‘Mummy … Mummy … Mummy … Mummy…?’
Harriet groaned as she turned to face Isla who was tapping her on the arm for the millionth time. ‘Yes darling?’
‘Can we go for some breakfast, I’m hungry? And Tommy’s done a poo – he stinks!’
Harriet looked at the clock: 05:55.
‘Isla, it’s too early for breakfast – they don’t start serving until 7 a.m.’ Isla moaned. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart.’
‘But I’m starving! I haven’t had anything to eat for ageeees!’
‘Slight exaggeration Isla, you had dinner and pudding last night.’ Harriet tried to keep her eyes open against the brightness of the sunshine streaming through their window.
‘But that was forever ago. I’m hungry.’ Isla dropped her bottom lip into a sulk.
‘Darling, Mummy can’t magic food out of nowhere, you’ll just have to wait.’
‘But I’m starving!’
‘You are not starving, Isla, you ate last night. All those poor children in the world who are starving and you’re moaning because you haven’t eaten for a few hours – be realistic!’ Isla recoiled at Harriet’s raised voice and she instantly felt guilty for her reaction. The children didn’t realise she had only been asleep a couple of hours, and why should they? It was times like this that Harriet wanted to grab and shake herself and scream what are you doing? She hated the person she was becoming. She was so proud of her career and she knew just how much she had achieved but it had come at a price. She just couldn’t understand how people managed family and work side by side successfully, and yet there were millions of people out there doing it. Why couldn’t she? She could see everything that was wrong with what she was doing but she just didn’t have a clue how to fix it. And it needed fixing. Isla’s little face, awash with shock at her mother’s outburst was enough to pick apart more of the thread of parenting self-doubt that was slowly but surely unravelling. It shouldn’t be this hard to be a mum. It was supposed to come naturally. ‘You’ll just know what to do when you’re a mum,’ people would say to her. ‘It’s one of the most natural things in the world.’
Yeah right, she thought. Maybe she was broken then, because it sure as hell wasn’t coming naturally to her. She looked at Isla’s little face and was brought back to the moment with a guilty bang. ‘Sorry darling – Mummy’s just tired.’
Isla sloped off the bed and climbed back onto hers, taking her colouring book out of the bag and beginning to colour, clearly in a mood with Harriet.
It was now that Harriet realised that Isla wasn’t joking about Tommy – she could smell him from where she lay on the other side of the bedroom. She rolled out of bed and walked over to the cot where he was still sleeping. She was tempted to leave him until he woke up, so she could grab a few more minutes sleep but the smell was so pungent she couldn’t ignore it. She gently placed her hand onto his tummy and rubbed. ‘Morning little man.’ She picked him up – trying not to gag – and instantly took him to the bed to change him.
She needed more coffee for this.
Minutes later a gentle tap sounded on the interior adjoining door of her room and Nancy’s head poked round. ‘I heard voices – figured you must be part of the Early Morning Club too?’ She smiled sympathetically.
‘You can only come in if you have coffee.’ Harriet pointed to her sideboard where once stood several sachets of coffee but now stood an empty pot.
Nancy walked in. ‘Jeez, you drunk all your coffee on the first day?’
Harriet shook her head. ‘No, I drank some of my coffee and Tommy decided to put the rest down the toilet.’ Harriet could see the laugh growing on Nancy’s lips. ‘I swear, if you laugh, I may have to kill you.’
‘I’ll make you some from my room – give me a minute.’
True to her word, a moment later Nancy returned with two mugs of coffee and Jack following closely behind, his headphones on and iPad in hand.
‘Oh, you are a lifesaver.’ Harriet sipped the steaming drink and instantly relaxed a little. It wasn’t up to the standard of her coffee machine at work, which she was practically attached to intravenously, but it was caffeine and it would have to do.
‘So, what’s the reason for the early get up? Although by the smell of your room I think I might be able to guess.’ Nancy wrinkled her nose and opened the window.
‘Yeah, Tommy woke Isla up with the smell and so she woke me up.’
‘Morning Isla,’ Nancy said, glancing over to Harriet’s eldest who was still sulking on the bed. ‘What’s up?’ Nancy asked, nodding her head over to her.
‘She’s hungry and wants breakfast but they don’t start serving until 7.’
‘I’ve got some cereal bars, yoghurt and fruit in my room if she wants some?’
Harriet looked at her friend, confused. ‘Why have you got cereal bars, yogurt and fruit?’
