Smashing Single Parenthood

Friday 13 August 2021

As I went into labour with my second child, 18 years ago, I do recall thinking.

“Arghhh …. now I remember how much this hurts! Where’s my epidural?“

And this week, as Prom-dress daughter gleefully drags me off to the aisles of IKEA for her ‘Uni shop’, I get a similar flashback to … can I say the pain… of my visit here last year, when my Eldest child also stocked up on her accommodation essentials.

Well, if not pain, it’s certainly a financial shock to the system! If we rewind the clocks back to 1980s, when I headed off to Higher Education, I pretty much took a few spare mugs and pans from my mum’s kitchen and the quilt from my bed. Not the case anymore … at least not in our house! It’s colour co-ordinated crockery, plastic plants, gin glasses, storage boxes and … and on and on it goes. One hour in and our trolley is stacked high, dangerously swaying and cheekily chinking and tinkling as we totter through the delights of the IKEA ‘Market Place’. None of it is particularly expensive but, as my mental calculator goes into over drive, it all adds up, and I find myself fighting the urge to grab one of the giant gin globes and pour myself a stiff drink!

I also have an emotional jolt, exactly as I did one year ago. As we are rummaging through the racks of bath mats and towels, my daughter’s face animated and happy, it suddenly hits me. Her excitement and haul of goods are not about her bedroom at my house. No, these are the trappings for a new room and a new life far, far away. Momentarily, my heart drops into my shoes and I have to fix a grin determinedly on my face and use every ounce of effort to stop myself shouting out,

“I don’t want you to go…”

Because in that second I really don’t. What I want is for time just to pause for a while. I want a few more weeks of my trusty trio all back home, watching trash TV, laughing at in-jokes, sharing nonsense into the WhatsApp group. But, I am proud to report that, in trusty mum style, I pull myself together, for of course, it is not what any of us reallydesire. It is simply that change is difficult and sometimes painful.

Maybe too, I am also over exhausted with all this shopping! Yes, there are further things that are aching … my head, which is completely zonked and my feet which are screaming “Heels, today! Really?” To revive our tired legs and frazzled brains, we stop for coffee and review our progress. Prom-dress daughter works briskly through her pre-prepared list and cheerfully informs me that,

It will probably take another shop to tick off all the ‘essentials’

Well one the bright side, that is not for today. We hit the motorway and collapse at home with a chippy tea and some very large gins in the new glasses. Alcohol… possibly the epidural to get me through the next few weeks …