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Life in Pieces
LIFE IN PIECES
Dawn O’Porter
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020
Copyright © Dawn O’Porter 2020
Jacket design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Jacket photograph © Pako Mera/Alamy, Shutterstock.com (all other images)
Dawn O’Porter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008431877
Ebook Edition © October 2020 ISBN: 9780008431891
Version: 2020-09-02
Dedication
Dedicated to all my family and friends who I miss so much. Soon, we shall dance again.
What a shitshow of a year.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
PIECE ONE
Full-Time Stay-at-Home Mum
Parenting – WHAT is that smell?
PIECE TWO
My People
Friends Are for Life, Not Just for Lockdown
PIECE THREE
Food. All of the Food
No Such Thing as Calories in Lockdown
PIECE FOUR
Drink – Hiccup
When in Doubt … Drink
PIECE FIVE
Strong Eye till I Die
Lockdown, but make it Fashion
PIECE SIX
Raising Boys
The Perfect Men
PIECE SEVEN
Grief. It Hurts
When the World Stopped Turning
PIECE EIGHT
The High Life
Flying High in Lockdown
PIECE NINE
Meanwhile, in the Animal World
My Daughter and my First-Born Son: Lilu and Potato
PIECE TEN
Let’s Get Spiritual
Who even am I, Mystic Meg?
PIECE ELEVEN
And Sleep … Or Not
Earplugs, Eye Masks, Sleep Hats and Pills
PIECE TWELVE
A Moment’s Silence
Let’s Do Better
New Beginnings
Epilogue
Footnotes
A Note from Dawn
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
Don’t miss the ‘So Lucky’ podcast series
About the Author
Also by Dawn O’Porter
About the Publisher
Introduction
Dear 2020,
Earlier this year I got myself a paper diary. I wanted to go back to writing things down, rather than having everything on my phone. I found it today and got so sad when I saw how empty it was. Just months of nothing. No people, no meetings, no life. I sat and looked at it and got a little weepy. There was supposed to be all this other stuff, and it just wasn’t there. There was only emptiness.
As always, in January, I started the year with great intentions and felt good about what was heading my way. I wanted a better balance of deadlines and parenting. We’d just returned from Christmas in Ireland and, while the rest of the world dieted, I continued to eat like my life depended on it until my forty-first birthday on 23 January (feel free to write that down). It’s always my most greedy month, because as soon as New Year is done, I get into birthday mode. I celebrate a lot every year. Multiple dinners and events, I’ve always been the same. Delighted to reach another age, excited to be healthy and (generally) happy. My birthday passed and I remained committed to making small improvements to my life – none of which involved more exercise, less food or smaller measures of tequila, but I had deleted Instagram from my phone (lasted a week). I’d started to search for a therapist to iron out the many creases that form by the time you hit your forties.
All in all, I was ready to continue to ride through this decade with a margarita in one hand and novels spouting from the fingers of the other. As Chris and I rose from the swamp of having babies we wanted to party more, dance more, write more and fuck more. Everything was on track for life to become really fun. I’d waft drunkenly through my forties, hosting parties in our garden, wearing vibrant kaftans, living off tequila and weed gummies. That was how it was going to be. Until that one Saturday morning when I woke up and everything went dark.
My friend Caroline Flack took her own life on 15 February. She was my funniest friend. It broke me. I remain unfixed. One of the worst things I could imagine happening had happened. All plans stopped. My forties were off.
This isn’t a book about Caroline, what happened to her or why. But to understand my emotional experiences of lockdown, you need to know how it began. I was grieving, and in a pretty terrible way. I quit Twitter. I refused to read the tabloids, or even listen to negativity. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to isolate (careful what you wish for). I wanted my life to be smaller (not that small, thanks Covid-19). Something seismic had happened to me and a lot of the people I love. The world could never be the same again, and then suddenly, it wasn’t. During that weird space of time between losing Caroline and isolation kicking in, I felt like I was in a world full of people who would never understand me again. Most of my friends were in London, my husband, Chris, and I were in LA in our own sad and cloudy bubble. I felt a million miles from home, but was also terrified of returning to London for the emotional memories it would throw at me. Caroline is embedded into those streets, how could I ever walk down them without screaming?
