The first Mother’s Day after separating I could hear my young girls making me breakfast, giggling and whispering in the kitchen.

Don’t come down they said in the same way we always did with them on their birthdays or Christmas mornings if we were doing last minute things to make everything wonderful- lighting the fire, putting the lights on, maybe some special music. They were doing for me what I had done for them. It was circular.

When they finally let me come down they were playing James Blunt You’re Beautiful really loud, smiling and leading me to the French Toast extravaganza they had prepared. I was so touched I could hardly breathe. 

From there we went on to church where both were singing in the choir. In the middle of their first song, my eldest looked out at me, alone in the pew with tears in my eyes, and ran towards me and jumped on my lap and sobbed through the entire service. I gulped rocks in my throat for an hour .

It was a hard morning.

I don’t know what happened after that except to say regardless of whether it seemed self important or obnoxious, I started pew stuffing.

Continue reading →