Bank holidays can be a good time for catching up with friends - that extra day makes all the difference to the weekend. I’ve just been chatting on the phone to Penny, one of my oldest friends – we met in Nottingham through a network of young mothers more than thirty years ago, and are still close, in spite of the fact that we both moved away to different parts of the country after a couple of years.

I’d always known that I wanted children at some stage. No hurry. Certainly no wish to emulate my mother, with 8 surviving children, and a ninth, her first, living for less than a week. Two, would do me nicely. One of each, perhaps.

The only trouble about having my own children was the fact that they’d inevitably start off as babies, and I wasn’t a ‘babies’ person. I couldn’t imagine how some of my friends and relations could spend day in, day out with their non-speaking but demanding bundles that constantly needed to be fed at one end and cleaned up at the other.

Somehow, my memories of my four younger siblings didn’t stretch back to their months of babyhood. There must have been enough other people around, (including my mother) to tend to their needs before they reached the interesting stage when they could be played with like a superior type of walking, talking doll.

Still, if I wanted my own children, rather than adopted versions, (which I definitely did) – then I’d have to put up with the baby-stage, as it was most unlikely that I could hand the new-born over to whomever might want it for its first couple of years, and then be happy to hand it back to me when it could enter into some kind of, albeit fairly primitive, conversations with me.

There’s something disconcertingly different about an actual experience, compared to the imagined one, and motherhood is a prime example of this. Nothing could have prepared me for the overwhelming feelings of joy, in spite of the utter exhaustion after a thirteen hour labour. What was even more surprising to me was how interesting my baby was. Every single day there was a new development – a different tilt of the head, the way the fingers tightened round my thumb, the movement of the lips that was, yes, it definitely was a smile, and no, it wasn’t ‘just wind’.

So there I was, having tumbled headlong into a very different state of ‘in love’. When this baby, my daughter was three years old, just before my son was born, I remember looking into the future and thinking sadly, ‘I love her so much, how will I ever bear it when she leaves home?’

I think of that moment whenever I try to imagine what this or that stage of my life will be like – and how it will feel to be old. Because when my daughter started primary school, and when she joined the Brownies and swore her solemn little oath of loyalty, and when she went alone on the bus to her grammar school, and when she went on her fortnight’s exchange to France, and when she had her Gap year in Hong Kong… all those separate occasions of leaving, were experienced, not by me-as-the-mother-of-a three-year-old, but the mother of the child of the relevant age. She wasn’t the only one growing and changing, I was, too.

It was the same while my son was growing up, so, with any luck, I’ll be able to carry on in this way, whatever life throws at me. (Fingers crossed, just in case I’m tempting fate – and tongue in cheek, because I’m really not superstitious!)

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