As the world started to change it felt like it was all connected. When I flew back to Los Angeles from London after the funeral the borders were literally closing behind me. I was surrounded by people in masks. The air was full of anxiety, like a huge volcano had erupted and the lava was heading towards us, no one having any idea when it would stop. For the first few days after I got home, I found it a struggle to get through reading a story to my kids. A week later, my cat pissed all over the sofa and I couldn’t smell it. Food didn’t taste of anything. I put the rough throat down to having cried my way through the previous week, but as I waved coffee under my nose and got nothing, the news broke that losing your sense of smell was a symptom. Other friends that I had been with in London started to get ill. For them it was fever, flu, days and days in bed. By all accounts, I was lucky. We all wondered if it was coronavirus itself but didn’t really believe it. Still sort of joking about it, questioning all the ridiculous hype. We had no way to find out. There were no tests at that point. Only the realisation that the global pandemic was striking us all, and the people in charge hadn’t done anything to protect us. Oh God, I thought to myself as the schools closed and the restaurants locked their doors, we’re all totally fucked.
What you are about to read are highlights from the (almost) daily diary I wrote from the start of isolation until the summer of 2020 when we moved house. I went from being a working mother with high demands and deadlines to suddenly being a full-time stay-at-home mum. I tackled this with varying levels of success. I had to step up my mum game, protect my kids from my grief, be emotionally available for my husband and basically pull my shit together way sooner than I think was right. Be prepared for a lot of parenting, drinking, edibles, shitting, pissing (the kids and the cat, not me), crying and analysing. But amid the stresses, there was a lot of good too. When life was stripped right back to the bones, I realised how strong my skeleton was. I have changed a lot since 15 February, and I’m happy to share the process and thoughts that go with it.
2020 is the year that changed us all, and maybe that is OK.
Love Dawn x
18 March
Isolation Update – Totally holding it together
Well there goes another day of total bollocks. Look, I plan to get my shit together and storm through this with grace, but I need a week of being an asshole first. They are saying the schools will be closed here until September? Whoa. I presume by then we will have tests, so we can at least share the kids with other ‘negative’ families, and get them some playdates going? We’re not dealing with the bubonic plague here. I get that we need to stop it spreading, but it can’t fill us all with so much fear that we never leave the house again … can it? I just want to get these two weeks of isolation over, so I can drop my kids off at their friends’ houses occasionally – that would make all the difference. I’m not sure what the deal with having any childcare is, because how can I control what that person does with their time while they are not with us? Kid share sounds more likely. With families who you know are doing everything right.
MY GOD THIS IS MENTAL.
It’s blowing my mind to think that just last week I was with a friend in London. We said goodbye to my sweet Caroline and among the sadness of it all, I was making jokes about coronavirus, saying how I wouldn’t have risked getting it for anyone else. Not so funny now.
I woke up with a cold and have felt low energy and a bit glum all day. Although I did do an hour of ‘school’ with my son Art. This involved teaching him how to write the letter N, and finding things around the house, and in his books, beginning with N. We both got bored, but he can now spell ‘Nope’, so it wasn’t an entire waste of time.
I forgot to give the kids lunch then, when I remembered, they ate it like it was their first meal in years.
I’m eating too many crisps. Today I had them with a mayonnaise-based dip. I plan to do that most days. If I’m going down, I want to do it slathered in mayonnaise, eating Kettle Chips. Is that too much to bloody ask?
Talking of going down, I have had Dido’s ‘White Flag’ stuck in my head for days. Nice and chirpy.
I need to exercise, but I genuinely don’t feel amazing so maybe I just let this thing pass first. I only wish I knew if I had the bloody virus. I can’t get my head around that I may never know. This is America. THIS is madness. You can spit into a tube and find out if your Great-Great-Great-Great Uncle Wally had a Spanish uncle, but you can’t find out if you have flu? Well done, Trump. Nailing it.
At least the weather is improving. We did some bee-saving today because there are hundreds of docile ones on the lawn. I accidentally drowned one in the sugary water and felt like total shit about myself all day. Art put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘It’s OK, Mummy, he didn’t look like he was gonna make it.’ And so I cried.
Why have I turned into a pathetic heap of blubbing nonsense?
I do think, as this goes on, things will fall into place. I have romantic ideas for isolated communes where we all get high while the kids play games like tiddlywinks and snap. I have some good kaftans that would be perfect for such a scenario.
There are lots of people sending around ideas and activities to do with the kids. I need to get on it, rather than just resent the fact that to do any of those things involves me doing them too. But the reality is, if we fill three hours a day with solid activities, then the rest can be more fluid … free play, food, park, TV. So, I will do better. I just want to sit and read, or start my new novel, but these days aren’t really working out that way. I guess what I’m most nervous of is that this school closure will become all about the kids. (Obviously, it is about the kids, but bear with me.) We must keep them motivated, fit, stimulated, but that leaves no time for us to work, does it? And if we can’t work, then everything is a nightmare. So, hopefully schools are going to take that into account while they experiment with all this remote learning, and accept that the kids will get a bit less attention than they would at school.
