A lifetime ago, when staying up all night was something I did for fun (or essay deadlines), and TV marathons had to be planned in advance, I used to serve on committees. A lot. In fact, I never really felt part of a group unless I was wearing at least two hats within it; I’ve always enjoyed knowing how things work, what needs to happen behind the scenes. It’s probably why I enjoy being a treasurer. There’s nothing like it for finding out all the gossip how everything fits together.

Then I had a baby. A few years later, I had another. And the first baby was now a mobile, bloody-minded force of nature in her own right. And everything changed. That was the point that I felt I had to give everything up, unable to commit to anything for fear I wouldn’t be able to see it through.

So it is quite a big deal for me to feel ready to do something for my Quaker Meeting once again. The advantage of being closer to a Crone than a Maiden is that I have slowly started to develop a modicum of common sense – something that does not come naturally to me. Start small, I said to myself. And do you know what? I actually followed my own advice, limiting myself to signing up to do teas and coffees after Meeting. Just for one week. It doesn’t get smaller than that – well, unless your Meeting has a deputy plant waterer, anyway. (Yes, that apparently can be a thing. I’m not the only one who sometimes runs low on common sense…)

Sunday was the big day. So, inevitably, on Sunday I slept through my alarm and set in train a chain reaction that I would love to say was unusual, but is actually the definition of “lazy like Sunday morning” in my household. I woke up an hour late, scrabbling out of bed before my eyes were fully open, holding my breathe for screaming from the girls’ room, worrying more when instead there was absolute silence. As I got out of the shower, The Cowgirl came to find me. It had all been The Paleontologist’s idea, she assured me, which is never a good start. They had decided to eat all the sweets from a birthday party goody bag. With big, mournful eyes, she explained how hungry they had been, waiting for me to come and get breakfast for them. And now her tummy hurt and she was going back to bed. So now I’m angry with them (not for eating the sweets – who can blame them, when they were sitting on the kitchen table; more for not stopping before they got ill and not getting cereal, which they’re quite capable of doing when they want to). I’m even more angry with myself for not being downstairs when I should have been.

The Paleontologist assures me she will eat porridge if I make it. That’s ok, I think. It’s healthy, I think. We can even add a portion of fruit to it, I think. Will I never learn? She starts to eat, at about the speed of that fight scene in the Matrix. You can almost see the trail of the spoon as it inches its way to her mouth, her body bending away at the same time as mouth and spoon somehow never quite make contact. So now I’m hanging on to my shouty voice by a thread, desperately trying to reason with them and explain why I would appreciate them moving slightly faster. Pleeeease. I just about hold it together until The Paleontologist, one sock waving vaguely around her head, started talking to me about what we might need to buy for our holiday. The one in two months time. When we needed to leave the house five minutes ago. So now I’m using the growl that bypasses my throat and comes straight from my chest, and both children are looking at me like I’ve grown a tail and finally, finally, they start to move, but only because now, they are worried too.

We finally make it into the car, remembering the milk, which almost certainly qualifies as a miracle. Once we are most of the way into town, the red haze fades enough from my ears that I start listening to what The Cowgirl is chattering about. “And there’s another one. I’ve got one, two, three on my tummy, and two on my legs.” “Have you counted the one on your chin?” pipes up The Paleontologist.

They’re counting spots. Of course they are. The spots they’ve both noticed, which, in my hurry, frustration, anger, I had completely missed. So now I’m sitting in a car with a five year old counting spots, remembering the message about chicken pox that came through from school, playing through my mind could it be? Would it be? Would it be worse to take a child with potential chicken pox to a Quaker Meeting, or to leave them with no milk for their After Meeting Drinks? (I decided to go to Meeting. You should never ask people to live without tea. In the end, it was chicken pox, but not the kind that slows a cannonball down. At least I am now much clearer about what chickenpox looks like when it’s not just on Google…)

Anger. It controlled me that morning, blocking my experience of the world around me and every moment I walked through to get to the point that I would not let anyone down. Anger. It stands, seemingly indestructable, a barrier between me and life. Between life and joy. Between joy and peace. Anger. That feeling of frustration, gnawing at my belly, gnashing my jaw, scrunching my spine. It is an everyday thing for me, a whirlpool that sucks everything within itself, driving towards oblivion until all that is left is tension, radiating through my bones and stopping me seeing beyond the moment.

But this isn’t solely anger. Bleeding into it, blended together until they are a new and augmented all-consuming fug, is fear. So much of being a parent is about fear. Sometimes I feel that living in modern times at all is the most terrifying thing, but being responsible for others gives that terror pinpoint focus. My grandparents lived through the Blitz and the Great Depression; my parents, through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War, the Thatcher years. In my time I cannot point to a moment in history which will be remembered with the same capital letters; and yet I also can’t point to a time in recent years when I have not been afraid. Fear for my children and fear for the world and anger that any of us should be put in this position merge together. Trying to be body positive to two girls with entirely opposing builds feeds my fear of how children are being taught to see themselves from the outside in, with the perfect photo being the hallmark of success. The Paleontologist telling me, only half in jest, that she is already worrying about her end of primary school exams (in several years time)? That makes me furious with the education system as we know it, and scared for the pressure she will put herself under when the time comes. They are ill and I plan for hospital; they are teased and I fear for their mental health. They tell me what they want to be when they grow up, and I get scared and try to hide it, wondering if either paleontology or caring for animals will even be an option in twenty, thirty, forty years. Then I get angry with the people saying it won’t be; surely no one in such a progressive, capable world will really let things get to that point? But stopping it means taking a hit ourselves for people who are not us; who may not live in this country; who are not even alive yet. And taking a hit for anyone else is not something our society does well. So then I get more scared, and more angry, and the haze builds up around me. 

Life is tough, and made tougher through the pressures of society to balance everything in the world. None of us are good enough unless we are working full time with a full-time commitment to our children. We must be creative whilst doggedly seeing through all our commitments. We must be committed to every good cause going, whilst single-mindedly pursuing one goal. We must look perfect whilst paying no heed to our appearance. We must be warriors, nurturers, educators, pastors, volunteers and generals. Once upon a time, this was solely the domain of women. By demonstrating that was not fair, we have somehow set up a system we call more enlightened: rather than treating women more gently, instead we hold men to the same impossible standards.

At work, I have been called an oasis of calm (yes, I laughed too the first time someone said it to me, but isn’t it lovely!) But calm cannot be recognised without storms, just as silence is only apparent after noise. Somewhere within me is that oasis, waiting to be discovered. Maybe it can only be found by walking into the storm.

What does walking into that chaos look like? It simmers below the surface, lava waiting to get to boiling point before exploding out into an atmosphere where it is lethal and destructive. It is strong. So very strong. Can it be harnessed? Can it be used for good, for transformation, for evolution? If all the anger, the fear, the turbulance and hate felt within the core of our communities could be harnessed, what would it not be possible to achieve? If righteous anger guides our actions, there are no monoliths, however immutable they may seem, that would stand before us all acting as one.