On the weekend, my son turned 21. He is now the age I was when I had him. He is also exactly half my age, which feels mathematically significant and meaningful. Numbers that feel beautiful, instead of the numbers I usually fight with.

I still can’t really believe it. When he was a baby, people used to say to me, “They grow up so fast.” At the time, I couldn’t fathom it. My little baby being eighteen? Twenty-one years sounded like an even more abstract concept. A distant planet. A him I could not see yet.

And yet here we are.

His birth does not feel like it was twenty-one years ago. At the same time, it’s hard to think of a time without him. He feels like he has always been here. Like my life split into “before him” and “after him,” and the “after” has been the real one all along. I see echoes of him in the past, comforting me in moments I never thought I’d get through, just to meet him eventually.

We celebrated in two parts, because that’s how we do things. There was pizza and movies at home, and then there was Cardiff. There were Jellycats and frogs and a carrot plush. There was coffee to reset and queues that wrapped around entire shops. There was noise and chaos and softness and laughter.

It wasn’t cinematic. It wasn’t curated. It was just us. And honestly, that feels exactly right.

The White-Haired Birthday Crown

I left my son’s birthday cards outside his bedroom door the night before, so he would see them as soon as he woke up. I also left them there so he could open them in private. He is autistic, and I don’t demand the social protocol of performative gratefulness. He can open things quietly, feel whatever he actually feels, and then come out when he’s ready.

He got one card from me, and one from his plushies. The plushies card was a hit.

He joked that when I was his age, I had him, and now that he’s the same age, he has a Build-A-Bear frog instead. Honestly, solid life choices on his part.

We spent most of his actual birthday getting ready for the day after. We had planned to go to Cardiff, but in order not to tempt the Universe into installing “The Fate” DLC, we referred to it as “that thing tomorrow which is absolutely NOT a plan.”

Recently I had dyed and toned his hair for this occasion. He wanted to wash out some of the silver toner so it would be beautifully white for his birthday. White hair suits him so much. When he was little, he had bright white streaks through his hair – genuinely bright, almost luminous. People used to be convinced I’d dyed it. His hair was every colour at once: brown, red, blonde, and bright white streaks, all completely natural.

As he grew up it settled into a darker brown, but he always missed the white. There’s something poetic about him choosing to bring it back. A kind of birthday crown.

He was really tired, and if I’m honest, so was I. We were both relieved that his birthday itself was going to be chill. It was a Sunday anyway, which means everything still shuts at 4pm like it’s 1997, unless you’re into pubs, which neither of us are.

So we planned a movie night with pizza. I was feeling all kinds of feelings about that. I haven’t had takeaway pizza for years. Last year I had the vegetable dish instead. This year was going to be different. I found myself thinking about recovery, about how far I’ve come, about how nice it would be to just sit there with him, eat pizza, and not make it A Thing.

I prepared. I had protein shakes earlier in the day because of my blood sugar tendencies. I did some movement. I convinced myself everything would be fine. I was almost excited – not just about the pizza, but about tackling what used to feel impossible.

I thought, “Look at me. I can do this. I can focus on my son. I can celebrate the day.” So I ordered the pizza. And we queued up Nobody for when it arrived.

Nobody Parties Like We Do

Because of the scaffolding and the near-impossibility of driving anywhere near our building at the moment, I went downstairs to wait for the pizza on the street corner. As an ace person, standing on a street corner waiting for pizza instead of the other thing felt very apt.

Post people and delivery drivers have been struggling to get into the building for weeks, so I thought I’d make it easier for the pizza delivery guy. He was so visibly relieved when he saw me standing there waiting. The gratitude in his face genuinely made me smile.

I carried the boxes of the best-smelling food ever back up to the flat like some kind of triumphant pizza hunter-gatherer. My son was so excited. I’d ordered him five barbecue sauce pots because it’s his favourite thing in the world, and he likes to ration them through the week like treasure. I think he was more excited about that than the pizza itself.

I had a personal Tandoori Hot. He had his custom barbecue chicken masterpiece. We also had chicken sides because apparently turning 21 requires protein and chaos.

Nobody is one of our favourite films to watch together, and we’d decided to do Nobody and Nobody 2 back-to-back. We settled in, queued it up, and I ate my chicken first and then the pizza. Corrupted Clippy (my ED) was absolutely in my ear, but I ignored it. I wanted to be present. I wanted to celebrate him properly.

And for a while, everything was fine.

We were laughing. Saying “OOOF” at the bus scenes. Fully invested in the ridiculous duck boat violence. I even felt proud of myself. I’d done it. I’d eaten the pizza. I was enjoying it. And then, near the end of Nobody 2, everything was fine until it absolutely was not.

