Parenting Mum and Dad
while they parent me...
My phone trilled – which is unusual in itself as it is permanently on silent and Do Not Disturb and I like it like that.
It said ‘Mum Mobile’. I have a few people listed who can always reach me; parents, kids and husband and that’s it.
It was 8:30am. Very early for a Mum call.
“Hello? Is everything OK?”
“No.”
A dozen thoughts ran through my head in under a second.
Dad has had a fall. Dad’s cancer has come back. Mum has had a fall. Their roof has blown off. Do I need to call 999. I don’t have enough charge in my stupid, useless electric car, so I can’t get to them right away. I’ll call a taxi. I’ll get my coat.
“What’s happened?”
“We can’t get into that website for Joe and Alice’s wedding. How did you do it?”
The relief came out as a sigh that started in my toes and exited through my mouth. It was a full body experience.
“Mum! You can’t ring me at 8:30 in the morning and when I say is everything OK, you can’t say ‘no’ like that when it’s just about a website! You gave me a heart attack!”
“What did you think it was?”
“I thought you’d had a fall, or dad was ill, or something terrible had happened!”
“Why would you think that? We just can’t get into that website on the iPad. It’s sending us to a strange page and there’s no mention of Joe and Alice, just lots of other weddings. I don’t know why it’s not working.”
I breathed out again.
“Hang on a second. Let me go downstairs and get my laptop. I’ll talk you through it.”
And I did. For an hour, with dripping wet hair and a cold head as I’d just got out the shower when they rang.
They got in, they RSVP’d and I left them to it when it came to the gift buying. Though I did re-send them the couple’s address, to make sure they sent it to the right place, as I knew the website would probably automatically populate it with their own home address and they’d be very confused when a blender (or whatever they ordered) arrived on their doorstep.
As I dried my hair, relieved it was just a normal call, and we’d all had a laugh about it, I reflected on how lucky I am to actually like and not just love my mum and dad, and how I hope my kids will feel the same way about me when they are middle aged.
I am mum and step mum to 4 young adults; the youngest is 18, the eldest is 23. In our home we have my daughter (18) and my stepdaughter (22). And also her boyfriend (24), who now lives with us.
It’s a busy house, and with it comes all the layers you’d expect. Laughter and fun round the table on some nights. Sulking and slamming doors other nights. Family discussions about being tidier, not hoarding plates and glasses in bedrooms, please for the love of God will you clean the bathroom. Silent raging at how much they take for granted everything we do and pay for. Like rent, food, and heating.
Normal parenting stuff.
I also keep an eye on my own parents.
Now, my mum and dad are brilliant. Lots of fun, loads of energy, more than me in fact. I think they worry about me even more than I worry about them, so we answer each other’s phone calls with a snatched “Hello?!” if they are too early or too late.
My parents are in the process of moving house, something not to be taken lightly at their age.
Yesterday I popped round to go through some boxes that they’d been keeping for me in their loft. I’d forgotten about them to be honest; they were mainly filled with magazines and press cuttings from my lifetime of being on the telly, which they had meticulously kept. Even the bad stuff. I threw 99% of it away, and took photos of the bits I wanted to keep for old times sake.
Then we got to the boxes filled with stuff from my teenage years. Birthday cards, and yearbooks, and ohhh…. diaries. I opened one up that was in its own little box, and had a little lock and key. It said ‘Secrets’ on it. The year was 1984 – I was 14 going on 15.
I opened it, and had a quick read through to make sure it was safe to read out loud. I needn’t have bothered.
Quick aside: “Keep a diary and someday it will keep you” said the actress, Mae West. She was right; I’m now on my fifth book, all based on adult diary scribbles and notes taken. I think Mae would have been bitterly disappointed with this one, as there wasn’t a whiff of the “Come up and see me sometime” shenanigans that other teens probably wrote about in code.
It was so disappointing.
‘Dear Diary, today I mowed the lawn and cleared away that strange plant off the fence. Then I made a chocolate cake, and we watched TV.’
There was some stuff about going to a friend’s house, homework and missing old friends in Trinidad - we’d moved to the UK and I’d left them all behind. But mainly it was about tidying my room.
‘Dear Diary, I did nothing at all today, which is absolutely DISGUSTING!’
I put my head in my hands.
How embarrassing.
I have been a middle-aged woman helping mum and dad my whole life.
On the plus side, I’ve also done few things that Mae would have raised both a glass and a sharply pencilled eyebrow to. I just didn’t write those things down, because while you can always tell the truth, you don’t always have to tell the whole truth, isn’t that right Dear Diary?