A Diary For Rusty

All the relevant pregnancy applications and baby magazines suggest that at this time, I should start writing a diary about my pregnancy. In true defiance style, when anyone suggests I do something, I usually do something different. I also thought, if I wrote how I was really feeling at the moment and you by any chance saw it in later life, you would think I was a horrendously mean Mummy!

So, I will just get that part out of the way: how one tiny tiny thing can make you feel so utterly wretched is mind blowing to me. I have spent the last few weeks with my head pretty much wedged down the toilet, apart from the time I was sick on myself in the shower that is! I have gone off all food, nothing holds any interest to me and the idea of cooking tea for my family is comparative to Chinese water torture. Especially as there is no way I will be eating it. Most days, I have barely been able to lift my bottom from the sofa. Ironic really as mostly I have been watching ‘Come Dine With Me’.

Regardless of this, and however many times I have chastised you for sapping all my utter being, I wanted to make sure that you knew that we loved you. That we loved you already. You were a big surprise, and not because you were not wanted: quite the opposite. You see, your brother or sister had left us just a month before you started to grow and we could not quite believe how quickly you were sent to heal our hearts after they had been unable to stay.

I have never really considered my skills as a mother, I just am one. I don’t know if I am a good Mum or not. I can only love you and your sisters with all my heart and fight with everything I have for you, every day. That is all I can offer you: me. Know that I will always be here for you, even the times when you and your sisters are making me shout at you for painting the walls or shaving the dog but, through all these times I will always be a constant. Heaven forbid that I could not be around for you for as long as I want. As your Mum, in whatever form, I shall always love you and watch over and protect you forever.

You are going to be lucky enough to have one of the most amazing Daddy’s that you could ever imagine existed. Your Daddy is without doubt, one of the most spectacular people to ever walk the planet. Even if he chastises you, even if he disciplines, you cannot help but realise that he will always remain, loyal, strong and protective and although he would never admit it to anyone, he is one of the most sensitive souls and with one of the hugest hearts that you could ever find. As soon as you meet him, you will be lucky enough to see everything in him that I do and feel utterly blessed that you are able to end every day with him as part of your life. He will be strict and funny in equal amounts. Embarrassing you sometimes with his silliness but making you proud to call him your Daddy. I am utterly sure of this. I apologise in advance for the fact that he may well pick you up from school dressed as a banana! I have no control over him!

Our Rusty

As for your sisters, they are both completely bonkers! One more so than the other but, you will work out which is which when you meet them. Lani is the most thoughtful child, caring and sensitive and sometimes overly nervous but, with a heart as deep as the ocean. Flo is on her very own planet but, cannot stay mad or upset for long and will fill your life with cuddles and laughter. I wonder if you will have a little bit of both of them in you. They will be so proud of you and if they had half a chance, they would no doubt dress you up in their Build a Bear outfits. I will probably discourage that.

Unfortunately, you will never meet one set of your grandparents, as your sisters never have but, I will make sure that you know everything about them. They look out for you from somewhere else I can guarantee that. You will however have the pleasure of a Grandma who, like Mummy, will always be honest with you. She is strong but, kind and caring and you know that she must be pretty fabulous because she has made your Daddy who he is. You will share your secrets with her over cake (which she will make) and giggle with her as I have done many times over the years. She will be one of the strongest people in your life and be a huge influence in your growing years. Grampa will tut a lot, wear bright socks and moan about politics but, however much we all joke that he is old and miserable, his eyes will light up when you enter the room and contrary to what he says, he will always be sad to see you leave. As he shows with your cousins now. He will always be there for you: and smile when everyone else leaves the room!

So, until we can all meet you in person, we will continue to play you songs that we hope you will like and even though I love you madly, I will continue to grumble at you for making me sick. Particularly as I should now be enjoying spoonful’s of mustard and grated (only grated) cheese sandwiches.