WHAT IS HAPPENING.
In terms of activities, the school suggested that we cut out little leaves from paper and then the kids come up with things they are grateful for. (All Valentine, my two-year-old, ever says is ‘whales’. All Art, age five, ever says is ‘poo’.) You write what they say on them, then hook them onto twigs and put them in a vase. A little gratefulness tree. Quite cute. I think I can manage that. I’m grateful for weed gummies. Stick that on a leaf and smoke it.
My dog Potato is having the best week of his life because we are all home. Honestly, I wish I was a dog. No, I don’t, I wish I was a fish, because you can’t get Covid-19 in the ocean. Can you? Oh God, what if it’s in the water?
I did nail our Paddy’s night dinner last night though. Corned beef and cabbage, with mashed potato and sweetcorn. It was yum. I think that tonight I’ll make something extra special like … hmmm … hot dogs. Done.
Of course, this isn’t all awful. I have two amazing boys who make me laugh all the time and happily occupy themselves when I ask them to. They are healthy, gorgeous and kind. It could be worse. There could be three of them.
OK, until tomorrow …
Love Dawn x
19 March
Isolation Update – The head in the cupboard
Today was considerably better and I attribute this to two factors:
1 I didn’t bother getting my kids dressed, to avoid excess laundry.
2 I abandoned all efforts to educate them.
Turns out, if you totally give up on even attempting to nourish children intellectually, everyone is happier. What a revelation to come out of this strange and total shit-show of a time.
So … the day started well. I woke up at six something, but the kids didn’t wake until seven thirty. They’re going to bed late, and for this period that works fine by me; at that time in the morning, to sit and have a coffee before it all kicks off is nice. My favourite part of the day is by far the mornings. Everyone is generally quite happy to see each other after social distancing in our bedrooms throughout the night. Chris came up with the genius idea of putting a few chocolate cereal pieces into their regular healthy cereal, which means breakfast time is a dream. We don’t give our kids much sugar because Art acts like me in the early 2000s in dingy Liverpool clubs at just the sniff of anything refined, so when they get any, they go into a trance.
I did playdough with the kids for nearly an hour. As expected, they squashed all the new playdough together until it turned brown and then threw it around the room yelling, ‘I’m throwing poo-poo at you.’ At first I shouted at them to stop, but soon realised, as I scraped it out of my hair, that I will never win. So instead I asked Alexa to play a ‘Farty Party’, and I pretended to do playdough poos all over the living room. This is where I am at.
NEXT, I ordered the kids a really cheap tent, which I popped up in their bedroom. They thought it was the greatest thing ever to happen for about forty-five minutes. While they were in it, I did a face mask, and then applied full make-up. There is so little I can control right now, but my eye make-up is something that no one can take away from me. I also wore double denim and didn’t take my slippers off all day. If this is still going on when the weather cheers up, I’ll bang out some kaftan action. I really feel that kaftans should be the traditional dress of isolation.
I gave Chris the morning off kids to get some work done, and right now Valentine is supposed to be napping. But he isn’t. He is rubbing banana onto my bed sheets while I say, repeatedly, ‘Mummy needs FIVE MINUTES.’ He is not giving me those five minutes.
I’m defrosting some ready-made pesto chicken thing for dinner, and I had two packets of crisps with my lunch. It’s 3 p.m. and Chris just walked in and gave me a margarita. What a guy!
Things I want to get better at during this time:
1 Calling family
2 Calling friends
3 Making podcasts
4 Bonding with my children (I realise that should probably have gone higher up the list)
5 Eating vegetables
6 Exercising
7 Not having meltdowns
But one day at a time.
Talking of days, what day even is it? I literally have no idea. Not that it matters.
OK, I’m going to go and turn the TV up for ten minutes, so that my kids can’t hear me scream into a pillow. I hope your days went OK?
WHAT IS HAPPENING.
Love Dawn x
20 March
Isolation Update – My kid is green
OK, well today was marginally better. I put this down to me completely abandoning any sense of self and committing fully to the children’s happiness and housework. Turns out, when not trying to do anything else, one can mother better.
This simply cannot go on.
I need to continue to work, when I can. But for today, I didn’t even try, and we all got through it.
We started the day with some rock painting. You get paint, you collect rocks, and then you paint them. You let the paint dry, stick some googly eyes onto the rocks and then do not wash either child until bedtime, no matter what colour 90 per cent of their faces are. (Art – green, Valentine – red and black).
