Picture this. I'm 24 years old. It’s three years since I graduated with my BMus. I’m back at the Royal Northern College of Music to audition for a place on the postgraduate course. I’ve prepared Kalevi Aho's Solo III, a handful of excerpts, and some Françaix (but hopefully not the fast movement). Musically, I feel pretty confident. Only thing is, now I've also got the latest Mothercare Spin pram. With a ten-month-old baby called Emilia in it. Flute bag, toys, snacks, and nappy change bag sharing a space in the delightfully generous undercarriage storage. Life has changed since I was last here.
I feel the heat rise from my chest to my cheeks as I take one last big gulp before opening the refectory doors (swivelling the pram round so I can yank open the heavy door and hold it with my bum while we manoeuvre through; wow this wheel action is so smooth!).
The lighting is always so flattering in here. I hear the low-level rumble of chatter and laughter. The familiar smell of coffee, toast, and the heady mix of fragrances worn by well-groomed world-class musicians wafts over me. The scarves of impossibly chic singers float past, tethered to their glamorous owners like kites. I feel like everyone's looking at us. I'm trying to look calm and sophisticated and convey a sense of belonging with my latest accessories in tow.
The RNCM refectory is the main artery of the building. You’ve got to go through it to get to the concert hall, the opera theatre, the restaurant, and many of the lesson or lecture spaces. It's essentially a catwalk. You never know who you'll stride past or bump into. Famous teachers with gaggles of hero-worshippers hanging on their every word, punctuated by bursts of riotous laughter. Students drinking beer at noon after a big recital (the American in me could never fully understand why there would be an actual bar where students and teachers could unabashedly drink alcohol together and be on a first-name basis). People networking, on official business, or just whiling away the time till their next lesson.
Before today, I hadn't been in the building for a while. I'd been living a very different life, far away. Yet here we were, making our way through the hallowed refectory with a purpose (actually, she couldn't walk yet). Emilia, at least, was gliding along on those fabulous wheels.
I tucked the pram by the stairs and sighed with relief. First step done. We did our walk-through. I unstrapped Emilia and lifted her out. She immediately went to crawl up the stairs. Shit. I laid out all the toys, rattling them and speaking excitedly to try to make her less interested in the stairs, including the most beloved Freddie Firefly. I also pulled out various snack pots, the Tommee Tippee cup, and wipes. (Please don't need a nappy change, I don't think there's even a place to change you here!)
Then, the moment I'd been dreading. Time to go and play for our future. A friend agreed to mind Emilia for twenty minutes or so while I did my thing. They'd met the day before, so maybe it would be okay. Nope.
Emilia cried immediately. Oh my god, everyone's looking over and probably thinking I can't keep my own baby happy and I bet she's going to cry while I'm auditioning and why did I ever think this could work?!
I took her back to give her some extra cuddles. I assured myself that I don't need much warm-up time at all. The Aho just starts with slow quarter-tones anyway. My friend put on a huge, false grin and exclaimed, “we’ll be okay, just go! Good luck!” So started the process of both of us learning that, to do this, I had to go away a lot.
Biting my lip and looking ahead like a wide-eyed crazed woman so I did not smear my mascara with my tears, I bounded up the stairs. I made it to the audition room. There was a crust of old applesauce smeared across the top of my music as I laid it out onto the music stand.
Please, please don't ask me how I am doing.
I nailed the quarter-tones. Sustained long notes with micro-tuning are perfect for melting away any anxiety. They didn't even ask for the fast Françaix movement! And then swiftly back downstairs for the biggest cuddles. A little twirl around. Mummy always comes back.
She'd been okay during my audition, fascinated by the buses going up and down Oxford Road. I strode us out of the refectory with a bounce in my step.
Back in Cornwall, I learned that I'd got a place on the course, and a full scholarship. Next mission: drive up again to find somewhere to live. We got a second-floor flat with no lift. We moved in as quickly as possible.
We co-slept. Co-ate. Co-existed. We made that flat into our safe haven. With intention, and many charity shop finds.
The work before the work
Everywhere I needed to be without Emilia came with a whole series of calculations. Finding childcare I could afford and that didn’t make my stomach turn with anxiety took several attempts. I found a great place but it was term-time-only, which did not coincide with the RNCM calendar, and caught me out every time.
What time are my lectures? What time does nursery open? How fast can I get from nursery to college? Warm-up time? That's another half-hour of childcare. Too expensive! How little childcare can I pay for and still make all this work? What if I'm put into an orchestral project? When might the rehearsals be? And evening concerts? Who could I ask to babysit? How much would that cost?
Neither of us particularly liked routines or early mornings, which was unfortunate because the rest of the world insisted on having things happen at specific times. Getting us both dressed. Packing food. Finding a shoe. Finding the other shoe. Packing the nappy bag. The flute bag. Getting down two flights of stairs. Nursery drop-off. Dashing across two busy roads to get back to college. Lesson. Rehearsal. Run back. Of course, that's all assuming that we were both fit and healthy. A poorly child could dismantle the whole thing in seconds!
Having a toddler around the RNCM daily offered delightful novelty. Oh, she's so cute! Sometimes it was something admirable. You're so strong. I don't know how you do it.