Love from Mummy xxx

Ghosts Part 2

My Dad was always falling out of bed! Sometimes the dog pushed him out and sometimes he simply turned over a little too far in his sleep and…doink! He could just about feel his legs but, he could not weight bare in any way. He could get onto the commode himself and from his wheelchair to the bed was ok but, there was generally a struggle each day. Once, he was so determined to come to the next level of the house and look out of our fire escape window at the gardens next door, that he tried to drag himself up the stairs like a merman. I was fuming with him that day! He got half way up and then slid to the bottom like a sausage. He thought it was hysterical (as he did most things) I, on the other hand was furious with him for taking such a risk to his already crumbled spine: I slammed doors and called him a ‘Bloody, Pissing idiot’! Again, he thought it was hysterical.

When my Dad was in hospital, I had some help to get the downstairs ready for him coming home. We were lucky enough to live in a large town house which used to be flats so everything was pretty much self contained for him. He had a bedroom downstairs next to the living room and a bathroom where I could empty the luminous green wee from his catheter bag.We built slight ramps so he could easily wheel from room to room.The house being so old, there were tiny drops into each downstairs room. Dad could pick up things with his special ‘claw’ which helped him grip and lift things that were slightly out of his reach. Mostly, he would use it to pinch my bottom when I was getting something for him or lifting the cats tail while giggling and singing ‘Pixxxeeelina’. Some utter bastard who drove like a numpty ran over my Pixxee after my Dad had died. I was devastated to lose that connection.

It sounds completely bonkers but, there are nights when I am feeling really sad that I will close my eyes and hold out my open hand, in the anticipation that my Dad would hold it: even if just for a second. Some times I beg him to do it or to come and sit on the end of my bed so that I know he’s there, that he misses me in the way I miss him. That he still thinks of me as I do of him and if he is proud of me at all. In reality, if he did come back to me, he would probably just pinch my bum again with that bloody claw!!

My heart will always be just a little bit broken.

There were some nights that I would stay away and although I worried about leaving my Dad, I needed a release sometimes. He had nurses come in and help him also. I loved my dad with every single ounce of my being but, sometimes the pressure of looking after him was too much and I needed to escape. I was happy for it to be just the two of us but, it did make me feel very negatively towards a lot of people who I felt had forgotten us. Something I am still working through!

My Dad’s prognosis was very bleak right from the beginning. He was given months because his Cancer was discovered so late and was extremely aggressive.He was a right stubborn old sod and he died almost four years later (even after Merman and slippery sausage incidents) He waited until I was married so he knew I would not be alone and he died five weeks after that.

My beautiful girl: if not a little bit weird!

Only weeks before, something happened which should have forewarned us. I often wondered if it was a consious forewarning for my Dad. He would never have dreamed of admitting that to me, never. In the same way he would never admit about the baby in our previous house. But, it has always left me wondering. This is what happened:

I had been away overnight at my in laws and was returning as I usually did if I had stayed out,around late morning.The image of my Dad in his chair is one that I will never forget. He was sat in the living room watching the television and as his head turned to look at me coming in the front door, he turned ashen. My Dad carried a lot of expression in his face but, this day it was one of confusion and terror. There was a split second where I contemplated that the Cancer had spread to his brain and perhaps he had no idea who this intruder was. ‘Shu’?…..’You haven’t just come home?’ ‘You came home last night’. I hadn’t.

My Dad went on to explain that just as he was drifting off to sleep he was aware I was home. He said he had not heard me come in the front door but had seen me furtling around in the landing (I did and still do furtle an awful lot) and had called out to me to see what I was up to. I had walked to the entrance of his bedroom and stood in his doorway for a couple of minutes without speaking and then simply turned around and walked away. Of course, I say me, but it wasn’t me, I was 17 miles away watching trashy TV and no doubt drinking wine. My dad said there was no doubt in his mind that he was seeing a person, a solid entity (what he thought was me) that he had called out and asked me to get him a drink. We made a joke of it of course and japed that it would have been more than a little unsettling if whatever or whoever that was that night had actually brought him a drink.

This has always been a comfort to me, not frightening in any way but it is something I will take with me to my own grave and I will always wonder who exactly it was that came to collect my Dad. Dad didn’t have much time to worry about it as whoever it was accompanied him to the next world shortly after. I hope someone comes for me too when I am ready to go. I will have that drink though: Pinot Grigio naturally!

