The final deadline for my second novel, after a million missed ones, coincided with my daughter’s first year at school. A shotgun baptism, enough cards to fill the principal’s mantelpiece and several summers of supporting the fete had secured her a place at a perfect little primary school by the sea.
I was going to be a punctual, organised, cheery PTA type of mum, helpful and practical, volunteering for everything, first in in the mornings, make-up free, my child well-rested and clean, all of her belongings clearly labelled with one of those special pens. The commute from our home in Bray to Dalkey would be a tranquil coastal drive that we would spend chatting or singing along to a selection of carefully chosen CDs.
My junior infant, Ruby Mae, would be everything I hadn’t been as a student (I sometimes wonder if I had listened even once, how different my life would now be).
I had been endlessly warned about the steep learning curve of parenthood, but never about the profound shock of starting school. From the very first day we seemed to be running behind, were somehow always out of the loop. We never got the right week for “show and tell”, the right day for morning prayers, I forgot empty yoghurt cartons and kitchen roll tubes for arts and crafts, money for the cake sale, my child’s knickers more than once.
Pupils bustled in ahead of us in homemade Halloween outfits when we had heard nothing whatsoever about dressing up, mothers reversed through the school gates with bootloads of things for a local charity that I had been determined to support but somehow had not.
Once, delighted about getting a parking place right outside the school, we were overtaken by a cheery group of jogging, rosy-cheeked mums in Lycra and the vicar in florescent bib and shorts, everyone doing their bit for Active Week. I had to drive all the way to SuperValu and hobble back down the hill in cheap Zara heels, my little girl steadying me as we went, so she could get her Active Week sticker and be like all of her little friends.
Throughout that autumn we ran on adrenalin, bundling into the classroom late, a confusion of coats, bags, apology notes. I got the commute down to a dangerously fast 20 minutes, sometimes pulling over on the way to make a note of a funny thing my little girl had said.
I tried to save time by putting my face on in the car, my child leaning forward in her seat to tell me when the lights had changed from red to green. This was really not a good idea: one morning a dad whose name I couldn’t recall put his hands on either side of my face. Had he been overcome by desire for my just-out-of-bed look? Perhaps he wanted to offer some reassuring words: “don’t worry”, “slow down”, “you’re doing great”? Sadly neither of the two. Using his thumb, he rubbed some poorly applied concealer from my nose.
The moment seemed interminable – our children staring up at us, mesmerised by the strangeness of this encounter, me speechless with embarrassment. When he had finished improving me, he examined his make-up-caked hand with a queasy expression and wiped it on a nearby bush.
New worries
New worries filled my addled mind, replacing plots, themes and narrative arcs: worries such as Stick Day, Letterland and, most worrisome of all, “the window wave”.
Each morning I would hug and leave my child – sometimes tearful, sometimes happily teaching her friends how to be funny – and as soon as I was out of that classroom, I was gone, physically, mentally, my mind absorbed in anxiety about my book.
My little girl would stand waiting at the second window as agreed and watch as her mother breezed by, without so much as a glance. And when I did remember, usually on my walk up Killiney Hill or halfway through a morning meditation (both excellent activities for work avoidance), I would drive back to the school and find her in the arms of her teacher, her little face crumpled and hurt.
Sometimes she would forget all about our arrangement; she would seem to forget all about me. And I would stand at the window outside her classroom in the cold, waiting for her or one of her friends to notice me so I could wave and go. Some days I would still be there 10 minutes later, staring in at the children like one of those helicopter mothers.
I carried my laptop through Dalkey village that winter, loom bands my child had made me around my wrist, messages she had written on Post-it notes in my bag (“I love you a 1,000 and a 1,000 and a 1,000 that I could explode”), making me guilty on those days when I couldn’t focus, when hours disappeared on Facebook and admin and countless texts and calls about collecting and delivering my daughter.
I write slowly; my publishers had been waiting four years for this book. The one before took me three. It takes me a long time to get started each morning; often I feel I am only properly working when I have to pack up and go. It’s frustrating but always a relief; I find writing hard and look forward to human company when I have spent too much time in my head.
Sick for attention?
I had until lunch time one day to get final changes to my jaded editor, and I wasn’t even at my desk: I was speeding through Dublin Zoo on one of those golf buggy things (something I’ve always wanted to do; in real life I felt silly and scared), trying to locate my daughter, who had been throwing up since she had got off the school coach.
She was sick so often that year. Someone told me that’s what kids do to get attention, and mostly she didn’t have mine. I was there beside her, but my mind was somewhere else. I was vacant and distracted by thoughts about my book; it was like having a very long hangover.
And in the final panicky days before sign-off, I would leave her with anyone who would take her, her pockets filled with Kinder eggs and Chupa Chups lollipops, her ears with bribes and lies and promises of trips to Smyth’s toy shop and to Disneyland, whatever it took to stop her tears when I had to let go of her hand.
By the end of the first year we were shadows of our formers selves, my exhausted child with dark circles under her eyes and me waiting for the day I look in the mirror to find that my face has finally collapsed.
It was a tricky old time in our five-year relationship, but without the discipline and limited working hours that come with having a school-going child, this novel would have never been finished. And, without my little’s girl’s voice and her brand new view of the world, I would never have had the inspiration to begin.
Julia Kelly's novel The Playground is published by Quercus