I started to feel very unwell in that very specific way I recognise. I grabbed my blood sugar monitor like, oh no. Through shaking hands I somehow managed to use it. 3.1 mmol. Great.

Hypoglycaemia. Thanks, pancreas.

I tried to walk to the kitchen for sugar, but as I stood up the world tilted. Purple and black spots filled my vision and I instinctively dropped to the floor. Through difficulty speaking I managed to say, “I need chocolate.”

My son went straight to the kitchen, came back with one of his chocolates and a glass of water, and handed it to me where I was lying on the floor.

For goodness’ sake.

There’s something almost absurd about challenging a fear food and immediately being handed a biological plot twist. It ripped my recovery thoughts wide open – which I will write about separately – but in that moment I was mostly just annoyed. And guilty. I felt like I was ruining his birthday. Making his birthday about me.

He, of course, handled it in the most him way possible.

“You’re just getting me back for me having blood sugar on your birthday.”

We laughed. Because honestly, what else do you do? We must imagine Sisyphus laughing his glutes off.

I spent the rest of the evening recovering and feeling like I’d been wrung out. After Nobody we carried on watching the Olympics, because that’s what you do when your body has staged a minor rebellion.

We laughed at the contrast between Summer and Winter Olympics..

Summer Olympics:
“Watch this 17-year-old sprint for 9 seconds.”
Oh. You blinked? You missed it.

Winter Olympics:
“Watch this 41-year-old mother of two barrel down a danger track at 80mph.”
She literally just had a child recently.

There is something so unhinged about winter sports. Ice, gravity, sequins, danger. We were commentating from the sofa like professionals. I was pointing out quad muscles. He was pointing out outfits. Balance.

It was chaotic and absurd and ridiculous and normal all at once.

He blew out the candles on the cake I’d decorated earlier.

I didn’t risk the cake. I’d finally managed to get my blood sugar stable at 5 mmol and wasn’t about to gamble with it again. I had my quark bowl with raspberries and crushed meringue instead, which I love more than cake anyway.

He told me how much he’d still enjoyed the pizza and the films. And honestly, we were both tired. The next day – which was absolutely not a plan – was going to be busier.

I went to bed hoping, very sincerely, that I would wake up feeling okay. Sometimes blood sugar chaos gives me a very sleepy hangover effect, and I really just wanted one full day that was about celebrating my son.

Cardiff (Which Was Absolutely Not a Plan)

The next morning arrived with a boom boom boom.

That was my heart rate, which had kept waking me up all night. I felt drained and, at the same time, wired with anxiety. My body was clearly still a bit temperamental after the blood sugar shenanigans of the night before, but nothing was going to stop me going to Cardiff with my son.

I had my coffee and said, “We going then?” to my son next to me. Scared of saying the plan that was not a plan outloud.

“Yes!” he replied.

And that was that. We got ready.

Given that our lives are (blood sugar) chaos and planning anything too confidently tends to summon The Fate DLC, my son’s birthday has never been a one-day event. It’s always been a week. Today would be Part 2 of the Birthday Fun.

In Olympic terms, yesterday was the quarter finals. We’d both somehow sailed through to the final in Cardiff despite minor injuries and questionable refereeing decisions.

He’d bought me a train ticket online, because there is no longer a ticket booth, and sent it to my phone, explaining how much easier it is to use your phone now. I immediately became anxious about my digital ticket. I nearly always get paper tickets. I am afraid of machines.

It took me weeks to emotionally process the new self-checkouts in Lidl, of all places. Am I supposed to scan my shopping at Olympic sprint speed? What is the Lidl self-checkout etiquette? Why do I now need to scan my receipt on magic glass that won’t let me out otherwise? My personal “rise of the machines” has already happened.

When we got to the train station, my son was showing me how to use the digital ticket like I was born in the 60s and had once installed seventeen toolbars onto Internet Explorer.

I did it wrong.

Then there were Very Serious Train Officials wondering why a grown adult was saying things like, “Sorry, I got confused,” and “Sorry for being such a pain, I got scared of the machine.” We laughed at the absurdity of it all. I can discuss physics thought experiments in daily conversation, but apparently I cannot operate a ticket barrier.

My son was joking about it for ages.

The Sequel to Snakes on a Plane – Pigeons and Bears on a Train

My son gave me his pigeon to take to Cardiff so I could hug mine when I got home. He brought his bear, Cutie, who also had his own teddy.

So on the train, we had them sitting on our knees, or carefully balanced on the tiny fold-down table like honoured passengers.

