Today is my husband’s birthday and as lockdown birthdays go so far, we’ve managed to pull it out of the bag so I hoped that we could do the same for him.
However, as we’ve both been so busy – him on site pretty much all the time and me at home with the kids – I had to wrangle for some time last night to go and get the birthday breakfast things and then realised I didn’t have any wrapping either so masking taped together some recycled brown paper and crumpled tissue and tied it with some tangled saree ribbon left over from our wreath workshops last Christmas.
Usually I could pull something like this off but feeling unable to perform even the smallest task of my own volition, it did not look good. In fact it was the personification of sheer frustration and unmet expectations. I might have to frame the pic I took of it to show my friend how bad the finished wrapping was, as homage to this moment in time. What I will now refer to as: The Great Unravelling.
Luckily inside the wrapping was a present that he actually wanted– an Orange Crush amp – and that I’d managed to get delivered in time (but only after I got the date of his birthday wrong and thought it was Wednesday not Thursday, which would have been even more of a disaster). However, the parcel and I were too misshapen by that point for it to be an enjoyable moment and so I went to bed and planned to get up early in the morning to try and proffer it over a birthday breakfast.
It didn’t happen. Exhaustion and chaos happened.
And so I tried again at lunchtime after The Great Unravelling of homeschool reached its peak, well meant World Book Day activities and assemblies and webinars simply resulting in computer fatigue, a lack of routine and not getting out of the house.
Garlic mushrooms. Rounds of sourdough toast. A bought cake decorated by the kids with brownies and cherries on the side. Croissants and pains au chocolat (actually I ate all these before he got back) complete with tropical umbrellas. Orange and grapefruit juice in the special glasses. A bunch of yellow tulips…. A Co-op special all laid out as beautifully as I could (code for me lining things up to help alleviate stress) – upon on our half made kitchen island in the middle of the uprooted kitchen with no cooker or sink (more fool me).
Ironically, by the time I’d made it, meltdowns left, right and centre from all of us, I’d actually lost my appetite. And so I left it all laid out for Tom and the boys and had to go for a run to get my head straight again. Fifteen minutes. 3km. Running on empty. I didn’t even stop to take a picture for once. I can’t even remember where I went. No nature to report – apart from my own primitive urge to make a break for it while howling like a wolf.
Teatime was a similarly fraught affair. What should have been a takeaway treat descending into madness. I’m pretty sure the Deliveroo man came twice after he heard me and the kids having a shouting competition the first time around. I don’t usually lose my rag like that but right now I just can’t hold it in. I’m frazzled. We all are and at some point, we all just tumbled into bed just to halt the day.
And so The Great Unravelling. I think we’re all feeling it now. The home straight to the 8 March, when the kids go back to school and we parents get our lives back a bit. I can’t wait but I’m stressed at the same time because I know the boys are worried about it and our emotional states are now so fully wired up to each other, so invested in the communal daily survival, that I feel their feelings wholesale. It’s like having babies again.
I did sow the sweetpeas though. That I finally did. And tomorrow we most definitely leave the house. And the birthday will retrospectively be remembered as one of those we celebrated anyway, despite the odds. The birthday that unravelled and that was held together with masking tape.