LOVE IS IN THE AIR

I wanted to write a light-hearted piece about Valentine’s, but it just doesn’t seem appropriate given that the sound of tanks rolling through our airports and across the Kuwaiti desert is currently drowning out the sound of violins, despite Cupid’s and Hallmark’s best efforts. And like many other mothers I feel more inclined to switch off from the news than face it. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have heard women say recently that they can’t watch the TV or read any newspapers because the world seems so awful. And it’s not cowardice; many of my friends face daily difficulties that test them to the limit. But having children somehow a direct line into the world’s pain and that seems so hard to deal with.

The old me is addicted to all the news programmes - I am an avid Newsnight viewer and still listen to the Today programme every morning - but now I’m experiencing a constant battle, with the new me wanting desperately to switch off and tune into the internal life that has become so important to me in the last four years. I’d rather run to the toy shop with my children than listen to the shopping list of items that US citizens are being asked to buy in case of an attack. Even listening to the platitudes in Clifford the Big Red Dog seems preferable to hearing George Bush telling the world that we have to wage war on Iraq. I wonder if staying at home with the kids has reduced my ability to cope with the outside world. Or as some of my childless friends prefer to call it, the ‘real’ world.

Steve is calm and comforting, and as I sit on the side of the bed crying and fretting he tries hard to put things into context, but I wonder if he is fighting a losing battle. Because my framework of reference has changed so radically it is hard to maintain the resilient spirit that allowed me to work in London throughout the whole of the IRA’s terror campaign without once thinking that I should stay at home. Each time Steve goes into London I worry he’ll get hurt; as I watch the little planes fly over our town from the local aerodrome I wonder if they are full of chemical weapons; and I look at the bottles of mineral water on the shelves of our local supermarket and wonder if I should be buying some just in case.

And life continues: there is the weird juxtaposition of our children playing around us, oblivious to the headlines in the newspapers and deaf to the bulletins on the news. While the outside world fractures and stability erodes, inside of me a life is growing and changing and preparing to be born. While outside of me there is both the threat and reality of death and destruction, inside of me is something pure and uncorrupt, something made of love for us to cherish. And as I face the next eleven weeks and the prospect of the birth, I suppose that if I have decided to create a life and face the journey that that involves I owe it to myself and my children to face what’s happening in the outside world. So to all of you out there who like me are worried about the future, frightened for your children, I send you my love and hope that we can find a way through this difficult and terrible time.

Juliet Jones lives in domestic chaos with husband Steve, son Oliver (aged 4) and daughter Billie (aged 3) in Hertfordshire.

Read Juliet's previous diary