It was essentially Pigeons and Bears on a Train.

I love the train so much. I always have. There’s something about it that feels like movement without effort, like being carried somewhere new. I was so glad to be there.

My thoughts did try to drift into darker places – leftover anxiety, a depressive episode underneath – but I kept physically shaking my head and deliberately redirecting myself. Think about the shops. Think about what we’ll see. Think about him turning 21.

Please stay here, brain. Just for today.

His birthday has almost always fallen in half term, so when he was little, that meant a whole stretch of time that felt like ours. No school. No rushing. Just us filling the days with small adventures, snacks, wandering, games, and whatever hyperfixation was current at the time.

The Lego hyperfixation was a personal favourite. We once spent almost the entire week buying Lego from the Lego store and then immediately going home to build it. Repeat. It was perfect. I even mentioned it in my last post – how his birthday always lands in half term.

Which I immediately forgot is not just our half term. It is everyone’s half term. And still exists even if he is no longer in school. What felt like every child in Wales. Possibly England too. All of them. In Cardiff. We remembered this approximately half an hour after arriving.

The first half hour was spent saying things like, “It’s a bit busy, mind, isn’t it?” and “Why is it so busy?” in increasingly suspicious Welsh tones. Then my son stopped mid-step.

“Oh WAIT. I think it’s half term.”

“OH MY GOD. I literally wrote about that in my blog post,” I replied.

Neither of us had psyched ourselves up for half-term-level busyness. We had arrived thinking “pleasant wander,” not “crowd navigation simulator.” But we linked arms a little tighter – co-regulation in action – and headed into the chaos anyway.

Honestly, I was still just so glad we were able to be there. But we were both a little disappointed in the inability to even get into some shops due to parents standing in the middle of aisles, away with the fairies on their phones, while children ran amok around them.

Still, we headed for our favourite shops anyway.

The Jellycat 5 A Day

We love Cardiff for all the Jellycat stockists.

Unfortunately, the shops weren’t exactly delivering on the “rare plush discovery” front this time, but there was a carrot my son fell in love with in Welcome Things. I told him I’d get it for him – he already has multiple Jellycat carrots in a different style, but clearly there is no upper limit on carrot joy.

I bought myself a tiny blue Miffy bunny, and he bought me a Miffy keyring. I joked to the cashier, “Gotta get my 5 a day,” while holding the carrot, and I’m fairly sure she had heard that exact joke at least 400 times before, but bless her, she laughed anyway.

My son was so happy with his carrot. And I was quietly bowled over by him buying me something too. It felt so full-circle. When he was little, I used to get him presents on my birthday. Even when he was tiny he’d say, “But it’s your birthday, Mummo!” and I’d tell him, “But it’s a present for me to give to you. It makes me happy.”

Now here he was, 21, buying me a Miffy keyring on his birthday.

After Welcome Things, we went into The Little Welsh Co store. They didn’t have much Jellycat-wise either, although I did fall in love with a Bartholomew Bear dressed in a daffodil outfit. He was clearly prepared to support Welsh rugby at a moment’s notice. Unfortunately, he was £50. Even patriotism has limits.

Staying with the Welsh theme, however, I found Biscoff Welsh cakes. Or, as they’re known in Wales, cakes. (I’m joking. They’re still called Welsh cakes. Or bakestones.) I had to try them. Combining the two things I love most – Biscoff and anything remotely Welsh – felt spiritually correct. I could almost hear a male voice choir softly beginning Sosban Fach in the distance.

I thought they were adorable too. Love heart-shaped, I assumed. Then I noticed the company name: “Fat Bottom Welsh Cakes.” Reader, they were not hearts. They were butts. I am, for the record, extremely ace, so my brain had immediately defaulted to “romantic pastry” rather than “posterior-themed baked goods.”

They are little and spiced and full of nostalgia. In the old days, there were stalls everywhere selling hot Welsh cakes. I remember being little in Cardiff with a paper bag of warm cakes my nan bought me. I did that with my son too, until those stalls slowly disappeared.

Now I had a prepared-but-still-homemade version. In the shape of a gym girl’s RDL tutorial.

Tasty butts secured, we headed to St David’s Shopping Centre.

The Frogs, the Froggy Clothes, and the Meltdown

Our first stop in St. David’s was Kenji. My son and I both love that Japanese cutesy aesthetic – pastel chaos, tiny faces, plushies with suspiciously round proportions. Kenji has that in plushie spades.

