Blending is hard

or what happens when your car is too small

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

Driving out of Glasgow on Saturday, the sky darkened and raindrops splattered the windscreen, as we set out on a trip to visit a precious baby. One daughter hitched a ride with some friends - my car is too small for our new life, it has five seats, and sometimes there are six of us now. As we crossed the Kincardine Bridge into Fife, another daughter told me she had missed the sea, and I had to agree. Our wildness now looks quite different to the marram-fringed beaches that have so far defined her childhood.

It’s a long time since I held a newborn, but I found myself swaying from side to side as I breathed in the smell of the top of her head - my body remembered what to do after many years of soothing my own daughters. I remembered my youngest as a tiny baby, how I wrapped her in a sling against my chest, strapped two of her sisters into a double buggy and firmly held the hand of my oldest child as we walked around the town. A tribe of five.

I was asked on a podcast recently how my mothering had changed since the end of my marriage, and I found it hard but true to say that I usually parented alone, wedding ring or not. In reality it has mostly been me and the girls. The impact of that has been that I’m used to doing everything on my own. There is also something quite specific to parenting against a backdrop of hostile systems that means I am sometimes tightly coiled and hyper-alert to being criticised or things going wrong. When you are fighting hard day after day to look after chronically unwell children and keep all the balls in the air it can be even harder to relinquish the reins.

In Fife, I kneeled on the carpet next to the sofa, where the sixth and newest member of our tribe nervously held the baby in his arms. I allowed myself to wonder for just a moment what it might have been like if he was holding our baby, looking into his own blue eyes staring back at him. Then I cast my gaze across the carpet to where my younger two daughters were colouring with felt-tips on the baby box gifted to every new family in Scotland. Remembered only a moment earlier when my littlest girl had folded herself onto his knee and stroked the stubble on his chin.

Driving home across the Kincardine bridge a bit later, a curlew flew alongside the car for a few seconds, and the curve of its beak reminded me of what we have left behind. I settled back in the passenger seat and enjoyed again the novelty of being chauffeured. Every day I am trying to lean in to not being the only one and it’s mostly glorious, but also sometimes I get it wrong.

Another of the by-products of being the single parent of a child with complex needs is that it is less easy to find suitable respite. I have never left my 13-year old overnight with anyone apart from her father and my parents. There can often be a fallout that makes me question whether it is worth me leaving her at all.

The morning after the beautiful baby and the curlew, I sat up in bed and wrote a plan of action for the subsequent thirty hours. Last year I bought my 15-year old tickets to see Coldplay at Wembley, not knowing we would be living in Scotland by then, and that my book would be published two days later. The timing was less than ideal, but the Glaswegian had offered to look after my other children and I wanted so badly to do something just with the daughter who loves music, crowds and the bright lights. She’s had her wings clipped too many times in order to meet the very different needs of her sisters.

My plan of action, scrawled in pencil because there is never a pen when you need one, involved school runs, a GP appointment, medication, tips for coping with meltdowns, packed lunch suggestions and uniform reminders. I realised, as I scribbled, how much I hold in my head without even realising, the multi-tasking I do every single day. I wondered, not for the first time, how I managed to find the focus to write another book. I can only conclude that it poured out of me in direct response to the isolation, incompetence and pointless bureaucracy that often defined those days.

I kissed my sleepy daughters goodbye and sat on a train for several hours. Painted glitter on my cheeks and strapped light-up bracelets onto my wrists. Stared through a sea of mobile phones at fireworks and confetti. Jumped and waved my hands in the air and feasted on the sight of the huge smile stretched across my daughter’s face. My phone had no reception, and I pushed to the very back of my mind the idea that my often-silent child might be trying to contact me. I worked hard to stay in the moment and trust that the rest of my tribe in Glasgow were all safe and calm.

They were fine of course. Although why ‘of course’? They are entirely new, the more frequent opportunities I now have to leave my children in the safe care of another adult. I find it hard to ask too, always follow up my request with an apology, as if it’s entirely unreasonable that another person would love my children. I am trying to learn that it is a gift for anyone to make my daughters laugh, or to hold them gently while they cry. They are not hard to love. I try to remember that we are all of us a fabulous prize. But it’s a source of wonder for me, too, that I have found a way to share my family and create a little more space for myself. I’ve spent a good portion of my weeks since moving to the city feeling amazed at what my life looks like now.

I’m typing this on a train heading north, past fields and forests that often made me claustrophobic, despite their expansive beauty. Soon I’ll return to my flat and my daughters. He will probably return to his flat and my cat. Everything will be a bit weird and new, and I will try to sit with that feeling. At some point maybe I will need to address the issue of my car being too small. But for now we will all keep jostling around each other, working out what we need and how we can ask for it and what we want to give. We will sometimes get it wrong and often get it right, we’ll keep saying thank you and sorry and I love you, and hope that is enough.

UNSCHOOLED BY CARO GILES is published on September 2nd by Little Toller. Please consider buying a copy if you enjoy reading my words. Available from anywhere that sells books x