“Because I’m cross, I’m cross that your lesson got cancelled.”
“Mummy I don’t think you’re cross, I think you’re sad, you look really sad mummy!”
And I looked up at the wing mirror to see Barnaby’s concerned face in the back seat. Through tears now cooling my inflamed face, I turned to him with raised eye brows, and a defeated smile.
“Barnes it’s OK, it’s going to be fine. I’ve got a plan. We’re going to zoom back home, meet Aunty Jo-Jo, hand over Harriet, get mummy’s swimmers and then I’m going to race you to the leisure centre. Much more fun swimming with mummy anyway”
“I think I’ll win mummy!”
And my angry sadness receded as I made the short drive home from the Roehampton Bank of England Sports Club for the last time.
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It is Monday 9th December 2013, and my last day of quality time with Barnaby before the op. I’ve been thinking about this day for a long time, wanting it to be perfect, filled with the simple happy things that we like to do together when it’s just Barnaby, Harriet and I.
Throughout the year, I couldn’t really embrace the notion that I might die during the operation or let myself think about how Alex might cope alone to bring up the kids. On a practical level, I had thought about re-drafting the generic Will that we had pulled together a few years earlier, and I had also thought about writing letters to Alex, Barnaby and Harriet to hand to my brother for safe keeping – in the unspoken event….but that whole sequence of activities felt too emotionally destructive and defeatist. Pragmatic though those thoughts were, I knew it would be too upsetting to write and hand the letters over for both myself and my brother receiving them. So I’d decided to bury that scenario, with the conclusion that I really couldn’t prepare for that outcome, except to be further emboldened with a Carpe Diem attitude and make precious lasting memories for us as a family. For a few months at least, this meant upping my game a little as a wife and a mum: Turning my iPhone off on Mondays to fully focus on play time with Barnaby and Harriet, and biting my lip if a silly every day irritation came up. Actually, I think I’d made a pretty good fist of it, but looking back I must have built this last Monday up too much in my mind.
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The weekend had gone very well, I had wanted to keep busy and I certainly achieved that. On Saturday night I had been out at a girls’ drinks gathering ahead of the tennis club Christmas party. It was great actually, the room had been filled with single girls, steadily getting drunk on champagne, exchanging very amusing calamitous online dating stories and I felt relaxed knowing that nobody knew of my upcoming operation. It had been good to keep it away from this sparkling room of laughter and tipsy high heels, and to accept each refilled glass of champagne; presiding as the wise married one, regaling stories of a wilder past, asking innocent question after question about which website, which rule, which guy. At the pre drinks and briefly later at the Christmas party I was glowing, feeling attractive, funny and almost care free. But I checked myself and went home shortly after getting to the club, conscious of the week ahead, and wanting to snuggle up with Alex to watch Match of the Day.
Sunday had been glorious: Slightly frosty but with the sun beaming through, casting brilliant winter light on to the orange and red hues of Richmond Park and moistening the ground underfoot. We got Barnaby’s red bike out of the car, bundled Harriet into her buggy and strode off happily towards a lake; Barnaby’s muscular calves were popping out of his short trousers as he pushed his balance bike with dogged determination up a small hill.
“What about that log there? “ Alex suggested
I called over to Barnaby. “Stop Barnster, come over here and sit with me on this log, let’s just take a little rest, I’ve got something to tell you.”
Barnaby came bounding over, wondering if there was a present or holiday coming up that I needed to sit him down to tell him about. Alex picked up Harriet and walked away to give us some space.
My head was still a little dusty from the night before, but after the line about mummy going to hospital so that the Doctors could fix her headaches, I’d prepared a few phrases in my mind. I was armed with a rally of “but’s and ands” – “BUT Granny’s going to be here on Wednesday, so that’s fun, AND daddy’s going to look after you, he won’t be going to work for a while, AND you can help Daddy with Harriet because you’re really good at that. AND I need you to be strong and make everybody giggle."
He’d gone quiet in a pale concentrated way as I spoke, and he kept repeating a short clipped ‘Yus’ when I got to each comma. I thought I’d detected his eye lashes glistening over with a hint of a tear and I was braced for the lower lip to wobble. But he took a pause, and then bounced back up, grabbed his bike and returned to the continuity of his racing from one tree to the next.
Alex came back, stooped and extended a warm hand to pick me up with.
“I think he understood what I was saying”, I said. “At least we’ve laid down a marker anyway; I’ll bring it up again tomorrow.”
