Grass Widowhood (no, not that kind of grass..)

Grass Widows are defined as wives whose husbands are temporarily away, on business.  Apparently in America it has come to mean a woman who is separated or divorced, but that's not the context for this blogpost. 

There is no total consensus on where the term originates, but the most likely way that it came into common use was through Anglo Indian slang. In the hot summer, wives were often sent away to the cooler stations, where the grass was greener, while their husbands remained stationed on the plains. There is a suggestion that the phrase came to infer a certain amount of bad behaviour that may have gone on while the wives were away, both back home and in the green grass of the hills. 

It's not a phrase you hear very often anymore, but definitely one I apply to myself in my own mind when Andrew goes away. He travels a fair amount, usually for less than a week, and most often to the States. But occasionally just for a couple of night to mainland Europe, and very infrequently, for longer than a week.

For many Irish families, this is a far more regular occurrence. Since the economy took a nosedive, many people have had to seek work outside of Ireland and often this means that Daddy works away all week and comes home at weekends.  This can be very hard and if you google 'husbands working away from home', your screen will fill up with posts from Mumsnet and similar forums, with people asking for support or expressing concern around this issue. And of course for Army Wives, this is a way of life, with the attendant fear and worry about the husbands' safety.

I know a few families where the Dad is away more than he is around and while it is not easy, families generally make the best of it, because they just have to.  I recently heard of a very sad situation, where the Dad moved to England for work, on the natural assumption that he would be back as often as possible. In actual fact, he chose this fairly spineless way to leave his wife and to simply not return. Try explaining that one to your kids...  But this is of course extreme and plenty of families do make Dads' absences work. 

I find there are some advantages to grass widowhood. People often seem sympathetic towards me when they know Andy has jetted off once more - but I would far rather have him enjoy the variety that travel brings than feel chained to his desk.  It definitely breaks down the monotony of the same faces and meetings every week and, for Andy at least,  travel is preferable to boredom. Mind you, it's not as glamorous as it sounds - generally, he gets to see the airport, a hotel and an office in any given city and very little else.  And jet lag is a real killer.  But before you get out the violins, there are of course great meals out, and some free time to explore new places also.  He had a great weekend in Washington DC a couple of years ago, for example. Jealous? Me?

As soon as he is on the N11 en route to the airport, my privileges kick in. One of my favourite is that I can park sprawled all over the driveway however I choose. No idea why, but I get a kick out of this! In addition, I become the sole proprietor of the remote control.  Or the mouse really, as I mostly watch Netflix these days. I try to pick a series that doesn't look like something he would be fussed about, like Grey's Anatomy, and watch that.  More often than not though, I find myself thinking 'ooooh, Andy would love this!' That's how I found Bones, which we both loved. And I started watching the IT Crowd last night, which I think he would like as well.  I will have to find something else tonight and save that for when he's back!

And of course, there is the bonus of presents!  Kudos to him, he is not bad at buying presents. Put it this way, I haven't run out of Clinique products since he started this job. He has even branched out into the area of clothes, especially in the States, where there is an outlet mall near one of his frequent sorties.  I was pretty impressed when he bought me jeans - how brave was that!

But all the Clinique and jeans in the world can't make up for the disadvantages of his absence. Generally, I find that I don't sleep as well.  There is a slightly hysterical irony to this, as I spent 10 years complaining about his snoring until he got that sorted out. And we frequently have duvet possession wars, or one of us reads for too long in bed while the other one is trying to sleep. But the bed seems awfully big when I am in it alone and I don't sleep as deeply.

Perhaps that's partly cause I am more alert to the safety of the boys and the house. I really hate being the one to lock the doors at night and turn off all the lights.  I never realised how much I value the security of Andy being the one to do that every night, until I started having to. In addition, I am now also supposed to remember to water the plants and the garden. And to wind the clocks. Never going to happen...  So Andy generally has to do emergency aftercare on the poor neglected plants and sort out the clocks once he returns.

And of course the biggest disadvantage is that the boys miss their Daddy. This has actually become harder as time has passed since he first started going away.  There used to be a big sense of excitement and we would consult the atlas and learn the names of new cities. Trips away were strongly associated with presents and the poor man would barely be out of the car before 2 boys launched themselves at him for a cursory hug, before asking for their gifts. 

