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I’ve gone wild in the socks and jocks shop aisles, spent more time in the car the last fortnight than in the last 14 months combined and I’ve even had the house to myself for a whole 10 minutes on one occasion.
Could it be that the days of pandemic parenting are finally coming to an end?
If it does prove to be the case I won’t pretend I’ll miss them. I’ve found it near impossible to relate to those who managed to cherish all this time together, the great slow down. So much time. So very much time. Perhaps it’s because no slowdown happened here, just new pressures and asks without any supports or structures.
They had kicked up a rumpus but gone anyway on those very boring walks because otherwise Mammy would have confiscated their devices for the day
Or perhaps it’s because I know that my children did not want to spend so much time, so very much time, with their adoring mother. Because I couldn’t compete with their friends and schoolmates and team-mates and extended family and all the other extremely important people in their lives who play a much different role than I do.
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And that’s as it should be. They know I adore them, even when I insist that they make their beds or empty their own lunch boxes after school. They’ve learned to live with such tyranny. What they hadn’t quite learned to live with though, was the absence of the many other people in their lives who make them happy.
They had resigned themselves to daily walks. Well perhaps resign is too misleading a word. They had kicked up a rumpus but gone anyway on those very boring walks because otherwise Mammy would have confiscated their devices for the day. They didn’t want to go for a walk with me, the person who is the proud owner of several Mother’s Day cards which bear testimony to the fact that I am, indeed, the best mother in the world.
Nope, they wanted to go and play “flush the toilet” (it’s a chasing game, not a lavatorial form of knick-knacking) with their friends. Or basically do anything with their friends, because that’s what kids like to do. The best mother in the world just didn’t cut it after a while.
But now as things have begun to creep back towards normality, I feel I can exhale again. Normality of sorts is on the way back and we’ve missed it so much.
I took great pleasure in telling them their grandparents were coming to visit last week. They hadn’t seen these grandparents in the longest time, and they’d stopped asking to see them. Not because they didn’t care, but because a vague “soon” had taken on an obscure meaning over the last number of months, and felt like anything but soon.
Excitement levels were high. “Does this mean they won’t die if they see us?” one of the younger children asked as I broke the news, catching me by surprise. It shouldn’t have really, as this was his perception of things. I just didn’t expect it to be laid out in such blunt terms.
'Age is just a number. You're only as old as you feel' is something we often tell each other as the birthdays roll around and the cumulative number grows unappealingly larger
“No, they’re vaccinated now,” I replied. “So, they won’t die?” he questioned again. “No,” I answered. “I wonder if Gran will bring brownies, so,” he continued before running off to another room to cause mischief, his expectation that all would be as was.
It was nice to be able to do something we took for granted before – see family when we wanted to. It was nice to go shopping for the needless as well as the necessary and it’s been nice to make plans again, especially as the birthday season approaches.
Four birthdays in the space of three weeks. First up will be the one who turns 15. I find myself wondering how that can be. He was just 13 when the pandemic started and life as he knew it shut down. Thirteen, just venturing out into the world of teenager-dom and now he’s in his mid-teens. Chronologically older, but (like his siblings who will also change age over the coming weeks), due to restrictions and school closures, without having experienced or navigated many of the life and school experiences that usually accompany such a transition.
“Age is just a number. You’re only as old as you feel” is something we often tell each other as the birthdays roll around and the cumulative number grows unappealingly larger. But something we’d do well to remember for our children and teens in the reverse who have missed out on so many formative experiences, as we emerge from this stage of pandemic parenting. There are subtleties easy to miss in the relief of it all.
Birthday season is go, and the back garden is the place to be. Candles, pizza, and friends outside. Not quite normal, but finally getting there.
Phew.