There are two things about having a large family. Well, there are lots really, but for now let's talk about two or we might be here a while.
One is that everyone thinks you're an expert on children. From the moment you have that final child, everyone, from midwives onwards, thinks you need no help and support. It's just one of a myriad of things that did not occur to me.
The second thing is people are always asking if you are going to have any more. Which is really annoying. As if that is all you can do or are interested in.
People probably ask that less now, as I'm looking old and haggered. And I did used to worry that I would always want more and more babies. I hear women now lament their broodiness, worrying that they will always feel this way.
But it occurred to me as I watched someone I used to go to school with cross the road in front of me, big children walking next to her, little ones in the double buggy, that you do stop. You do move on. And I'm glad I have. The vision shuffling behind the handles did not inspire anything other than relief, mean as that sounds.
I expect others have thought similarly of me, although I hope I have gone about my life with a bit more joie de vivre. Certainly, those first few years with a little one were, for me, blissful. Now as they get older I'm taking stock. My life is moving onto a new chapter as theirs' do.
All these thoughts popped into my mind as I waited for the lights to change. Along with gladness that I'd found gardening. It's given me another focus just when I needed it. I didn't realise, of course, that I would be needing it, but it's funny how things enter your life and you don't realise their impact or value at first.
It's not good for children to be their mother's sole focus, especially as they get older. I'm realising more and more they need an interested but vaguely distracted mum on the sidelines. Someone who is there but not there.
Cooking can serve that role but I find it a bit....soul destroying. Who eats what and how and why and who's going to do the dishwasher and oh-crikey-if-I-have-to-cook-prawns-and-pasta-one-more-time-I-shall-scream. Plus it's a vital necessity, one in which mothers are increasingly judged. Every time I step up to the Aga I feel I'm taking part in a contest I can never win.
But transplant me a few feet away to the greenhouse, with the radio happily burbling in the background, a puppy chewing twigs at my feet and seeds to push into the soil and I can accomplish that magical mothering act of being available at all times but invisible.
So even if nothing grows this year (I'm worried last year was a fluke), even though I really haven't got a clue what I'm doing, that someone is doing it better than me, that I seem to spend more than I save, I will still pick up my seed tin and head to the greenhouse.
