Poor cow has moved!

Our holiday is coming to an end, we froze at the beach for a while, and everyone is relaxing a bit after the excitement of the last couple of weeks. If you want to know what the future has in store for us, you will need to check out at http://poorcowinfrance.wordpress.com/ as I have moved my blog over to the dark side. See you there! Poor cow xx

The club

T has a collection of brothers accessorised with a collection of nephews and nieces. Last week, I met up with two of my ex-sisters in law, and made some interesting discoveries... Such as the fact that I had become the latest addition to the growing club of victims of the T brothers curse.
I always knew T’s family had been profoundly affected by loss and the dysfunction of the parental couple, but had never fully realised how much it had shaped T’s and his brothers’ life. From my sis in law, I heard how every single one of them craves the idea of fixing their childhood by having their own family, and being a good husband and father. But when reality hits, they all fail, leaving behind a trail of incredulous exes, trying to bring up children whose fathers are no more than wounded little boys.

Happy international women’s day everyone, and special kisses to my brave sis in law: You rock.

Neneh Cherry - Woman

Deep breath

I have managed to get a bit of sleep, and sit in the sun, surrounded by relatives and friends. My children are playing happily, I am coming up for air. For the time being, we are all safe here, away from the unrecognisable T. I take a deep breath and survey the devastation left by last week with an eerie feeling: Everything looks the same, yet everything is different. I have learnt that if you really want to hurt a parent, you should hurt their child while they watch you helplessly do it.

Tom McRae – You only disappear

The park

Children everywhere play in the sunshine, a very light wind rustles palms fronds and carries the smell of a nearby mimosa. A lone man plays the kora on the edge of the fountain. It is Sunday afternoon in Montpellier.
How can life be so magnificent and so ugly all at once?

Salif Keita - Ana ne ming

 

Lost for words

I thought it would be a long and slow process, but it only took a two-hour conversation to kill the love I had for T. It would seem the man I let into my and my son’s life, who always said he considered and loved my son like his own has changed his mind… Actually, what he says is “I still consider him like my son (why of course), but I would like to see his sister more, and take her only on holiday abroad”. Like this is the most normal thing in the world to tell a child who refers to you as "my daddy".

How much longer?

Two months. This week found me having yet another delightful time pinned to bed with the flu, the inside of my head lined with Marshmallow, wanting my mummy and missing my children all at once. Back to square one, to the same obsessing questions: Why did T not say anything, not even try to address whatever he felt was wrong with us? Aren’t we worth fighting for? How can he think this is better? Is 9 am is too early for a double Bailey’s?

If any of you readers have been through similar experiences, how long was it before you were through with abject misery? Before you were able to let go?

September – Cry for you

Generations

I have gone South, to a tiny village in the Corbières region where old people call me by my mum’s name, and like to tell me about the time she fell off her bike and cracked her head when she was eight. I go for walks with my uncle and aunt, we pick wild leek and thyme. The rugged land is covered in spiky bushes, vineyards and rosemary, a mad wind chases the clouds across the sky and messes up our hair. I think about the snow-melt from the Pyrenees swelling the rivers, about how perhaps one of my great grand parents walking the same paths, looked down at the river wishing it could wash away their sorrow. The church bell chimes seven, this used to be the time my cousins and I had to drop whatever adventure we were up to nearly thirty years ago, to run home in time for dinner. Five hundred kilometres away, it is my children’s bath time.

José Gonzalez – Heartbeats

Half-term

The bell rings and children come pouring out of school, the excitement is tangible: They’re on holiday! We get home, I hastily finish packing the suitcase, admire T’s new car, put the car seats in, the children are so happy they’re going on holiday. Wait, something’s wrong... I'm not coming. The car pulls out, I am ripped by pain, I want to curl up and scream. I smile and wave.

The Dandy Warhols - Mohammed

Old and new

A year and a half ago, I moved to the French Alps in the middle of a heatwave, with my son, a huge bump, and a heavy heart from leaving behind my friends of twelve years. Last night, I could no longer feel the February chill, after downing some caïpirinha with nine new friends. We sat in a disused bus, ate burgers and chips, and probably scared unsuspecting diners at the next table with some hair-raising birth stories. It was fun and good. Despite no longer having a garden to potter around, I can feel myself putting down new roots here.

