Man-handled
Having had a relatively challenging childhood, as an adult I’d sworn to myself that I’d try and avoid the mistakes my own parents made. This began with waiting until I was in my thirties before fully relenting to my strong urge to “nest” and become a parent (in contrast to my parents who began a family in their twenties). I was on course to make a career out of my passion for the arts and teaching; to living as my most authentic (and therefore effective and productive) self, and believed I had the support of my (now ex) wife who worked as a solicitor having qualified a year or so after we met. Perhaps though there was hubris in my belief that I could avoid my parent’s past pattern as circumstances soon drastically changed. Whether it was the circumstances themselves or the decisions we made that began the unravelling is a question for another time and place though.
It is a fact however, that having only recently started a new job in 2008 and still in her probationary period, my ex-wife was made redundant without notice the same week we found out we were pregnant with our first child - and during the financial crash of that year. At that point I was still completing my Photography MA, while also doing freelance photography and tuition and some part-time lecturing at the university where I’d studied for my BA. I’d spent much of the year before my MA almost single-handedly renovating the small bedroom bungalow we’d recently purchased. My father was a carpenter and joiner when I was young and I was confident in my practical skills so I relished the challenge of saving money by knocking the wall out between the kitchen and lounge, fitting new flooring throughout the house and fitting a new kitchen and bathroom myself. Certainly we could not have afforded to pay someone else to do it and it gave us a pleasant modernised home.
Having not enjoyed law (or more specifically, working in law firms) as much as she’d hoped, my ex-wife said she’d rather return to mental health nursing (her previous career), something of which I was supportive - I just wanted her to be happy. With a mortgage and bills to pay, we were wary of the prospect of relying on her bank-nursing work, statutory maternity pay and my somewhat sporadic income. It therefore seemed that the only sensible option was for me to return to full-time paid employment as soon as I’d completed my MA which, at that time, I was studying full-time. Sadly, without a teaching qualification this meant returning to the commercial world, the world which I’d made a conscious decision to extract myself from the year before I met my ex-wife, when I’d begun my BA as a mature student.
My ex-wife had intended to return to work in nursing full time when our first-born was old enough to be left in day care. This would mean between us we could be earning roughly what she had been solely as a solicitor. However, when the time came she decided she could not leave our young daughter - who seemed to have severe separation anxiety - even with the highly experienced professional we’d chosen. Our first is a very sensitive girl anyway, but I have also aways wondered if the interrupted bonding she experienced in her first week of life was at the root of her anxieties (see the post that relays that experience here). We decided to manage only on my then meagre income and that we would just live modestly and cope, concentrating on the simple joys of family life.
I tend to put my all into anything that I choose to do and, the prospect of being the primary wage earner for our new family was additional motivation. I applied myself completely. Within eighteen months I had earned four promotions and doubled my salary (though was still earning only half of what my wife had been when made redundant). The following year I consolidated my position as a Purchasing Manager and although finances where tight, and my job stressful, I at least had the pride of supporting my family financially. As a couple we decided we wanted our first child to have a sibling. It seemed sensible to raise two young children simultaneously and make the most of their mother’s inability to work during their early years. We saw it as a short term situation, until they were both nursery aged and we could both be free to earn again.
Twenty-one months after my first daughter was born, my second daughter came into this world. She was born at home (intentionally). My ex-wife’s water's broke early on a September evening so we called the midwife. We hadn’t wanted my first daughter to be disturbed by the noise and fuss of the birth, so shortly before the midwife was due, I took my first daughter out for a drive knowing that this was likely to put her to sleep. Twenty minutes later I got a call to say my second daughter had arrived, born on the laminate flooring which I had laid with my own hands and shortly before the midwife had got there.
At that moment, and during so many after, I felt like the luckiest man alive: a wife I adored, two amazing daughters and our own modest house. Our second child brought along a challenge other than financial however, as missing the exclusive attention of her mum, my first daughter became very much a “daddy’s” girl seeking to get undiluted attention from me: It was me who put her to sleep most nights and me she asked for in the night, or if she had a fall etc. It was bitter sweet as my bond with her had never been so strong but without doubt the interrupted sleep I experienced took its toll and meant most of my lunch breaks were spent sleeping in my car trying to catch up on well needed rest. Despite the challenges, doing a job that I despised seemed a price worth paying. But that job never seemed to pay enough. I had seemed to reach the ceiling in the business were I worked, in the short term at least.