I felt quite relieved, and we had a delicious lunch at Petersham Nurseries café just outside the park, before returning home to an ever filling house to share a great big vat of mulled wine for our “very casual really, just pop in for mulled wine, bring the kids, but maybe don’t stay too long” Christmas drinks do. Despite later finding that Barnaby’s room had been turned completely upside down with his side party of toddler rabble, and half the kids did end up staying for tea, it had felt good to make the house all Christmassy and fill it with friends and happy smells and sounds.
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Monday started pretty well – a positive weigh-in for Harriet for which I could handover a mark on a graph to Alex in the red book, then a handsome hair-cut for Barnaby, ensuring they kept a few surfing curls to lap the tops of his ears; a lollypop, a quick whizz down the orange helter skelter slide by the river, and then on to Carluccio’s by Putney Bridge, my banker for a convivial lunch with Barnaby. Awaiting his meat balls, Barnaby looked up and said:
“Mummy, I don’t like you!”
I gave Barnaby a quizzical eyeball back.
“Barnaby, you don’t mean that, come on, you love your mummy”
He seemed distracted for a moment, thinking, contemplating what to do or say next, and then he said:
“Mummy, stay there, I’m coming across” and he jumped up, came over to my seat and gave me the tightest, longest hug he’d ever given me. “That hug’s for when you’re in hospital mummy”. Then he skipped back to his seat, smiled at me and said “I love you mummy”.
I was bowled over.
And the emotional valve that I’d try to keep shut for so long opened just a little as I tried to hide behind the breadsticks the shield a few tracks of tears that were escaping down the side of my cheeks, before thanking Barnaby very much.
After lunch, we went home for some TV downtime to regroup before Barnaby’s last swimming lesson at the club. On the way home, I’d picked up a bloody irritating email from the sports club’s membership secretary on my iPhone. I’d scanned it at the same time as pushing the pram, pulling faces at Harriet and coercing Barnaby along the road: The week before, the same lady (I’m guessing she is without children) had sent us a fairly aggressive email pointing out that we’d just finished our 3 month membership trial, but she’d noted that Barnaby had attended a swimming lesson one day after the month end. Should we wish him to attend his next and final swimming lesson then we’d need to pay the £920 joining fee, and a quarterly membership fee.
Are you serious? I’d asked Alex.
“Let’s just leave it”, Alex said: “he’s had a good run, he won’t notice if we stop there”.
“We’ve got just one more lesson with Edward, Mummy, I’m going to swim underwater next week and do all the hoops at the deep end. Then I’ll be able to swim with you and daddy and I’ll know everything I need to know!”
I’d paid in full for the bloody swimming course anyway – above market rate in addition to the membership fee. Why should we walk away from the last lesson? And the tiger mother in me had come to the fore, determined for Barnaby to have his last swimming lesson and for me & Harriet to be there with him.
So I’d written a rather long winded reply querying why we needed to stop ahead of the last lesson when I’d paid in full. I described how well the lessons had gone and the joy in watching Barnaby swim unaided and I attempted to explain why the last lesson meant a great deal to me – My last day of quality time with my son ahead of going into hospital on the Wednesday for major surgery. I also explained that we were considering the full membership but needed to pause until after the op. I ended with a suggestion that unless I heard to the contrary, I would go ahead with the last lesson, and get a friend at the club to sign Barnaby and I in as guests.
She’d sat on that email for a week and waited to reply until just a few hours before the lesson when I of course now had my hands full with a screaming Harriet (Barnaby had woken her up with a bang on her head so he could sing to her as we left Carluccios), and a tiring Barnaby who’d just had an ice cream sugar hit.
The first paragraph in the email triggered me to the point where I had to stop reading it and bury my phone in my pocket. Apparently we could pay a month’s pro rata membership to attend this one lesson, or she could discount the joining fee by 20% if Alex could show proof that he was acting as a single parent and I was genuinely to be incapacitated. “You’ll understand that the proof is needed for auditing purposes” she’d clarified.
I was furious. Well, I guess that’s some consolation for Alex I thought, 20 bloody percent off the joining fee if he loses the mother of his kids. Wow! Tension built up in the back of my head, the start of the inevitable blinding headache that always follows tears and tension. I didn't get to the end of the email unfortunately. Not until after the event anyway.
We got home, put on the TV, and I threw across some alternative suggestions to Barnaby in as upbeat a tone as I could muster:
“It’s such a lovely day, let’s go to the duck pond in Barnes and we’ll do races around the triangle track on your bike.” Pause. “Or we could wait for Jo-Jo to arrive at 4, then I could take you to the leisure centre and we could swim together, that would be much more fun, wouldn’t it? Barnaby?”