Donald Trump, our orange president, did a briefing this morning. LA is on almost a complete lockdown now. No shops, bars, bloody anything remain open. It’s a ghost town. The weird thing is, I have become totally used to this and can’t remember a time when I walked freely down a street, sneezing willy-nilly, instead of bathing in anti-bac every time the postman delivers a package. This is our new normal, for however long it lasts. Listening to Trump on the radio has never been pleasant, but now it’s even worse, as every time he is telling us that more of America is closing down. People are losing their jobs by the second. It’s the most devastating thing to hear. All we can hope is that we are wrong and, in a week or two, everything will be OK. Let’s hold onto that thought for as long as we can. Because, as mad as the world is, and things keep getting worse, things could also be mad enough that they just get better and all of this madness will end.
I hope you’re all OK.
Did I tell you that Chris panic-bought 200 worms? Well, give a two-year-old 200 worms and you have around twenty minutes of being able to think about something else. This activity was not relaxing. I rescued at least 40 worms from decapitation (got them all, no worms were harmed) and spent a very long time scraping soil off my carpet. Valentine named all the worms ‘Mr Worm’, and then was entirely over it by snack time. The worms are now in a large pot with moist soil, and I apparently have 200 more pets than I did yesterday. Great.
I ate crisps for lunch. With a side of cheese. I did not exercise.
I am making Jamie Oliver’s chicken and mushroom pie for dinner. I am also digging out all of my trousers that have elastic waistbands because I wore jeans today and they hurt me.
I’m committed now to hunkering down. I’ve got lots of food. I can cook and deliver to anyone I know who gets stuck, and we could survive for a month. The reality of being in LA at the moment is that the last things open are the food shops. It’s likely they will soon be closed too. Which is WILD.
Art (the five-year-old) misses his friends and has so much energy he can’t burn off. I feel bad, but there isn’t much we can do about it. I’m just trying to do as many activities as possible, and not lose my shit when he loses his.
Valentine, on the other hand, thinks it’s awesome. We are potty-training him now – we thought we might as well – so the house is covered in his piss, as well as the cat’s. By the time this is over it will probably be covered in mine too, to be honest.
OK, I’d better go. The kids are clawing at me again, and I want to cook the pie.
Sending love to you and yours, I really hope you’re all OK,
Love Dawn x
Parenting – WHAT is that smell?
So I’ve been thinking about parenting a LOT over these past weeks, I mean, obviously, it’s all I’ve been doing. It’s just Chris and me doing 100 per cent of everything with the kids, the dog and the cat – and we are shocked at the constant stream of piss or shit coming out of at least one of them at any given time. I mean, what the HELL is happening? It’s almost tempting to not feed anyone for an entire day, just to get a break from it.
I never thought I’d be married with two kids, because I was happily on track to be a single cat lady who wrote books in bed. There is rarely a day that goes by that I am not stunned by the life I appear to be living, but the good news is, I like it very much and find being a mother and a wife a largely riveting experience. Well, that is how I felt before the schools shut and I found myself a full-time stay-at-home mum without much warning.
It’s important that I say at this point how much respect I have for full-time stay-at-home mums. One side effect of feminism that really breaks my heart, is how apologetic a lot of women feel they need to be for being just that. It is, quite simply, one of the hardest, most selfless jobs you can do. There is no ‘clock-in at nine, leave at five’. It’s an all-in, 24/7, every fucking day, SORRY, WHAT IS MY NAME AGAIN kind of job, and if there is any part of you that feels judgement towards a woman who is doing it, abandon those thoughts. Full-time mothers (parents, to be fair to the men who do it, of whom there are plenty) work harder than the rest of us. The point of feminism is to make sure that the women who don’t want to do it have an equal amount of opportunity as the men who don’t. It isn’t there to make stay-at-home mothers feel less than – and if you ever witness that, call it out.
I must add that being a working parent is no joke either. There are rarely breaks. You get home from work after a long day and you begin the ‘second shift’ of giving the kids dinner and putting them to bed. And when you have small children, there is no such thing as a relaxing weekend.
Before lockdown I had pretty much been on a work deadline for the previous eighteen months. I’d get to my desk at 9 a.m. and not leave until 4.45 to collect the kids (on my days), working much later on the days it wasn’t my turn. I’d be so caught up in it as my deadline approached that I’d barely look up to have a conversation. I’d go for turbo wees and eat lunch over my keyboard, to the point all the keys got stuck and I had to get another one. Two days a week Valentine would be downstairs in the day care that my workspace provided. I’d see him doing the music class on Wednesdays and feel awful that I wasn’t down there with him like the other mums, but my workload wouldn’t always allow it.
