Despatches from a mother who started late (and is running to catch up)

Nursery parting such sweet sorrow

Dropped K off at nursery this morning, an event that's become a regular torment for both of us.

Mentioned this trouble to my mother, who spent her early wartime childhood evacuated onto the family farm in Yorkshire. "Whenever the farmers separated a cow and a calf into different fields both of them mooed for days afterwards," she tells me. "Yes, both of them."

She shook her head. In sympathy? confusion? Remembering her own similar experiences? With me? With her own mother? For years I thought myself alone in missing her as a child when work took her away. Now I realise she must have felt the same.

However, unlike the poor cows, my daughter and I have not gone been forced apart forever, at least I hope not. I have every confidence we will be reunited at 5.30pm today, or even earlier, if I can tear myself away from this blog and get through my professional work sooner.

But believe me, when her face crumples and the tears start falling, it feels like we could be on that windswept Yorkshire farm, cruel fate intervening as bluff farmer.

Staff assure me that she soon settles down happily to "floor play" or whatever else they're doing. "She's a cheeky monkey, guilt-tripping you like this!" says one girl, trying, I think, to reassure me. I don't believe her. I think K really prefers to be with me, even if we don't do all the "singing, dancing, music" at home that I read about in her nursery report cards.

We go through a rigmarole of cuddles, putting her down, her crying, then back to more cuddles and so on. After a few rounds like that they promise to call me if she doesn't settle. Furtively, I creep away while her back's turned to examine a dreamcatcher. As I leave, I peer through the window, thinking people will take me for a nutter, to catch a glimpse of her and check she is indeed okay. She's settled fine. Phew.

Nobody else in my entire life has ever wanted to be with me this much. Probably no-one else, save future children, ever will again. Yet I don't really know how to deal with it. Is there something wrong with me that I don't always embrace this, that sometimes this dependance and love is claustrophobic, even oppressive? I'm flattered, touched - but also daunted and guilty.

Why is it that I persist with my professional writing, when I could be 24/7 with someone who so plainly favours me over all others? I doubt myself, wonder so often if I'm doing the right thing, even though I'm only working a  two-day week. Being a modern mum, there's so much pressure to be all things to all people, nurturing earth mother and career woman, both so at odds with each other, and I waste so much of my time missing one whenever I'm doing the other.

So why do I work? Well, the income is useful; also, the sense of continuity with my old life  is reassuring; then there's the thought that in a few years K will be at school and I must keep my links with the adult world of work that I'll need even more then. And finally, most shamefully, sometimes I like to have a break. It's as simple as that. There, I've said it.

Does that make me a bad mother? Sometimes it's nice to tidy the kitchen, and know it won't be messy again in four minutes. It's nice to focus on me, without half or all my mind on another person all the time. It's nice to eat lunch without feeding my beautiful daughter home-made organic gloop she'll probably reject or flick on my new trousers.

And yet, the emptiness is intense as I walk away from nursery towards the car, where her Maxi Cosi throne sits empty and untenanted, bare save for a discarded pink sock. I pick up the sock and bring it home, where it now sits on the table in my otherwise pristine kitchen, awaiting the return of its pair this evening.

Posted 30 April 2007 12:30

Car Daughter Granny Home Nursery Pregnancy Work

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