Home is where heart is

Home is where heart is

I grew up in a cosy home. We never had much money but it wasn’t a problem, mum built us a home using nothing but a bit of creativity and cheerfulness. We had an old worn creaky sofa in the lounge; the kitchen featured battered units and uneven floors; and for years we didn’t have a loo in the house - we had to use the one at the back of the garden.

Although looking back I remember all those things, they were never a problem. What stayed with me is the feeling of snugness; the warmth in winter and refreshing cool in summer; the smell of mum’s baking; the sense of peace and belonging. I liked nothing more than sitting in the kitchen after school, eating my dinner and catching up with mum. I loved that shabby kitchen. Because it was home.

When I started dating Mr Chateauneuf, he proudly began introducing me to his friends (and boy, they were a lot of friends to meet). Any normal girl would’ve found it fun and somewhat flattering; for the introverted me meeting new people was no picnic – I was a ball of nerves.

Once we were done with PE postcode of friends, we moved onto Hastings. I still remember parking the car down the hill on St Helen’s Park Road in front of this huge Victorian house with a grand entrance.

Nervous and apprehensive I climbed the stairs, not knowing what to expect. As soon as the door opened I was immediately enveloped into a welcome hug by the lady of the house. 

She took me through the hall of creaking floors, past the dining room and the drawing room to the heart of the house – the kitchen. (As I found out later it was not a part of the original house and was only added after WWll).

She sat me down at the  kitchen  table and went about making me a cup of tea. As I looked around at the tired units, the freestanding shelving solution, wooden panelling and the dripping tap, I had a jolt of deja-vu. Not of the place but the feeling.

I saw the sunshine streaming through the crooked windows, the smell of something deliciously fried wafting in the air and the laughter of the kids filling the house. It reminded me of my childhood and of mum’s kitchen.

We sat at the kitchen table like old friends and talked for what felt like an eternity. As the afternoon turned into evening, more people arrived and we drifted into the dining room where food and wine magically appeared. A few hours later we moved to the drawing room and conversations turned louder and more personal.

At 3am we found ourselves sitting at the kitchen table again, drinking probably wine (although I can’t be sure now) and putting the world to rights to the sound of a dripping tap. I knew that having found a home with Mr Chateauneuf, I found another one, in the middle of a post-war dated kitchen, somewhere in TN postcode.

On our bi-annual visit to Hastings a couple of weeks ago we found out that our friends are renovating the kitchen. As they were excitedly showing us the plans for the old kitchen would be demolished and the new extension would be built, I felt the ache of sadness and nostalgia.

As I was listening to the dripping tap, I couldn’t help but wonder if the new kitchen would be just as home as the old one was? Would it not lose its essence? Would I have that sense of belonging I have every single time I walk through the kitchen door?

While we were still taking, the kids burst into the kitchen with nerf guns, screaming and shooting everything and everyone. And as the foam bullet hit me in the eye, I realised that the new kitchen won’t change anything. Yes, there will be new matching units and the tap won’t drip. But there still will be an aroma of something fried, the laughter filling the air, and years from now we will still be sitting around the kitchen table into wee hours in the morning, drinking and talking. Because that’s what you do, when you are at home.

Mum

Mum

My mum used to say that there is a special connection between a mother and her child, but there is an even more special one between a mother and her daughter. She knew what she was talking about – we had that connection.

From shopping, to cleaning and cooking we did everything together. I used to climb into her bed on a Saturday morning; we would cuddle and talk about everything and anything. She wanted to teach me everything she knew – we spent hours doing chores, baking and chatting. It was the most fun I’ve had learning.

I will never forget one particularly cold winter. I was 11 and we were waiting for a bus. My cheeks were bright red and my breath was turning into icicles on my scarf within seconds. The raw wind was piercing through my coat, chilling me to the bone. Mum stood behind me shielding me from the wind and rubbing my arms to warm me up. And although she was fighting a losing battle against the gale, somehow I felt warmer.

Years later, when I went to university and moved out, she found it tough to let go of me. It ripped my heart out when she unexpectedly passed away on a February morning.

I still remember the room swaying when I was told she had died just a few hours earlier. From there everything happened very quickly and before I knew it I was unpacking her wardrobe and putting everything into the attic until I was ready to deal with it.

Over the years the pain subsided and I managed to move on.  But sometimes it still catches me off guard when I least expect it, like at a friend’s birthday party.

Carla and I met two years ago at New Years party and it was love at the first strike of the clock. We quickly became chummy, sharing deepest secrets and hanging out at my place in pyjamas and with no make up on. In girls’ world, that is the highest level of friendship.

