NOT The Life I Wanted For My Kid

How jumping into the unknown doesn’t always work out.

“Come on honey, eat it, it’s got CHOCOLATE in it!” I say this cheerfully as I try to shove some more cereal down my daughter’s mouth and get her out of the door to nursery. She is nearly 4, I am well aware she can eat by herself. Or should be able to.

Sometimes, though, I haven’t got time or patience or the conditions to follow the internal guidelines I had set myself when becoming a Mum: to have her feed herself, providing her with warming porridge and healthy fruit, not chocolate-coated Rice Crispies. Not cake.

I imagined being the Mum I always saw in the ads, and in my head; giving her a colourful bedroom where she could play with her dolls and design it herself, reading to her at bedtime, baking together, trips to the park, exposing her to culture and art, taking her to ballet, gymnastics, swimming.

I can’t beat myself up about this, I know, but right now that image is so far from our reality. We moved to the coldest place in Spain, where we’re struggling to find an apartment to live, where I have no family or friends as support, and to begin the residency process here as soon as possible, we moved onto a bus at the local campsite.

My husband has friends here, we had the plan to move to Spain before Covid, and as I can teach English, I can do it anywhere. So I said, let’s go where you know people, honey. Those people didn’t mention we were moving to the ‘Siberia’ of Spain — Vitoria, capital of the Basque Country.

It’s cold on the bus. She sleeps in a converted bed with us, I shower her quickly in the mornings as it’s so cold outside. I teach until late at night in the city and arrive back after her bedtime. When I get to take her to bed, I’m so tired, I let her watch “Grey’s Anatomy” on the laptop with me (she loves watching ‘doctors’ with Mummy) and we virtually fall asleep together.

I don’t show her the city I see — the Christmas lights, the carousels, the beautiful parks, the stores full of goods. Her life is mainly going from our bus to her school and back again. We live far from the centre, and it’s too cold to go there walking and by bus in the evening. It’s not what I imagined when we left Cuba.

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