no. 42. the thief is right here

This is the last Writing About Women before Christmas and I mostly want to say a heartfelt thank you for reading, (without sounding like Gwynnie in her pink dress). Thank you for all the kind notes, the coffees, and for sticking around despite the significant gear change of only writing about the tornado of the first year of having a baby. (If you have liked these newsletters, and you want to read more, please consider a Christmas coffee/Ko-fi - I can assure you it will be spiked). My first ever WAW post was 1,000 angry words on why Biden needed to say the word abortion more. I’m still as furious about the same things, perhaps even more so, but the words that come to me now are the ones about being a mother. 

Once a week E is away for the night. I thought this would mean my choice of television and a Charlie Bighams for one. But from the get-go, without any thought, and no matter how exhausted I am, I sit at the kitchen table with the baby monitor, my laptop and write. However hollow I feel, however much I would benefit from a hot bath and an early night, a compulsion keeps me there. And the words I always find, even when I think I have nothing to say, are about A and me and who I am becoming. This ritual has become a north star on these dark nights. I’m not sure where I’m going, but I know I need to write. Thank you for reading those words.

I am currently limping towards a Christmas laced with fairy lights and family wounds reopened. I realised this year that among all the fiery ambition, aching uncertainty and never-not-stopping life with a baby, I am craving peace. So this year, wherever you are, and however the next few weeks look for you, I wish you peace.

And of course, I wish it for those who need it and who deserve it the most.

#ceasefirenow #ceasefirenow #ceasefirenow #ceasefirenow #ceasefirenow

***

These words are being typed at 4.18 am. My son woke almost an hour ago and is wide awake. He’s not teething, he’s not hungry, he has no fever. He’s smiling at me like we’re at a glorious Christmas party and we were the only ones invited. I’ve already spent 50 minutes pointlessly rocking him in the dark of his bedroom so now we’ve moved downstairs. He’s in a bouncer which he's too big for watching Octanaughts on my laptop. I can’t even put the TV on because it’s controlled by an app which is only on E’s phone and E is asleep. I’m sure that screen time is not the recommended method of getting a baby to sleep but it sometimes works, and we’re firmly in the Try Anything stage. If I try and bring him into our bed, he’ll think we’re at another party. 

I’m quite relaxed about the situation. Often the reality that I’m not getting sleep sends me into a panic, fearful of how I’ll feel in the morning, how the day will be ruined. I’m surprised I’m not more so. Tomorrow isn’t just my last working day of 2023. It’s my last working day for the foreseeable as our nursery crisis continues. 

If 2022 was about what I gained - a beautiful little boy with eyes like planets - then so much of 2023 has felt about the things I’ve lost: time, control, my sense of self, my career in the version I’ve always known it, parts of my relationship in the version it was before. One day I’ll write honestly about the strain of a baby on a relationship but that feels too raw to touch right now. 

Interruption: Little A became upset he was in the bouncer and wanted to get out. I now type this one-handedly as he sits on my lap. It’s 4.33 am

Much of this year has felt like the times I’ve been burgled - a violation, an intimate trespassing. Someone has come into your home, right under your nose, as you were sleeping upstairs, and taken things you had no intention of giving away. In the morning you berate yourself for what you could have done differently, shocked that this has happened to you, even though, statistically, it’s well within the realms of possibility. Many mornings I’ve woken up and wondered where I’ve gone, my freedom has gone, my career has gone.  But unlike previous burglaries, the thief is right here, currently on my lap, wrapped in a cashmere blanket rubbing his eyes, fighting the tiredness. 

This little thief is the love of my life, and I know he’ll take many, many more things from me as the years tick by. But right now, at 4.38 am, his warm head tucked under my chin, it doesn’t feel like theft. I will give him everything he wants. I will leave the door wide open and I’d do anything to keep him here. 2023 was a year I was cut down to my quick, and in so many ways I feel hollowed out. But here, at 4.41 am, in the silence and still our home, alone together in the early hours, a comfort and closeness in our midnight party for two, this little thief makes me believe that what he’s taken isn’t a loss. Nothing has been stolen. Instead, he’s forced me down a new road, to find new ways of being, to find a new version of myself, one where I have to write at 4.47 am one-handedly but also one where my heart and my world are expanded in the most kaleidoscopic of ways.

Of course, you have to say goodbye to all that was before, he seems to be saying to me, as he twists his little body round to face me, tilting his head to find my eyes, offering me his pirate grin, oblivious that bedtime was yesterday. You’ve got to make space for all there is to come, he seems to be saying. And just wait till you see what it is. 

***

Some great things this year:

• I bought an Atlantic subscription at the start of the year to see me through maternity leave, and I’m so pleased I did. When you’re awake in the middle of the night, exhausted but unable to sleep, it’s a perfect time to get a lot of reading done. I couldn't pick up my book. If I did, I’d be awake for hours. But if I pick up the Atlantic and read half an article, my brain will be fully distracted to fall asleep. I also love reading things I don’t expect to: like a long read on why baseball is too long. I know this doesn’t read much like an endorsement but it really is.
  

• I started reading about motherhood this year. It took a while. I was too anxious at first: but your motherhood doesn’t sound like my motherhood. What am I doing wrong?

  My favourites:
  The Song of the Whole Wide World by Tamarin Norwood. This tiny but devastatingly beautiful book is about a woman’s baby who lived for 72 minutes. It reads like poetry, and it should be the kind of book I couldn’t face reading. Instead, I wanted to read it again as soon as I finished.
  The Baby on The Fire Escape: Creatively, Motherhood and Mind-Baby Problem by Julie Phillips. This is a wonderful, wonderful book on how on earth you’re meant to marry creativity and motherhood and the brilliant women who tried.
  Soldier Sailor by Claire Killory. Son of a gun. Brutally, unflinchingly real about the agony of motherhood, the days it feels impossible, the isolation, the insanity, and of course, the wild love of it all.
  Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story by Leslie Jamison. I’m a Jamison megafan but her new memoir left me… unssatisfied. Despite that, her depictions of being a newly divorced single mother in New York trying to hold down a career and a baby are vivid and beautiful.

• The Media Show on Radio 4 was my favourite podcast find of 2023. (I know; it’s not remotely new). 30 minutes of some of the most interesting people in the media talking about our biggest topics and conversations. What has motherhood really taught me? How much I love Radio 4.
  

• 2023 was the year we said goodbye to The Marvellous Mrs Masiel. Hands down some of my favourite TV of recent times. Escapist, joyful, beautiful, funny, poignant - as well as a story of a woman’s success against the odds. Precisely what good TV should be.

  

Thank you for reading and wishing you the best of everything for 2024

See you on the other side

Marisa x