Rhodri was coming out with all these pearls of wisdom about children and parenting and how yes, they did have everything given to them, but their freedom had been taken away from them. We both had childhoods where we spent hours and hours away from our parents, in rivers and up mountains and running across fields, a freedom our children could never have in a city – that’s the price to pay for living here.
Then we went for a coffee in the Washington Gallery and had lovely cake and had more normal conversations about Welsh art, then we went to the Cancer Research shop and bought some really great books for Elis, Life on Earth and a fantastic 1950s children’s illustrated encyclopaedia. Rhodri said it was for me, not Elis, as I liked it so much. Then we went home and had a little lie-down and read the papers and it was all really pleasant.
Later we went to Llandaff village, to the Italian restaurant, and again we talked about lots of different things; it was all really nice.
I guess taking yourself away from the children and rediscovering what it is you liked about your partner in the first place is a reality check we could have more often. I said on the way back from the restaurant (between rocket-fire from various bonfire parties) that people usually find something in their partners that’s missing in themselves. You know, they want to fill in the gaps. I said, ‘You spoke Welsh and were musical, and had been to a good college, and had a nice house and actually talked about wanting children, and all those things appealed.’ I also thought that he was very handsome, of course. He considered his reply – for a bit too long, I thought – and said, ‘You’re just incredibly sexy and beautiful and very intelligent; that’s what I saw in you. Now come on, let’s go. I’m desperate for a pee.’ Ho hum, it looks like we love each other very much.
November 6, Monday
Rhodri has been working in St David’s for a few days. My lovely mother had plans in place for when Rhodri is working away, which I was very grateful for at the time as I didn’t know how the chemo would affect me but, apart from the first three days, I have been able to look after the children by myself. In reality, that’s getting them up at eight (they won’t wake before that, unless it’s the weekend of course when you want a lie-in, and then they are up at seven), dispatching them to school and nursery by nine and then picking them up, which I can do at six, but it’s usually about four thirty and they are both in bed by eight – so it’s not exactly stressful, although Osh took it upon himself to have his first tantrum last night.
I don’t think he was himself though, although I know this is a middle-class parents’ excuse for a child’s bad behaviour. I had cooked a fabulous lamb dinner and made gravy (Rhodri does not allow me to make gravy – I am beginning to question his authority on this) and wanted Osh and Elis and me to sit down and chat and eat our dinner together. As per bloody usual, nothing worked out as planned. I turned the telly off in the front room and said Osh could watch telly while he had his dinner in the kitchen. He absolutely refused to come; he wouldn’t move and wanted to have his food in front of the telly in the living room, a habit that it took two years to get Elis out of.
We were so desperate for him to eat that we would have stood on our heads naked as long as Elis ate something. Of course, I know now that it was our parenting rather than his eating that was the problem. So the upshot of that is we have endeavoured with Osh to get him to eat at the table, NEVER make a fuss if he doesn’t want something and NEVER spend half an hour discussing eating and cajoling him into doing so. It doesn’t work. The best cure is chill out. They will eat eventually – oh, and don’t give in and give them any old crap, that doesn’t work in the long term either. Tonight, Elis didn’t like the gravy. He said it four times; after the fourth time I said, ‘I know you don’t like the fucking gravy, stop saying that.’
When he grows up a foul-mouthed, hoodie-wearing yob, and I wonder where it all went wrong, I must remember this. I must stop swearing in front of him, well, actually at him – is it child abuse? The theory is that if they hear their parents swearing, they will think it’s so uncool that they won’t do it themselves. Even I am not convinced by this argument. (I must smile at a hoodie next time I see one – it is clearly not his fault). So Elis and I ate our dinner in the kitchen while Osh screamed hysterically in the front room, which was not, of course in the least bit stressful for me, oh no.
