19 April

I had a friend visiting today, who had driven up from Hertfordshire with her 8 week old baby, and who has only just left. What a surreal day; a very old friend with a brand new baby, and bubbling emotion amongst my new cyber friends. I couldn’t properly give my attention to either, vacillating between talks of broken sleep and routines, and thoughts of competitions and blogs. The moment my poor friend disappeared to change a nappy, there I was, clicking away to see what was going on, rushing red-faced and breathless from the study as soon as she reappeared. God alone knows what she thought I was up to. The baby was soft and downy and fitted snugly into the space between my shoulder and neck, the way they are designed to, her mouth like a rose petal rooting for milk, her eyelids still transparent and veiny, her tiny hands fluttering like a bird. That sweet milky scent, that soft heaviness, the little sighs, that other worldly gaze. I want another one, I thought, I feel cheated. Then I looked properly at my friend. Huge dark circles under her eyes, her face pale and waxy. Her total inability to concentrate or finish a sentence, her thoughts slow, her speech thick and sleepy. Her body still aching and leaky, she still groping blindly back towards adult life, her emotions all jumbled up with the baby. Oh, now I remember. It is her first baby, and I know from my own experience of a mere two that it does get easier. I also know with absolute certainty that she will come through the fog, that she and her daughter will partake in a dance for the rest of their lives, separating and merging, and it will all seem quite normal. At the moment, though, like so many women (myself included), who have their children late in life, compared to previous generations, she feels like she has been in a train wreck. Upside down doesn’t quite manage it; more like spinning frantically in a vortex. She was always the calm one, when we worked together, me the nervy, manic one. Today was different, of course, I was another adult, one who knew, moreover, what to do with a baby, and who could make cups of tea and offer reassuring pats and soothing noises. She sat under the unfurling lilac tree, looking like a weary Madonna, and I felt like her Grandmother. Strange for me, since those days of panic when faced with the fragile limbs and milk-seeking iron will of a new baby aren’t that far behind me. Funny how these markers in our lives change us, transform us into people apparently capable and confident, when inside we still feel ten years old.

She’s only just left, driving off to visit her ill mother in law in Ipswich (which is why she came here, otherwise I would have course driven to visit her, before you all think I’m callous and lazy!). Now I can ignore my own children who are happily engaged in the garden and get back on the site, back to what is increasingly – and worryingly – beginning to seem like Real Life!