Waking up

When I think about it, you know, I honestly cannot tell at what point it was that I realised I ‘had it all’. It could have been the 4 week holiday we took in New Zealand two years ago. Then again, it may have been the day on which my promotion to Marketing Director was announced, or the birth of either one of our children, the completion of the extension to our beautiful house, or the day my husband had my birthday present delivered to our door wrapped in a huge red ribbon – my dream car!

Yes, it could have been any one of these events which gave me cause to puff out my chest, pull back my shoulders, lift my chin and inwardly praise myself for the wonderful achievement of ‘having it all’.That heady mix of a career, good money, a great lifestyle and two glorious children. Whichever day or event it was, I had ‘made it’!!

No, I cannot recall the day on which I knew that fact, but I can tell you now – in great detail and with immense emotion – the day on which I realised it’s worth…..

Saturday, May 16th – a calm day weather-wise. The world was awakening to summer, and I was enjoying a quiet morning watching the children playing in the garden with their au-pair, Francine, before she completed her week’s work and left to meet her friends to enjoy her time off. Enjoying my coffee and the sounds of joyous laughter from the trio, I marvelled at how well my life had panned out, how happy I was with the way I had organised things; my career, childcare, my home in general. Yes, it was all very……’regimented’ – the word popped into my head and stung! It hardly conjured up enjoyment, did it? That was the tipping point; my unfortunate selection of word to describe my world – regimented. It stopped me in my tracks, gave me a perspective from which to view things that I had never used before, and it tilted my world forever. On Saturday May 16th I looked deep into the world I had created for my family to live in……and it frightened me.

In past years, as I climbed the corporate ladder to success, my job had been challenging and enjoyable but still a means to an end. It gave me the satisfaction of doing a job very well, and afforded me and my family a good lifestyle. On May 16th, I suddenly became aware that the satisfaction in my job was ebbing away. The remuneration was good, very good, but not good enough for the feelings of fear I was now developing. The balance of hard work=good pay=good life had shifted; the equilibrium had gone. Yes, I had a wonderful husband and family still, and a home I had worked hard for, but deep within me was a niggling question now…is it worth it??

You see, the issue now was this – I did possess a home, it’s contents, a car etc and whilst they were still mine I had, in effect, handed them over to others! My children had an au-pair to take them to school, prepare their meals, take them to parties etc and play with them. She was there, now, in my garden entertaining them, laughing and enjoying them. They loved me, I knew that, but did they enjoy me? Could they remember a day when I chased them in and out of the shrubbery whooping with joy? Probably not.

And then there was the house and garden. My ‘dream home’ – sumptuous, modern, laid out and cared for just as I wanted it. But was it me that primped and preened and cleaned it? No. I had a marvellous housekeeper who cared for it as if it were her own. She polishes the silver, plumps the cushions, and buffs up the marble. I am like a lodger in a showhome. I dare not undo the work she does, so everything is kept neatly in it’s place at all time; places that she has chosen for them to be kept in, not me.

So, you wonder, what did she do? Did she do anything, and where is she now?

There is a school of thought that says once you have set foot on a certain road there is no turning back. Maybe that is so, but how sad if we allow ourselves only one road to follow, only one vista to enjoy.

As for me, after many weeks and months of discussion, plans and open,honest communication my family and I decided that we had,indeed, travelled too far down a road that we were no longer comfortable on. We cut a diversion across some ground that was new for us, rough and hard-going at times, but we travelled as a unit, and found a new road that suits us much better!

These days I walk my children to and from school each day and pick fruit and vegetables with them in the little market garden we have bought. The fruits of our labours are sold to a nearby restaurant and two pubs in the area, and we have a stall at a local market once a week where I sell produce from my new gardening ‘hobby’! It is extremely hard work, but equally rewarding. We have no manicured lawn or spotless house since we have no gardener or housekeeper. Our guests are always warned of the unkempt nature of our home, but those who love us have little concern for that since they have seen how full our lives have really become.

My husband retains his hard work ethic, but is always home with us by Friday evening ready for a busy fun-filled weekend in the garden or greenhouses. We rarely have the long, luxury holidays we used to enjoy, but instead we luxuriate in our new-found family life. It hasn’t been an easy change, or a quick one. We took many months to decide to change things, and many more before we were ready, but it’s been a change for the better, it truly has!

I no longer have my dream car, dream home, high-flying career with all the high-life such a well paid job affords, but today as I sit here in my kitchen amongst the unwashed breakfast dishes, discarded shoes and coats, muddy boots and wellies and hastily drawn garden plans, I am assured of one thing – now, I really do ‘have it all’.

You see, of late, the wonderful career had lost some of it’s sheen. There had been personnel changes at the highest level of the Company, and the ‘new broom’ that was supposedly sweeping clean was also a vacuum cleaner into which I felt I was being sucked. More and yet more was expected of me and my team and my time. There was an air of quiet but discernible fear of being found away from your computer, desk or office; as if such an absence smacked of disloyalty to the Company. Even a lunch hour seemed like a display of this perceived disloyalty. I felt it for myself as well as my team however much I tried to encourage them to have the break which, frankly, they were entitled to and unpaid for! Yet I,too, was afraid to be discovered absent from my post and thus seemed to be unwittingly pressuring the team into the same situation. Now there was talk of transferring some of us to an office over 150 miles away to work three days of each week, and none of us relished that prospect.

And as for my garden? Well, I usually declare gardening as one of my hobbies. In truth, my hobby seems to consist of cutting the blooms that my gardener lovingly tends all year and which my housekeeper will arrange in vases in places of her choosing. The beautifully manicured lawn is not achieved at my hand, and many of the plants the gardener grows are not the choices I would make but I do not have the time to spend with him planning the garden, so I give him a free rein. It is beautiful; but it is not mine.

I wondered on that fateful Saturday how all this had happened? How did I lose sight of how much I was handing over to others? How much of my life was being run by other people? Did I really ‘have it all’? or was I merely working to fund a lifestyle? I had a house I only seemed to be in for sleeping, a garden I spent no time in, children I watched another enjoy, and a husband I rarely saw since we were both so busy working to fund a life neither of us was living!!

Like a bucket of cold water thrown over me, in one fell swoop I was shocked, chilled and awoken in a cold and disturbing fashion. I do not recall my actions immediately upon having this revelation and perhaps this is just as well for I know that my mind was a veritable Van De Graaff Generator of sparking and fizzing thoughts and emotions. My hair probably stood on end; it should have done for all the shocks I was feeling!