When dinner was finished I went in the living room, put the telly on (basically Dr Tania would be turning in her House of Tiny Tearaways), sat there and cajoled Osh into eating his dinner – which he did, in fairness, and enjoyed it without complaining about the fucking gravy, probably because he can’t really articulate this yet. But basically it all happened on his terms, watching his programme, eating on the sofa – whatever.
Elis was rude to his music teacher, Miss Fran – who is a really lovely woman. She comes to the house every Tuesday and she says he is very musical, which I don’t doubt for a minute, as he has a perfectly beautiful singing voice. He was really naughty and in the end I went in and intervened. She said she doesn’t like to shout at them – she’s just started on her own as a teacher. My God, she’s got a lot to learn if she’s teaching six year olds piano.
‘He needs a firm hand,’ I said. ‘Please feel at liberty to tell him off.’ Jesus Christ, music teachers scared the shit out of us in our day, you wouldn’t dare be rude to them.
She said he was in a funny mood and didn’t listen. I heard him deliberately playing off-key. I know nothing about music and yet I know he was taking the piss because before she came he was playing and it was perfect. She said, ‘You often find very musical children behave like that,’ making out he was this creative genius. No, he’s just a little sod, I wanted to say.
We never push him really, but I am beginning to think he does have a talent and so I want to persevere. A lot of Rhodri’s family are musical. Rhodri has a music degree and is obsessed with music. Sioned, Rhodri’s aunt, is a concert harpist and a wonderful piano player, and Rhodri’s mother is a very accomplished pianist, so I do think it’s in his genes.
As a child my grandmother had a piano in her front room and I would spend hours playing it, learning by ear very complicated pieces. I cannot for the life of me understand why someone didn’t give me piano lessons.
Even if Elis isn’t the most accomplished pianist on the planet, if he has a grounding in music it will be with him for ever. If nothing else, he’ll always be able to play ‘Happy Birthday’ on the piano! He is Miss Fran’s youngest student and is better than children two years older than him. I think I’ll sit in the room next time, just to make sure my creative genius listens.
November 7, Tuesday
Part of me wishes I would wake up one day and be bald. Tibetan monks don’t have hair, do they? No, I don’t think they do, and somewhere in the back of my mind a little cog is turning that says that’s to do with avoiding vanity – get rid of your hair and you never have to worry about it.
Except real life’s not like that. For instance, Gail Porter loses her hair and it’s all over the papers, so even though she doesn’t have a bad hair day, she does have a bad hair day, get it? Profound. Anyway, if I am bald or ‘bold’ as Elis calls it, then that’s it – start again. At the moment though, I’ve basically got a head full of dead hair; touch it and it falls out, brush it and it falls out but not quite enough to think, Fuck it, and shave it off in some momentous gesture.
I have my dark brown hair, which is peppered with grey, flat to my head where my wig has flattened it and I dare not touch it as it falls out. I have even begun to forget about washing it. Yesterday I could smell something funny all day and kept thinking, ‘What’s that smell?’ then realised it was my hair. I can’t remember the last time I washed it.
Anyway, I washed it this morning in the shower and half-hoped that with one touch it would all come out and that would be it. When chemo is over then I would start again with a glorious head of hair looking like I had just stepped out of a salon, because I would be lucky to have the chan
ce to start again rather than patching it up continually (a bit like my front lawn).
I’m so very very excited about Christmas that I went to the Cancer Research shop and spent £15 on cards. I thought about not sending real cards and sending ecards instead, but relented. On the back of the cards it says, Together we’ll beat cancer. Yes, thank you, Cancer Research, we WILL beat it.
I am giving £12 a month to Cancer Research. I give £8 to Greenpeace and was thinking about stopping that and giving it to Cancer Research, but do worry about the Amazon rainforest a lot so I’m in a bit of a dilemma.
I will be writing out Christmas cards and wrapping presents over the next week. I’m so bloody organized. Then I can concentrate on the colour scheme for my Christmas table (am thinking burgundy). I have a beautiful cinnamon and clove Christmas candle from Marks & Sparks which I will light tonight.
