We Have Come Of Age
Today, at 4.44pm, I became the mum of an adult.
It is such a cliché but I can’t believe how quickly the last eighteen years have passed. It only seems like yesterday since Alice’s tiny six pounds and one ounce emerged and I delivered my Oscars speech to the assembled team in the operating theatre, giving thanks for her safe arrival. But, as my husband kindly informed me later and has many times since, they were just on stand-by to perform surgery if the vacuum didn’t quite manage to suck her out! I like to think though they felt especially valued that day. And it definitely only seems like yesterday since the anaesthetist had to be called away from his dinner to reassure me that I wasn’t paralysed, that the spinal bloc would indeed wear off and I would be able to use my legs again.
As I dangled Alice under one arm and a catheter under the other, exhausted, physically broken, weeping into the payphone cradled under my chin in the hospital corridor, the next morning, I was in deep shock, grasping the full weight of the responsibility I now held. Nothing prepares us for motherhood. We spend more time researching the best buggy design or the most expedient steriliser than understanding the emotional, social and psychological changes we will go through. There is a term ‘matresence’ which describes the transitions women face when they become mothers. We are no longer independent, carefree, selfish, in control. Instead, we are scared, vulnerable, exposed, constantly giving pieces of ourselves away. The world is such a dangerous and unpredictable place when we have our young to protect. We fear we have lost our identity but, we are actually acquiring a new one. We are changed forever.
Although in the early days, an afternoon at home with a newborn felt like a decade, the mornings in the park an endless eternity, somewhere along the line, maybe around the end of primary school, life speeded up to a ridiculous pace and it is as if Alice has propelled through her childhood in the blink of an eye. Thousands of school runs, hundreds of packed lunches, millions of play dates are a blur. Sometimes I grieve the fact that I did not pause, relax and enjoy those years more.
I owe Alice much. She has been the one I experimented on, the one who suffered my inaugural attempts at parenting. She has borne the brunt of my expectations. She has coped admirably with my perfectionist tendencies, my desire to get it right and my frustrations when I didn’t.
As we journeyed to London together last weekend, I realised it is not just her who has come of age, we both have. We have made it through to her adulthood, mutually growing in wisdom and experience. Comfortable in each other’s presence, grateful for each other’s company, we are now travelling companions for life. I have learned and am continuing to learn more from her than she will ever learn from me.
And now it’s time to reflect.
There can be no greater privilege than watching your child mature into an adult you are proud of. As she coaches small children to play tennis, I know she is exercising her many leadership gifts. I am conscious of how far she has come, the crippling shyness she has had to overcome.
I saw her pair up with the other most anxious child in the class in P1 so they could face their anxieties together. I watched her sit off-stage in P2, too nervous to perform in the Christmas nativity, only to watch her stand on-stage, the following year, determined to be a narrator. I witnessed her be the most wonderful friend to Sarah, who lost her mum when they were just seven and I’m so painfully reminded of Helen now because she never got to see her daughter turn eighteen. When I sat in the front of the car, taking them to Youth Club, listening to their innocent conversations, processing her death, it almost broke my heart.
Alice has been my right-hand woman in so many ways. She is our resident hairdresser, whizzing up French plaits, our caretaker, locking the door at nights, our counsellor, reassuring and advising her sisters, our secretary, keeping us on all on track with regular reminders.
I am aware that the hardest days are still ahead, the ones where I will have to properly let her go. As I write this, she is submitting her UCAS application and making her university choices. None of them involve staying at home in Northern Ireland. Soon, she will head off and carve her own path. Our mission as mothers is not to keep our children attached, it is only to equip them to separate from us.
Therefore, on this momentous day, 15 October 2021, I want to finish with a blessing for Alice from one of the greatest ever poets, Rod Stewart¹! Rod says what I hope for her so much better than I ever could…
Dear Alice
May the good Lord be with you down every road you roam.
And may sunshine and happiness surround you when you’re far from home.
And may you grow to be proud, dignified and true.
And do unto others as you’d have done to you.
Be courageous and be brave.
And in my heart you’ll always stay.
Forever young.
May good fortune be with you, may your guiding light be strong.
Build a stairway to heaven with a prince or a vagabond.
And may you never love in vain.
And in my heart you will remain.
Forever young.
And when you finally fly away, I’ll be hoping that I served you well.
For all the wisdom of a lifetime, no one can ever tell.
But whatever road you choose, I’m right behind you, win or lose.
Forever young.
Alice, I’m right behind you, no matter what. Happy 18th birthday.
Love Mum
[1] Forever Young - lyrics adapted from Forever Young by Bob Dylan who wrote the song for his son.
