Saved from going down a slippery slope

YOU know your kids are grown when they see the snow as inconvenient rather than enchanting. They are people with plans now, people with agendas and they don’t have time to be dealing with the female forces of nature aka Emma (and Ophelia in her day). Welcome to adulthood kids!

My sympathy however rests largely with my daughter. She was about to sit the last of her Leaving Cert mock exams when everything got postponed. Having spent the mid-term studying, she was anticipating the temporary feeling of freedom and a fleeting release of pressure that the end of the mocks would bring. She had a calendar of events pending to mark the elusive hiatus, not least of which yours truly was included; she wanted to see Ladybird with me – the movie.

Weather conditions, exam cancellations and anti-climaxes notwithstanding, the plan prevailed. We were going to the movies. We booked an early screening which was just as well as the cinema decided to close its doors right after it finished. Having penguin-walked the whole way there over powder, slush and ice, we had the theatre to ourselves. Mother and daughter.

It was all very apt seeing as the movie documents the relationship between a mother and daughter in the daughter’s final year in school. To my mind it is a movie in which nothing happens, and in which everything happens; where an analysis of a relationship comes under the microscope revealing it to be fractious, combative and poignantly sad in parts. There are redeeming moments too, moments that give you hope for them and their future.

As the closing music purred and the film credits rolled, we sat in the empty theatre and pondered. Our feelings were mixed. We agreed it was a good movie and a watchable one but much like the mood we were in when it started, there was an anti-climatic tinge to it; had we not seen this kind of thing before, had we learnt anything new from it?

But it did evoke thought and, for me, a memory. I was driving my daughter home from school one day, she was ten years old and agitated about an injustice that had been dealt to her during class. Listening to her vent, in my so-called “wisdom” I adopted the role of devil’s advocate. I suppose I thought I was balancing the books, giving her another perspective; creating empathy even? Regardless, the upshot was that for every argument she put forward, I had a counter one. Until she fell silent and in the voice of the child that she was, she asked “Mom, can you not just be on my side?”

Loving comes instinctively but paying attention is an art. I have been on her side ever since.

So, as we penguin-walked our way home over powder, slush and ice, I reached out to hold the hand of my female force of nature; to tell her of a memory and my gratitude to a ten-year-old who saved me from a slippery slope.