To my old and new friends on both sides of the Channel, I’m so glad our paths crossed :o). Some crazy French tunes for you!

Zebda - Tomber la chemise

Mediation

Today was our first day of mediation. Mediation is basically the Zero Calorie version of a high-sugar court battle, and is meant to help you constructively deconstruct your family. How nice is that? Needless to say I had been looking forward to this almost as much as to poking my eyes out with a blunt spoon. I was mostly too choked to speak, even though I know it needs to be done. Afterwards, T and I managed to talk for a bit, which is something we hadn’t done in weeks. We were both sad, and somehow that felt good.

Texas - The saint

Ties

To me, the bond between us was one of those extra strong, dynamic climbing ropes. Something, which protects you from falling and helps absorb the shocks. Something made out of love, commitment, and shared experience. For the last six weeks, our rope has been rubbing hard against a sharp rock edge of pain, and I can spot the first snapped threads coming loose. One day, the rope will be worn and unrecognisable. My love for him will have gone, and I will be free. Instead of giving me hope, this makes me incredibly sad.

Heather Nova – Paper Cup

Bitter sweet

I got the job. In fact, I didn’t just get the job, HR rang me an hour after the interview finished to let me know the jury’s decision had been taken in five minutes and unanimously. This is just the good news I needed to boost my badly dented confidence…

But guess who I am missing so badly I could start blurbing all over again? Think the 15^th of Feb may be turning into National Crying Day at this rate.

To T who would have been so proud. I would have sat on your lap while we checked-out houses for sale on the internet tonight... Cascadeur – The meaning

No tears

I have been smiling manically for five hours, pretending to be cool and confident. I sit in the car, James Blunt sings something about no tears and this is apparently my cue to melt into uncontrollable sobs. My make-up runs everywhere and I scare a mad French pedestrian off the road. The interview is over.

James Blunt – No tears

Holiday

People were fighting their way to the train, threatening to poke each other’s eyes out with skis and poles, clubbing me in the shins with their ski boots. Families off on holiday. I remember being one of them: Hastily packed sandwiches, children dropping their favourite toys, counting tickets and bags, the mixture of stress and excitment. I am going home to an empty flat.

The sun is low, the land undulates, covered in a green stubble of winter cereal. I think about my children, how their life story is so different to mine, and how I cannot really imagine what they are going through. My own parents had their ups and downs, but did not give up. And only now, as I discover a harsh new world of separation, custody and co-parenting, can I fully appreciate the gift they made us, by giving each other the time and chances they needed.

This is my daughter's song. It came out when I was expecting her and made me cry everytime. I am soppy at the best of times, but pregnant and soppy is just great. Francis Cabrel - Des hommes pareils

Someone's child

I am hurtling across France at 200 miles an hour, the sun is setting over some lakes in Northern Burgundy, the quiet beauty of my country unravels: Villages, cows, vineyards on a hillside, a light winter fog nestling in the valleys. It is the end of the day, the end of a wretched week too, and I am looking forward to a week end at my parents'.

The children are with T, and I hope they have a good time. Never had they been apart from him for two weeks before, and they have missed him dearly. Meanwhile, for a couple of days, I can stop being someone's mummy, and enjoy being someone’s child, feeling loved and safe, being fed too much and told to put a scarf on.

I discovered this song pretty much at the same time as the fact I was expecting my son. I guess this is his song. Let me know what you think!

Beth Gibbons- Mysteries

English cuisine, for real, innit

Today, I served a full English breakfast for ten, which is an interesting thing to do after a week of not getting more than 5 hours sleep a night, trying to finish a demanding job on time, dealing with tummy-bugged extra grumpy children and essentially feeling mildly suicidal great. Still, it reminded me that I hadn’t had a fry-up since I’d left the UK, and you know what? It was luuuvely, and apparently, there’s nothing like a bit of greasy stodge to impress a bunch of French ladies!

