Starbucks
For a while I have felt a hundred years old, out of touch, distracted entirely by my kids and quiet domesticity. Wearing the same black Levi jeans and navy cashmere sweater, a mother’s uniform; highly practical and dark to hide all manner of snot and stains.
The last couple of months, through dedicated effort on my part, I have been waking up to myself again. To fashion. Trips away. Passion projects. Dinner parties and private views. Flipping through Vogue on a Sunday morning in a friend’s spare bedroom I learn Naomi Campbell has had a baby, too. I feel 34, as I guess I should, hopping on a train to Euston with too many clothes in my backpack, buying bucket hats and denim jackets, spending weekends away from my sons.
I breeze across a spring-fuelled, sunny-skied London alone, dipping into exhibitions and shops of my choosing, refuelling, smiling at strangers and drinking Starbucks coffee while scribbling in my journal. Sipping a caramel oat-milk latte is like tasting every city I’ve ever sat journalling in. Inspired, lonely and ripe with freedom. There was a Starbucks down near Wall Street that I’d walk to sometimes as a student, heading out from my apartment in Tribeca, amazed at my young self on the other side of the Atlantic, eating lemon-and-poppyseed cake in downtown Manhattan like I’d always dreamed I would.
Today, in this London Starbucks, the woman next to me talks on her phone about her patient’s medical symptoms. Swollen ankles and low blood pressure. I put my headphones in, podcast on, and revel in a moment’s separateness. I’m starved of quiet time, as most parents are, time when nobody is asking me how skin is made or what’s in a lunchbox.
I sit with a lacing of guilt for not being home to make snack plates, but remind myself it’s a necessary escape from our household after a long winter of covid-scares and actual covid, squabbling, and seeing barely anyone outside the family unit.
Later I meet Siobhan in The Rose for £6 pints of wheat beer, and walk along the Southbank to The Globe Theatre to watch The Merchant of Venice in the cheap seats.
At times over the last four years I have felt lost in motherhood’s days, either feeling I’m failing by spending so much time in my children’s pockets that I get cranky, or completely absconding myself of my duties and fleeing for solo nights at my mum’s house, idly searching for flights to America that I never actually book. I am amazed at how quickly I start living for myself when I disappear for a night or two. It takes very little time to nestle back into all my greedy, philosophising, lonely, joyous, sweet moments. Into new-old versions of myself. I get to spoon in bed with my best friend til 9am, get to drink a pint at twilight and slacken my control line, just a little. Get to remember more of Jesse.
But then, day two away, a photo pops up on the family WhatsApp of my sons sat on a riverbank, side by side, looking a little glum. I can’t help but worry they are missing me, even if it will take another couple of days for me to miss them in return.
On Monday I meet my oldest son Forrest at the Small Breeds Farm back home. It’s freezing and he wants to show me the baby goats. His cheeks are raw and he’s grinning. His face is exquisite as he explains which goats he’s been allowed to pick up. ‘I missed you, Forrest. I hope you had a great weekend.’ He smiles. ‘I did have a great time. I didn’t miss you at all.’ A little part of me contracts at the sharpness of a toddlers’ honesty. Ninety percent breathes a great big sigh of relief, free to plan another sojourn alone soon, knowing they are completely able to survive some weekends without me.
