Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [72]
“Don’t be like that, Jennifer. If there are things that you can change, that you two can fix, to make it like it was before, or better, then do it, do it fast. Life is too short, my darling, to live that way.
“And if you can’t see a way to fix them, then move on. He’s my son, and I love him, but this applies to both of you. You’d be better off apart, with new chances to be happy, than together with none.
“I didn’t know your mum all that well, more’s the pity, but I’m pretty sure she’d have been telling you the same thing, if you’d given her the chance to. I truly am.”
BARBARA’S JOURNAL
This one is called…
The Days That You Were Born
It’s a few months since I started doing this. Told you I’d be sketchy, at best. I read the last bit and took my own advice—I’ve been sucking it dry. Yes, there’s been the treatment, but I’m not going to, not ever, write about that. Bad enough having to do it, without reliving it in print. In between the treatments (enough said) there’s been holidays to take, friends to drink wine with, daughters to lie in the garden with, swinging on the seat, Mark to love…but I’m back now…I have more stuff to tell you….
I know we used to talk about this all the time when you were small, but we stopped when you grew up, and I don’t know if you all remember the stories, so I’m writing them down. They’re part of your blueprint, and I want you to have them. Do you remember the Mother Goose nursery rhyme, about birth days? I always felt like she (Was she a she? Who wrote Mother Goose? Who the hell knows. And I’ve got better things to Google) got it so right for you lot. Lisa was my Sunday baby—bonny and blithe, good and gay. Of course, she’s not gay, and I don’t really know what being blithe entails, but she’s definitely good and bonny. (Note: Bonny does NOT mean chubby, Lisa, although the baby pictures tell their own story…my fault. I thought if I kept feeding you, you’d be bound to sleep through the night. You were like a foie gras goose until you were about ten months old. Sorry about that.) Jennifer—who came on Saturday, during the football (an early indicator of both your loathing of team sports, and your uncanny ability to wind your dad up)—works hard for a living. She works hard for everything (and, by the way, always dresses immaculately. Did I ever tell you how much I admired that about you? You look like a magazine article—always). Lo and behold, Amanda came on a Thursday, with far to go (Have you got there yet, my lovely?). It got to the point where I was terrified Hannah would come on a Wednesday—her due date, incidentally, making her full of woe, but thank God she came two weeks early, helped along by a slightly elevated blood pressure, a sympathetic doctor, and an intravenous wee dram of syntometrine, on a Monday. And was, of course, fair of face (apart from those little milk spots, which it nearly killed me not to squeeze), as you all were. I was the Wednesday baby in the family. So that figures! Although the woe didn’t really kick in until much later. My mother reports that I was an agreeable, happy baby, in no hurry to walk or talk, which, coupled with the inane grin I apparently always wore, made people think I was simple. Thanks, Mum. No photographic evidence exists of this phase, fortunately.
I’m writing this in the hospital, by the way. I’m having a “course” today. Mark drops me off, but I get him to leave me here. This is not a spectator sport. He buys me a vast stack of magazines in the hospital shop. As though Jude Law and Sienna Miller are a suitable distraction. Bless him. And sometimes a helium balloon, which he ties to this high-backed plastic upholstered hospital chair I’m confined to. He thinks it makes it jollier. I think it makes the nurses nervous. Especially the times the only balloon they