Border

Guess when I am writing this post? Reuben's nap-time.
It transpires that Reuben's nap-time is actually the only time there is for writing blog posts. So I'm going to have to do a bit of back pedalling.
But it doesn't matter.

I want to write this blog as a way of marking Georgina's position in my life and in my family. Jess described writing as a type of mothering once and that has stayed with me. These words are how I mother Georgina, and they are recorded in the only place that accepts her, this strange, half lit world of the internet.

And my mothering is far from perfect.

If it were a blog, it would not be a perfect blog, full of witty remarks, accurate spelling and deep thoughts.

If I were mothering Georgina, a hypothetical living and breathing Georgina, there would be days when we would fall out. When she would get cross and upset with me, when she would punch me in the throat and I would feel she was being unreasonable. We'd fall out. She'd sit on the floor sulking and refusing to speak to me and I'd go and cry guilty tears in the kitchen. Heaven knows that Jessica and I have had days like that, cross-throat-punching-guilty-tears days.

We also have twirling-bouncing-smiling days. But even then, even then, I notice that I am sometimes gripping her shoulders a little too tightly. As though she might slip away into the dark without me. Some days those scars on her hands seem to shine at me more brightly. As my husband says so perceptively, 'Catherine, you are just not the 'getting over it' type.' And I'm not. I hope that the children don't notice.

They tuck you up your mum and dad don't you know. Except with an f rather than a t.

I will do my own fair share of tucking up. It is inevitable. 

So Georgina, Jessica and Reuben. My dear, dear loves. Please know that I am trying my best. It's not perfect, it's far from perfect. Sometimes I feel I'm only running damage limitation. Occasionally I do something I'm proud of, more often I'm left wishing that I could start over. But I can't.

Whether I'm desperately trying to figure out why you are screaming in my face (Reuben) or to figure out why you are punching me in the throat (Jessica) or trying to write you a love letter that makes some sort of sense (Georgina), I'm trying. I want it to be right, to minimise the whole tucking you up thing. But, show me a human that's never tucked up a bit? Ok ok, except for you Georgina, you never got a chance to try.

***

In real life, that hazy place, I have very few friends who have lost a baby. But strangely, I do have a friend who lost a baby under very similar circumstances to those in which Georgina died. Very early birth, survived for a few days, became sicker and eventually had life support removed, dying in the arms of his mother.

We sometimes meet, in cafes, in pubs. We often talk about the experiences that we have in common, doesn't everyone? I suppose that is the basis of most friendships, that upwards glance that says 'I recognise you. We have been in the same place, you and I."

But the experiences we have in common are difficult ones. Sometimes I catch people listening to our conversations. Once, I looked up and caught an older woman listening in. She looked repulsed and disturbed. I wanted to go over to her table and say, "Well, that is what you get for eavesdropping. Anything you would care to contribute?" But I know that I am guilty of eavesdropping myself on occasion. Even to the sacred, to the last gasps. And so I remain in my seat.

And this is where I am currently struggling. Because I have forgotten or misplaced where the border lies. Between acceptable and unacceptable. Between talking and that dread word, particularly frightening to the English perhaps, over-sharing. Even typing 'over-sharing' sends a shiver down my spine.

As  I have said in the past, I babbled on about Georgina quite happily for almost a year after she had died. Because it never crossed my mind that this was odd or might make other people think that I was crazy with a capital C.

But, somewhere along the line, I became scared of the opinion of others. The line between appropriate and inappropriate had, apparently, completely disappeared and that I've been struggling to relocate it ever since.

Now I'm not at all certain where to draw the line, in some arbitrary place that might not match up with that which is marked out by the world at large. It's particularly difficult at work, where I am putting in quite a bit of effort to maintain a professionally bland exterior. Not hard. People forget easily the Catherine W. of 2008, with her little belly. The Catherine W. of 2010 with her red eyes and frequent dashes for the office door. With that tiny, dead, cold, unspeakable weight around her heart. Still there if you look closely enough. But I don't expect them to remember those people, I'd rather that they didn't to be honest.

But now, I worry that I have over stepped. I enquired after a colleague's father's joint replacement the other day. He'd told me the story of the operation after a meeting the week previously. And he seemed disconcerted that I had asked. He twice said, "it's very kind of you to remember."

And I wondered if I have become the hovering bird of ill omen, who only remembers hospitalisations and deaths.

My exterior goes quieter and quieter. Neutralising myself into a quiet shade of beige. My make up is applied more thickly, retouched at lunch time, my clothes more carefully ironed. I only join in conversations about comparative car ugliness, division of domestic chores. Small words. Not marriage. Not babies apart from the coo-ing and congratulations that pre-2008 me was genuinely good at.

But my interior starts to roar. Compensating for all the damping down on the outside. I sit and stare out of the window and miss my girl. And I wonder what this all means.

If we are all of us sitting here, in our office, with internal roars, screams, shouts, cries. Desperately trying to stop our heads twisting off with the sheer amazement of it all.

Because now, everything seems a wonder to me, my office job, my feet on the ground, my lungs, my thirty two years of life tucked up under my heart.

Am I alone? Or are we all editing ourselves down to small words? I wish I could ask but I don't know any of my colleagues that well. Despite having sat in their close proximity for the majority of my waking hours for close to a decade.

Part of me thinks, where's the point in that? All the editing and squishing and squashing. Biting our tongues. Minding our manners.

Part of me thinks, well, life would be intolerable if we all of us went about roaring at one another all the time. Conversations about comparative car ugliness are what makes life unbearable and bearable all at once.

Sometimes I think that this place isn't where I'm supposed to be.