brand new, shiny, un-dented dustbin from some thirty years previously with its bottle of Moet hidden inside.

My husband has said that he loved me then and never stopped loving me. I feel so blessed that we are together now and the love we have for each other can flourish. We have shared many bottles of champagne since our reunion.

He also told me, as we watched our daughter's dustbin games (with our son supplying her with more moss), that if he had been granted a glimpse into this future back when he presented me with my unusual wedding gift... a future in which the dustbin he carried would hold our beautiful, mischievous child...  he would have been a very happy man.

Wishful thinking

Just after I finished writing my post yesterday and turned off the computer, my upbeat mood that had blossomed from a lovely Easter day and having both babies asleep in bed, suffered something of a
setback. My little Dylan woke up screaming and would not be settled back to sleep. I gulped down the remainder of my sparkling chardonnay getting all the calories and none of the pleasure and resigned myself to another night of bed sharing to the detriment not only of my back but also my time spent with my husband.

Time with husband has been very lacking of late. As well as the disruption to our evenings because of the children's recent illnesses, I also lost him for two days during a well overdue visit with his best friend. And now, I lose him again as he spends the next four days with his daughter from his first marriage. The relationship with his daughter has been strained almost to the point of estrangement but he has never given up hope that his love will find a way to bring her back to his paternal embrace.

Demands on his time are great. Our time is always the first that is sacrificed.

Often I don't even realise how much I desperately need that time. Time to reconnect. Time to restrengthen our bond. Time to re-energise. If I am not careful, I can easily find myself in the position where I am now -feeling low, withdrawn and frankly, not coping all that well. I hate it. Stupidly, it means that I waste the opportunities where I actually could be having the sort of wonderful shared moments that can make a marriage so fulfilling.

I had been looking forward to the Easter holidays not just for our family time but as a chance to get some of the jobs on our ever growing job list crossed off, getting out in the garden for some spring planting and also grabbing with both hands those opportunities for the indulgence of my need for quality time with my husband.

None of the above have really come to fruition...

...yet.

The optimist in me is insisting that it could all still happen.

As I type this, my husband is putting to bed the two little ones (who I know he is going to miss terribly over the next few days when he will be far away and doing his best to cope with an altogether different parenting challenge).

Maybe they will settle quickly and sleep peacefully throughout the night. Maybe then, just maybe we can relax and enjoy our last evening together before he heads off tomorrow with his hastily packed bag and headful of dreams of a happy reunion with an eighteen year old whose life has become so unfamiliar and distant.

And if not... he'll be back on Friday and maybe then, just maybe......

The Gallery - Week 43 - Children

As I prepare to celebrate my one year wedding anniversary next month, my thoughts return to my wedding day. 

On our Order of Service, I printed photographs of my husband and I as children. I liked the idea of acknowledging the children we had once been this way (and it did get a lot of "aaahs" from our guests!)

The Order of Service is visible in the background of this photo along with the original old photographs and the champagne ready to toast a year of being man and wife.

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