Ghosts

I can remember my old bedroom like it was yesterday. Actually, in truth, it was bloomin hideous. I had cream wallpaper but it was covered in brown and yellow flowers so actually it just looked brown. Half the wall was covered in a wood panel which had been painted white and I had a poster of Patrick Swayze which surreptitiously moved from the wall to the door, depending on how I was feeling at the time and how easy it made it to kiss him. He always kissed me back. Good old Patrick!

Of course Dirty Dancing was my favourite but he wasn’t too bad in this either!

Because our house was above the cafe then, the bedrooms at the very top were all attic rooms with the sloped celings. I would spend hours looking out my window. You had a birds eye view of our garden below. It was a large garden.My Mum was mad about flowers and gardening (hence my name) and she would potter outside for hours on end. She always made my dad build her things and when he had to build her a pond, there was almost a divorce thats for sure! I would sit out with her into the evening somedays,on my swing and making up songs.

My bed was in the corner of the room and I was incredibly scared of the dark. So I would sleep with the light on every night. Not a side light: a full light. I say I slept in there but until I was about 11 I had a tendency to creep into bed with my Mum and Dad. I could not understand their constant frustration as I only wanted to be close to them. However, now as I have my own children, the thought of my daughter still coming into bed in years to come fills me with dread. My whole future sex life eradicated until she was old enough to leave home. No doubt I would become one of those frustrated retirees who goes to yoga and looks at their Vagina in a hand mirror.

If I had the gift of fortune telling or hindsight though, I would have got into my Dad’s hospital bed and proclaimed that I would never leave until he left me. I would hold him for as long as I could, for every second that remained and he would know I was there, holding tight. In actual fact he would have probably thought I was the milkman as he was definately a little less lucid towards the end.

Anyway, one night when I was asleep in my own room, I was woken up with a start. It took a little while to register what exactly the sound was but, in the corner of my room I could hear a baby crying. It was so loud that I was sure my Mum and Dad would burst in at any time. I told myself it was a cat outside and merely took myself into my Mum and Dads bed. I would hear that baby cry once a month, always in the same place and always really loud. There was a particular night that I was already in my Mum and Dads bed and the crying woke me up from the other room. It woke my Dad up too because he sat up and looked around the room in a daze. I know for sure that he heard it. When I asked him the next day he denied all knowledge but what person in their right mind would confirm to their eight year old daughter that they had also heard the phantom infant in her room?

One of our Sundays out. Pretty sure this was Cricket St Thomas.

I was scared of that house. Even when we moved into our own official proper house next door and we used the old place for storage, I would rarely go in.If I did, I would run up the stairs and run out again, always feeling like someone was hot on my heels. I still have nightmare about it to this day and I often wonder if that baby was trying to tell me something.

When my Dad was well into his final months, I had decided to practice Reiki so that I would have a hobby to give me a break. My Reiki teacher was lovely and we would spend a lot of time on other spiritual subjects such as Tarot and past lives. We were talking about spirit guides one evening: not something that I really agree with and purely because if it were true, mine should have been sacked years ago! My teacher was convinced that I had a male sibling who was always around me but, it had only ever been my brother and I and I had confirmed with my Nanny that Mum had never lost any children.

When we first moved into our house, our actual house next to the cafe which my Mum had her ‘eye on’ for years, it was great fun. Effectively we had two houses and I would play in the new house all on my own for whole days on end. I would cook with the pots and pans and lone bottle of white wine vinegar that was left in the cupboard by our original neighbours. My Dad would tell everyone that listened that when he was decorating the front room he had removed seven layers of wall paper and on the last layer he found a newspaper cutting from the wedding of Queen Victoria’s son (or daughter, I can’t quite remember) It wasn’t until I was in my late teens that my Dad told me that all the time he had been decorating, he was aware of a figure stood behind him. It was even more surprising because my Dad was never really like that. He was very much straight forward and he certainly was never superstitious. That was surprising based on his parents background too. That house was everything to me though, I loved it and it loved me back (as any house could and showed itself to do so!) There were often times that I would hear someone walking around outside my room when everyone was in bed but, it never bothered me. I never saw anything and we always discussed that whoever or whatever was there was willing to live with us too. My Dad was adamant he had seen a dog running around too and this was before he was on large doses of morphine. Just two weeks before he died, something quite incredible happened (that will be continued)

