Pollyism of the week
Back in the Stone Age when I left school, my only thought was to flee the nest. It was not only expected, but just taken for granted that whether it was uni, an OE or just getting a regular old job, you did it without your mum holding your hand. How did our mothers survive it?
I remember the day my 17-year-old daughter went on her gap year to Kent in England. By the way, I now realise a gap year is just a paid drinking tour of Europe at the expense of Mum and Dad. But that day, I got down on my hands and knees – not in prayer – but with a toothbrush, a bucket of hot water and a bottle of liquid sugar soap. I cried and I scrubbed, and then I cried and scrubbed some more. I was crushed that my little girl had flown to the other side of the world, but on the bright side, I discovered underneath layers of liquid floor wax there was a shiny, sparkling, deep-blue lino, not the dull grey I was used to.
I left home at 17 to go to college in the US, as my sister had done before me. My parents seemed to accept it as life. There was no trying to dissuade us or emotional blackmail. I don’t think my mum scrubbed floors and Dad seemed a wee bit teary at the airport, but there was certainly no weeping. How could we have done that to our parents? Or are we just a little softer now?
I love being a mum. I love it so much that all my children still live with me. But it probably wouldn’t break my heart if one of them attempted to go flatting. There seems no sign of that, though – perhaps if I stopped cooking and didn’t pay for the Wi-Fi? Now that would cause a mass riot!
I love being a mum, even to a tribe of young adults who forget to buy toilet paper and still ask me several times a day, “What’s for dinner, Mini?” (That’s what they call me because they all tower over my 1.75-metre frame).
This Mother’s Day, I hope they give me breakfast in bed and homemade cards.
Life is so short and children stay kids for such a tiny amount of time. It seems like yesterday that they were all at school and had rugby, netball, swimming, touch and French horn lessons (well, actually, no French horn, thank goodness). The years speed up and tumble together. Life is so full of lost important school notices, squishy bananas, half-eaten muffins and semi-organised chaos that it’s like a decade or so passes by in a puff of wind, and suddenly they are all beautiful, grown up and ready for life.
But this mum ain’t ready. I’d like to tie them to my house with invisible magic thread that stops them roaming too far or into danger. I guess until someone invents that magical “Mummy string”, I’ll just have to rely on my primo cooking!