On Mothers and Daughters....(Part IV)

The Mother is very, very worried about me. The Mother wants me to give up blogging. Blogging, apparently, is very dangerous. Blogging is very dangerous because it involves t'internet, which is populated entirely by terrorists, paedophiles and pornographers.

This latest outburst of maternal concern was prompted by the fact that I told her I had met up with some bloggers. I met these terrorists, paedophiles and pornographers bloggers at Caroline's book launch in Manchester in June. I returned home unscathed. If any of the bloggers who attended Caroline's launch would like to identify which particular category they belong to, however, I would greatly appreciate it.

I also drove in my car today, which statistically puts me at significantly greater risk of harm than writing words which other people sometimes read. But driving does not involve the internet, so that's ok.

Sometimes Step-Parenting Is Hard

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Have I ever mentioned the fact that I am a step-parent? We are what the textbooks refer to as a ‘blended family’: me and my son, The Husband and his daughter. We look like a perfectly normal family. The children very easily pass for siblings except that that they don’t invest their energy in trying to secretly maim, shame or kill each other. They get on like a house on fire. They are, in fact, great friends and will hug warmly when they come back to our house after a period with ‘the other parents’ (as we quaintly call them.) I have read a lot about step-parenting. Partly for my work with young mothers where step-parenting is becoming the norm, and partly to reassure myself that it really is as difficult as it feels sometimes.

So we look like a perfectly normal family. Except that slightly hidden from view are a variety of relationships that play out in different ways and at different times.

I love my son with an animal instinct. I am convinced that I would lay down my life for him. I would step in front of the bus. Sometimes my husband is jealous.

I love my step-daughter because she is bright, funny, engaging and loveable. And she is my husband’s daughter and I love my husband. Sometimes she challenges me for her father’s love. She always wins. I would hesitate before stepping in front of the bus. I may not step out. I have my child to think of.

I love my husband just because. (I do not intend to get sentimental or shower him with praise. But I really do love him a lot.) However much I love him, I wouldn’t step in front of the bus. I have my child to think of. Sometimes he wants to be number one.

My husband loves his daughter with an animal instinct. He is a fantastic dad, and hasn’t designated his parenting duties to me, as many fathers will do when they meet a new partner. He is mother and father to her when she is with us. He would step in front of the bus. Sometimes I am jealous.

My husband loves me, and I trust that his love is sound. He would not step in front of the bus. He has his child to think of. Sometimes I want to be number one.

My husband loves my son because he is bright, funny, engaging and loveable. And because he loves me. Sometimes son challenges husband for my love. Son always wins. Husband would hesitate before stepping in front of the bus. He has his own child to think of.

Half of the time we are four. But when we are four, we are sometimes two and two. Occasionally we are two and one. Sometimes we are just two. And each has its own dynamic quietly playing out.

It is only right and proper that my son knows he is first in my life. It is only right and proper that my step-daughter knows she is first in her father’s life. That is how it should be for children. It breaks my heart when I work with young mothers who meet a new partner and consistently prioritise him over their children, so desperate are they for another to love them. Parenting books tell us that we should not allow children to ‘come between’ two parents as it gives the child too much power and an illusion of grandeur. Step-parenting books skirt delicately around the issue. We are afraid of naming it. We are afraid of the primal feelings of jealousy, envy, rage and triumphalism.

Sometimes you have to step into someone else's shoes. Sometimes I back my husband into a corner and compel him to talk about it. That is the deal when you marry a therapist. Things get talked about.

We are a happy family. I’m glad we can think the unthinkable.

Keen And Ambitious Children Up For Adoption...

Eldest child is speaking on his mobile in the kitchen.
Youngest child is speaking on the landline in the adjoining sitting room.

Eldest: So you would like to buy some car insurance?

Youngest: Yes please, that would be lovely.

Eldest: We have the standard insurance at £50 a month, or for a little more you can buy the deluxe insurance.

Youngest: Ooh, deluxe sounds good. What’s that?

Eldest: Well, it covers you for all eventualities apart from abduction by aliens or attack by giant gorillas. It’s a snip at £150 a month.

Youngest: I shall take the deluxe insurance please. Here is my credit card.

