Bit dark, this one

Day 181

It was Mother's Day yesterday. This is always a bit of a two-edged sword, as I have a lot of guilt about the kind of mother I was forced into being because of my illness.

Normally I don't do guilt as I find it a waste of time and a bit of an indulgence. My viewpoint is that if one is truly sorry about something, then one simply doesn't repeat that behaviour ever again, and does what one can to make up for the consequences of one's previous actions. I've noticed that some people use guilt as a way of self-punishing, ("if I feel really bad and suffer about this, then it's ok, and no one has the right to be really angry with me"), and then carry on the repeating the same behaviour. Nuts to that.

However, I do feel guilty about this and I think it's because it was always SO important to me. I started off ok - I was even a foster parent at one point. When one comes from an abused background, one is usually determined to do everything differently, and I did and it was great. But when I got ill after Sam was born, all my nightmares came true and I turned into a bunny-boiler version of the rotten mother that I had endured. This is the worst kind of hell because it is one you cannot escape.

It's taken years to recover and get my brain back to normal, and in that time I have done many things I am ashamed of but could not help doing. I wish I could feel more compassion for myself. I know that it wasn't my fault, and that I would be much more understanding of somebody else going through the same thing. It's just that, my kids only had one childhood, and it most certainly wasn't the one I wanted for them. I can't turn the clock back on this, and I find that hard to bear sometimes.

So along comes Mother's Day, and I go into a whole spin about feeling dreadful about the past, doubting totally whether the boys love me, and at the same time wanting them to prove that they do by how much they gush over me for the day. Talk about issues!!! I let Steve in on what was going on and he was really supportive, but hopefully the boys had no idea. This is my shit to deal with, not theirs.

So it didn't start well. I ended up cleaning windows and doing the laundry while waiting for the boys to turn up, and getting grumpier and more self-pitying the longer they took. Steve was wisely getting on with his essay and leaving me to work through this at my own pace. Finally, at about noon, Sam phoned and said he'd be along soon, but an hour and a half later he still hadn't showed and my sorry-for-myself dramas were going into overdrive.

Eventually he met me at the garden centre, where he gave me a choice of choosing a plant or having a cream tea, which is our thing. As soon as I saw his beautiful, open, smiling face coming towards me on the garden centre steps, all my stupidity evaporated. Love does that - cuts straight through the shit.

Of course he loves me - I'm his mum, good or bad, and he's knows I will always, always be there for him. The past has certainly influenced how he grew up, but the present is more affirming than anything that went before, and I would do well to remember that. I love him more than life - how can that not show or be as important as the past? What an idiot I am sometimes.

We spent a happy hour picking some flowers to pot out, finally deciding on some flame-coloured miniature Tulips, a deep pink Primrose and a sunshine yellow Ranuncula, and bought a pot of whipping cream to go with a cherry tart later. We came home and spent the day tidying his bedroom from top to bottom, as it had gone beyond hope and even he was avoiding it.

When Joe turned up later with, of all things, cold, heart-shaped mini omelettes he'd made for me (?), we all got together and roasted a chicken, then watched some terrible dance programme for sport relief. Steve whipped the cream with such enthusiasm it turned into butter, but who cares! It was perfect - relaxed, comfortable, no great shakes. Really, what more could any mother want?

28

Day 96

Twenty-eight years ago this very minute, I was in the car circling Shepherd's Bush roundabout on the way to the hospital, and I had my very first contraction. I mentioned this in passing to my flatmate at the wheel and he damned nearly crashed the car. So my son Joe's life was almost over before it had even begun.

Yes, it is Joe's birthday, my first born, the child who taught me how to be a mother first, a grown-up second, and a child all over again, bless him. No longer my baby, he is tall and stringy like his father but dark-haired and hazel-eyed like me, and someone who is often described as 'walking to the beat of his own drum' like I don't know who.

It sinks in now, if I let it - I have been a mother for twenty-eight years! There was a time when that prospect was so daunting, when I had no clue if what I was doing was right or wrong, if I was up to the task at all. How would I manage when he was a teenager if I couldn't even get him to ride on a bus as a toddler? (Same way as it turned out - grab him by the braces and ignore all the screaming).

Joe used to draw cats. And robots. And sometimes cats in capes flying over the heads of robots. He weighed so little I could pick him up with one hand until he was six. He had huge eyes in a tiny little Oliver Twist face. When he hit the age when boys and girls went their separate ways in the school playground, girls still invited him over to play. "I don't care if I get teased, " one little moppet once said, "he's kind and I like him". Good for you, Laura.

He always had the most alarming imagination. When the teachers played clap-around-the-circle games at school, Joe was the most inventive at being the one in the middle, doing something for every one else to copy. New every time, the teachers said, unlike anybody else.

His favourite Christmas presents were cardboard boxes, sellotape, string, and old yogurt pots. He went through a phase of traumatising our cats by making cat traps that were terrifyingly effective. Once, when he was seven and a friend of mine came to visit with his new baby daughter, Joe requested a box "to make a surprise present for the little baby". Try and imagine, if you will, the look on my friend's face, when Joe proudly produced a well constructed and working model of a guillotine - baby sized!

In more recent years, that imagination has been put to good use filming weird videos with his friend Andy, whose passion as a film-maker is phenomenal. You can catch Joe on You-tube doing 'The Mighty Wow'. Don't ask, just go and look, because really, there is no explanation that I can think of that comes close to explaining either of them.

He's coming round this evening. I'm going to make him a cake. And give him a telly for his new flat.

And remember that I made him, but he made me, too.

Happy birthday, Joe, Love from Mum. xxx