Confessions of a Single (Irish!) Mother

  CONFESSIONS OF A SINGLE (IRISH!) MOTHER

  First Kindle Edition

  MARISA MACKLE

  Copyright © Marisa Mackle 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the purchaser.This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other person. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you'd like to share it with. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

  Find out more about Marisa and her other books on www.marisamackle.ie

  INTRODUCTION

  In the children’s story books nobody grows up to become a single mother. Everyone finds the perfect partner, gets married and lives happily ever after. The frog turns into a prince, sleeping beauty wakes up, and the ugly sisters get their marching orders.

  Real-life isn’t like that, however. I’m a romance novelist with little time for real-life romance right now. Apart from Kate Middleton, the rest of us must come to terms with the fact that we’re never going to marry a prince. Or, in some cases, even get married.

  Nobody teaches you how to become a mum. And what’s more, nobody teaches you how to cope as a single mummy. The baby doesn’t come with a rule book!

  As a single mummy you constantly worry. Am I doing this right? Or am I totally useless? Can somebody please help me get some sleep! You are also bombarded with advice (most of it unwanted!) by well-meaning friends and family.

  Friends offer to help out but then find every excuse not to. It’s lonely, but it’s also fun. It’s exhausting but so rewarding. My son, Gary is now three but I’ve been writing a journal with all my thoughts about everything from dating to potty training since the day he was delivered by emergency C section and my life changed forever. Hope you enjoy my honest, heart-felt thoughts on single mother hood and everything in between.

  A FRIEND INDEED!

  You know when you’re so tired you can’t even speak properly, never mind being able to remember things or even think of anything besides crawling back to bed? Well, that’s what it’s like having a new baby. It’s like working through the night, only worse. Because if you’re a shift worker, or indeed, you’ve even been out all night partying, you know that sleep will be yours soon. You count the hours until you can crawl under the duvet and block out the world. When you’ve a new-born, that much-anticipated never comes. Night after night is lost in a fog of tiredness. And there is no over-time pay. No pat on the back. Just more of the same for the next few months.

  Now, I had almost forgotten all of this since recently. My Gary is now a three-year old, who thankfully, enjoys ten hours sleep a night. But a dear friend who has three kids under the age of three needed somebody to mind her brood the other day. Herself and her husband had to go to a funeral abroad and they were wondering if I could hold the fort for the night. ‘Sure,’ I offered immediately. ‘That is no trouble at all.’

  Okay, so when I arrived at their house with my overnight bag and my own child, I was under no illusion that this would be like some fun spa break, but I wasn’t prepared for the bedlam that was to follow either. I had actually forgotten how to mind a new-born. You know the way if you cram for an exam, you forget everything shortly afterwards. Well, I couldn’t for the life of me remember how to make up a bottle. Luckily my friend had left a long list of specific instructions. ‘She suffers from reflux,’ I’d been warned, ‘so just bear that in mind.’

  ‘No problem,’ I assured her. ‘You don’t worry about a thing. Aren’t I a mother myself?’

  I waved my friends off down the drive. No sooner had I done so than I felt a little hand tug at my skirt. ‘I want chocolate.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry but your mother said you weren’t allowed chocolate. Would you like a yummy apple instead?’

  No, apparently not. The little girl opened her mouth and yelled so loudly I was afraid the neighbours would appear any minute to see if everything was alright. We compromised a bit. She ate half an apple with a scoop of chocolate ice-cream. Then I fed the baby. She threw up over me, herself and my newly-blow-dried hair. We all got changed. I fed her again. More puke. We all got changed again. As we were changing, Gary started shouting, ‘Mummy, come here!’

  ‘I will in a minute, love,’ I said.

  Too late. He’d had a little accident. Another clothes change. The washing machine was now full.

  Then the eldest child told me he’d made a boat in the kitchen. So he had. All the chairs were upside down and there was water everywhere.

  ‘Let’s be pirates,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s not,’ I said firmly.

  Then the phone rang.

  My friend was at the other end. ‘Hey, is everything okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh goodness, yes,’ I lied. ‘Everything is completely under control.’

  OOOPS!

  Motherhood can be lonely. Your single friends seem to dance off into the distance almost as quickly as the thin blue line appears, and then when you have the baby, he or she doesn’t talk, only cries as you try helplessly to figure out what’s wrong. When your toddler is growing you’re just dying for their first word. Gary’s first word was ‘no’. Well, it was better than nothing, I suppose, but definitely not as exciting as everybody said it would be. Then when he kept saying it over and over again, not only was it not cute, it began to get irritating. Another mummy friend had once told me, ‘having a baby is fantastic, but it’s hard when they can’t communicate. When they get older and can have little conversations with you, it’s wonderful.’

  And so I waited patiently. A lot more words, and then finally a full sentence. ‘I don’t like it.’

  Honestly, it wasn’t music to my heart, but I was convinced it would get better, and that soon enough we’d be having little heart-to-hearts. Fast forward a year and I can’t shut him up. He has a loud, booming voice and he comes out with the most inappropriate things sometimes.