Eldest: Could I interest you in any of our other products whilst you are on the line? We have home owner loans, if you own your own property?

Youngest: Oh yes, I own my own property. I’ll take a loan while I’m here.

Eldest: Excellent. I’ll just take your credit card details.

Dismayed Mother: What are you two playing?

Eldest: Hastings Direct! (The word ‘stupid’ was implied, but omitted out of deference to his ageing mother.)

Youngest: 0800 00 10 66!

Dismayed Mother: And how long have you been playing?

Eldest: About half an hour. We’re getting bored now.

Dismayed Mother: And who has phoned whom?

Youngest: I phoned his mobile! (Great. Approximately £7.50 of phone call.)

For those of you who do not watch daytime TV – and I assume that is most of you – Hastings Direct is an insurance company who have an apparently thrilling and memorable advert showing regularly in between Yu-Gi-Oh and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. It has obviously had a considerable impact on my children. Perhaps my punishment for forcing left wing politics and intelligent discussion at the dinner table is that they now appear to harbour ambitions to hard sell financial services. I am thinking of enrolling them in the Woodcraft Folk.

Wingardium Leviosa...

This new technology still baffles me. I can barely understand how words and pictures can be stored on what is basically a cheap piece of plastic. I certainly don't understand how information can spirit its way through the ether and land on someone else's laptop. It still amazes me that I can send a document to someone and it can arrive there seconds later, without me schlepping out to the post office to photocopy it, put a stamp on it, find out a week later it hasn't arrived and then go through the whole damn process again. I feel like my mother trying to programme our 1980s video recorder. I don't like not knowing how things work, but I fear I will never get my head around this World Wide Webulator malarkey. It may as well be magic.

My son spends half of his time living with his lovely dad, eight miles away from my house. He is now at secondary school - I still call it 'big school' much to his disdain - which means that lovely dad and I spend half of our lives ferrying books, rugby kit, uniforms and other associated school miscellany back and forth from house to house. It is becoming a pain in the arse. A few weeks ago I got home to a desperate call from him when I returned home from an evening session at 10pm.

"Mum! My English assignment is on a floppy disk on my desk. I NEED IT FOR TOMORROW! You will have to drive over with it in the morning before school."

I work two evenings a week until 9pm, which means that two mornings a week I get a bit of a lie-in and potter around the house until I start work in the afternoon. This should have been one such morning. I waved bye-bye to my lie-in, and sought out the floppy disk.

(In my defence, at this point I did wonder why he had put it on a floppy disk and even where he had found one. I haven't used floppies for years, and somewhere in the confusion at the back of my head was a suspicion that there was a better way to do this. I was tired though, and ignored the nag. Silly me.)

I was up at 7 the next morning, so I could drop it off in time for him to print it out for school. As I drove over to his dad's, there was still a nagging doubt that this was a ridiculous thing to do. I was also pissed off, however, at missing out on my lie-in and having to negotiate the morning madness on the roads.

His dad answered the door, with a very broad grin. And then....very slowly....it clicked...into... place.....

Bugger!!!!

"Email" I said.

"Email indeed!" said his dad.

Son took the floppy disc off me, looking a little shame-faced if truth be known. At least I have an excuse. I am old-fashioned. This is not my world. But heaven knows it is his - he spends half his life on the computer-box.

Next time I saw my son he had bought a memory stick. Well done, son.

Note to self: ignore nagging doubts at your peril.

(And if anyone knows of a way to transport a rugby kit by email, could they please let me know?)

I Love The Shipping Forecast...

My 11 yr old son and I were listening to the shipping forecast at 5am this morning. Being up before sunrise always brings out the melancholic aspect of me. I have learnt that this is a time for sadness and the darkest of thoughts. I told him that I used to listen to the World Service when he was a tiny baby, and that the shipping forecast was my favourite part of the day. Instantly soothing to me, like being swaddled tight in a blanket. I would get excited if I heard a force 10 gale, and would wait excitedly for my partner to wake so I could tell him that North Utsire had a force 10 today. He could never understand why this was so significant to me, and to be honest neither could I. I was a bit mad in those strange early days of motherhood, when your life moves around feeds and you find yourself awake when the rest of the world is slumbering.

