My mother came to stay for a couple of days last week, something which, beforehand, I was slightly concerned about. Thinking back to when I actually lived under her roof, under her rules, and within her sight and control, it concerned me that this short visit would bring it all back and regress me back to childhood. I needn’t have worried.
To be honest, her stay was filled with laughter, with fun, with comfort and with mother/daughter bonding. Something which, in a way, I thought I had lost with her. It was something which I thought had been severed, but it was only snipped slightly and the threads have now been wound back together again and are stronger than they were before.
Due to having such a nice time in her company whilst she was here, the children and I were devastated when the time came for her to board her train and head home. We saw her to the train doors, and as she hugged us all, nothing could stop the flow of hot tears as she boarded, from all 4 of us.
I had to prize the kids away before the train set off, standing there was just punishing ourselves more, and so we trudged down the platform, found a free bench, and sat and had a group hug and a group cry, with me trying desperately to compose myself for the sake of my children.
Finally, we managed to get it together, and we headed down to get the tram home. We got off at our stop, and started to head up the stairs, our heads drooping and our shoulders shrugging, heading home to an empty house. As we mounted the stairs, a man started heading down towards us, he appeared to be some kind of junkie (sometimes, you can tell, especially here where I live), and as he saw us heading up, he started huffing and puffing, shaking his head and muttering about us being in his way. He then jumped over the barrier to the other side of the steps, and headed down them, moaning and whinging.
Well, I couldn’t help myself. I had to say something, and it just blurted out. The emotions of the day made me stupidly brave, and I said: “We would’ve moved you know! You only had to say “excuse me”, and we would’ve moved over to let you down”.
As he reached the bottom of the stairs to the platform he said “Whatever, get a life!”
To which I replied with a very loud “HAHAHA, coming from you?!”
To which he retorted with a “Yeah, get rid of your kids and get a life!”
Well, as you can imagine, my blood started to boil, and I had to grip hard to the hands of my innocent, beautiful, sensitive little girls to prevent me from hot-footing it down to the platform and kicking him off it. I was so angry! How dare he tell me to “get rid of my kids!” Why? Why would I want to do that? They enrich my life, and my life would be meaningless without them in it! Not that kids bring meaning to everyone’s lives, or enrich everyone’s, each case has it’s own story, but they do mine! It’s not like I’m a young 13 year old who has ruined her life by having children, and even then, some 13 year olds improve their lives by having children anyway. Basically, he just had no idea what he was on about, and the sooner I got away from him and his ignorant, ridiculous remarks, the better.
So, we went and bought chocolate. Because chocolate solves all.