  For example, I took my little darling swimming last week. It was a real bonding moment as we splashed about together in the pool. Then a large man, and I mean a very, very large man, walked into the reception area in his tracksuit. My heart sank a little. I saw him stick his head into the gym area but I had a feeling it wasn’t the gym he was after. I was right. The next minute he disappeared into the changing rooms and a minute after that he was standing at the pool’s edge.

  I saw Gary turn in amazement and his mouth dropped open. ‘Big man!’ he squealed in a tone of delight and amazement. ‘Look Mummy, very big man!’

  Unfortunately his voice seemed to echo as it bounced off every wall. I was mortified! But then again, he has a habit of embarrassing me lately. Like when we were recently in the hairdressers and I was discussing my hair with the stylist.

  ‘Do you like the colour?’ she asked.

  ‘I do. It’s nice and bright.’

  ‘It’s orange,’ Gary yelled.

  The hair stylist wasn’t a bit pleased. After all, I had paid her a handsome sum of money to make me a platinum blonde.

  ‘Ah, he’s so cute,’ she smiled through gritted teeth.

  Yes, quite.

  THE CUCKOO

  ‘I need to tell you all about my new man,’ a friend announced the other day over coffee. Oh, not again, I thought. This girl, whom I see about once a year, has always got some amazing new guy that she wants to rave about. I began wishing that we had met up f
or a few stiff vodkas instead of the coffee. She produced a photo on her phone. I peered at it and nodded with a polite smile. He was no Brad Pitt, but he had a full head of hair and a nice set of teeth.

  I half-listened as she gushed about his amazing job and his amazing car and amazing everything. It was only when he got to the ‘amazing kids’ part that my ears pricked up. What? He was married?

  ‘They’re kind of separated,’ she said defiantly.

  ‘Kind of?’

  ‘They’re pretending they’re still together for the kids.’

  Oh. That old chestnut.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘If you met you would see how nice he is.’

  I said I didn’t want to meet him, and I meant it. But in a way I felt sorry for my friend. She has always had the worst luck in men. The last chap she dated was someone she met on the Internet who sounded delightful. They went out for a romantic meal. He paid but then sent her an email the following day with an invoice attached for half the food. She sent him a cheque and then deleted his number. The fellow before him took her out dancing one night and left the club with another woman. He drove the other woman home with my friend’s house keys, coat, and mobile phone in the back seat, and she had to walk home to her mother’s house in her stilettos and short sparkly dress. I think it could have been snowing at the time. It’s safe to say my friend’s love life has never been a great success. If you’re ever missing the excitement of being single, all you have to do is meet her for a chat and you will be grateful for your own settled life.

  But why take another woman’s man? Aren’t there enough available men to go around? Who wants to be a cuckoo? Sometimes at creative writing workshops, budding writers ask me if my heroines have affairs. The truth is that they don’t. Not knowingly anyway. Why? Well, a heroine must be likeable. She must be the type of woman you can identify with. Few women will identify with a fictional character that would have no problem taking their own husbands. It’s the same in real life. Mistresses have few friends. It is not comfortable hanging out with a couple who are having an affair.

  ‘Look at my neck!’ My friend said, suddenly beaming. I could feel myself recoil in horror. Who wants to see a hickey on a 38-year old woman? But it wasn’t a hickey. It was a chain with a love heart on it. Very cute. For a teenager, maybe.

  ‘He might leave her one day,’ she said wistfully.

  ‘He might,’ I agreed. ‘But just remember that a man who leaves his wife for you, will one day, have no problem leaving you for somebody else.’

  THE SING-OFF

  I’d normally need a few before even consider singing songs with a bunch of people I’ve never met. So when a pal suggested that I join her for a mother and toddler singing session at the local community centre I thought she was pulling my leg.

  ‘It’s good fun,’ my friend explained. ‘The ladies are great craic and it’s a good way of making friends.’

  I had to decline. At the time I had a million and one things on my to-do list and making new friends was way down the list of priorities. I mean, just because I’m a mother doesn’t particularly make me feel like hooking up with a host of other mums so that we can all chat about our kids. I have friends already. In fact there are so many friends that I would love to meet up with only life always seems to get in the way. Every year I write Christmas cards to the same people insisting that this year we really must meet up again. And then it never seems to happen. People move on. They move jobs, get married and have kids. The people who you used to love clubbing with no longer interest you as they Facebook message you about yet another Sunday hangover. People from your old office call you excitedly to tell you that so-and-so and so-and-so from work got it together and you rack your brains as you struggle with a mountain of ironing, wondering who on earth your old colleague is even talking about!

  Every time I’ve ever left a workplace there has been a leaving do, with everybody becoming a little tearful in the pub later on, promising to keep in touch no matter what. But they don’t. And neither do you, apart from the odd email in the weeks that follow your departure. It’s nothing personal, it’s just that people you work with are not necessarily folk you would normally be friends with. Or is that just me?

