My Luck: my Pre-Pubescent Beauty and Blue Eyed Boy

My children. Pre-Pubescent Beauty and Blue Eyed Boy. Hereforth known as PPB and BEB. I will be talking about them both a lot in this blog, because they're central to my life. She won't stay pre-pubescent for long, but his eyes will always be blue...

Now I know every mother in the world (well excepting the few that murder their families, or bugger off to Magaloof leaving their 5 kids with the local teenage childminder, or drive off a cliff with the whole family in the car, but probably even including them because love is a strange thing) is proud of their children. Every mother secretly thinks her own children are more intelligent, more beautiful, more cool than the other kids on the block; it's a kind of vanity, really, because, of course, your children are 'half' you. You see yourself reflected in them like a warped mirror; you see your daughter's beauty and remember how you looked twenty years ago; you see your son's stoic determination and you remember how you manage to clench your own fist and get through the days.

In my case I think until a year ago I took them for granted, a bit. Of course I had those moments of complete joy - when they open their stockings on christmas morning, when you surprise them with an adventure they had no idea was about to happen, when they turn around and give you a kiss for no other reason than 'you're the best, Mum'. But I took it for granted that they loved me and I loved them and we were a happy, if unconventional, family unit, with our ups and downs but basically doing ok.



our lives have changed whether we like it or not

But a year ago everything changed for me when I became ill. And my relationship with my children has changed too; shifted; and I will never, ever, for one moment, take either of them for granted every again. They have had to adapt to a reality in which neither of their fathers is nearby, and their mother, aside from being a bit of a fruitcake to start with, is suffering from a serious chronic disease which they can do nothing about and which they are forced to stand on the sidelines and watch. However much I try to make things 'normal', they're far from normal.

Blue Eyed Boy takes it all harder. He wants me to dash around the park with him with a football like I used to, he wants me to have my energy back. He can say quite hurtful things without meaning to, and I have to run to the bathroom and lock the door and wait 5 minutes before I can re-emerge without being in floods of tears. 'I liked you better when you weren't ill', he'll say. Or, out of nowhere, 'what if they never find a medicine to help your insides, will you feel like this forever til you die?'. Or 'will you be better by the time I'm sixteen?'

Pre-pubescent beauty has, rather wonderfully, adapted to my illness by assuming a newfound sense of responsibility. Which is not to say that it hasn't been hard for her - it really has. But she will quite happily make breakfast for her brother now, and when not screaming at each other that they hate each other (which is occasionally - like in every family I know of), the two of them have become very close. They look out for each other. They are in the same boat, and I'm in it too.

I feel perpetually guilty, of course, because we're in a situation that makes them sad and it's me that is causing it even though there is nothing more I can do other than what I'm doing. But emotions aren't logical; and lying in the dark at night it is the tentacles of guilt that reach out to wrap me up in 'what if' and 'if only' and 'why can't'.......

Like every Mum, I want the best for my children. I am fighting so hard to keep going, to keep my boat afloat, to keep the show on the road, and my two little ones are my reason for fighting.

The other day in the doctors surgery she asked me how I felt.

I said I can't tell you - you're a doctor.

She said you can tell me anything you like.

We go back 5 years, she and I; and she knows me pretty well.

I looked her square in the eyes and said that I wouldn't see much point in going on if I didn't have my PPB and my BEB.

She didn't look surprised, or worried. She said in that case, you're very lucky. You're a great mum and you'll get through all of this because you've got the two of them.

And I hadn't thought of it that way. But of course I am. If I had Interstitial Cystitis and was in this much daily pain and all I had was the Jeremy Kyle show, a packet of chocolate digestives, and maybe a smelly dog on my collapsed sofa for company, I wouldn't rate my chances.

But I have these two beautiful rays of light.

One day I will (I hope) have grandchildren. One day I will (I hope) be telling my grandchildren about all of this, sitting back in my chair and remembering what these dark days were like and how my two lovely children cheered me through them.

And I will watch my children leave childhood behind; go through all the same rites of passage as I did (less bumpily, I hope, though in PPB's case I think that's unlikely); I will watch them grow into adults. We don't own our kids - they leave us, in the end - but if you bring them up right they never really leave you because you all love each other much too much for that.

I will carry on doing the best I can do for them, because it is all I can do; and in doing the best for them, I am also saving myself.

Lucky for me that I have a reason. So if they squabble sometimes about who is in charge or who's done what to whom, I need to stop, breathe, take hold of their little hands, and remember that it is our love which is stronger than illness, than pain, than suffering. It is our love which will pull us through.