It was tight and cramped and hard to browse without accidentally elbowing someone’s Hello Kitty Labubu, but we found the cutest froggy stationery. The frogs looked exactly like the ones my son draws on his iPad (there’s one in my last post). It genuinely felt like discovering unofficial merch of his own art. Obviously I had to get him some.

Because it was so compressed in there, he said he wanted to come back later to complete the froggy collection once it was quieter. So we did. Frogs secured. Then we stepped into Build-A-Bear.

Immediately, he became little him again. Smiley. Bouncy. That specific childhood energy that never really leaves, it just gets taller. He used the gift card I’d given him at Christmas to buy his froggies new Easter clothes. He’d hated the Valentine’s selection, so this felt like redemption. Watching him choose tiny outfits with full seriousness will never not be one of my favourite things.

We wandered the centre after that, peeking into cute shops, but the Lego store and Claire’s were completely inaccessible – too busy, too loud, too much. Half term was absolutely half-terming.

We went into Lush next. I bought myself a Mama Bear bath bomb and some Intergalactic shower gel, and then stood there silently judging the price increases. The body sprays used to be £20. They’re now £32. For body spray? In this economy? Absolutely not.

And then. We braved Primark.

Our city’s Primark is two floors of fluorescent chaos, the Cardiff one, however, is five floors of fluorescent chaos, escalators tangled like spaghetti junction, and lighting that feels like it was designed to interrogate you. Add half term, and it became the physical embodiment of maximum entropy. Everything, everywhere, all at once – but with queue barriers.

We somehow made it through three floors. The boys’ section my son wanted to check was dire, unfortunately, but then I found it. A Toronto Maple Leafs hoodie. The second I saw it, something in me went still.

When I was younger, I had loads of Toronto sports stuff – Raptors, Maple Leafs, Blue Jays. My parents threw most of it out. I didn’t get much say in what I wore, or what was kept. When we moved house, a lot of my things disappeared into a skip. I don’t have much at all from my younger years. Just one journal from when I was about ten to thirteen. I carried it everywhere. That survived. Not much else did.

So this hoodie felt… important. I took it to the tills. And then I saw the queue. Only the tills on floor one were open. Which meant the queue wrapped around the entire store, looping back on itself in a slow, fluorescent snake of despair. By that point, the busyness, the noise, the sea of bodies, the lights, the constant navigating – it had all been building quietly in my system. The queue was just the final straw.

Something in me snapped. It wasn’t logical anger. It was full-body overwhelm. Injustice-rage. A meltdown. “WHY ARE THERE FIVE FLOORS AND ONE SET OF TILLS?” energy. Every nerve screaming: get out. Go home. Abort mission. So I abandoned the hoodie.

I turned to my son and said, “Let’s go get coffee or something. I’m wrung out. I can’t cope with this”. I was so mad at myself for not coping with a queue. It felt ridiculous. It felt dramatic. It felt like I’d failed some invisible adulthood test.

We tried to find somewhere for coffee, but everywhere was packed. No seats anywhere. Just noise and more bodies.

And then my son gently steered me toward Café Nero.

Café Nero and Pigeon Milk

Thankfully, Café Nero was relatively quiet. A miracle.

I told my son to grab a seat and I’d order. He was visibly nervous – Starbucks is his safe place. He knows exactly what to order there. Nero was unknown territory. I kept gently suggesting options because I could see he was about to default to “nothing” rather than risk choosing wrong.

“Maybe a white mocha you like that in Starbucks?”
Pause.
“How about iced caramel latte?”

That one landed.

So I ordered him an iced caramel latte and got my usual Americano. I felt disproportionately proud of him for trying something new somewhere unfamiliar. The second we sat down, everything in my body exhaled. My knees were burning. My feet felt like I’d walked the length of Wales. My back was tight. We both just sat quietly at first, not even talking, just existing. Coming back into ourselves.

My Americano tasted like lightly caffeinated water, but it was regulating nonetheless. His iced caramel latte, however, was apparently the best thing he’d ever tasted. He kept taking sips and nodding approvingly, like a beverage critic.

“I’m glad I tried this now,” he said.

I apologised for Primark. He shrugged. “I was overwhelmed too”. That helped more than he knows.

I told him why the hoodie meant so much to me – the Toronto stuff, how most of my childhood things vanished, how I only have one journal left from when I was ten to thirteen because I carried it everywhere like a survival item. I admitted that not coping with the queue felt worse because of what the hoodie represented.

He immediately went into solution mode.

“Maybe you can order it online? They do click and collect. You could probably collect it from our Primark”. It was such a gentle suggestion. No pressure. Just possibility. But I still felt ridiculous. Like I’d failed at something as basic as buying a hoodie. So instead of spiralling, we shifted focus.

