FINAL EPISODE OF SEASON 2... Lately I’ve been reaching for the right metaphor to try to convey to my sons that unconditional love is truly unconditional. That love never leaves the room? That love is the room? It’s the carpet that never gets pulled out from under you, the ground always beneath you? But it makes sense that it’s hard to convince little people that even when you’re mad, or disappointed or disgusted by something they’ve done, that there’s always this forever glowing ball of goodness at the centre of it all, this core to the lollipop you can’t lick away? Fuck, I don’t know. It’s been quite a journey this loving them.

I’ve been single for a while and happily so. Well, as happy as I get. And surely much happier than I’d be if I was still doggy-paddling in the dirty pool of online dating. Having just turned 50, I can’t really tell if I find heterosexuality to be a joke or a tragedy. But somewhere between the dearth of appealing men, and my barely-there libido lies my suspicion that I’ll be single for life.

And I’m not actually that upset about it. For one thing, as a separated mum of two sons, I don’t mind that in my dawning spinster phrase, there’ll be a lot less splainin’ to do.

As my eldest son comes up on his 13th birthday, it strikes me that the following story, featuring him as a newborn, is an old one. It must be out of date, irrelevant, belong happily for new mothers like I was in the ‘remember back when?’ files. But hearing of a friend who recently had a baby and her own experiences with breastfeeding pressures, made me not so sure. As a society, it often seems like we’ve been generally broadening our compassion for diversity of human experience, but when it comes to how we see mothers, you can never rely on that broadening to go quite wide enough.