Anyway, there is a definite whiff of Spring in the air this week: The cafés’ terraces are filling up, pedal go-karts are back at the park, and the birds are going mad in the barren trees. Ooh, and I am typing this from my balcony, attempting to catch the sun so that I may not look too much like an aspirin-tablet-forgotten-at-the-back-of-a-cupboard for my job interview next week.

Coldplay - Don't panic ( we live in a beautiful world, yeah we do, yeah we do...Do we?)

Irony

What goes on in the head of a fourteen months old whose doting daddy is no longer there at night to blow raspberries on her tummy, to make her feel high-up and secure in his arms; whose mummy keeps making a crying face, whose brother is clinging to her for safety? How does she make sense of the fact that the family she was born into has been blown up into tiny shards? She grumbles when her gums are sore, empties cupboards, smiles, plays, does whatever tiny little girls do. She says “papa” 350 times a day. On the other end of town, “papa” works in heart surgery, literally helping mend broken hearts.

Donovan – Please don’t bend

Fruit

Late September in the Alps, still warm enough for shorts and t-shirts, but the golden sunlight caught in the strings of spider silk above the meadows a reminder that Autumn is around the corner. We were looking for some blackberries, and I am sure the cheeky things were hiding when they heard us coming. Down in the valley, we could see but no longer hear the bustle of the city, our daily lives. My daughter’s buggy was hard to push along the dirt tracks, and my son was whining that his legs hurt and he didn’t want to walk anymore. We were about to head back empty-handed when we came upon unexpected treasures: An abandoned orchard covered in the most delicious plums, then a single giant blackberry bush. I worked on the lower branches while T picked above my head. When we had enough for a tart, we gave in to the children’s whining and headed back, hands covered in spikes and blue juice. T excitedly suggested that we wrote down all the good wild fruit picking spots so we could remember them for next year, and we discussed a promising spot for blueberries and raspberries. On the way down, “I gotta feeling” played on the radio, we all sang along, waving madly in the car and startling rush hour drivers.

Black eyed peas - I gotta feeling

Dilemma

Every night, T phones the children. I suppose it makes him feel better, but the jury’s still out on whether the children appreciate it or not. Last night however, he also wanted to speak to me. I can see you wondering: Had he finally seen the light and wanted to say how sorry he was for the mess he’d made? Joined Al-Qaeda? Decided to become a Buddhist monk? Well, it’s almost as exciting as that: He wants to get come get his ski gear on Saturday night. And no, this cannot wait until he has the children next week, because presumably -ooh, let me take a wild guess here- he’s going skiing on Sunday. In other words, the man who left me a month ago rings in the middle of feeding time at the zoo to ask me to rummage through our ski gear, find his stuff and pack it for him, so that he may go skiing, while I try to keep up with work-work, house-work and children. The way I see it, I’ve got three options

1.     Carry on being a doormat: Pack his stuff and leave it in the cellar for collection as requested. I so resent having to be reasonable...

2.     Refuse to be a doormat: Leave a packed horse head in the cellar. May not be so helpful in the long run...

3.     Be crafty: soak his ski gear in super strength hot chilli pepper paste or something equally pleasant.

Seriously, I’m beat: What would you do?

What would you have done differently?

Today I heard a song on the radio about a guy who wishes he could travel back in time to change the course of events. Not wholly original, but it made me ponder the following pointless question: Had I known the bitter end of the story, what would I have done differently? Would I have taken T up on the offer of baby-sitting that brought us together? Let him get under my skin, talk me into trusting him, believed his promise never to abandon me?... I guess strangely the answer would still be yes. For I would rather be here now, than to not have tasted the richest and most accepting relationship of my life, the joy of wanting and building a family with someone, of holding our daughter... Either that, or I am really a closet masochist.