But as they are getting older, they are making the very healthy transition from Mummy being the main focus, to Daddy being the hero. This means his absence carries more weight. For the first time ever last night, I had a boy come down to me in floods of tears long after I had put him to bed: 'I want Daddy!' He was very hard to console and I had to resort to kissing every single stuffed animal in his bed good night before he was sufficiently distracted and calmed down. 

For me, I measure his absence by the laundry basket.  If he is away for only a few days, he might only just have disappeared from the laundry cycle, but there are probably still a few clothes to fold and put away that are his. On a long trip, he vanishes from the laundry. Until of course he comes home and fills the entire basket in one go...

While he is away we get on fine, because we have to. It's easier during the school term, which kicks in tomorrow, and we are in our little routine and it's grand.  In fact, the trick is to realise how well we have coped, and therefore to recognise that we all need to readjust when he returns. Because we have to just get on with it, the Daddy shaped hole becomes less pronounced each time he goes away, or for each day that he is gone.  This is helpful while he is not here, but can make his return tricky. This is not a big issue - just one of those areas where we have to be aware and intentional in recalibrating ourselves to having four of us in the house once again.

He just left yesterday, and this will be a long-ish trip.  And he will be away for his birthday again, which is a shame. On the other hand, I was beginning to run low on Clinique...

Flat 7Up and a Duvet on the Couch

Remember that feeling of being sick as a child? I am not aware that I was a particularly sickly kid, but I have very strong memories of being unwell and being looked after, in particular by my Mum.  Even though these are memories of sickness, they are very happy memories as well, as I just remember being warm, snuggled and looked after with care and love. 

One of the best things was being allowed to go into my parents' bed for part of the day. No idea why, but this really felt like a big deal and was reserved for occasions of sickness. I remember feeling very important and special in what seemed like an enormous bed. The other really great thing was a duvet on the couch.  If you were lucky, a double duvet folded over, so you were lying both on and under it. Mmmmmm... the sense of comfort from that should be bottled! 

And I would extend that sense of comfort into the deeply uncomfortable arena of throwing up. It's horrible - the way it takes over your body and, just, yuck.  But when your Mum is rubbing your back and murmuring soothing phrases, you know you will be ok.  I had a French teacher who used to encourage us as we spoke French in exactly the same tone my Mum used when we were being sick.  I always felt a bit nauseous in his classroom...

Then there is the paraphernalia: medicines, dry crackers or biscuits and of course flat 7Up. Nobody ever recovered properly from anything without flat 7Up. And books that you had already read before so you didn't have to think too much. And tv: Anne of Green Gables or Mary Poppins (but not too loud for the singing).

I am of course not talking about hospital sickness here, which is a whole other scenario. But the childhood flus and bugs, which prevented you from going to school and presumably prevented your Mum from doing much of anything, although she was gracious enough not to let on. As a child, I almost revelled in the whole experience - you were allowed to ask for almost anything to eat, drink or watch and the chances of being told no were severely reduced. 

My husband has a very different experience of childhood sickness.  Not that my mum allowed me to be a hypochondriac, but his mum was just not having any of it.  Unless there were broken limbs or blood coming out of his ears, he was going to school...  Consequently, he is rubbish at being unwell himself.  Following surgery, I looked after him while he recuperated and he was totally uninitiated in the art of the couch duvet. There is a knack to the placement of the pillows, the proximity to the coffee table has to be judged carefully and there is of course the all important 'socks or no socks' debate.  All of this was foreign territory to him and I was happy to educate him...

Now it is my turn to be the Mum who looks after sick kids.  Today, my younger son has a nasty tummy bug. Although of course my heart breaks for him, a tiny part of me loves suddenly being needed so much again.  It goes so fast and we are so proud of every milestone.  But each of those means more independence and less direct interaction with me! But today, even though his little woebegone pale face was very tragic indeed, I was secretly delighted at all the extra cuddles I was getting. And, yes, I now get to hold the sick bucket and make the soothing noises.  It is strangely un-gross - it just goes with the territory and I don't mind it at all.

