You know how December is all preoccupied with itself, and the schedule for stuff is ridiculous and you just lurch from one thing to another, and while you are at it you are a bit cranky about it all, thinking that if only you had some TIME to enjoy the Christmas drinks and had some moments to spare to go proper shopping instead of constantly ordering off the evil Amazon then you could really be having a lovely festive period, and then you finally finish up at work and go on holiday and everything stops, kind of (but not really because everyone needs to be fed and dogs need to be walked, etc etc) and then January comes at you like a punch in the actual face?

Compared to January, December now seems like a silent movie, tinselly and slow motioned, full of gentleness and fizzy wine, sequins and goodwill. Work in December was a masterpiece of loose-ish plans assembled for the new year – projects roughly sketched, emails signed off with a ‘let’s circle back to this in the first few weeks in Jan’, Christmas lunch budgets ‘o’erflowing, OOO messages ensuring nothing much mattered because no one was even there anymore to care. December was, I see so clearly now, the best month ever.

I think I expected the circling back in the first few weeks of January to be a bit of an empty threat, like when you tell people you will be in touch for some dates to catch up for a drink or dinner soon, but you won’t, and the other people are a bit glad because going out feels like salt on raw skin these days. But in a work context, they actually mean it. So it’s been so so so so busy, serious work things all lined up for the first week back, deliverables expected to be delivered in those embryonic January days that should have seen everyone slowly emerging out of their post-Christmas and New Year slanket skins all pale and rubbery from too much cheese and not nearly enough vitamin D, with work gently coaxing the brilliance and the drive out of us in a kind of lovely massage. But it didn’t. It made us pay for that sparkling December lull. Coming back to work in January is violent.

In the middle of that, we said goodbye to Mark’s mother, who has been sick for a long time. He had been to see her in New Zealand a few months ago which was a most wonderful thing, giving them both time to sit together, talking and not talking, napping, watching TV, navigating nurses and the visitors and the cadence of end of life care, just being there before things got worse.

Her funeral was livestreamed (that’s such a weird phrase to type), planned carefully and thoughtfully by her. We sat in our basement flat half a world away and watched, everyone hunched over a phone or a laptop, sounds on all devices muted except for Mark’s laptop to stop the chorus echoing slightly out of time. We were a part of it and yet not; the gathering on a sunny morning in a whole other hemisphere reminded us that we are strangers, placed too far away for too long.

Her granddaughter read out my mother-in-law’s life story, written because she worried that no one really knew her story as she saw it, and it was true – what she wrote was revelatory to all of us, even to Mark. Because how do you really see or know your mother? How do you really see your husband’s mother, or your grandmother, with whom you’ve seen a few times, or only ever had some snatched phonecalls now and then? What I knew a little of was that she was enormously elegant, self-deprecating, curious, loving, intelligent, and wise. She valued faith and friendship. She was bossy and stubborn. She was house proud and fastidious, keenly alert to the opinions of others and to a high moral code. She was a connector of people; gathering women together, organising things, dispensing advice and ideas, good at listening and caring and weighing things up. She had too many clothes, loved shopping, never left the house without a full face of makeup. I love that so much, because me too.

I didn’t really know her, but I see her often, in the snubness of Remi’s nose, the shape of Noah’s face, the slightness of some of my boys. I see her enormous capacity for friendships in my husband, her kindness in him too, and I think I now know where that side of the family get their bafflingly strong will. She was a force, that woman – a tiny, formidable, proper old school matriarch. She will be forever missed.

To birthdays, then

Meanwhile, my children refuse to stay little and in the 11 days between 23 Jan and 4th Feb, three of my six children all get another years older. This is horrible, not so much because all the weekends and all the money get used up, but because they aren’t babies and I am no longer surrounded by chubby little messy adorable preschoolers. They are all just tall and handsome and sassy and we hardly remember to hug anymore and I lose them a little more each day and even THE BABY TURNED FIVE! This is weird for me because I have a history of filling the small baby slot with another one but Mark is too old and I’m probably barren, my ovaries like tiny useless raisins.

Here’s a selection of birthday shots. Each birthday means a cake of their choosing, some sort of outing (a trampoline park for Remi or an ice skating rink for Ned), and whatever they like for dinner. It’s an old formula but it works.

In other news, we are trying to buy a house. It’s exciting and frustrating and depends upon selling a house in New Zealand which feels impossible and expensive and causes all sorts of emotional triggering. I have also read Wifedom by Anna Funder which all women who feel exhausted by domestic demands and general grumpiness towards the patriarchy should read asap. I am personally feeling somewhat like in danger of drowning from the tasks that fall to me – I have been forgetting parent teacher interviews, booked the wrong weekend for a hotel and had to pay twice, forgot what time I had booked the bowling for Ned’s birthday which ended up meaning we had to switch to ice skating (much to everyone’s slippery bruised horror). I keep saying that I am at capacity and am struggling but I am not sure anyone is listening. Anyway. I am now going to take Ned to Portobello because I forgot to get the timing right for that yesterday and we missed out on that too.

Drowning. And saying goodbye. And making too many cakes in too short a period of time. That’s 2024 so far.