  BOOK TOUR

  I’ve had a kind of a strange week. I’ve been on a book tour. I know that sounds exciting but it really isn’t. It is kind of scary to go out and meet people after being a recluse for most of the year with my head down writing. But I decided to do a little tour this year to celebrate the publication of my book ‘Along Came a Stork’. I did one two years ago with the former Miss World, Rosanna Davison when our kids’ book was out but this year I was on my ownio. No Thelma and Louise-style venture. Just me going into shops and saying, ‘Hi, I’m Marisa Mackle.’

  More often than not I’m met with a blank face. ’Who?’

  But then when I explain, the shop staff are usually very nice and accommodating and some even offer me a chair and a glass of water. I usually accept the water but decline the offer of the chair. This is because I was doing a signing in a shop a few years ago and an elderly lady admonished me for taking up the only seat in the room! Even when I explained what I was doing she wouldn’t back down and went onto say that all chick-lit was ‘filth’.

  The problem with book signings is that people come up to you and say the oddest things. I mean, I’ll never forget that man in a West of Ireland bookshop who tried to pick a fight by asking me if I thought I was Maeve Binchy. I told him that I didn’t think I was anyone but me, but he still went on to say that writing was a waste of time and that fiction was all made-up lies anyway.

  I am mistaken a lot at bookshops for being a member of staff. Just the other day I was signing in an Eason store and somebody asked me whether I sold ‘Post-it’ stickers. I said I didn’t and she asked me what I had in my hand.

  “They are ‘signed-by-the-author’ stickers!” I explained.

  ‘So, no Post-its?’

  Another lady asked me if I sold brown sticky tape. I seemed to spend the week apologising that I didn’t know where anything was. You can’t be the shy retiring type if you embark on a book tour. At one shopping centre they actually put a table and chair in the middle of the foyer, and as I was sitting there, I heard a loud announcement on the shopping centre intercom that Marisa Mackle was in the vicinity, willing to sign books. I actually wanted the floor to open up.

  Then, on my last day of signings, a woman with a kind, friendly face approached me with a small child.

  ‘My niece is seven,’ the lady said. ‘And she’s here to get her book signed.’

  I looked at them both in mild alarm. ’But it’s not a children’s book,’ I insisted. ‘It’s a book about a pregnant woman.’

  The little girl looked a little disappointed.

  ‘She liked the cute cover with the baby on it,’ the aunt explained.

  I took down her address, promising that I would post her on one of my children’s books. With that I wrapped up my not-so-glamorous tour. Thank goodness it’s all over for another year!

  PARTY-TIME

  Parties scare me. I’m not a huge fan of throwing them, although entertaining at home now and then is good because it frightens me into scrubbing the place down before the guests arrive. But I do hate the pressure of having folk over. I mean, people can be so non-committed and well, rude. They will wait and see what the weather is like first, or ask who else is coming. They won‘t RSVP until they’re sure a better offer doesn’t turn up. Would you bother? Is it really worth the stress?

  The last time I had a really big party was over a decade ago when I moved into my first home. Everybody said I needed to have a housewarming party so I did. Was the house warmed? Hell, it nearly went on fire! What with everybody smoking, and jumping around the make-shift dance floor, and drunkenly making out with each other, I thought they would never leave! I have tended to steer clear ever since.

  Of course now that my child is three it’s a whole different b
all game! He knows what parties are all about. He was at one last week and was well aware of the cake, and the fact that he had to give a present to the birthday girl and not keep it for himself like he initially wanted to. He also was delighted with his goodie bag complete with bubbles and a bracelet (I told him it was a fun watch!).

  I mentioned in passing a couple of weeks ago that I might have a little tea party to celebrate Gary’s third birthday.

  ‘Oh go for it!’ My mother enthused. ‘He doesn’t turn three every day.’

  True, I thought. Anyway, how difficult could it be to organise a little afternoon party for three-year-olds? Not difficult at all, I reckoned. And relatively cheap, no doubt.

  Eh, not exactly. I contacted a clown and thought he was being funny when he mentioned his rate. But, no, he was being serious. Right, that’s it so! If ever my books stop selling I’m going to don a curly wig, a fake nose and make sausage dogs out of balloons at the weekends. But in the meantime, I need to put my career as a future kiddie entertainer on hold as I get through this one party.

  Mum and I went to a party shop to get supplies. By the time I’d purchased the colourful napkins, paper cups, party hats, and table cloths I was practically skint.

  ‘I won’t be able to go on holidays this year after all I’ve spent!’ I told my mother.

  ‘Yes, but Gary doesn’t turn three every day.’

  ‘Okay, okay, I heard you the first time!’

  So I came home and made up the party bags. As I filled them I remembered that there had been no sweets or lollipops in the bags at the last party Gary attended. Suppose giving sugary treats to other kids was frowned upon? Should I leave the sweets in or out? My head was in a spin. My credit card had taken a hammering and the party hadn’t even started. ‘I wish I hadn’t started this!’ I heard myself moaning.

  ‘Gary will only turn three…’