Of course this is all very well for me.  I don't work regular hours outside the home and am in charge of my own schedule. In the recent times I worked in office jobs, I was very fortunate that both kids were relatively healthy, apart from a dose of chicken pox. But today, all I had to worry about was getting the oldest guy a lift to and from football camp.  No drama, no stress really.

How different for working Mums.  And I say Mums here rather than parents.  I think there is a real urge within a very young child for Mummy when they are sick.  With the greatest respect to all Dads everywhere, Mummies are just better at sorting out the duvet on the couch. But when the same Mummy is due in 5 meetings that day, it's a different story. It's a monumental juggling act, loaded with guilt on all sides.  Whatever she does on a day her child is sick, she will be left feeling that she is letting someone down. 

A friend had a sick child just this week, on the day she was due to have an important job assessment talk with a manager. It was just so typical that this was the day there was a sick child in the house. Next thing, the manager sent a mail: his Mum had died and he was cancelling. My friend was delighted! And then horrified at her reaction!  And then just relieved and probably a bit guilty - there always has to be guilt...

My heart goes out to working Mums as they juggle so much to begin with - housework, laundry, shopping, cooking, childcare and the job itself. Adding a sick kid to the mix is just too much and can send the whole dynamic out of whack for the family. The pressure is enormous and sometimes simply having an understanding employer will make the difference.  That is, of course, not a given. Laws about time off for sick kids vary tremendously and it can be a minefield to have to negotiate your rights. As I understand it, in the States, some parents risk job loss or the docking of pay if they have to mind sick kids. Grandparents and aunties can help out, but only if they are around to begin with and even then only if the child is well enough to have anyone but Mummy.

This is perhaps one area where equality is a bit of a flawed concept.  It's great that woman can and do work of course, but kids need their Mummies when they are sick and perhaps employers should allow for this.  But then you can see where employers would avoid employing women of a certain age (where they are not already doing so), and the whole thing gets a bit murky. 

There is no obvious solution here - each family just muddles through and keeps their kids as healthy as possible. Having recently seen a family close to me go through two weeks of stress around this issue, I wish I could be a fairy godmother and swoop in to help with this kind of situation. Maybe that's what all families need! 

Meanwhile, I need to go and wake my poorly bunny and hope the sleep has done him well. Think it's time for Toy Story, watched from the vantage point of a duvet nest on the couch - prepared by an expert!  Now where did I leave that 7Up?

Real or Not Real

Last week I met up with a friend I hadn't seen since my sister's wedding 8 years ago.  We used to meet her and her sister every school morning at the end of their road and all cycle off together to school. Often we saw each other both weekend days as well, in the dance group of which we were all part.  Her husband was in my class - not while he was her husband, I hasten to add.  All of this to illustrate how much we used to see each other and how involved we were with each other's lives.

And then I moved away to England to university and I maybe saw her about 6 times since 1994. So it was so great to catch up again and to spend the morning together.  It was particularly special to meet each other's kids and just brilliant to see them run off and play together happily. 

Here's the thing though: we hadn't seen each other for 8 years, yet we are connected almost every day, on Facebook.  I see pictures of her kids frequently and have asked her advice on issues I face with my boys, as one of hers is a few years older and she is further down that road!  She was one of the very first people to congratulate me on the pregnancy of my second son after I posted that I had 2 heartbeats, much to the excitement of some Dr Who fans. (No, me neither until someone explained...)

So it was quite an odd dynamic, to have not seen one another really for so long, yet at the same time be quite up to date on each other's lives.  I knew that her husband is looking for a new job and that her brother's wife is about to have a baby. I knew that her other brother recently got engaged and have seen pictures of his (beautiful)  fiance.  She knew that Andrew travels a lot for his job and that we had recently been to France. It was kind of odd! We didn't need to have the huge catch up chat about where we now live or what jobs we are in... In many ways it was like we see each other often and it was much more relaxed and easy going than it might have been had we had to reconnect all over again.

On the other hand, there were things that you just don't get from Facebook.  I have never spoken to any of her kids, and I really enjoyed chatting about books with her oldest boy. He is working his way through the Harry Potter series and I have just started my bi-annual reread thereof...  So we had a great natter about this, and I loved it!  

