Equinox, losing things, letting them go

My daughter knows the truth about Father Christmas and I'm the one who can't handle it

This morning I realised that I’d during my circle last week I’d given the wrong time and date for the autumn equinox, thus missing the moment myself and possibly causing others to miss it.

A small, unimportant error, but in my mind for a moment it fed into a story about my propensity to make mistakes - sometimes because I’m trying to do too much and too fast, at other times because of some scattered quality within me, disorganisation, an inattention to detail.

What if I miss things because I’m looking the wrong way, at the wrong thing?

I felt the same self-judgement surface last week when I had a recurrence of the feeling that I hadn’t captured enough memories of my son. At three and a half he’s at that stage where his voice is still vewwy high and cute and babyish, but he lisps clear, wonderful sentences like “mummy that owl is wearing a beautiful hat!” Such sweet juxtaposition. But have I got enough videos of him? Enough audio files of him chuntering away to Captain Barnacles and Peso? Enough bound photo albums, memories of the year just gone presented at Christmas? Why do I keep forgetting to write down the malapropisms (“oat” tree, makel syrup, scramby eggs, quick, write it, before you forget!!)

My sister and my son on a beach in Ireland this summer

What is it we fear about not remembering? Wouldn’t we not remember what we hadn’t remembered? Or would there be that uncomfortable sense that there had been more, and it’s gone now, forever?

Last week I took my daughter, who is in her penultimate year of primary school, to the open evening of a local secondary school. I thought that kind of thing was left until year 6 until all the other mothers on the what’s app group starting sharing that they were looking at schools from this year (more of the vague sense that I should be more organised, not missed half the open days for local schools, not be flapping around booking them 24 hours before; also, how do the others know?!) I had prepared myself for overwhelming feelings for one or both of us, but when it came to it we were both excited and enthusiastic, even if she hid behind me for the first 20 minutes and was too nervous to step into any classrooms.

The night after she asked me if Father Christmas was real and after some obfuscation from me, we had “the conversation”. She was tickled at the truth rather than traumatised, and impressed about my Claire’s Accessories stocking selections from the last few years.

A night later I told her about the long scar on the side of my face - the one I’d previously told her was caused by me running and scraping it on a twig as a kid, but was actually the result of a dog bite at the age of four. She was very interested and empathetic but not fazed, not scared.