One of the last things I cleared from that front room when my Dad had gone was our long mahogany dresser. The things I found in there meant what was thought to be a quick job took hours.I sat there on my own and took everything out of those drawers, one thing at a time. I found old dog pedigrees from when my Mum and Dad went to dog training classes (with dogs of course!) and I found umpteen letters and cards that me and my brother had made for them over the years. I even found a dried up old condom which was more than perturbing.

As I cleared the very last thing from the musty wood and moved the dresser away from the wall, a brown envelope that had been wedged in the back of the drawyer fell to the floor. In that envelope I found my Mum’s NHS card and our baby bracelets. Most bizarrely, the envelope also contained my Mum’s two maternity cards from her pregnancies with my brother and I. It wasn’t very interesting, mostly her weight and sugar levels etc.. However on her maternity card when pregnant with me there was a prominent section which stated in scrawly handwriting….’One previous full term pregnancy and one miscarriage at 11 weeks before this pregnancy’……………………

Truth is often stranger than..

For as long as I can remember, I have loved writing. Like reading an amazing book, it can take you away to wherever you wish to go. Even now, as I sit at my kitchen table with my glass of wine and the dog in her basket, probably farting (the dog that is, not me), I have just been somewhere else. I have been writing some fiction.

I have wanted to write a book for a really long time. My idea of a book was always pretty much what I write about now. I don’t mean in a depressing way but, just the only way that I know: about life and about loss. Well, about my life and loss really.

I have never read fiction. Even before I had children, I would think that reading something that had no truth would be like wasting hours when I could be learning something, filling my mind with information I never knew. That sounds pompous I know, I don’t mean it like that. I just mean that I love real stories: true crime, I love biographies and ever since I did history in primary school, I always wanted and loved to learn new things. Only history wise, I really have very little interest in the natural breeding of the lesser spotted toad weasel!

Now, my love of writing has gone so much further. What was once initially cathartic scribblings has not only become my therapy but, my ultimate escape when it is needed. My man has his guitar and the girls have, well… a child’s life and for sometime now, I have felt pretty uneventful regarding my mark on the universe. But, I want to write. I love to write. I realise that it will probably take me no further than my small Dartmoor town but, it actually takes me everywhere I want to go.

So, I have decided. I am going to try to write some fiction. I never have before and the way in which I write means that there is no pre meditation involved. I sit at the computer and simply see what comes out. I do not know if this will work so well with fiction but, if it does, perhaps I will try to write that book. The thing that really excites me is that even if I am just the smallest bit capable, I could practically write about anything.

With this in mind, I am going to try it and I am going to let you read it. My man will no doubt say it is good but, that is because he loves me. If it doesn’t work in the same way as fact, then I shall simply shelve it until I have more practice. Let’s just suck it and see eh? Ooo that’s an idea…50 shades esq next time maybe? LOL…. xxx

The Godmutha

Even now, I have days where in a split second, I will think of calling my Dad and asking him a question (usually about something totally useless) I would call him a lot. When we first moved to the house next door to the Café, I would call him with my breakfast order and he would bring it in to me. As a child, I would wake him up in the night for a drink and he would always happily oblige, sometimes even going into the café to get me a frothy glass of milk. Just to confirm again, the Café was next door! Spoilt wasn’t I?

I didn’t even really consider how he went above and beyond without a grumble but, yet, now in the position of having two young children, I appreciate it even more. Particularly because there are days when I am ready to tear my hair out and I wish I had my Dad to make me feel better by getting me a glass of milk.
Why is it that as soon as you go into a supermarket, your once well behaved child will turn into Chucky on a bad day and with an irritable bladder, coupled with an endless rendition of, ‘can I have this’ and ‘I’ve always wanted one of these’, even if said thing is a turnip as you couldn’t possibly leave a shop without furnishing them with something.

