A fall from grace*

This week I bumped into an old colleague. I was dashing home from Sainsbury’s with the girls to meet the carpet chap who was coming to measure our carpet-less hall, and the heating engineer who would – please God – repair our boiler. I saw her at the precise moment she saw me, which is to say I watched her squint as she tried to ascertain whether I really was who she thought I was.

The last time we saw each other I was eight months pregnant with Rubes. Pre pandemic. Pre babies. I wore some makeup, I dressed pretty well, I had a reasonable amount of composure. I was a presentable member of society.

Fast forward three years to the sight that trundled towards her at the traffic lights: two sprogs in toe, wearing a jumper designed for breastfeeding, badly fitting jeans and battered trainers. Full disclosure: I had not yet washed my face, brushed my teeth or brushed my hair (to have achieved none of the three is unusual, but time was of the essence and the fella painting our hall was obstructing entry to the bathroom). Short of being caught naked, folks, it couldn’t have been much worse.

(Tom, that evening, pointed out that it could have been worse. Thanks to the hot shower I managed to steal at my brother in law’s down the road the night before, I did at least have clean hair. Top husband, spotting that silver lining in the big black cloud of my self-pity.)

I suppose it would be impossible to pinpoint all the ways in which I’ve changed in the past three years. But I realised the aesthetic contrast between old me and current me is, literally, just the surface of it. Parenting has carved me into somebody else entirely – a bit of light sanding here and some heavy duty sawing there – and I’d almost forgotten what the old version looked like until I saw the juxtaposition through someone else’s eyes.

In reality, my old colleague was on her way to visit someone in hospital and probably couldn’t have given less of a shit if I actually was naked. She might even have been preoccupied thinking about how much or little she’d changed since we last saw one another.

Nonetheless, my desire to be swallowed up by the concrete under my feet made me realise that, six months in to being a mum of two, self-care is still in the backseat. Honestly, it’s barely in the vehicle anymore. Surely I should at least present as a functioning member of society, even though all fellow parents – including the lady I used to work with – will know that I’m not. For neither are they. How could they be? We’re in a collective kind of madness.

Here’s the truth:

I miss being consistently clean. I miss applying makeup unhurried. I miss applying makeup at all. I miss my old (younger) less tired face. I miss my old (younger) body and the stomach I never thought was flat enough. I miss worrying about things that didn’t really matter. I miss working with adults. I miss feelings of professional accomplishment. I miss after work drinks. I miss seeing my best friends on the reg. I miss exercise that doesn’t involve pushing a couple of kids up a hill in a pram larger than some small lorries. I miss the millions of self-indulgent moments I took for granted before I had children.

And yet I look at these two happy souls who burst into our life and set it on fire and I wouldn’t change a single thing. Motherhood, eh. It’s a mass of contradictions.   

Anyway, it turns out we needed a new boiler. Of course we bloody did. Apparently – if we’d been getting it serviced as the experts suggest – the main cylinder might not have burst open and destroyed the fan next to it. If that’s not a metaphor for self-care, I’m not sure what is. Tonight, I will rejoice in a ceremonial hot shower and plot my return to civilisation.

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*Ok, maybe ‘grace’ is pushing it.