The husky voice of the announcer said “Low Biscay 1010, low just south of Iceland 1012 and high Norway 1029 all losing their identities.” We laughed that they were losing their identities. “Perhaps they need cyclone-therapy” I said, and he laughed and laughed. He is smart and witty and I love him so much it hurts.

We drove into town through the early morning mist and I dropped him at the car park where all his school mates were waiting to climb aboard their coaches. I watched him amble across to his friends with his bag slung across his shoulder.

Don’t talk to strangers in the service stations, always stick with your friends and don’t wear your iPod when you are crossing roads I said to myself in my head as he slouched casually against one of the coaches.

I can’t bear that he is growing up. The world is full of danger and people who will hurt him. I want to wrap him up tight in his cellular blanket, as I did when I was mad and listening to the Shipping Forecast at 5 each morning.

I cried all the way home, weeping gently for my own lost childhood, not his. His world is not full of fear and danger. That was mine.

This Is A Test Transmission...

Please bear with me whilst I conduct a short experiment:

• My husband is extremely sexy and a wonderful and thoughtful lover.

• I love his Thai cooking. I don't at all mind that he uses every pan and utensil in the kitchen - even though Thai is classically one-pot cooking - and then fails to soak them so that the washing up takes me twice as long as it should.

• He is not untidy. His method is just different to mine* but is equally valid and shouldn't be criticised.
  

*which is to put things away when you have finished with them.

• He is not disorganised. I, on the other hand, have an obsessive-compulsive disorder and from now on shall refrain from re-organising the yoghurts in the fridge according to sell-by date.

• The top of the bedroom chest of drawers is absolutely the correct place to store piles of loose change, large numbers of receipts, credit card bills, cello strings and rosin.

• I agree that any flat surface is just fair game.

• I don't at all mind the fact that he pushes the duvet down the bed in the middle of the night and then traps it between his legs, so that I wake up in the morning curled up in a heap at the bottom of the bed in a bid to keep warm.

• Sitting on the sofa on a Saturday afternoon watching the football results definitely counts as 'work' if you have a child sitting next to you.

• Haydn's string quartets are infinitely preferable to Amy Winehouse, Ojos de Brujo or anything else you might actually be able to dance to.

• He can have a free pass for Angelina Jolie, Kate Bush and the woman who works in our local.

• I forfeit my free pass for Zidane, Robert Carlyle and Howard from Take That, thus promising a life time of monogamy.

The Husband claims that he has never read this blog. This may have something to do with the fact that when I first started writing it I said "I don't want you to read it", because I was feeling a little shy. Since then, however, I have said several times "have you read my blog, yet?" which is woman-speak for "I've changed my mind and you can read it if you like." He tells me that he hasn't. It's not that I don't believe him, just that I want to be sure. And this will surely flush him out if he is lying.

On Mothers and Daughters (Pt III)

The telephone rang at 11.30 pm on Friday. The Husband was working a night shift and my son was at his father’s house. I know that when conducted with genuine cooperation shared care is best for the children of separated parents, and my son has shared his time between his father and myself since we separated eight years ago. For most of those eight years, however, I have felt as though something has been ripped from me when he is not around. I appreciate the opportunity for solitude -I am happy when in my own company - but the solitude is often tinged with an underlying fear for his safety: he is not with his mother and therefore he is not safe. (His father, I hasten to add, is a fabulous dad and I couldn’t wish for him a kinder step-mother. My fears are entirely irrational.) So when the telephone rings so late at night it means Something Terrible Has Happened.

I answered in a panic. It was The Mother. My immediate thought was that The Terrible Thing had happened to The Father, who doesn’t enjoy the best of health.

“Don’t worry, nothing’s wrong,” were her first words. (She knows that late night phone calls generate panic. She should know, as it is one of the many faults she has filled me with.)

“I just wanted to know if you are okay?” she said.