And there are things that you don't put on Facebook.  It is not the place where I am the most vocal about my faith, so she could have been forgiven for not being sure if that was something with which I still engaged. It was great to chat about that and there was other family stuff that we shared, that wouldn't be Facebook-appropriate either. (That makes it sound much more dramatic and scandalous than anything we actually discussed...)


It's a funny one!  Facebook's ostensible raison d'être is to let you 'connect with friends and the world around you.' The wider media often talks about Facebook friends being 'friends' and posits that it isolates people and stunts friendships. An article I read in the Guardian asked: 'does Facebook really connect people? Doesn't it rather disconnect us, since instead of doing something enjoyable such as talking and eating and dancing and drinking with my friends, I am merely sending them little ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in cyberspace, while chained to my desk?' The suggestion further down in this article is that people now think that the more 'friends' you have, the better you are - that people aim to engage in quantity rather than quality of friendships.  

Personally, I don't know anyone who uses Facebook in that way.  Perhaps this is age-related and maybe 'yoofs' are amassing huge numbers of friends and feeling like they are very popular this way. Very few of my friends have an absurd number of 'friends' and they seem to me, as an outside, and occasionally nosy, observer, to genuinely connect with people rather than just garner hangers on to feel good about themselves. As someone who has lived in a few different countries, it has allowed me to stay connected with people I genuinely know.  In all honesty, I would be unlikely to email, phone or write to them. But here is an easy and often fun way to (re)connect and share with them. 

Friends is a big word to apply to absolutely everyone with whom we are connected in this way, of course.  It is quite a loaded word and has perhaps been devalued since the dawn of social media.  But I absolutely disagree with the suggestion that Facebook disconnects us from people. I can think of a few people that I see frequently, whom I have got to know better since being connected to on Facebook. It turned out that we had more in common than we realised, things that we might not have got round to chatting about, and it has genuinely enriched rather than impoverished a new acquaintanceship. 

I am not suggesting that it substitutes real life connections and that someone sitting alone all day sharing and posting to friends on Facebook is as good as meeting a few pals for a coffee.  Of course it's not!  But it's surely equally ludicrous to suggest that connecting to people on social media will somehow diminish your real life contact with them. Unless you are genuinely a hermit who has 2000 Facebook friends and no real ones - but this is surely not representative of the majority? Or do I just happen to have sensible friends and have a very rose-tinted view of the whole phenomenon?

Meeting up with my old schoolfriend was fantastic and could never have been substituted by a Facebook chat, clearly.  However, I would say that our connection on Facebook added hugely to the likelihood of us getting together to begin with and to the quality of the time we spent. We both commented on the unusual dynamic of feeling like we had very little catching up to do, although this wasn't really entirely true.  It was in many ways a shortcut, and one that was good and helpful.  And a tiny bit weird...

And anyone who gets the reference in the title of this post gets promoted instantly to bff, on Facebook and in real life.

Not Taboo, But Still Unspoken

I woke up this morning feeling weird and edgy and then I remembered my dream. In it, I had a miscarriage. Even though it was non sequential and incoherent, as dreams are, I knew in the dream that this was the fourth one and I was devastated.  And I woke up feeling unsettled and off. 

Dreams are really strange. I am not pregnant and I haven't had a miscarriage for 8 years. So it's hard to know how the combination of conversations I had yesterday and the pasta I had for dinner conspired to conjure up up these images.

Apparently 1 in 5 pregnancies end in miscarriage, of which there are several different kinds.  Not 1 in 5 women ever have a  miscarriage, but 20% of all pregnancies. That's a very high proportion and indicates how many people are affected by this. Yet it is strangely unspoken about - it's not something people tend to reveal about themselves on a night out. I don't think this is because it's taboo, rather that it's a very personal thing for everyone. Depending on what stage you were at in the pregnancy, whether you already have kids or not, how both people in the couple respond to this and a host of other factors, your experience will be very individual. People's responses to such a loss are deeply personal also and are hard to share with others, as you are mourning the loss of potential, which is unquantifiable in many ways. 