This is how my Dad always was, nothing was too much trouble and that is why I wish I could still bug him on a daily basis with pointless questions and useless requests. We reversed our roles at the end of his life after I became his legs and yet I still don’t think that I did him any justice in comparison to how he had cared for me. I wish I could have given him back just even an amoeba sized amount in return so he could feel just how grateful I was and just how lucky I felt.

When my brother and I were little, we spent a lot of time on our own due to the sheer amount of time that our parents worked in the Café. I got used to my own company in summer holidays and filled most of my time with learning all the words to pivotal musicals and patching up Barbie’s after the terrible accidents they suffered on a regular basis. That pink camper van must have seen more cliff dives than Red Bull. I remember when one lost an eye. It was a painstaking operation to return her from the brink of a terrible fate. Thankfully, I was an expert optical surgeon and she pulled through.

We never missed out though. We would go to Torquay every Sunday and Exeter every Thursday afternoon (when they shut the Café half day) I have so many happy memories of our days out, obviously excluding the Texas Homecare incident and the time I nearly amputated my Brother’s finger with the car cigarette lighter. But, I never felt alone. Not like I have done in later life when I have been unhappy in my personal life. I don’t really like to be alone now that I am so happy because I worry that it won’t end (the being alone), that I may be alone again through no choice of my own. I never chose to be strong, I had to be. That was very lonely though.

Sybil was good company. Especially with Deely Boppers naturally!

I never really called my Mum. Mainly because there were no mobile phones then and I never really went anywhere without her. I went to Italy when I was 14 with one of my best friends and I can remember standing in the shower whilst I was there and ‘crying my eyes out’ because I missed my Mum so much. I will never forget how I felt when I was able to come home to her. Actually, when I came home I was horrible to her as she had redecorated my entire bedroom on the proviso that it was much more grown up! My lovely reassuring pink ‘Snatch’ bedroom accessories had been replaced with black, turquoise and yellow with a simple cat silhouette on my grown up duvet. Any child in the 90’s will remember the Snatch phenomenon, a duvet set that appeared like a big brown dog was in the bed with you…genius.
Ironically, I did really grow up on that Italy trip but, I was so happy to come home to my Mum. She was right though, the new version was much more grown up and I did thank her for it as soon as I had stopped being a horrid brat!

My Mum had a best friend from her teens and beyond.She was always a constant in my life when I was growing up and she still is now. She is pretty much the only constant that has remained with me from the day I was born to the (cough cough) 34 year old I am now.My Godmother Ro is amazing. Quite confusingly, she is actually called Caroline but, I call her Ro. Ro and Mo it was in their younger days and my Mum and her were most excellent friends throughout the years. She is my Godmother and subsequently, she is now my daughters Godmother too. I knew that she would remain in my daughters life in the same way and this is exactly what I wanted. So often we have Godparents that are merely that in name and quite honestly, I have always thought, what is the point in that?

When I was young, my Godmother would always send me little parcels containing pretty tins and heart shaped bath pearls with added glitter. Can you still get bath pearls? Anyway, she still sends me little parcels and thoughtful letters now but, most importantly, she is there for me in a massive way. You know sometimes you can have a friend whom you don’t talk to for a while and yet when you do talk to them, you feel like you never had any time apart? Well, that is how we are and that is how her and my Mum were. Bearing in mind that she is still in Wiltshire and we are now Devonians. My Mum loved her wholeheartedly and so do I.

This photo is one of my most treasured possessions.

I love the fact that she knew my Mum and was there for her too in the same way. Judging from my Mum’s photos and naughty stories, they also had a bloody good laugh! Well, she is a laugh and in the most excellent way, she is utterly and fabulously bonkers. Everyone needs a bit of bonkers in their life and I certainly want her to know how grateful I am to her for adding a little bonkers into mine and most importantly leaving a window open to the memory of my wonderful, beautiful and massively missed Mum.

I had this amazing card last week 🙂

Cooey Mr Shifter

Menu

Tag Archives: family

A Diary For Rusty

Ghosts Part 2

Ghosts

Truth is often stranger than..

The Godmutha