This knocked me sideways. The Mother has not actively enquired after my well-being since I was old enough to change my own nappy, and that was approximately 38 years ago. So why on earth was she ringing me at 11.30 on a Friday evening to ask if I was OK? I rifled quickly through my mental filing cabinet to work out what the hell was going on. Nope, no joy there. In the absence of a framework with which to make sense of this strange occurrence, I chose silence. ( Thankfully, I stopped my sarcastic self from replying I’m fine thanks, B.…I managed to somehow leave school with four A levels and got myself into a Good University entirely by accident [I liked the fact that it had a beautiful Minster and a pretty town; I had absolutely no idea it was a Good University]; I have had disastrous relationships with a string of unsuitable men and women, serious bouts of depression, including post-natal depression that left me feeling suicidal at times, and have dealt with the utter terror I have felt at the responsibility of being a mother myself. I am now happy and settled with a beautiful family thanks to an extended period of psychotherapy that enabled me to resolve my deep seated insecurities and attachment issues. But thanks for asking, anyway.) Fortunately, The Mother is an expert at holding both sides of a conversation so she failed to notice that I hadn’t actually responded.

“Well, thank goodness you’re okay” she said, before launching into a long story about how Sister #1 has a new boyfriend and how he sounds very nice, unlike the last one, etc etc. One half of my brain was still desperately searching for a frame of reference for this conversation whilst the other was noting with amusement that she appeared to have all the facts about the new boyfriend entirely correct, suggesting that she does actually listen even though all the behavioural indications are to the contrary. I made a mental note to tell Sister #1.

“Thank goodness you are okay anyway,” she concluded. “I have been so worried about you.”

I grab my opportunity.“B – what have you been worrying about?” I ask.

“Well, the snow!” she exclaims, as if it is glaringly obvious.

I glance outside and there is a very light dusting of snow on the ground. This could only cause me problems if I had a serious snow-phobia (chionophobia, apparently) and a cruel and vicious husband who made me stand in it for kicks. Given that I have neither, I still couldn’t see the point.

“The snow?” I enquired.

“Yes, the snow!!” she repeated. “I was watching the news and the M62 was just terrible. Blizzards, freezing fog and probably black ice too. I’ve been so worried about you!”

Things started to fall very slowly into place.

I haven’t worked in Manchester for the past four years. But the thought was there, bless her.

What On Earth Does He See In Me...?

The Husband and I have both been practising very hard since Christmas. I can now play 'Take Me Out' (level: HARD!) on Guitar Hero. I rock! He, meanwhile, can play his Grade 5 cello pieces beautifully. He is sophisticated and talented. He loves me anyway.

On Mothers and Daughters (Part II)

I have had a strange and emotional weekend. My sisters and I took our mother to London to celebrate her 70^th birthday. We left our father at home, on the pretext that it was to be a ‘girly weekend’ but in reality because they are difficult individuals who become intolerable when a pair. So a girly weekend it was, with the brother we were staying with elevated to honorary girly status and his wife in a stoic supporting role.

I rarely see my mother out of her domestic context. The family gathers around her, as she is unsettled when removed from her natural habitat and is an uneasy guest in all our homes. She rules her own home with an iron fist and a viper’s tongue, however, and occasionally I will still flinch if she moves towards me, in honour of an archaic memory. My siblings and I have forged fragile but loyal adult relationships. But with my mother I remain locked in a relational dynamic that is flooded by the past until the present has no room.

She was truly out of context this weekend: a guest in her son’s home, pampered and spoiled by her daughters as we ferried her round ‘that London’. And through the fissures that appeared I was able to see glimpses of the present. I saw a frail old lady, scared of the world and anxious to please. I saw an ageing parent struggling to accept her children’s successes and independence, but bursting with pride at their ease in the world. As we cussed and shouted and laughed ourselves hoarse over dinner, I watched her fade into the background and let her children set the rules of engagement. I saw her through a stranger’s eyes and the past was, for once, in the past.

Happy Times This Christmas...

• I am a fan of anything that kids and parents can enjoy together – The Simpsons, rollercoasters, hash cookies – and Guitar Hero ticks all the boxes. For the uninitiated this is a PS2 game where you simulate rock riffs with a real-life (well, plastic) guitar which attaches to the console. The four of us played for many an hour and I discovered that firstly, I am a very competitive parent and, secondly, I could give Suzi Quatro a run for her money. Normally I am utterly and laughingly hopeless at PS2 games but let me tell you, this mum really ROCKS! (And The Husband found it strangely arousing…)

• Family dance classes: showing my son ‘how we did it in my day’ to the Arctic Monkeys, and him laughing so hard he turned puce.