It was very striking one evening at book club, to go round the table and realise that every single woman there, had had at least 1 miscarriage. There were about 7 of the wider membership that had turned up that particular month, but each of us had a completely different story. That's when the statistic '1 in 5' was shown to be such a high one - that it had affected every single person in a relatively random group of women one Thursday night in Wicklow town.

Before we ever had any kids, we went through 3 miscarriages. The very first one was really early, like about 6 and a half weeks into the pregnancy. If I hadn't suspected and taken a pregnancy test, I possibly wouldn't even have realised and would have just assumed I was quite late.  In fact, one of the midwives said this to me and said that early pregnancy tests are great in many ways, but do cause a great deal of heartache that would otherwise have passed you by.

The next miscarriage was almost exactly a year later and was a really difficult experience.  I was almost 11 weeks pregnant and the school I was working in was 2 days away from being inspected by Ofsted when I realised I was bleeding. Cue the two most awful days. Scans showed that there was no heartbeat, but the doctors insisted on various surgery-avoidance procedures that were really awful.  It was our first experience of being in a hospital system where staff were quite poor at communicating what was going on, and stuff was just done or medication just given, without explanation, until Andrew demanded to be told what was happening. Eventually, I ended up in surgery.

That was a very hard time as one of my closest friends had just had her first baby.  I had found out I was pregnant on the day she gave birth and it all just felt so right and we were so happy!  It was very difficult to come back from this, and I was very angry and upset for a long time. It changed me, it changed our marriage, thankfully by bringing us closer together in the end,  and it changed, deepened and strengthened my faith. 

Two years later, I found out I was pregnant again and was delighted to feel sick and nauseous for a few weeks. Until I stopped feeling sick and nauseous...  I knew then and wasn't at all surprised when the early scan we were allowed due to our history did not show a heartbeat. The one they made us come back for 2 weeks later confirmed this, and I was admitted for surgery in Holles Street. In those 2 in between weeks, our house had flooded due to incompetent plumbers and I spent the subsequent weeks post surgery on the couch as a humidifier drummed next to me and various workmen painted and replastered. Not a great recuperation!

And only then, after 3 miscarriages, would 'they' look at us and do any investigation as to the cause of this recurrence. 'They' being the medical profession, who are acting from the 1 in 5 statistic. At the time,  after the second miscarriage, it is so hard to accept that they don't consider you have been through enough to investigate. There you are, devastated, and told 'we only take blood tests etc after 3.' I almost felt like that was a sentence and a small part of me was relieved after the third one was over, that at least now they had to look into this.

But, several blood tests later, we proved to be perfectly healthy and there was no reason to think the next pregnancy wouldn't be fine.  Although this was good news, I almost wanted there to be a problem.  They would then present us with a super straightforward medical solution, just like that, and we could go forward with certainty and confidence.  Well, that's not how things go in real life!

I write this while ignoring the sounds from upstairs that tell me one of the kids is about to come down roaring in pain any minute now. After the 3 miscarriages, I had 2 subsequent pregnancies, both of which were fine and we have 2 healthy, bouncy boys. Although our experiences were difficult, they are nothing, NOTHING, compared to what some couples go through, in terms of ectopic pregnancies, the whole ivf route with its attendant financial and hormonal pressures or indeed the soul-destroying bureaucracy of adoption. Not to mention losing a baby much later in pregnancy or having a baby die shortly after birth. And I have also always thought that in many ways it must be harder to suffer a miscarriage when you already have kids.  Although we were desperately sad that we might never have a family; at least we were at liberty to console each other, to head off for long weekends and to take time out from normal life as needed.  If you already have kids, that's not an option and I am full of admiration for couples who stay strong in these situations.

I always worry when I hear new couples talk blithely about their plans to start a family after they have travelled and had glittering careers etc. I think the phrase 'planning a family' is in fact extremely unhelpful as it utterly fails to prepare people for the fairly high chance that this might not just happen cause they want it to at a certain time. I am not suggesting people should be worried and tense around this whole issue, but at least be aware that children are a blessing.  At risk of sounding too cheesy for words, I mean by this that each child really is a miracle, given all that has to happen before they are safely delivered. I am immensely grateful for my two miracles and will now go and check which one of them has injured the other...