It was the end of January and Carla’s birthday was coming up. She booked an outdoor area in a local bar. It was a little unorthodox for January but with blazing heaters, comfortable sofas and thoughtfully provided blankets the lounge had that snug feel with a touch of Scandi-chic.

I sat next to Carla’s mum, Trudy, and we huddled under the same blanket. People were coming and going but we stayed next to each other, chatting about coffee and men, shoes and properties; drinking and giggling.

The night was in full swing and I noticed a couple of familiar faces. Leaving Trudy talking to some of the girls, I walked over to them to say hello. Later on I ended up in a smoking booth catching up with some friends with the cold slowly creeping up and down my body.  When I could no longer feel my toes, I returned to the lounge and the comfort of the blanket. As I sat next to Trudy all frozen, she immediately wrapped a blanket around my legs and rubbed my knees warm.

It was such a motherly gesture, exactly what my mum would’ve done. As I inhaled Trudy’s perfume that became so familiar and somehow smelt like a mum, the unwanted tears started prickling my eyes and I quickly blinked them away. The chill of familiar pain of loss started spreading in my body, making me even colder.  

Carla came over and sat next to us. I looked at Trudy and Carla, mother and daughter, it occurred to me that I was a little jealous of the fact that they could enjoy each other’s company. I no longer could do that with my mum.

As I was listening to their chatter, I realised I was lucky enough to have had my mum for as long as I did. I would forever treasure the memory of her but she left me when she did because I was ready to take on the world without her.

And somewhere between my second G&T and a burst of laughter across the room I felt warmer. Because someone else’s mum put a blanket around me and rubbed my knee warm. Just like my mum would’ve done.

Sisters

Sisters

When I was growing up I always had a lot of friends. There was a gossip girl, a fashion star, a popular girl and then there was Kat.

Kat and I met some time in the 90s when our mums became close friends. Because of their friendship we were inevitably forced into each other’s company, which later resulted in a friendship between two girls who were different as night and day, apples and oranges, shoes and dresses.

Many sleepovers happened and many secrets were shared.  As soon as one of us experienced her first kiss, a conference was immediately called to discuss that life changing event behind the closed doors of my bedroom over mum’s apple pie washed down with a pot of tea.

As our friendship blossomed, we seem to be doing everything together. We both learnt English; we took our first trips abroad for the first time within a year of each other, and in 2005 as the winter turned into spring, we both fell in love with the boys who later changed our lives forever.

When my mum suddenly passed away in 2006 and my daddy started behaving like a hormonal teenage boy in love with a pretty girl, who happened to be Kat’s mum, it felt like a natural course of events (even though the timing was a tad off). As much as I missed my mum, I really didn’t mind Kat’s mum being married to daddy. It also meant that Kat and I became stepsisters.

In the spirit of doing everything together, we both met our husbands while travelling – in my case the UK and in her case Sweden - and got married within a couple of months of each other. We then promptly swapped our typically Ukrainian maiden names for foreign married ones and left our motherland for good.

We started new adventures in our respective new homelands and because we both were new at this, we often called in to huddle. We confidently marched through the years, getting older together and learning the ropes of marriage.

When mine fell apart, Kat was at my side as soon as she found out. Loyal girlfriend as she is, she promptly unfriended my ex on Facebook and adopted the ‘all men are jerks’ attitude. Just to support me.

And as time went by and I fell in love with Mr Chateauneuf, she turned into a protective, fire-breathing dragon of a sister. She didn’t want me to get hurt again.  Luckily in time he passed the test and nobody got hurt.

Living in different countries has never been easy and ever so often we organise girlie reunions. The latest one was in Alicante. The location and timing were meticulously planned, so were the outings. Given the fact that Kat and I are poles apart, we had to negotiate everything from food to which places we wanted to visit (if go out at all in my case).

But there was one thing we both agreed on – drink and catch up. And as the drinks were flowing the boundaries and inhibitions were dropping, we started talking real stuff – shoes, haircuts and relationships. We asked each other questions we’d been afraid to ask and to find out the answers.

And as the intensity subsided and we got everything off our chests, we started reminiscing. Neither of us could remember exactly how we met or the time that we hadn’t known each other. We talked about silly boyfriends and fashion mistakes we made, about our families, about good old days.

Careering down memory lane at full speed, fuelled by shots, G&Ts and Cosmopolitans, I couldn’t help but wonder, what if we married our school sweethearts? How would our lives have turned out?

And as we staggered back to the hotel in our killer heels, holding on to each other for dear life I had a thought. Life has been a real rollercoaster of events of the past few years – good and bad things happened. The highs have been thrilling, the lows have been scary. But no matter how scared or happy we were; we were lucky to have each other on the other end of the line.