• The annual trip to the pantomime. We laughed loudly, we booed even more loudly, we shouted ‘behind you’ and we sang along competitively to a ridiculous song. The Husband is so loud and potentially embarrassing that we draw straws for who sits next to him. I hope the kids don’t grow out of this.

• Tucking my son up in bed on Christmas night, and him telling me it has been his best Christmas ever. He says it every year, and every year I find it more touching.

• Spending four days with my loveliest, bestest friend, laughing and crying in equal measures and remembering how special it is to have some women-time.

On Being a Mother...

I was sitting at the kitchen table with my 11-year-old son, discussing his Christmas list which he had sourced himself on the internet due to his mother’s terrible lack of organisational skills.

“You can get all of it on Amazon,” he was telling me, “and if you go for the second-hand options I can get five PS2 games and five books. And of course a surprise” he added, with a frown.

It was then he noticed his 8-year-old stepsister, eyeing us with concern. He paused.

“The thing is,” he directed at her “when you are my age Santa only brings you a couple of small presents, because he saves the best for the little ones”.

She looked satisfied, and went back to her supper. He winked at me knowingly. I felt a surge of love for my lovely, thoughtful, kind little boy and remembered my siblings cruelly disabusing me of the Santa myth when I was only three or four. Perhaps I have not been such a bad mother, I thought to myself, to produce such a lovely son. And my eyes welled with tears.

“Mum!” he said with disdain.

“What on earth are you crying about?!”

Oh, the joys of motherhood.

On Mothers and Daughters...

I awake filled with the milk of human kindness. I briefly wonder why, but, working on the premise that only misery responds well to analysis, I let it be. This seems like a good opportunity to visit The Mother, requiring as it does reserves of good will and tolerance.

I have been seated at her kitchen table for approximately 3 minutes and already I am aware that the local park is once again home to a flasher (and the Pope, is he still Catholic?); she is devastated as a very distant relative has prostate cancer (I wasn’t aware of his existence until this moment), and The Father is a lazy, selfish shit (which I have known since I was able to understand the words ‘lazy’ and ‘selfish’. The ‘shit’ part she added when I reached the age of consent to swearing).

The Mother has elevated the one-sided conversation to an art form. Her expertise is so widely recognised that the local college has approached her to teach an NVQ in ‘Lack of Social Skills'. The Father has availed himself of the opportunity for respite and is recumbent in front of the television. Before long I have adopted a familiar, defeated pose. My eyes glaze over and my energy saps. I begin to muse on my options:

Option 1. Elbow my way into the conversation until I force her to acknowledge that I too am in the room. Benefits: sometimes this actually works. Cost: it takes a lot of energy and leaves me feeling irritated.

Option 2. Give in, and let her bombard me with her unique version of white noise until she gets tired. Benefits: It’s familiar and we all know our role. Cost: it takes a lot of energy and leaves me feeling irritated.

Option 3. Find a genuine interest in her deliverances and accept who she is with love and compassion, even if that person is critical, carping and self-obsessed and even if I am, more often than not, on the wrong end of it. Benefits: she may find some compassion back. Cost: it still takes energy, which in itself leaves me feeling irritated.

It seems I am destined, at least for today, to leave feeling irritated. So I opt for the path of least resistance and succumb to a crushingly boring collection of stories about people I can’t remember, people I never knew, and people she insists that I would know if I ever showed an interest in her life. I make no murmur of dissent, which is about the nearest I can get to showing compassion for her lot. After about 3 hours, which in fact only lasts for 30 minutes, she says indignantly ‘So, there you go!’ and folds her arms triumphantly, as if I have demanded that she inform me of every thought that has gone through her head in the past week, and she, martyr that she is, has stood up to the task. I feel bewildered, and, of course, tired and irritated. She still hasn’t asked me how I am. I make my excuses and leave.

Later that evening I speak to Sister # 2.

“I went to see mother today,” I tell her.

“I know” replies sister. "She thinks you must be crap at your job. She says you don't listen."

We both laugh.