Unexpected Gift

Eleven years ago, almost to the minute, my new born little girl was placed in my arms. She was unplanned, unexpected and undiscussed - but very welcome. All night she laid beside me in the transparent cot, sometimes awake, sometimes asleep. She never cried, she was calm and relaxed. All night I looked at her and marvelled. And that's when I fell in love.

No-one told me that you fall in love with your children. That feeling of looking forward to seeing them every time you've been apart, the joy of waking up and smiling hello, the urgent need to press your face right against their skin and soak up their soft smell - it doesn't wear away with time.

I have loved the way that becoming a mum has changed me, opened up a softness that I didn't know was there, given me a sense of purpose and a sense of worth even in the darkest times. I love the pleasure of giving, helping, caring; of kindnesses welcomed.

I was told, by own my mother, that right from the outset I was difficult and hard to love. Hard to love. That's a tough label to wear, but the best way seemed to be to embrace it by being wilful, maverick, awkward, contrary. And to find a series of boyfriends, partners, husbands, who seem to strike a chord somewhere nasty within me, finding me difficult and hard to love.

And this is where being a mum has saved my soul - because my girls find me utterly adorable in every way. Lying with one cuddled fast in each arm, singing the mermaid lullaby we invented together, I can sometimes consider the possibility that they are right, and the rest of the world is wrong.

I was terrified of becoming a parent. All through my pregnancy I was distraught - knowing that the model I had was one I definitely didn't want to follow (my mother, an only child of odd, solitary parents, born in 1939 and didn't see her father for years, had struggled to create a family environment in any usual sense of the word). I still worry now, worry endlessly about the choices I have made - and not made. The expectations I might place on them, and limits I imply by not expecting enough.

Lately I worry, as girls growing into young women, about what I am teaching them to expect from a relationship.

There are lessons for me too. Learning to deal with two strong-willed feisty madams, living proof that Larkin was horribly right. Understanding that you can't make people, even little people, into something that they're not. I hadn't expected a child of mine to score 52% in the Eleven Plus mock and be advised not to enter. Equally I hadn't expected a child of mine to win dance awards, performing arts scholarships and Most Improved Player in her rugby team (the only girl).

They talked about this on a course I went on recently - a course where I've been a bit of a slow learner, and where some points are only just beginning to sink in. The course said, consider embracing people (not accepting them - too passive, but actively deciding to choose them) as they are, and as they are not. For heaven's sake, choose your children as they are - love them for their actuality and not their potential. I think I do that.

The point I'm slower to pick up on, is to embrace myself - as I am, and as I am not. To stop trying to be the New Improved Version (the route to being internally inadequate). It's all a bit Bridget Jones. The girls, however, love me just as I am, and they don't find it hard at all.