And sometimes I felt I ought to keep the whole motherhood thing rather quiet. Had I been deluded enough to think I really could have a music career as a single parent? Was I not taking my profession seriously enough? Or was I supposed to be SO good at everything that nobody could possibly question my right to attempt both?
I've recently found notebooks from those years, full of increasingly elaborate schemes for making our days work. Pack the bags the night before. Start bedtime earlier. Prepare food. Eat it. And there, rather emphatically: I can do it.
Notebook from 2012.
At nursery drop off, Emilia would often cry when I left. I'd walk away with tears streaming down my face, already feeling guilty, already late. Across the roads, back to college, into a flute lesson.
Please, please don't ask me how I'm doing today.
How are you?
Oh god.
I remember one lesson when I broke down in tears. I was trying to wean Emilia from breastfeeding. All the guidance I'd read suggested getting your partner to help during the night, or having someone else comfort the baby in place of the usual ways.
But there was no one and I was so touched out.
I'd tried so hard to keep these parts of my life separate. I immediately felt embarrassed, as though I wasn't quite grown-up enough to be dealing with something quite this grown-up. I wiped my tears, giggled, and somehow transitioned into my Mozart exposition.
After that, I tried harder to stick to the usual answer. Oh, you know, just a bit tired! But we’re fine! Fine. Fine. Fine.
There weren't words to even begin explaining the situation to my peers. I hadn't begun to make sense of it myself. And teachers? I worried that if they knew how much was happening outside college, they might stop giving me work or professional support. So I tried to look as though I was managing just fine.
Underneath the young mother pushing her nice pram through the refectory was another life entirely. I'd come to Manchester hoping to make a fresh start for us, but there was an awful lot from our previous life that hadn't stayed behind in Cornwall. That's a much bigger story, for another time.
Nits and other friends
Back at the flat, we had our own little ways of doing things. I'd leave bags filled with random toys dotted around for Emilia to discover. A sort of domestic treasure hunt. She'd investigate the contents, collect things, move on to the next one. Meanwhile, I could squeeze in a bit of writing or flute practice.
We loved sleeping in. Making Sunday pancakes quickly became a tradition. The walls of our little flat were covered in her artwork. Every painting and drawing that came home from nursery was immediately stuck to the wall. Hide and seek. Going to the park. Picnics every sunny day. Sweet playdates and lovely friends (those with the same slightly glazed expression at toddler groups have a magic way of finding each other).
I became deeply invested in the things I could practise quietly, like whistle tones after bedtime (if I didn't fall asleep with her). I also found a way to earn some money by taking my flute into Emilia's nursery and other early-years settings. Instead of trying to keep my two worlds completely separate, sometimes I could bring them together, which I rather liked.
And then there was Unity Capsule, Brian Ferneyhough's famously complicated solo flute piece from the 1970s. I've written before about the learning process, the decoding and decoupling, and my colour-coding methods. What I haven't said is that basically I spent so many evenings doing it because I was intellectually bored and socially lonely. Unity Capsule was excellent for swallowing up my spare mental energy. And it led to some really cool guest lectures, performances, and even inspired my Coming Up for Air project years later.
Of course, parenthood occasionally interrupted all this highbrow musical activity with something considerably less sophisticated, like head lice. I realised I'd caught nits from Emilia the morning of the college concerto competition final. Obviously, there were priorities. Nielsen came first, and I won the competition. The nits lost a few hours later.
The only me there will ever be
Sometimes I wonder what my story would look like if I hadn't won the scholarship and the competition. If I'd missed too many rehearsals, failed my degree, or just couldn't keep going. Would people still have been interested in what it was like to be a young mother in a conservatoire? Or would it have confirmed what I was already frightened they thought: that I'd been naïve to attempt it in the first place? I don't know. But I remember feeling I couldn't afford to find out.
In one of my old notebooks, amongst all the plans and reminders, I found something I'd written to encourage myself:
This is the only me there will ever be. Celebrate this.
I keep coming back to that.
It wasn’t until this year, as a mother of three, that I found out I was autistic and had ADHD. I look at those notebooks in a totally different way. The lists! The plans to improve the plans! The reminders to eat! All that effort just to get ourselves out of the house. Meanwhile, I could happily spend hours decoding Ferneyhough for fun. Well. That explains a few things.
Part of coming to terms with my late AuDHD diagnosis has involved grieving for the younger versions of myself who didn't understand why things were so difficult. I've found myself doing a little imaginative role-playing, revisiting moments from my past and wondering what it might feel like to give myself the care and understanding I needed then.
I wish I could have gone round to that little flat and kept them company. Made some dinner. Put a wash on. Taken Emilia out for a bit while her mum practised, or had a nap, or did absolutely nothing. I might have enjoyed helping her colour in Unity Capsule. Although she probably wouldn't have appreciated me messing up the system.
And I'd like to tell her that the things she was doing were interesting, even when nobody was watching. But perhaps more than anything, I'd just like to sit with them for a while. Celebrate them. The 24-year-old woman with the fancy pram and the flute, the coloured pencils and the nits, who was sometimes brilliant and sometimes completely overwhelmed. And her little girl, who was there through all of it.
We were there together. And we were trying.