‘Because I know Jack gets hungry first thing and I have to make sure I have stuff as a backup if there are places where they don’t do food that he likes.’
Harriet felt a mix of elation – that she could offer Isla some food now – and sadness – because this only highlighted how bad at parenting she was. Why didn’t she think of packing stuff like that? ‘Isla, Nancy has some cereal bars in her room if you want one?’
Isla immediately jumped up. ‘Yes, yes, yes! I’ll get it – where are they?’ But she had already disappeared into the next room before hearing a reply.
‘I’ll go,’ Nancy laughed, following.
When she returned, Harriet asked, ‘does it come naturally to you?’
Nancy frowned, confused. ‘Eh?’
‘Being a mum – do you just know what to do?’
Nancy laughed. ‘Yeah I’m a total pro – the ideas just come to me in a flash of inspiration and I feel well-equipped for every situation life can throw at me.’ She stopped giggling when she saw Harriet wasn’t laughing. ‘What’s up?’
Harriet felt vulnerable. She didn’t normally like to talk about feelings; she was methodical, regimented, she got jobs done. She didn’t have time to sit and ponder on things. But recently, since Isla was getting older and more demanding, she was starting to question her role in things a lot more. ‘I just don’t get how you can just know all this stuff. Where does it come from?’
‘What stuff?’
She pointed to Nancy’s room. ‘The breakfast stuff.’
Nancy tilted her head like a confused dog. ‘Hari, you’re not making any sense.’
She exhaled. ‘You brought breakfast stuff, for Jack, in case he needed it.’ Nancy nodded. ‘How did you know to do that?’ Harriet laughed as she heard herself. ‘OK, that sounds really weird. I know what I want to say but I just can’t get the right words.’ She groaned, putting her head into her hands.
Nancy moved towards Harriet and placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you OK?’
She flung her hands back down into her lap and looked at her best friend. ‘I just don’t understand how something as little as thinking ahead about breakfast when you have little ones comes so easily to some people, yet I don’t ever seem to think about it. I can chair a corporate meeting, I can collate all the necessary information relating to a project and I can analyse and interpret various work-related deals. Why can’t I think of something as simple as packing snacks for my children?’
Nancy laughed. ‘Come on, you’re being too hard on yourself. Look, I think about stuff like that because I have to. Jack is different from your children; if I don’t plan and think ahead, it could mean the difference between him feeling comfortable and him having a meltdown. I don’t have a choice. It didn’t come naturally to me; I had to learn the hard way. Your children are not the same. If you told Isla to wait an hour for breakfast, yes, she would kick up a fuss and she might feel like it was the end of the world, but ultimately, she would cope. Jack wouldn’t.’ She squeezed Harriet’s hand. ‘That’s the difference.’
‘I guess.’
‘Hari, I don’t get it right all the time – you know that!’
‘I just don’t get the whole “it comes naturally” thing people say with parenting.’
‘That’s because it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. I love being a parent, but parenting an autistic child is a completely different story and I certainly do not feel like that comes naturally to me. Everyone is different. It’s really shit but we have to learn things the hard way, by experiencing the ups and the downs and working out what went wrong so that it doesn’t happen again. And that’s why I know to have breakfast stuff – it isn’t because I’m Supermum.’
Harriet smiled at Nancy, thankful to have such an understanding friend to travel this rollercoaster of feelings with. ‘I just need to balance my life better, I think.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just, you know, work and stuff.’
‘I agree, you work far too much.’
Harriet made a noise which was half an exhale and half a laugh. ‘It’s not as simple as that Nance, I have to work.’
‘Yeah I know that, but do you really have to work as much as you do? You have a team of people around you – use them!’
Harriet nodded. There was no point in having this conversation. As much as she loved Nancy, she just didn’t understand what she went through with work. She didn’t have the same stresses as Harriet. If Harriet didn’t work and make it a success, she would lose her business. And not just that, she would lose her house, her only source of income and her dignity. Regardless of how much she wanted to spend more time with the children, the fact of the matter was, work had to take priority. She had no choice. And until she found a solution that would allow her to embrace both aspects of her life, she would have to continue juggling.
She looked over to Jack who was now seated on the chair by the window, glued to his iPad. She then looked over to Tommy who was playing in his cot with some toys. Finally, she looked over to her laptop which was still open but had gone to sleep. She could almost feel the emails dropping into her inbox.
It would be another late one tonight – she needed more coffee for this.