Category Archives: Family

The Book I’d Like to Write: 373 Friends

May 27, 2011 By in Blogging, Family, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 22 Comments

person using smartphone to look at Facebook

At the last count, I had 373 Facebook friends.

There is more than sixty years difference between my youngest and oldest friends. A dozen of them are related to me. There are seven Sarahs, and three Tims, but only one Wendy.

Some of them are people I went to school or university with, and some of them are former colleagues. There are a lot of fellow mums, journalists, and poets. Three of them are people with whom I shared a tent on the Arctic ice sheet. A small handful of them are people I know through online communities – parenting and photography – who I’ve never actually met.

My friends include several MSPs, one MP, and a former US Congressman. One of my friends made news around the world for disrupting Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the Jewish Federation General Assembly, while another once superglued themselves to a British Prime Minister. One of my friends has featured in a Blackberry advert, and one of them turned down the opportunity to go on Oprah. Continue reading →

Raise a glass to those we’ve loved and lost

May 22, 2011 By in Family, Nostalgia Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

A group of my old school friends ran the Edinburgh marathon today, in memory of a friend of ours – Peter – who lost his life in a car accident just over a year ago.

They were raising money for Riding for the Disabled, an excellent cause, and if you can spare a couple of quid I know they would be thrilled with any additional donations.

I still haven’t quite found the right words to talk about how much I miss my friend. He was one of those rare people who you could go months without speaking to, and then pick up right where you left off, without a hint of awkwardness. He was a sweet and gentle person, with a wonderful laugh and a wicked sense of humour. He sent lovely chatty, handwritten letters. He would regularly leave me rambling, drunken, voicemails at 3am after he’d been out on a Friday night. He was probably the kindest person I’ve known in my life. I think of his family every day, and can’t imagine how hard the last year must have been for them.

Peter was a guest at our wedding – and gave us a gift of the two beautiful wine glasses in the picture above. We don’t use them often, but every so often it feels right to take them out and drink a toast to him. I imagine that tonight will be one of those nights.

I know I won’t be the only one who has lost a friend far too early in life. There is no way to make sense of these things, not much we can do but find our own ways to remember and honour. I could never have run the marathon, but I am so proud of those that did, especially his brother.  I hope tonight that they are sitting and chatting about all the wonderful times they had with Peter, and that they will join me in raising a glass to his memory.

The reality of an age gap relationship: life with my husband who is 35 years older

May 21, 2011 By in Family Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 62 Comments

A black and white photo of a tree trunk on which someone has written 'love never dies'. This photo accompanies an article about relationships with large age gaps.

This essay about being in a relationship with a large gap was originally published in the Family section of The Guardian on Saturday May 21st 2011. A shorter version also appeared on Offbeat Mama in February 2011.

As a result of writing about our age gap marriage I get emails almost every week from other people around the world who are looking for advice on their own situation. I’ve written about this experience as an accidental Dear Abby in a piece for the Washington Post. 

My husband is a beat poet, a professional fundraiser, and the proudest father I’ve ever known. He also happens to be 35 years older than me, and 60 years older than our son. Somewhat ironically, his name is Young.

Believe me, if you had asked me five years ago who I imagined marrying and starting a family with, a man old enough to be my own father would not have been top of the list. And if a friend had confided to me that they were considering entering a relationship with such a significant age difference, I would have done my gentle best to discourage them. But here we are, coming up to our fourth wedding anniversary, and still recovering from our son’s second birthday party. Love is a wonderful and surprising thing, and as we tell people who ask how we met, we just kinda bumped and stuck.

To those on the outside, there are many disadvantages to our unconventional relationship. The mistake people make is thinking that we haven’t given consideration to those ourselves. Of course we’ve thought about the future, of course we know that things won’t always be as easy and fun as they are now, and of course we realise that we look a little odd when we go out… We dated for six months before moving in together, and several nights a week we would linger over dinner, drinking wine, talking about all the reasons we shouldn’t commit to each other. It is a standing joke between us that, due to those six months, there is no good restaurant in Edinburgh that I haven’t cried in. Continue reading →

Things they don’t tell you about parenting… Part 2

May 20, 2011 By in Family Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments

toddler holding assorted coloured crayons

A couple of days ago I posted Part 1 of ‘Things they don’t tell you…’ written when DorkySon was just a few months old. This is Part 2, covering the additional lessons I’ve learned over the last couple of years.

I was foolish enough to envisage that DorkySon child would be ‘part of my life’. That he would have his own room, where all his belongings would stay, and that there would still be parts of the house, and of my life, untouched by him.

Ha! Not so! DorkySon shares everything with me. He stashes his Lego bricks in my pillowcase. He sneezes, coughs and splutters his bodily fluids all over me, just to make sure that whatever cold he has, I catch too. And if he is eating something he doesn’t like, he will expect me to stick my hand out and catch it, when he spits it out.

In return, I am expected to share everything with DorkySon. Nothing is my own anymore. He will refuse his own sandwich but insist on eating half of mine. He will want to try every cleanser, toner and moisturiser I bring in the house, cheerfully oblivious to their price tags. He empties my underwear drawer, rearranges my bookshelves, and when I’ve got visitors he has been known to walk into the room with a handful of Kotex, saying “Dat?”.

So, acknowledging that having a child is all-consuming, life-altering, and very messy, here are ten other important lessons that I’ve learned during my time with DorkySon. Continue reading →

Things they don’t tell you about pregnancy, birth and parenting… Part 1

May 17, 2011 By in Family Tags: , , , , , , , , 18 Comments

multicoloured candy worms

I’ve just found an old Note that I wrote on Facebook (remember Notes?!) from when DorkySon was three months old. It’s called “Pregnancy, Birth and Parenting: What They Didn’t Tell Me”. It made me smile, laugh, and even cry a little to look back on how I was dealing with being a new parent, almost two years ago, so I’ve decided to post it here too.

Later this week, I’ll post an updated version – Parenting A Toddler: What They Didn’t Tell Me – but in the meantime…

It has been a funny old year. I’ve gone from feeling barely able to look after myself, to knowing that I have to look after myself because I’m growing a little bean inside me, to that little bean turning into DorkySon… and having to look after him every day.

Right now it feels pretty awesome. He’s a wonderful mellow little guy, and it’s great fun getting to know him and watching him grow up. But so often in the last 12 months I’ve wished that I’d been warned about how hard it can be – pregnancy is hard, birth is hard, and parenting is hard.

All along the way I kept having moments where I thought gosh, I wish someone had told me such-and-such. So even if this note serves no purpose other than to remind myself of those moments should I ever find myself in the same position again, here they are… Continue reading →