‘I’m the person with a debit card who tidies up’ 20 THOUGHTS THAT all mothers have had OVER THE PAST YEAR

Louise Atkinson’s Cotswolds home went from a soon-to-be-empty nest to ‘a kind of commune’ Judith Woods

This time last year, I was fully immersed in a shared parenting mission to get our youngest son through his A-levels, keeping a light hand on the reins of his older brother and sister at university, and worrying about how I’d cope with the devastation of an empty nest when my 6ft 5in baby started his planned gap-year travels.

Somewhere on the periphery of my consciousness was a virus working its way through European ski resorts.

Life was sweet. We were enjoying a dinner-party social life, pub drinks with friends, cinema and theatre trips, and I had excitedly booked a tented cabin for the family summer holiday, sufficiently remote and lacking in amenities to mean we’d be thrust together for an intense few days of concentrated family time. I feared it would be the last time we’d really be together as a unit before my great big chicks finally flew the nest.

Wow. What a difference a year makes. Motherhood, for me, has changed unrecognisably in the past 12 months.

Back then I was part tutor, part motivational coach, part cheerleader, as well as taxi driver, cook, cleaner and bottle washer. But all three kids (Florence, 23, Isaac, 20, and Greg, 18) have spent much of this past year at home with me and their dad, Jonathan. Often, we’ve had their partners in tow, and this has rendered our Cotswolds converted barn into a kind of commune.

The conservatory is now a gym, the backdoor porch is stacked with beer and the number of bottles in the recycling box each week is shocking. Everyone pulls their weight – kind of – and in return for our generous hospitality, we enjoy the steady stream of gossip from lives infinitely more exciting than ours.

My mothering role has evolved as a consequence, and I’d say I’m now more bossy team leader crossed with psychotherapist, drinking pal and peacekeeper – less dictatorial matriarch, and more “pleasant person with debit card who tidies up”.

Normally a mother of kids this age would be worrying about whether they were partying too hard, drinking too much, getting in with the wrong crowd, eating too much pizza or frittering their money on handbags or designer trainers. But my biggest concern? Their mental health.

The kids would tell me stories of friends who were depressed, disillu- sioned, self-harming, and I felt huge empathy for this generation of youngsters struggling to cope with lost dreams and an uncertain future.

Isaac should be OK. He’s got a lovely girlfriend and has coped admirably with

The kids would tell me stories of friends who were depressed, disillusioned, self-harming, and I felt huge empathy for them

online lectures and a curtailed social life. Flo is pretty resilient, too. She’s landed a great job nearby and a boyfriend we love (not least because he takes the bins out without being asked).

But the pandemic has hit Greg hard. When the first lockdown struck, he effectively lost his place on the county cricket squad, his starring role in a youth production of Jesus Christ Superstar, his promised A-level grades (like many boys, he was making a late sprint for the finishing line, but ended up having to settle for grades based on his lacklustre mock results), his social life, opportunities to meet girls, any chance of a big 18th-birthday bash and, as the virus spread around the world, his dreams of gap-year travelling, too.

This year, my mothering mission has been Project Greg – specifically keeping him buoyed and happy. It hasn’t been easy and, even working in a tag team with his dad, not always successful. In my darkest hours, when I feared parenting couldn’t get any harder, I’d force myself to be grateful we hadn’t been trying to juggle work (I’m a freelance writer and Jon is a graphic designer) with homeschooling young children. I cannot imagine anything tougher.

But I refused to be defeated. Instead, I channelled all my energies into a single-minded quest to get Greg out of the country so he could pull free of the apron strings, learn to manage on his own, have adventures and gather experiences to eclipse the stale and fusty memories of a year festering at home.

Right now, he’s a volunteer on a wildlife conservation project in Costa Rica (all legal, all Covid-safe boxes ticked) and he’s loving it. I consider getting him there (my goodness, the hoops to jump through!) to be my single greatest pandemic achievement.

I’m green with envy and I’ve told him I might just fly out to join him. He’s not entirely sure I’m joking. I’m not sure either. Letting the last child go is not easy, even when you’re the one diligently tiling the path.

We may only have one child at home (Flo, above), but Isaac has landed a “work in industry” placement 20 miles away, starting in the summer, and Greg will doubtless be back for the cricket season. So, I’m looking at a two-year stay of execution on my empty-nest fears. I couldn’t be more delighted.

We got our money back on last year’s family holiday, but we’re not rebooking for this summer – we spend more than enough time together as it is. Instead, Jon and I will wait for our vaccinations and squander the money on an escape to somewhere lovely together if we can. The kids can look after the dog.

1

Realising with a jolt of nostalgia you will not shop at Mini Boden again because your tweenager only wears grey prison tracksuits.

2

Glimpsing the girl three doors down practising her viola at the window and bitterly wondering why your children are so useless.

3

Lunch. Again today. What is wrong with these people?

4

Reassuring your mother-inlaw the kids have enrolled in night school to explain why they are never awake when she calls.

5

A growing sense of outrage that your privately educated teenagers are talking like drill rappers, fam. Or should that be mandem?

6

Musing that the greatest Mother’s Day gift of all would be everyone going out and leaving you alone. Then pulling a sickie with a fake migraine so you can stay in bed with the laptop.

7

Looking in the mirror and wishing you were Judy Murray and could get your lockdown face ironed in time for sweet freedom and possibly an affair with the sort of man who does not believe women are capable of taking out recycling, too.

8

Resenting the vogue for unconditional love. Maybe if your children were more emotionally insecure, they would do as they were told once in a while.

9

Unilaterally deciding that books are all fine and dandy but it is a year of dust that really furnishes a room.

10

Wishing you had banned all relatives from downloading the Deliveroo app as a moped pulls up bearing a single blueberry yogurt.

Not even bothering to hide your kids’ execrable attempts at art as you chuck them in the recycling bin.

12

Idly calculating on an Excel spreadsheet just how rich/ thin/happy you would be if you had not met the father of your children.

13

Pretending you like your esoteric Mother’s Day gift of dark artisan chocolate tasting of coal sprigged with heather that cost more than the big tin of Roses you really wanted.

14

Wondering how mumtrepreneurs set up kitchen-table businesses amid the detritus of mugs, unidentified crumbs, discarded clothing, dog worming tablets and pots of home-made slime.

15

Furtively wishing you could skip the shouty, shambolic heavy lifting of motherhood and go straight to the ditsy, doting grandmother bit.

16

Discovering that not only have wine bottles shrunk, gin bottles have got significantly smaller, too. Haven’t they?

17

Scrolling through your phone for lovely memories and finding the only photograph taken in the past 12 months was of that damp patch in the basement.

18

Listening to your neighbour banging on about the unexpected joy of lockdown gardening with her toddler twins and willing your cat to wee on her runner-bean seedlings.

19

Seething with resentment that your overachieving mum chum has managed to get all four children out of the house for a family walk. Then sighing with blessed relief when you notice everyone is wearing ear buds. Including her.

20

Ringing around Heathrow quarantine hotels to ask if they take walk-ins. Eleven days in solitary, looking out on a car park and eating meals off a tray sounds like the best £1,750 you will ever spend.