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...

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.

Pea Shooters and Curtain Material: The 'Perfect' Wedding

Today is our 15th Anniversary.  In many ways this has flown by and I can remember July 25th 1998 like it was yesterday! But on the other hand, so much has happened in those years and we have both grown and changed so much as well.  We are completely different people really. The pictures show what people around us saw at the time, but I didn't: we were SO young! But here we are 15 years later, still happy, still married, still in love.

At the time I had just graduated from University, literally a few days before the wedding, in fact. I was about to go on for one more year of study; teacher training. Andrew had worked for 2 years. During the time that I was doing my final exams, we were completing the wedding details and also buying our first house. So for the actual wedding, we had no big savings account or massive budget.

In Ireland today, despite the recession, the austerity measures and all the accompanying woes and misery, the average cost of a wedding has actually risen! This is according to a 2012 article I read, which puts the number at 21000-ish Euro. Twenty One Grand? Wow!  The 3 biggest costs are generally the venue, the honeymoon and the wedding party's clothes, at over 6 grand, over 3 grand and over 2 grand respectively. Not unrelated to this is the fact that the average age to get married in Ireland at the moment is in fact 33, a full ten years older than Andrew was at our wedding. This may account for some of these figures - I guess you can do a lot of saving in those extra years! I should say at this point, that I would absolutely not criticise how anyone chose to spend their money or what they wanted their dream day to include. It's a day people plan for so long and it is a unique occasion for every couple. 

Over twenty thousand Euro though, that is a LOT of money. Having said that, if you go on to Pinterest and do a search for Weddings, there are an unbelievable amount of ways to get through 21 grand and more, easily! Embellished Vintage Heels anyone? Or a Rustic Distressed Chalkboard Sign for $100 telling people to grab a drink while they wait for the couple? Personalised Wine Sets as the Wedding Favours? This is just the tiniest glimpse of the multitude of ideas on Pinterest - google Pinterest Weddings when you have some time to spare, like 5 hours.

Many of the ideas are actually very cute and some of them are cost saving ones also.  But they are often hugely elaborate as well: ideas for cute photos with your bridesmaids (of which there generally seem to be at least 6 in the pictures) before the wedding, customising the bridal shower, super creative and unique invitations. Of course, none of these things are necessarily silly or bad!  And some of them are brilliant and very fun ideas. But the pressure to have this perfect day and capture all these perfect moments, with perfect hair, just seems immense.  If I was a bride-to-be now, I think I would find Pinterest overwhelming and very intimidating. 

In our case, we didn't have a bean. We hadn't been living together yet and any money we did have was going towards the house really. I don't remember exactly what it all cost and who paid what, but I do know we cut a few corners and spent as little as possible.

So, the dress and the suit: The best man wore his own suit. Andy got a suit from M and S. We got my sister's bridesmaid dress on sale in Debenhams, for about 20 pounds, if memory serves and I guess she wore her own shoes.

I was in Germany for the third year of my degree when I got engaged. At the end of the summer term, my parents picked me up and we drove to Switzerland to visit a friend. I hadn't yet really thought much about the logistics or cost of getting a dress, apart from the usual daydreaming and sketching that every woman, if she is being honest, will tell you she has done since she was 6. I was chatting to our hostess and she told me she had bought material for curtains in Thailand, but it hadn't turned out to be right for the purpose. Perhaps I would like to have the material for my wedding dress?

Um, curtain material for my wedding dress? I stayed polite and said that was very kind and I would love to see it. Well, she appeared with a roll of cream raw silk and just gave me the whole lot. It was stunning! Once I was back in England for my final year, I found a dressmaker, drew her a basic sketch and the whole thing was done for 200 pounds sterling. Mind you, I did have to argue with the dressmaker, who wanted me to wear a hoop and who wasn't at all pleased when I had her take out a whole layer of petticoats.  She might have been happier working for the dressmaker in My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding...

The car: Andrew's fiesta was the carriage for the day!  Not very glamorous, but completely fine!  Andrew's uncle was the photographer; he did a fantastic job. And the pictures were taken in his Grandma's beautiful garden.

The cake: my Mum made it!  And iced it, and decorated it with flowers, which we got alongside my bouquet on the Wedding Day. It looked amazing - and she loved doing it! Especially as she had been in a different country for most of the lead up, so this was a way for her to be a big part of the day in the end.

Our main costs were the venue, the food, the DJ and the flowers. One important cost was also the peashooters.  Yes, really. We had been to a few charity balls together and they always had these colourful tubes on the table and pint glasses full of small balls.  Andrew was eager to have these at our wedding, and they were loads of fun! It took some people a while to work out what they were for, but once they did, all hell broke lose! In the end my Dad had to stand up and get people to stop so the food could be served. Friends of my parents mentioned this to me the other week as a memory they have of the day, so it made an impression! Mind you, I don't think I've seen this on Pinterest...

It was a great day. Not a picture perfect, super glamorous, Pinterest worthy day perhaps, but a very very happy one! We were absolutely blessed with the weather, the service was lovely, the speeches were witty, the food was nice... And then: the honeymoon. Friends of my parents offered us their little cottage in Yorkshire, for free.  It was such a perfect gift from them and we had a wonderful week.

So I look back on a happy day. I don't think it could have been any happier, had we spent an extra 15 grand on it! And here we are 15 years later and ultimately it doesn't matter what car we drove or whether I really did have a dress made of curtain material - none of those things make for a happy marriage in the end. That comes through love, communication, trust and effort. And while we didn't have a massive wedding budget, so far, we've never been short of any of those assets.