My thoughts on a page.

I thought I’d just let you all know how I’m getting on with my book writing. Well, so far so good. I’ve a deadline for mid-May which is alarmingly close but I’ve it all worked out. All I need to do is write 5000 words a week, edit the previous weeks work and never go out!

I may or may not be succesful in completing two out of three of those weekly goals.

In other news, I am now the mother of no children. Yes, my baby reached the magic number of 18 years old, has moved out and will no longer need to be fed or have her clothes washed!

One of those four statements is true.

It is hard to believe. The best thing about it, is that she is happy and content. The worst thing is that she is determined to learn to drive! I have barely recovered from the last daughters driving.

So, just to remind me and possibly some of you, of those mothering days now lost, here is a trip down memory lane with a blog post from 2014.

I’ve been made redundant!

No, I’ve not lost my high paid job, as I don’t have one, I’m referring to my life as a mother. Tonight another door on motherhood closed on me forever.

I was sitting down, minding my own business, happily watching nothing in particular on TV and feeling all was quite good in my world, when the door opened. In came my youngest. At twelve, no longer a young child but my baby forever, regardless of her age.

‘Goodnight Mom;’ she said, as she bent down to give me her usual goodnight kiss.

‘Night sweetheart,’ I replied, hugging her in return while trying to see over her shoulder and listen to the last two minutes of the mindless soap I was watching.

‘You don’t need to come up tonight Mom,’  she said, leaving the room. ‘Okay darling,‘ I replied, in my not listening mode while staring at the TV wondering would he really die?

A short while later yer man walked into the room and said, ‘She doesn’t want us to go up anymore, did she tell you?’

‘What!’  Then her words came back to me, ‘You don’t need to come up tonight Mom.’

No more goodnight kisses, no last minute hugs, no shared moments lying together on the bed as she revealed something in her day she hadn’t told me earlier.

Quickly I put all such thoughts out of my mind. ‘ Ah don’t mind her, she doesn’t really mean it,’ I said.

I waited the usual twenty minutes or so and then clambered up the stairs as usual. Her door was shut, but I’d got used to that as she’d hit us that punch a couple of weeks ago. Unperturbed I opened it and went in.

It may have been only twenty minutes since she had left me downstairs but as I entered her room I knew times had moved on. This ‘you are not welcome vibe’ was not the vibe I was accustomed to.

However, many years of mothering have ensured that I have grown a thick skin. Choosing to ignore the frosty atmosphere, I bent over her fake, ‘I’m almost asleep,’ position and gave her the obligatory bedtime kiss. She reached up and hugged me but as she did I knew; this was it. There would be no softening her determination. These night-time goodnights were over.

As I kissed her I breathed her in, inhaling twenty three years of bedtimes, hoping it would allow me to forever remember that warm, tucked up smell of a child. My child.

An hour has passed and it is slowly sinking in. Yes, there will be no more broken nights and no more early mornings, for that I am not sorry. However, there will also be no more bedtime stories, no more bedtime chats and no more end of the day moments spent lying together.

I am redundant. I have been a mother of young children for over twenty years. Now what?