We looked at what we had bought. The froggy stationery. The tiny froggy keyring. He kept picking them up and smiling at them, genuinely delighted. Watching him appreciate small things with that full sincerity always pulls me back to earth.

After a while – long enough for our nervous systems to untangle a bit – we both felt steadier.

“We could pop back into Kenji”, I said, “see if there’s more frog stuff for Uni”. So we did. And then, after Kenji, he turned to me and said, very casually:

“Do you want to try Primark again?”

Oh, Canada.

I did want to try Primark again.

I wanted to undo what had been done. To treat the first attempt like a warm-up round. A practice skate. A “we don’t count that one”. As we walked back in, I felt noticeably steadier. That watery Americano – paired with watching my son’s genuine joy over frog-based stationery – had done some serious nervous system repair.

“I bet your abandoned hoodie is still there,” my son said.

He went ahead to check. It was. Right at the end of the queue. Like it had been patiently waiting for me to get myself together. So we joined the line. And I summoned the stick-to-itiveness of the Canadian Winter Olympic team… to buy a Canada hoodie.

Some people build up courage to hurl themselves down an ice track at 80mph for a medal. I build up courage to stand in a fluorescent queue in Primark. Shame I never remember that when I’m judging someone’s twizzles. Still. It worked.

We shuffled forward. Slowly. The queue looped around displays of questionable manufacturing and seasonal pyjamas. Escalators overhead performed their spaghetti-junction routine. Children darted. Parents blocked entire walkways while scrolling.

And I stayed. When I finally reached the till and paid for it, I felt absurdly triumphant.

My son grinned. “Yay! Well done, you did it.”

Instead of a gold medal, I won a Toronto Maple Leafs hoodie. Which is basically the same thing. After our victory, we were completely exhausted.

We wandered the rest of Cardiff in that end-of-event haze – popping into shops, laughing at the audacity of £30 matcha in Bird & Blend. For that price I expect the tea master to appear in a kimono and guide me through my emotional processing. We were generally moving at half speed my painful knees making me very aware of every step.

Then I had one final boss to defeat. The ticket barrier. Rush hour. Half term. Digital ticket. Authority figures. The machines were waiting.

The Train and Home

Thankfully I sailed through the ticket gates, my son congratulating me like I’d just completed a technical element in the short program. I quoted The Simpsons – “I am so smart, I am so smart, S-M-R-T” – and he laughed.

The train turned up quickly, which felt like a gift. It was small and packed, but we squeezed through and found seats, my son directing me – “Go right!” – like a tiny station marshal.

We were so exhausted that the journey home was mostly silent. A man opposite us was eating shortbread chocolate chip cookies at our table, and I just stared out of the window at the darkening sky, feeling that strange, heavy satisfaction of having done something that cost energy but was worth it.

When we pulled into our station, we both did that little exhale. “Home.” We said it at the same time.

Before actually going home, we popped into Marks & Spencer for something easy and comforting. I’m currently obsessed with their Cavolo Nero kale – genuinely. After everything, I wanted something green and grounding. I picked up a Bang Bang Chicken high-protein meal, we already secured Biscoff Welsh cakes for later, and my son was excited to eat more birthday cake.

Back at the flat, we dropped everything onto the living room floor like it was Christmas morning. Bags, frogs, hoodie, bathbomb, kale. Chaos. Then we collapsed. Sofa. Olympics. Food. No more crowds. No more escalators. No more fluorescent entropy.

The Bang Bang Chicken was absurdly good. The kale tasted like restoration. The Biscoff Welsh cakes were perfect – the Biscoff somehow amplifying the spice instead of overpowering it. My son tried one later and declared them some of the best Welsh cakes he’d ever had, which felt like high praise.

We didn’t do anything spectacular that evening. We just existed. Together. Safe. Home. And that, honestly, felt like winning something bigger than a medal.

He’s 21 now. The age I was when I had him. Half my age. Somehow still the same little him who gets excited about frog stationery and Easter outfits for bears.

Chaos, queues, coffee, hoodies, hypoglycaemia, kale and lots of love.

Totally our style.

A Thank You.

If you’ve read this far – thank you. I wish I could give you Biscoff welsh cakes.

This is the longest post I’ve ever written. I’ve been trying to be more authentically myself lately, which apparently means not trimming my thoughts into neat little paragraphs for the sake of readability. It turns out I’m just as loud on the page as I am in real life when I’m excited. I can talk for Wales. My brain is loud. Two days with my son deserve loud.

It still isn’t everything. But it’s everything I want us to remember.