(Primary) School’s Out Forever!

Most years when the end of an academic year rolls around for my daughter and I’m still in a job despite all the juggling that working parents have to do, I’d always give myself an imaginary high five and say:  “Wow! Made it to the end of another school year! “  Then I’d take a deep breath in preparation for that yawning stretch of summer when childcare fees become unreservedly crippling.  Still I’d tell myself, this too will end and then I’ll wonder where all the time went.

Yeah well, that time has finally come and while I do not disparage the real privilege it has been to parent my little Lishy through primary school, I can also say that I have felt and lived (happily, gratefully - if a little cash-strapped) all those beautiful early years.  But now, it’s my time because this year marks the end of primary for Lish Losh.  In September she starts secondary and life as I know it will change forever.  Again.

Despite it all, this year was no different as the end of the final term approaches and I am just as impressed as ever to have made it round the block once more.  There is however a finality about this one given it marks an important milestone for Lish Losh.  I recall in vivid colour my last day at primary school.  It would prove the first time I’d experience the pain of loss.  I remember spending the whole day on the brink of tears and as the last bell went so began the heart wrenching sobbing.  I wept all the tears of my heart as the French so richly express (J’ai pleuré toutes les larmes de mon coeur).  I wonder how Lishy will react?

Thus in preparation for the unbridling of a very different parenting experience, I started looking for a new job.  A more senior role that I could commit to without the confidence crushing anxiety created by twice daily inflexible school runs and other tricky child minding issues.  In anticipation of no longer needing the flexibility of my current role – a role I cherished for such a long time – but ultimately the typical middle management role that many working mums are condemned to, often forever, I could now envisage super charging my career.

I was not really up for settling any more, so I only went for the top roles.  And by golly I found one…slightly earlier than I’d hoped given there are still a couple of months before Lishy is that independent tween who can walk herself to and from school and can be left at home without fear of starvation, electric shock or flooding.  Not one to look good fortune in the mouth I decided to bite the bullet and fast track Lishy’s route to independence in order to accept the challenge of this new role.  She now walks herself to her after school club for instance though in other aspects I’ve had to up childcare.  It is what it is.  

Come September she’ll be at a school on our road.  Unheard of in London I can tell you.  All I can say is that the universe provides.

I figure at my age I have maximum 2 more big roles in me before I’ll be looking to wind down.  It means I need to make sure the next 20 years really count in terms of wealth accumulation.  Conscious that the state will likely not be providing state pensions when I am of retirement age and children not actually becoming cheaper as they grow, I. Mean. Business.

Making Sense of the Illogical

I’m having trouble curating my thoughts at the moment.  So many inexplicable things are happening in the world and not wanting to sound glib, rather than generalise, I’m going to focus on 2 things in particular that have helped cement in my mind what I already know in my heart.  Life is precious and we hold the power to make it an exquisite experience.  Happiness is a choice.  Or in the learned words of The Specials: Stop your messing around!

 

First I have to talk about the suicide of Chris Cornell. The words themselves are incomprehensible.  I am typing them; I am reading them but I am not computing.   That a man of his talent, intelligence and sensibility could not have found a way to muzzle the black dog of depression for long enough to stay another day, and another, and another is something I am finding very difficult to comprehend.  I think the truth is I simply do not want to believe that he is dead and especially that he is dead by his own hand.  I know from experience that sometimes you have to take life one hour at a time.  Anyone who has experienced depression or anxiety (and I’ll wager that’s pretty much everyone in the world) knows exactly the position of helplessness that underpins such a condition.

But most of us do not have Chris Cornell’s voice or music background.  That is not to suggest that our lives are any less important or valid.  Not for one second.  We are all deserving and blessed souls, universally loved by the divine source.  Hope I’m making that nice and clear.

Getting back to Chris Cornell, he was widely considered one of the key founding fathers of the Seattle grunge scene that would ultimately grind its way across the globe with integrity and gravitas.  Never once knowingly succumbing to the mainstream.  And in the end the music, its message and the artists comprising the scene were too good for it not to be embraced by the masses.

It subsequently shaped the formative years for many people around the world, defining their very characters going into adulthood. I know it did mine.  So for a creator of era defining culture to terminate himself in what seemed like a facile almost whimsical moment of impulse seems preposterous to me (I'm not saying he did that).  I ask myself when did gratitude fail him?  We know he was deeply loved by his family and his fans; so to the foundation of my bewilderment.  For now, I can only come to one conclusion – never stop being grateful for what he gave the world and actually never stop being proud of what we all as individuals give to the world. 

Onto the second event of recent times that has winded me – the horrific Grenfell Tower fire in West London.  My first instinct being a hot-blooded Mediterranean by heritage is to be f-ing angry.  HOW could this have happened?  Putting aside the colossal levels of self-serving ignorance that led the resident in whose flat the fire is deemed to have started, to have decided it was more important to pack a bag of clothes and flee than it was to call the fire brigade is disturbing in the sublime.  An eye-witness described the fire as small when said resident knocked on her door on his way out.  When did we become so selfish?  I’m not saying it was his fault and I’m positive the poor fella did not imagine how it would end (by all accounts remorse does not begin to describe what this man now feels) but current levels of anger are causing me to want to lay blame.  It is wrong of me of course, but tell that to the parents of the missing children – all presumed dead.

I won’t go into the socio-economics of this all because honestly I am not sophisticated enough a thinker to be able to untangle the historical politics of it.  All I can imagine is that when you lose your family, home and reason to live – it pretty much feels the same whether you are rich or poor.  I think about the last moments of those children and the desperate parents that could not protect them.  What purpose do you have as a parent if not to save your children? Some did the unthinkable and threw their children out of windows –successfully is my understanding - with heroes waiting at the bottom ready to catch the precious cargo.

Meanwhile firefighters risked their lives to try and save a few more and happen they did.  They deserve every accolade.  This is a time for love now because no amount of money or new homes will erase the horror of this tragedy.  But love may just save a few of the survivor’s lives.