Phew.

Ava made it through her two operations. She has emerged ever bouncier, seemingly energised by the ability to run with her head held high, looking to the horizon, rather than peering at the ground to check her steps; even chattier (if that were possible) as she engages even more energetically with the world around her, and, importantly, able to take her rightful place on the (new!) enormous family sofa, Simpsons-style with the rest of us, to watch TV, instead of standing directly beneath the screen, staring intently upwards. Whether I have emerged with my sanity is debatable (ask Paul, or my team at work, but please don't tell me what they say) and I definitely failed the numerous tests on my patience which Ava managed to pass with flying colours. Waiting with a two year old forbidden to eat and drink before an operation is possibly the longest wait you'll ever endure, except for the wait once you've kissed them goodbye as they fall asleep at the hands of the anaesthetist. But try helping four nurses and doctors to hold your baby down while they kick and scream and cry and almost faint with the hysteria as their eye is cleaned out if you really want to feel like you're finally cracking up. Ava's right eye had a harder job healing than the left. The stitches became inflamed and we spent a nail-biting couple of weeks as we and the doctors tried to ward off the now high risk of infection. Infection that would lead to her sight being irreparably damaged. I'm not prone to flights of fancy but I swear I began to imagine things every time I looked at her eye. And when Ava fell down the stairs - all the way from top to bottom - between the two operations, guess who cried harder, me or her? Yes, Ava has been a trooper, and I have been a certifiable flake. She's bounced back after every setback and charmed every nurse, surgeon and optometrist in the place. Last Monday, she started to turn a corner and by the time we went for her check-up on Tuesday, she got the thumbs up. The eye patches are still on, but we're down to only four lots of eye drops a day (!) and one of ointment (which I quickly learned to administer after she had fallen asleep at night). Her eyes, when they flash with fun, sparkle darkly, the cloudy patches gone. Importantly, her shiny, new, magenta pink, square-framed glasses will be arriving later this week. She will be the envy of all her friends.

Entering the fray

Ava is soundly asleep and joyously unaware of exactly what's in store for her tomorrow. She has a very chic new 'princess haircut' (ie one which involves a fringe which won't go in her eyes), a bright new bunny rabbit to hold (thanks to our very lovely neighbours) and is looking forward with great excitement to "going in a taxi to the hopital to fix my broken eyes." Meanwhile, I am half way through my second glass of red wine and wondering why all rational powers of thought seem to have deserted me. So, think of us tomorrow, as we set off towards Moorfields Eye Hospital in the grey of dawn, and pray that I won't actually be sick when they apply the general anaesthetic.

Shit hits fan x2

It has been difficult to find an appropriate post to follow my last. I set myself up for a fall, really, with this blog, always trying to keep it lighthearted and a little bit witty, for there isn't very much lighthearted or witty to say when your Nanna dies. Somehow maintaining blog silence has seemed the only appropriate response to the passing of one of the most important women in my life. My gorgeous, kind, funny and serene Nanna was a constant in my life, and, I now realise, she will always stay with me. I hear exactly what she would be saying to me now, for instance, as I begin to grapple with my latest challenge, which is how to stay emotionally sane, not make myself sick with worry, and appear fearless for my little Ava, who is about to go through double eye surgery to remove the cataracts that have been slowly deteriorating her sight over the last few months. What Nanna would be saying is, "Don't worry dear, just think about how much better it will be for her after it's done! Isn't it marvellous what they can do these days?" Which would be her generous spirited and kindly way of telling me to pull my socks up, lift my chin and remember how good we really do have it these days. Perspective is a wonderful thing, and my Nanna always delivered it in bucketloads.
PS: To help me through my current exercise in maintaining perspective I have been reading what ought to be hailed as one of the best books of this year. The Flying Carpet to Baghdad by Hala Jaber (full disclosure, my company publishes it) is one of those books that you tend to become evangelical about after you've read it, because it does something to your insides at the same time as speaking to your intellect. It is an insightful war memoir, a gut-wrenching look at the impact on ordinary lives of the war in Iraq, but also an incredibly moving, tear-inducing story of a woman facing the ultimate clash between her professional life and her personal mothering instincts as she attempts to rescue just two small children out of the thousands affected by the chaos of war. If anything can help to put your own problems in perspective, this book can. All I can say is, please try to read it, even if you don't read anything else this year.

Nanna

13 April 1917 - 16 April 2009

Death is nothing at all
I have only slipped away into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other
That we are still
Call me by my old familiar name
Speak to me in the easy way you always used
Put no difference into your tone
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
Laugh as we always laughed
At the little jokes we always enjoyed together
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was
Let it be spoken without effort
Without the ghost of a shadow in it
Life means all that it ever meant
It is the same as it ever was
There is absolute unbroken continuity
What is death but a negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind
Because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you for an interval
Somewhere very near
Just around the corner
All is well.

