But mothering has been my key focus for the last 18 years. It takes a while to adjust, to clean out, or properly store things of the past, like my children’s old drawings and paintings. One day my children might have children and will ask me about their own first words and whether I have any early work of theirs, and I hope that, somewhere, I will.
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So, that drawer in the sitting room, full of pens and batteries and bits of geometry sets, is not really a drawer of stuff at all. It is a portal that links me to 13 years of my children’s schooling, a time when I was greatly needed and could at least ensure that whatever challenges might arise during the year, the children would start with everything they needed in their pencil cases. That drawer takes me back, far back, to when the children started writing in their foundation year of school. Their weekend recounts, written each Monday morning with improvised spelling, are as significant as the Rosetta Stone in decoding their first ruminations on life while providing sometimes too much of an insight into home life for their teachers.
The pens are going, I promise. I’m not procrastinating or trying to distract you as you hover, Marie Kondo-like, over my shoulder. It’s just that to clean out the drawer seems like an acceptance that something is over, that life is moving on, recognition that the hum of school is fading.
And I’m not ready. Will I miss the bustle, the early starts, the sense that maybe I could help? I think, yes. And what is to fill the empty drawer? I don’t know yet.
