rise and fall

Half term mornings start slow and heavy. Dreamy headed, creaking downstairs to pour hot water on teabags, kids pressed up against each other on the sofa in red T shirt yellow T shirt, Ketchup and Mustard, Like and Subscribe, television caterwauls. Blinds are hoisted up, papers and yesterday’s life remnants cover the table, no beginning or end, and I try to arrange into piles, tiny plastic goody bag toys and stickers peeled off their backs, worksheets and half full cups of water, a charm bracelet and a hair bobble and a teddy, like I can contain a life which might fit into a pile, before the next morning when we will rise and do it again.

Half term mornings lead to half term elevenses, soft feet pad through to the kitchen wrenching the fridge open once more, kettle flicks on again. Bread bin is investigated, seeking glucose or sprinkles. Pantry door swings ajar for handfuls of lesser sensational corn nuts, broken cashews, wrinkled sultanas. We scrabble shoes and flatten unruly hair, gather library books and we’re headed out, towards town, to source halloween costume odds and ends. We stop by the market for apples and coriander, Greggs for hot pastries in paper bags, and follow our noses towards coffee. Charity shops to exchange our own clutter for new shiny possesions; books, a pony, a scarf. And homewards with new chapters to read, sausages for tea. Front door flings to, kettle flicks on. And we settle back.

Half term evenings and the kids are in their onesies after dinner, it’s a late-night grocery run and they have each got a miniature shopping trolley, stepping in front of each other as they scan containers of oat milk, a four pack of baked beans, three large boxes of cereal, grapes, bagels, sourdough bread. The bagging area becomes overwhelmed time after time and I step aside for the assistant to make her way back to us, with her laminated barcode, to wave across the screen. I watch ourselves in the security video, and imagine watching us from afar, and wonder, whether we seem like good people, who can decide on things, who have a place to go, who have proper, sensible jobs, with tidy kitchen tables, who make good decisions.