Here’s the song in question. French rap I’m afraid, and it starts off with a rendition of Happy birthday. Don’t be scared. Soprano – Hiro

Bumpy ride

My son’s currently fixated on a pop song called Bumpy ride, and likes practising some funny spastic dance moves around the living room. He has also taken to scrutinising my face as though he were checking the weather forecast, then announcing “mummy, you are sad/happy again”. I have had to explain over and over again that whilst I will be happy again, it may take a while, even as long as until his birthday, next Christmas (shocking), or possibly even longer. In the meantime, appropriately, it’s going to be a bumpy ride, there will be some happy times, and still some sad times. By this stage, I have usually lost him: Anything further away than his birthday is quite frankly unthinkable for a seven year old, and he’s gone back to splashing his sister in the bath or flying Lego across the room.

As you can guess from the title, the words are probably entirely inappropriate for childen, but kids seem to go wild for this song. Try it with yours and let me know how it goes! Mohombi – Bumpy ride

Scales

Last week, I made it to a gym class and actually got a shock when a skinny, drab-looking creature stared back at me from the mirror.  Who needs Weight Watchers to shift those post-baby kilos? My face tells a story of pain, a new harsh crease above my nose, grey skin and hollow eyes. I can barely recognise myself. And for a dose of extra drama, I got light-headed and fell down at the end of the class: How very 19^th century ladylike!

Here’s a guy who must have practised his scales Chopin – Nocturne 8 in D flat, Op27/2

 

Good vibes

It’s almost a month already, since I was hit by a metaphorical bus (must have been a double-decker), and the lows still keep on coming. Desperation so thick and dark it makes me want to howl, and I can no longer remember who I am. I know I used to love life and be happy once upon a time, but at times like this, it becomes a concept as abstract as quantum field theory. Yet even though I feel lonely, I am not going through the days alone. Good vibes keep coming our way from friends and family all around France and the UK, helping me hobble along until I get back on my feet. Never had I spent such an inordinate amount of time on the telephone, drunk so much tea or received so many presents and invitations. And I cannot thank them enough for their time, attentions, sympathy, soups, and for not dwelling on the fact that I look like death warmed up and shrunken in the wash :o).

Really cool song for today Groundation - Groundation chant

When did life get so complicated?

Tonight, my son actually opened up: Hail hail hurrah, a boy who talks, let’s have a merry dance! The poor thing somehow felt responsible for his step-dad and I splitting up. A classic child-response to separation we thought we had pre-empted by saying that our separation had nothing to do with the children, that we would always be there for them and all the standard crap you get from “help your children through divorce” blurbs.

Then of course, things get quite a bit more complicated when the man your mother is separating from is not your actual dad. And the current situation has thrown my little boy into existential turmoil revolving around: Why did his own daddy leave, and what is going to happen with the man he had adopted to bring him up, now that the link that brought them together no longer exists? And the thing is that up until now, T had always said he loved my son like his own, and even mentioned adopting him a few months ago. Since our separation, he has seen both children together and so far, I had not really thought about them being treated separately. But the scary truth is that I no longer really know or understand T, and I no longer know if I can trust him not to dump my little boy much the way he dumped me, because the going gets tough and he feels like fleeing his responsibilities rather than facing them. (Sigh and reach out for the triple strength ibuprofen)

Archive - Londinium
 

Need you now

My son's woken up from a nightmare, and here I am, wide awake: It’s a quarter after two, I’m all alone, and I need him now.

Sleep has been so hard to find lately, I feel so tired, so immensely sad…I just wish the power of my longing could turn back the clocks. That I would stop waking up at 6.20 every morning, stretching my leg towards his, only to be met by a cool patch of sheets. Yes, this is all unhelpful thinking, what good is it going to do me, blablablabla…But at 2.30 in the morning, there is no strength left in me to beat out the misery. I miss my companion.

Antebellum – Need you now

Banal

If I got a euro for every time I’ve heard someone tell me "this sort of brutal separations happen all the time" in the last month, I could be off cruising around the coconut islands for a fortnight. The thing is that yes, I’m sure you too have heard about your great auntie’s butcher’s wife sudden unexplained walk-out,  and seen the statistics. But wait a second, this is my life we are talking about here! My life and my children’s family…And no, it is no consolation to know that what we are going through is somehow banal. In fact, it hurts. Think I need a t-shirt that reads "I am not a statistic".