But on each suggestion I got a dead pan look - “No mummy, I need to have my last lesson with Edward. Let’s swim together later in the week, shall we?
“OK” I said jollily, resigning myself to the extortionate supplementary ‘pro rata’ fee.
I called the club swimming pool office via reception to check that Edward was still scheduled for our 3.30pm lesson, and they said that he was, so I thought we’d either go to reception before or after the lesson depending on timing to pay the extra charge.
At 3.29pm, I was sitting pool side bare foot in the white plastic chair that Barnaby had brought for me and Harriet. We were positioned next to the shallow end and directly opposite the pool office window at the other end of the pool where we could also see the big white clock. Barnaby was pacing from one foot to the other and his bloated meatball and strawberry ice cream tum rested above his bright red surf instructor swimming shorts.
“Where’s Edward?” Barnaby asked
“It’s not quite 3.30 yet” I responded, nervously, worried. “Let’s wait until the big hand gets to 3.31 and then we’ll go and ask where he is.
“That hand mummy?” Barnaby pointed.
“Yes, the big one, there” I said.
We diligently waited in silence whilst the big hand made it around to the agreed point and then I got up, feeling sick, and holding Harriet with one arm in between her legs, and the other hand outstretched to hold Barnaby’s, we walked the length of the 20m pool to make the doomed enquiry. A haggle of nervous looking instructors and lifeguards busied themselves, none of them wishing to return my eye contact. The youngest guy stepped out.
“Hi, is Edward on his way? My son Barnaby was due to have his last lesson at 3.30”
“I’ll just call him up and check”.
I let go of Barnaby’s hand whilst we waited and told him to stand back from the pool, just as the first tears started to roll down my hot cheek as I made out the gist of the conversation playing out on the phone. Finally he turned back to face me
“Sorry, Edward says that he was told not to come to the lesson, that he’d just received an email to say it had been cancelled. He was told that you hadn’t paid your membership fees.”
“Really?” I replied, tears now cascading down my face which was contorting into a red blotchy mess, at the same time, hyper aware of Barnaby still waiting hopefully behind me.
“Nice of somebody to tell us! It’s his last lesson for God sake, I paid for it!”
“I’m really, sorry, I’m just…”
“I know, I know, it’s not your fault I said, it’s just…well it’s really bloody sad that my son can’t finish his course."
And as my lips moved, I dropped to the tiled floor onto one knee, extending the tips of my right fingers and steadying Harriet into an upright position. I desperately tried to hold the next wave of sobs back, to not cry out in this echoing space, but it was too late, the valve had fully opened. Why now? Why in front of Barnaby on our last day together. Christ, I’d held it together for so bloody long, a year almost, but now on the one day I’d tried to choreograph, I was losing it, and I knew it wasn’t all about the swimming lesson, it was so much more than that and I also knew this particular situation was mostly my own fault.but it didn’t stop the anger building up inside like a furnace, and the desire to hit out at someone. It was humiliating, but at that precise moment, I didn’t give a shit about how I looked to the young life guards in their red shorts, how OTT they must had found my reaction. I only cared about dealing with Barnaby. What to say next? Aware of him still waiting just behind me, still waiting for his despairing mummy to turn around and face him with her screwed up red face and crushed expression.
“Barnes, Edward’s not coming” I said, turning around, still crouched on the floor.
“The lesson’s been cancelled…… it’s, well it’s partly mummy’s fault I’m afraid, but…. it doesn’t matter, because we’re going to head back to Putney, see Aunty Jo-Jo and go swimming just the 2 of us……..I’m very sorry, but let’s go and get changed, let’s do it really quickly so we’ve got more time to swim together. Come on give me a little hug”
And Barnaby looked at my fire engine red face and then back at the pool and said:
“No!”
“Sorry Barnes, I really am” I said reaching for his hand and pulling him back towards the shallow end and the changing room. “He’s just not here, there’s nothing we can do, he’s not coming.“
He resisted a little, but somehow I got him back to the changing rooms.
“Right let’s get your clothes back on, I’ll put Harriet down and help you take your swimmers off”
“No mummy, I’m not taking my swimmers off”
Shit, I thought, not wanting to start a physical battle with him and trigger a tantrum, and at the same time catching the horrendous state of my face in the mirror.
“Well ok” I said, “stay in your shorts, we’ll just put your shoes and hoody on.” Never mind that it was winter outside.
He seemed much happier with this, so we made progress and finally we were able to leave the pool area.