Canon Henry Scott-Holland

Imagination

You'd forgive me for thinking I'm living in a parallel universe in which no parents exist, the drink of choice is pink milk, and the children are called things like Charlie, Lola, Lotta and Marv. In this universe it is ever so extremely important that you intone, gigglingly, in slightly pretentious toddler speak, putting a lot of extra emphasis on certain words in order to convey their importance and to show off that you know them.
Yes, my life is currently ruled by Charlie and Lola, Nath's current obsession and one eagerly adopted by his sisters. This means that when I return from work I am greeted by three small faces momentarily turned in my direction and then back to the TV screen, which is always showing one of Nath's new collection of Charlie and Lola DVDs. It also means that whenever I ask anyone to do anything I am treated to a very loud, "Sorry, I am just too very extremely busy", and whenever we eat a meal together (ie every day) I am regaled with a list of foods that will never be eaten ("I will never not ever eat a tomato"...etc) but whose fantasy counterparts are completely acceptable ("Ah, it's a moonsquirter - that's okay then.") Whilst in the shower the other morning I could hear a quite vocal discussion taking place between Nathan and Eden. They were speaking in unnaturally high voices and guffawing at each other conspiratorially. As I stepped out of the shower I could hear the words more clearly and realised they were reciting word for word an entire Charlie and Lola show, play acting the parts and enjoying themselves immensely.
You might wonder if all this is more than a little irritating but there are a number of things to be grateful for, here. At least Nath's captivation with Charlie and Lola has taken sway over his obsession with killer robot wars, and at least this all goes to demonstrate that TV doesn't kill children's imaginations, after all. Well not exactly, anyway. It just slightly warps them. It seems to be doing quite a lot of good for their memory and recall abilities, too.
Yes, the imaginative streak seems alive and well in the entire family at present. Whilst changing Ava's nappy in a restaurant's baby room over the weekend, she suddenly whispered, a propos of nothing, "Ssshhh, we're in a dark forest!"
"Oh gosh, are we?" I asked. "Are there any creatures in the dark forest, Ava?"
"Yes." She answered, in a stage whisper. "There are dark tigers and dark ducks."
And that was that. Funny girl.

Ava grows up

It's official. I don't have any little people in the house who could realistically be classed as babies. Ava, our youngest, started nursery on Monday morning, and with that small step, off she went on a journey that gradually takes them further and further away from you and closer and closer to independence. Looking at her, all innocent and unaware of what she was about to encounter, in her little, blue, nursery-branded sweatshirt, was enough to make me yell hysterically, 'Don't go!' grab her up into my arms and try to hold onto that umbilical link, just for a few days more. But no, just as my Dad always counselled me, it's our job as parents to teach our children how to manage without us. But Dad, why is that sometimes so very hard?
Monday morning I was due in the office early. We had a big day ahead of us including an important author presentation. Quite apart from trying to rein in my hero worship of the guy I needed to be sure I didn't fluff my part of the presentation and let down my colleagues. But the butterflies in my stomach were all about this little picture I had in my head of Ava in her blue sweatshirt wandering around the big, new nursery looking for her Mum and Dad and wondering why we'd left her with all these strange people. Thank God it was Paul who was going to have to handle the drop-off. I was simultaneously relieved, guilty about feeling relieved, and somewhat sad that the job wasn't mine this time. That's not just a paradox - that's, like, a three-dimensional paradox. Or something. No wonder my stomach was in knots.
Paul called me at 10.10am. He had arrived at the nursery with her at 10am and he was already leaving! She had launched herself in to the thick of it the minute they had arrived, trying out the activities at every table in the course of a few minutes and settling at the painting easel with a look of disbelief that someone could have laid out all this fun stuff and noone was stopping her from playing with it all. She had more or less ignored him when he had told her he was leaving. His voice sounded a bit wobbly.
'Oh, phew,' I said, 'I think.'
As I went into the presentation my butterflies had disappeared. Ava was going to be okay. The small matter of a major author's happiness would be peanuts.

P.S. Do not allow this post to full you with sentimentality and sympathy for poor little Ava. Both her brother and sister are this week sporting bruises over their eyes after 'combative encounters' with their 'cute baby sister'. If I wasn't already certain she was growing up fast that should be physical evidence enough!

Juggling, in extremis

Nathan's birthday party was craaaaaaayzeeee. 14 four year olds (mainly boys) in our very small living room, plus most of their parents, too. Next year, the local soft play centre it is. It was however very, very nice to see placid, low maintenance, non-attention-seeking Nath, the quiet and gentle and slightly dopey one of our three, taking centre stage and even enjoying it in his own little way. Have to admit, was slightly embarassed by his guest greeting manner (airplaning down the hall, yelling at the top of his voice, 'PRESENT!', yanking the front door open and snatching the present from each unsuspecting guest's grip before running back down the hall and into the living room without so much as a 'hello', 'how are you?' or 'come in'. Hmm, maybe not so quiet). Still, he made up for it later by joining in the party games (after a bit of persuasion), NOT crying when someone else won the pass-the-parcel, and, importantly, RECOGNISING WHAT HIS CAKE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE - YIPPPEEEEEE! So, yes, the cake worked out okay, and with the indoor sparklers going for the jet engines it really looked quite spectacular. Most importantly, Nathie loved it.

But here, you can judge for yourselves:



The day I wrote my last post, as I laboured over this cake and hoped against hope that Nath wouldn't take one look at it and say, 'Err, what is it, Mum?' I had to laugh at the Extreme Sport that is Working Motherhood. Here I was, sticking bits of Victoria Sponge together with jam, licking a bit too much of the icing off the spoon, and wondering whether I'd got the gun metal silver effects right on the Fighter Jet Wings, when only 48 hours before I'd been stepping off the red eye from New York where I'd been at the annual TOC conference speaking to an audience of 1000 people about 'The Future of Publishing'. (See embarassing pics, here).

With all this flipping between such frankly silly extremes, it's a wonder we don't get more mixed up and confused than we already are, and no surprise that so many of us develop a bad case of Imposter Syndrome. I can't work out whether I think I'm more of an Imposter-Future-Gazer or Imposter-Mother, but I'm probably a bit of both.