Garbage - Not my idea

Autumn day

One afternoon in early November, less than three months ago. T had just started a new placement at the ambulance service and was really enjoying it. He came back full of stories from his early morning shift, I told him about my latest assignment on bariatric surgery, the children were at school and nursery. It was just the two of us, and an afternoon of pale Autumn sunlight. And guess what parents do when they get such rare opportunity? Sleep! I took a break from work, joined him in bed for a tender time and a nap. Later, I went back to work, he went to pick up the children, I made some soup, boy moaned about having too much, girl guzzled it with much satisfied humming. Once the children were in bed, he may have watched one of those TV crime series, which gives me nightmares, while I got on with some work. We hung the laundry together before going to sleep.

Lamb - Gorecki

Family

As I pass yet another Valentine’s day display in a kitchenware shop, it is hard to stop myself from being violently sick over the stylish fine china - whose life expectancy I would roughly estimate as 1.5 days in our household. I can practically touch the great big dream-shaped hole in my life. So much has been lost: My companion, our family, our future. Yet as I look out of the window, not all has gone: The sun setting over the snowy mountains, the smell from the bakery around the corner, and a thin but sturdy wall of protection around me – the love from my family. Knowing there are people I can call in the middle of the night, hearing them bang on about feeding me up and getting some sleep. Being loved unconditionally, when Valentine’s day feels like an insult...

Moriarty – Jimmy (To my lovely sister)

Rage

Incandescent rage has irrupted into my life after yet another night of being woken up every 20 minutes by a teething baby. My fatigue only equals the anger I feel that I should be the only one getting up every night, rocking and soothing anxious children to sleep when my own world has only just crumbled. That this man has not only suddenly forgotten all that we shared, all that was good about us, he has left me virtually jobless in a still new city, with no family and two little kids. He has broken the deals we had for our respective careers, for our future. And if this wasn’t enough, he is currently enjoying the single lifestyle of hard working and partying, spending money we haven’t got on flash furniture and recently thought it appropriate to lecture me on crying in front the children. No really, the cheeck of the new T is seemingly limitless!

This has to be my all times favourite angry song
Rage against the machine – Killing in the name (to be blasted at full volume for full effect, ooh yeah...)

Karma

Have you ever felt ashamed of the way you treated some people in previous relationships?

Bile rose in my throat this morning as I contemplated the fact that I too, in the past, have abandoned some perfectly good men who truly loved me, because I was fleeing my own problems. I remember how suffocated I felt, how liberating the escape, how sad they were that they really wanted to make me happy, yet I wouldn’t let them. What if this was what happened to T?... What if he too felt he had never truly loved me? What if he never looked back?

Except of course there are two significant (p=0.02) differences between my past mistreatment of men and the current situation: One is seven, and feels abandoned yet again by the man who was supposed to bring him up. The other one is not even walking, yet her own father has walked out on her family.

Massive Attack – Karmacoma

(To J I hurt so badly, to S and S, you were all so good to me)

Take your life and shake it hard

About a year into our relationship, and heavily pregnant, I left my whole life behind, and uprooted my England-born son to move to France. I left a good job, a home, my friends, my support network, my whole life to move in with T. He had to struggle with the scary proposition of leaving behind his day as a care-free student to become a husband, dad and step-dad all rolled into one. Times were happy but tough, and when our daughter was born, our lives had truly been shaken so hard they were unrecognisable. In spite of all this, we learnt to live together, struggled through sleep deprivation and insecurities to gradually become a new but perfectly formed family.

T used to sing our colicky baby daughter to sleep with this song  Israel Iz - Over the rainbow

The letter

Two weeks on, the initial shock is beginning to recede and life has reluctantly resumed. So far, I have somehow coped –read: I have occasionally managed to brush my teeth, and the children get fed (though mostly frankfurters, rice and green beans from a jumbo bag in the freezer). But just when I thought the worst was over, I can feel myself sinking even lower: T has signed up for a flat and started removing things from our home, and the violence of this disappearing act, combined with the resurfacing of my own deepest insecurities have projected me into a world of bottomless anxiety. I can feel myself looking down a dizzying abyss of the darkest depression and a primal fear grips me. Gather me up because I'm lost...