“Barnaby, I just need to speak to somebody at reception” I said, unsure if I was really going to turn right towards reception or left towards the car, and not thinking through my next move.I turned right, walked to the desk, holding both children, making no attempt to wipe my nose or reassemble my blotchy red face.
“Is the membership secretary here?” I asked the blond 50 something receptionist. “No, I’m afraid she left at 3pm, Can I take a message?” She asked with a concerned look.
“Er yes, can you say that Sophie Orme was here, and that I was very upset that she cancelled my son’s last swimming lesson.“
“Right, gosh”, she said scribbling my name down and looking back up, but I’d already turned away, rushing Barnaby to the car, where he would correctly identify why I had a red face. Rushing to put this awful episode behind us and get on with making it right, as my headache started to close in and wrap around my forehead.
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My poor sister had just travelled to Putney from Liverpool, in a last minute impulsive decision to see her little sister one more time before the operation. Given the emotion she felt, she might have expected a warmer welcome when she arrived, but instead I just said:
“Hi Jo, great to see you, Harriet’s asleep, can you feed her when she wakes up? I forgot earlier! Barnaby and I are just off to the leisure centre for a swim.“
And that was it, no instructions re milk feed, no thank you for coming, no proper explanation for enraged face,. We just scarpered, and making good on his prediction, Barnaby won the race to the leisure centre.
I was slightly disappointed we didn’t see a cockroach in our cubicle at the leisure centre (one of the reasons that Alex had cited for the 3 month club trial). I bought some coloured ‘sinkers’ at the counter with smiling seals heads on, and we were both stripped and ready in record time before plopping into the freezing cold grown-up swimming pool. Barnaby immediately swam by himself to me and back to the steps with cold hyperactive breaths and grinning from ear to ear:
“Mummy, mummy, you were sad before, weren’t you, but now we’re both really happy aren’t we, So that’s good isn’t it?”
I swam over and gave him a little hug, resisting the urge to cling on so tightly that I might crush him, and I felt an unbelievable surge of love and depth of prayer that things would be alright, before obediently complying with every game sequence that Barnaby came up with, until my eyes were stinging so much with past tears and present chlorine that I could barely see.
**************************************
Tuesday had been unseasonably warm and sunny, and after dropping Barnaby off at nursery, my sister Jo and I began a very long but relaxed walk along the Thames to Barnes. I’d turned down the short cut to the village by the Barnes Elms rowing club, as we were both enjoying the rhythm and the freedom of strolling together. We crossed a resplendent bright green Hammersmith bridge in the morning sunshine, and joined the riverbank on the North side, meandering past ancient pubs, stunning Chiswick houses and countless little blue signs of famous past proprietors. I explained that this was my favourite walk, and recalled anecdotes as we went.
We finally made it over Barnes Bridge, exhausted from carrying the pram up and down the bridge steps, and found a charming little café at the end of White Hart Lane. This was to be the site of our deep and meaningful and our farewell to each other. Or it would have been had Harriet not chosen this time to be inconsolable, with Jo and I, two normally capable mothers, botching up her feed and failing to calm her into contented sleep. With the time slipping away, Jo needed to run for a train and so I placed a still crying Harriet back in her pram and we embraced. I could feel Jo’s sobs on my shoulder, and I pushed her away smiling.
“I’ll be fine poppet, just fine, I feel really confident, please don’t worry”!
As soon as Harriet lolled to sleep in her pram on my walk home through a beautiful Putney common, I sat down on a bench and sent Jo a text where I pointed out that pre-Op, I knew it was much harder for those around me than it was for myself. I knew this first hand because the roles had been reversed years earlier. I vividly remember the phone calls I received, first when I was working in Barbados with British Airways, aged 21, Dad had tracked down my apartment phone number to tell me Jo (aged just 25 at the time) had breast cancer and they would operate in 10 days. Then 11 years later, when this time I stood on top of a mountain near Madrid (where I was working with my solar company), Dad called to explain that the cancer had spread all over her body and they were looking into treatment options. I remember being inconsolable on both occasions, and I couldn’t really move forward and focus on anything until I’d seen her face to face. It was only Jo who could pick me up, and not the other way round. I’ll never forget how strong she was. It was quite inspirational, and I knew that it was my turn to take on that role
And that’s really how I felt – confident and positive arriving at St Georges Hospital at 3pm on Wednesday 11th December.
I didn’t know then, that the hospital wouldn't have a bed available for me, nor that I would be only third up in theatre the following day, to commence the planned 10 hour operation.
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3 final blogs on this subject to follow shortly: ‘Pre Op’, ‘ICU (where my Dad is threatening to guest blog), and 'Post Op'.
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