I feel slightly liberated as it is getting close enough to Christmas to dare speak about it. I’m thinking of getting my parents Sky Plus as my father goes on ad infinitum about not giving money to Rupert Murdoch, so this way he gets the telly he wants, can record programmes for my mother, doesn’t have to pay Murdoch and we get something decent to watch when we are up there.
Elis thinks it’s a most marvellous idea as we could have the family package for them, which has all the children’s channels. I’ve bought Elis and Osh Marks & Spencer’s slightly sanitized version of the nativity which plays ‘Away in a Manger’ (or Away in a Manager as Elis read it); you sing along to it. I know Rhodri will be scathing about it and that’s partly why I bought it, as Elis needs no excuse to be in the God squad with me. I just think, as I have said to Rhodri, Christian values are sound values to have in life and he can’t argue with that.
I’ve been reading it to Elis and Osh in bed every night before Rhodri comes back and it’s their favourite book, especially as at the end you press a button and it plays ‘Away in a Manger’ and you sing three verses. Elis is particularly taken with this and even wants to learn it on the piano for Miss Fran!
We lay in bed last night and Elis, in his perfectly beautiful singing voice, sang, ‘The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes. I love Thee, Lord Jesus, look down from Sky Plus, and stay by my side, until morning is nigh.’
We laughed so hard, the pair of us, our sides ached and tears were in our eyes.
November 8, Wednesday
I keep singing to the children that Eartha Kitt song, ‘Santa baby, put a present under the tree for me . . . ’ It’s stuck in my mind now and I’m singing it over and over again. The only thing is, in my mind I sing ‘Cancer baby, put a present under the tree for me’ which is a bit disconcerting. Actually, a 100 per cent cure would be just the thing, please. Thanks. Failing that, I’ll have a digital camera.
November 10, Friday
Chemotherapy has a smell to it. The first time I had chemotherapy I thought that I would have to throw away my red duvet cover with all the pretty white flowers on it because of the smell. I kept asking Rhodri if he could smell something but he couldn’t. I suppose the smell comes through your skin, does it? I don’t know, maybe it’s like garlic; all I know is that about four days after chemo I have to change all my bedding because I think it has a smell to it. By five days the chemo is more or less out of your system, I think. Should I know all these things?
I did ask Gill about that because you can pass the chemo on through your bodily fluids; so it can kill the fast-dividing cells of other people in extreme circumstances. I have visions of Osh’s cells (no one else’s for some reason) being zapped and the poor wee mite fading away before my eyes like a balloon from which the air has been let out.
One of the pieces of advice they give you in the chemotherapy booklet from Velindre is to flush the toilet – something I tend not to do if I wee (save the planet etc – don’t flush unless you are forced, as my mother says). Now I am flushing left, right and centre and washing away the planet.
What chemotherapy smells like is death. My mother and her sister Janet nursed my Auntie Beatie, who had lung cancer, until she died. So I know what death smells like. Since Auntie Beatie died I have been unable to have any air fresheners in the house as they remind me of her dying.
Trying to mask the smell of death is impossible and also rather pointless. It’s not faeces or sick or body odour; it is a smell of death. When I go into my bedroom in the mornings after I have had chemotherapy, I feel the need to open the windows and change the bedding to rid my room of the smell.
The way I reconcile it is that it is killing the cancerous cells – that is where the death smell comes from. It is short term and won’t last for ever, and I am dying, we all are; this will just help me live a little bit longer so my two children will have their mummy until they are old enough to cross Zebra crossings, boil eggs and iron clothes, then they can go out into the world as fully developed individuals with my duvet of love wrapped around them.