Kristin Hersh – the letter

Stand by me

Word of my current predicament is starting to spread with the inevitability of rain on an English Summer day. The good side of this is the somewhat unexpected, and overwhelming wave of support I am getting from everyone from parents at school to neighbours and nursery staff. With two interesting side effects: Firstly, it does really warm my heart and helps me still see the best in people. Secondly, it does make me see T in a different light. The brutality of his change of heart, his inconsistency, the sheer speed with which he has thrown our relationship away to rush towards his new single life all paint a fairly ugly picture. This person is no longer the man I loved.

Ben E King - Stand by me

Waste

Tragedy lies in the details. For the first time today, T did not use let himself into our home, he rang the bell, and I felt the love in my heart begin to make way to a deep, cold hurt. It feels like nothing can stop the spiral of grief, guilt and resentment that is hurtling us apart at terrifying speed. We need to urgently discuss looking after the children and money, but the situation is so loaded, it practically feels like a day out in Kashmir. And to think that a couple of months ago, we were discussing the best timing to have a third baby feels as unreal as the Queen popping round for a cup of tea... The same obsessing question keeps going round my head: How?

Fast track

When we first met, I lived in the UK, while T was an intern in medicine  in France, so we spent hours chatting on Skype and single-handedly kept Easy Jet in benefit. Within a few months, we fast tracked to wanting to spend our lives together and started talking about moving in together and having kids. Yes, I know, bloody love hormones have a lot to answer for... We made plans for me to relocate to France, and actually got pregnant 6 months into our relationship. You think this would be scary, and you’re wrong: This was terrifying. It felt completely reckless, yet completely right.

Walk away

Last night had heartbreaking quality. We had dinner as a family, T was ever so nice, the children whined about eating vegetables and smeared pizza into their hair. Were it not for the palpable sadness, it could have been a couple of months ago, when our lives hadn’t been torn apart. And while I know that denial is all part of the process, somewhere deep inside of me lies the faith that this is not the end of the story.

Ben Harper - Walk away

Cougar woman

T and I met two and a half years ago on holiday. I was a weary single mum, he was a broody newly single med student, and yes, crash bang, it was love at first sight. He is nine years my junior and easy on the eye, which could practically put me in the same league as Madonna had I a penchant for kabbalism. For all the lust love at first sight, I was incredibly scared to let anyone into my, and my son’s life, and kept alternating between being a hysterical woman with baggage, and having panic attacks. In other words, the very image of the totally positive and together woman you’d normally try to project in a new relationship. Amazingly, T did not run away, loved my son, and for the very first time in my life, I knew I’d found someone who accepted me for who I was, who’d seen me at my worst, yet still wanted to build a life with me. This gave him the courage to share some of his own baggage and weaknesses and made us incredibly close.

Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah

Tissues are my new best friends

After the initial bewilderment, point blank refusal of his decision, and anger, I feel an immense sadness welling up inside as I am giving up the fight and beginning to accept reality. It felt easier to think that aliens had abducted the man I loved when he was being cold, but his current concern for me is a reminder that he is still himself, only without the love, and I find it devastating. The amount of crying involved in my daily schedule is simply ridiculous: I knew I should have bought some Kleenex shares!

Ouch

Today, I broke down seeing both our names on the front door, the bright, cheery sun felt like an insult, and I could not even stand hearing my children on the phone. Everything hurts. I am clinging on to my next counselling session tomorrow like a life line, but the hours just seem to expand into a terrifying inventory of all I have lost. If you have been through a similarly cheerful time, how did you drag yourself live through those initial abysmal days?

Poor cow in France

On the 1^st of January 2011, the man whose life I’d shared for two and a half years (T) announced that he didn’t love or trust me anymore, and that he wanted us to go our separate ways. His decision was final and could we please get on with making arrangements. Do you get the feeling you’ve heard about this all before? Yep, me too, and I’d always thought “Wow, poor cow, how could he/she be so deluded they never saw this coming?”. I hope this blog will be an account of my journey back to life. I have an amazing 7 year old son from a previous relationship, and T and I have a beautiful 13 months old daughter together.