Birthdays and the Art of Keeping Secrets.

Andrew and I have a tradition of planning surprises for each other for big birthdays. You know, the ones where your new age ends in a zero. When I say tradition, this is actually only going to be the third time that this happens since we have been married.  But the expectation is certainly there. This is where I get the pay off for being just over a year younger than Andrew: I get to set the standard for my birthday the year after! 

When Andrew was 29, we were both working full time and had no children.  So, the budget was a bit bigger than it is now and I went ahead and planned what I knew Andrew would really love: a trip to New York.  I was thinking about this the other day as I remembered that I went to an actual travel agent to book this!  How quaint!  I honestly think this was the last time I ever used one... So I explained to this lovely man in the agency down the road from where I worked that this was a very special trip for my husband's birthday. He entered into the spirit of it brilliantly and even found me a hotel called Thirty Thirty on Thirtieth street.  Perfect!

Now all I had to do was keep the secret. Yes, that was all. No big deal, piece of cake, no problem. Except for the fact that I was madly excited and fizzing with anticipation. The one person I would normally share this with was the one person I couldn't tell!  This proved to be very very difficult! I hadn't foreseen this at all, but it was really very hard for me not to tell Andrew.  On the other hand I couldn't keep completely quiet about it either as he had to book time off work, so needed to be told something was up.

In the end I couldn't do it: one day about 2 weeks from our travel date, I completely mistakenly said something along the lines of '...when we are back from America...'. I then stopped, did a classic cinema moment face and clapped my hand over my mouth.  Then, just to round it off neatly, I burst into tears.  This is not something I do very often, but in this case I just lost the plot!

Maybe it's a testament to a strong marriage that I found it so hard to keep a secret from my husband.  He thought the whole thing was hilarious of course and even more so my reaction.  And he was absolutely delighted with the plans and actually thrilled to have a couple of weeks to look forward to the trip.

In return, a year later, I was whisked off to Rome, where we had a fantastic week.  Of course, Andrew never cracked and I didn't know anything about where we were going.  Having planned the previous year, I was fairly sure it was a trip away and he did have to give me clues about what to pack and which days to book off work. But he was much better than me at keeping the whole thing quiet and not telling me more than I needed to know until we got to the check in desk at Dublin Airport.

Keeping secrets is hard work!  There is even a Wiki How page devoted to this.  It's a list of fairly repetitive hints.  And then there's this: 'you can tell your stuffed animal if you really have to tell someone.' Unexpected and sort of useless as tips go really! Other hints include lying if necessary and pretending you don't have a secret. Helpful. 

Of course the list is catering for people who are keeping a secret that someone else has divulged to them, like that they are cheating on their partner, right the way through to someone planning a great surprise party for their best friend.  Not exactly on a par with each other...  The classic secret conundrum is when you know one of your friends is being cheated on and you have to decide to be the person who knows and doesn't say anything while this continues, or the person who blows the whole thing apart. Thankfully, I have never been in that position.  I would like to think I would tell my friend, but what if I was mistaken? Or what if she hated me for bursting the bubble?  Secrets are complicated.

The thing is that I am great at keeping confidences when this is needed.  But not great at keeping happy secrets to myself. Some good friends are currently expecting and know the gender of their baby - but aren't telling anyone!  No way could I keep that quiet! When we were expecting our second baby, we chose to find out the gender as well.  But I told Andrew beforehand that we should only do so if it didn't have to be a secret. We were keeping the name choices a secret and if I had had to keep more than one, I might have just popped.  Thankfully the scan was incredibly clear and we did tell friends and family that another boy was on the way.

I now have a new secret as Andrew's 40th birthday is approaching. Well, it's actually not for another 13 months.  However, what I am planning needs a long lead in time and I have in fact made arrangements today for the crucial part of the whole shebang. I now have to keep this to myself for a year! Andrew knows something is up as I have already had to check a few dates with him and have access to a bit of money.  So far I have managed to do this without giving anything away! This is where I find out if I have become any better at keeping secrets in the past ten years.  I suspect not however, so I may have to find a stuffed animal to chat to on a regular basis.