November 11, Saturday
Alison W, my neighbour, had her baby on Thursday – another little girl, a sister for Erin. I have two Alisons and Erins in my life, which is fine when they are apart, confusing when they are together, and even more confusing when I am talking to Rhodri about either Alison or Erin. So I refer to them in conversation as Alison K and Alison W. Alison W’s Erin goes to crèche with Osh and her husband works at the BBC. Before we moved here I would dream of having neighbours with babies who I could talk to and go for walks with, with our pushchairs. When we lived in Canton we were the only people in the street who had a baby. People either had grown-up children or they were elderly, and no one was really that friendly, so I felt a bit isolated. The way you meet women with babies is to move to housing estates and you have instant friends, people in the same position as you, but we didn’t want to move outside of Cardiff. We also wanted an old house, so when we moved here and I saw our neighbour had a baby the same age as ours, it was like a dream come true. We have been really good friends ever since. The upshot of all this is that Alison W having her baby means I got to do my favourite bit of shopping – baby girl shopping. Having had two boys and having had all Osian’s clothes passed to me from my two sisters and Kerry, I never have to buy him any clothes at all, ever, not a thing. He is the cheapest baby in Cardiff, I tell Rhodri. Some of the clothes he has were originally Elis’s, which have been around four other children and are now coming back to Osh. I wholeheartedly subscribe to recycling clothes. I was going to give Alison W all Osh’s clothes if she had a boy so now they’ve reached the end of the line – although I think my mother’s friend’s daughter has a child a bit younger than Osh, so I can pass them on there.
I bought the new baby a pink tutu skirt, shamelessly girly, with a pink bow on the front and sequins, a white cardigan embroidered with roses, and pink tights. I want to wear the cardigan myself, it is so beautiful – I hope Alison W likes it. What with Alison W’s baby (no name yet) and baby Daisy, I can satisfy my pink baby purchasing for many birthdays to come.
I don’t feel sad about not being able to have another baby. There was a time when I obsessed about it after Osh. Obviously, having my own baby isn’t possible now on two counts. Firstly, I physically might not be able to have one and I know, having an oestrogen-receptive tumour, that pregnancy would not be good, but I am not certain about that as women do have children after they have had cancer. But I think for me, personally, I wouldn’t want to bring any child into my family thinking I might have to go through all this again. I need to gather my strength to look after my two boys and myself should I have to face it again in the future. Please God though, let that not be the case.
I met Kate yesterday to go shopping and she was telling me about someone she works with who has had breast cancer twice. She’s just got it again, but they had told her it would come back within ten years – although it has only been four years.
I didn’t know they could say that and wonder what sort of cancer it is. She didn’t have chemo the first tim
e but is having it the second time.
How do they know it’s going to come back? How can they tell that? I’m going to ask Gill about that just to put my mind at rest. I found myself thinking yesterday that maybe all my family know something about my treatment and know I’m going to die, that’s why everyone is being so kind to me, and then I checked myself for being so ridiculous. They can’t do that these days, can they? Unless you are about ninety or something?
I wondered how Kate’s friend could live every day of her life for the last four years not thinking, Today the cancer will come back, since a medical professional had told her that it would.
The only way I can reconcile living with the paranoia is knowing that the odds for this tumour are in my favour and, if I get another one, I’m already in the system; I am being checked, they will get that early too and those cancerous cells floating round my body will be zapped. However, it will always be a little niggle at the back of my mind.
Anyway Kate and I were in Borders for about two hours and we both independently wound up in the self-help section and bought the same book: Ten-Minute Life Coach. I had it in my hand and turned around and there she was with it too. We instantly recognised ourselves in the parts we read. Good people are the most likely to dislike themselves. The reason for this is that they desire to do good. They feel compelled to be good, to do the right thing, to cause no harm or suffering to another living being. This might sound a little pious, but that’s how it is and I suspect you may be recognizing yourself here, at this point we are both nodding vigorously, and the reason they are most likely to dislike themselves is simply this – good people are always the most sensitive, thin skinned and open to suggestion. This is acutely the case when they are children and at their most vulnerable. Their tendency to blame themselves for anything and everything that goes wrong in their world and the world at large takes root*.
My Mummy Wears a Wig - Does Yours? A true and heart warming account of a journey through breast cancer Page 11
