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 It must be out of date, irrelevant, belong happily for new mothers like I was in the ‘remember back when?’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.

There are many things that we feel we should make our kids do that indeed we likely should. Teeth brushing is a good idea, doctor’s appointments come to mind. But many of these shoulds are just knee-jerk reflexes, repetition compulsions. Things we just feel like we’re supposed to be doing, even though we’re not always quite sure why, which means they’re driven by tradition, conformity, social fear, and peer pressure. Not much in that list of motivators to be too proud of really. And even though I’m a teacher by trade, I’ve gotta admit, one of the most sadly over-burdened shoulds is homework.

I don’t really have any friends who are mothers. I know a few fathers, but their kids are way younger than mine, entrenched in phases I can barely remember. Just being parents only buys so much bonding. If I ever were to develop a friendship with a mother though, I’ve always imagined her not to have girls. She would have to be stuck with boys like me. It’s an assumption based on a suspicion: mothering boys and mothering girls are such fundamentally distinct experiences that whatever common ground is shared by simply mothering gets canceled out by that difference. Ok, maybe not canceled out, that’s extreme. But dampened. Very very dampened.

I recently celebrated my 50th birthday. I had my kids that day, but luckily, my brother came to visit too. Else the occasion would surely have felt swallowed by the whims and wiles of my sons, by their age-appropriate, yet still insulting, levels of empathy. For a very long section of our lives it doesn’t actually feel like we’re aging. We’re getting older, but not aging. And then suddenly we are. It’s impossible to isolate how I feel about my aging from its constant dance with the evolution of my sons. They are getting older, but I am aging. We’re a study in contrasts cause I had them late.

If boys aren’t playing video games or eating, they’re up in your face. Hashtag not all boys. Fine. But I’m always trying to dream up quiet, sedentary, non-screen activities that my sons will do independently. A way for us to be around each other, but not actively engage. Or speak. Maybe that sounds awful. But winter is long. And my apartment is small. On a rare occasion I’ll catch us accidentally settling into a peaceful vision: my youngest drawing, eldest reading and me doing a puzzle. It feels like a scene from a Renaissance painting. Why can’t this be our life? I’ll wonder. And it lasts about as long as it takes me to ask.

I’ve always envied people who clearly have a simpler relationship to alcohol than I do. Who can casually encounter a drink, with take it or leave it flair. They always seem like elegant self-negating heroes to me. But, of course, they’re not. New weight loss drugs, like Ozempic, are fascinatingly confirming that some people deal with a lot more food noise than others which makes resisting over-eating a more complicated, challenging and draining experience. But one that has been stigmatized as a sad reflection of character. People who seem to come up with better answers in life, are usually having a very different experience of the questions.