I was in the car, so I can be forgiven for not knowing the full facts, but then I also suspect that some of the full facts have not been disclosed. On Jeremy Vine’s excellent Radio 2 show today (of which I am an avid listener) there was a man dying of a terminal illness, desperate to reach his son who he had “lost touch with”.
I stopped the car to listen properly, affected, as I am sure most listeners were, by his heartfelt plea to speak to his son one last time. Jezza filled us in on the facts. They hadn’t fallen out, they’d just “lost touch” a few years ago and he was desperate to make amends.
I am sad for the man, sad for his family and sad that a life is coming to an end. But why is he looking for his son now? Why is it so desperate NOW and not ten years ago?
Granted, I know none of the facts. His son could have gone travelling, deliberately left his family behind, committed a crime, taken his own life, anything. But why should a parent wait until they are about to shuffle off the mortal coil to make amends? I suspect I would have felt this a few years ago anyway but now I am a mother I feel it even more. I hope that I don’t get to the end of my life and think, “I wish…” or “I regret”. As a parent, it’s my duty to my child not to.
So with my music-writer hat on, today I have occasion to be writing about the fantastic folk family The Watersons. I am currently listening to Eliza Carthy and her mother Norma Waterson’s 2010 disc, Gift, and am not a little teary.
Not only have I always looked with bewilderment and envy at the closeness of the group and their intuitive performing, I also regularly trail after them at folk festivals, sobbing into my real ale that I will never get up on stage with my ma and knock out a couple of tunes.
In fact, the very idea makes me spit my coffee out. But it really shouldn’t, should it? I sing. I sing in a choir, I have sung in bands, I sing in my bedroom with my guitar and I LOVE karaoke. My mother loves music and I know she CAN sing. She’s coming to visit tomorrow. Could I? Dare I? Could we…could we sing a song together?
Gulp.
I am delighted that Daughtersnet reported Carrie Dunn has decided to write a book based on her column here. It’s such a simple idea but one that anyone with a mother who’s ever read a book (or should that be anyone who’s ever read a book and had a mother? Whatever) will relate to. Our favourite characters’ relationships with their mothers can say so much about them. Even if they don’t have one at all. Pick a character. Katy from What Katy Did, you say? No mother!! An Aunt Izzy instead. Hmmm. *Strokes beard thoughtfully*.
I cannot wait to read this book. Watch this space for more news on it.
Inspired by the talk of French children not throwing food and breastfed babies having temper tantrums (or something), I have been wondering about the value of raising an obedient child.
I was raised to never question anything. The most common words in my house were, “No buts,” “Don’t answer back,” and “Because I said so.”
I’m probably not alone in this and it’s a fairly common parenting technique but it did mean that for years, despite being unhappy with many things about my relationship with my parents, I kept schtum. Talking about problems was not encouraged, rebelling was off the cards and shouting was simply unheard of.
This is why I will try and bite down VERY hard on my tongue the first time I get the urge to say, “because I said so”. I will welcome my daughter’s inevitable refusal to obey (remind me of that when she is three)
I came across this brilliant article on Parent Dish by writer Keris Stainton on parentless parenting. Keris has sadly lost both her parents and talks about what it’s like raising her children without them around.
I have suffered nothing like the loss she has but in a weird way I kind of (only kind of) identify. Without the usual mother-daughter closeness, I don’t know how I was when I was seven months old, the age my daughter is now. I can ask my mother and she is happy to answer but to talk about it seems odd. I didn’t talk to her much about my pregnancy and she has never asked too many details about the birth. She is the last person I would go to for advice on feeding or sleeping.
It’s not that she wouldn’t be happy to oblige if she could, it’s that the foundations just aren’t there to facilitate my asking in the first place. Instead I ask friends, books, websites, Oliver James!
Our counselling is, of course, helping us to overcome these communication barriers but in the meantime I am forging ahead as a parentless parent of sorts.
How much parenting advice does your mother give you? Are you happy to ask for it? Is it implied or supplied? I’d love to know.
Because I am pretentious and like to look good to fellow train passengers (and, well because I do actually like reading it), I subscribe to The New Yorker. I can’t really afford it and I seldom have time to read it properly but I like to have it about the place (and in the toilet for when guests come). Anyway, in a rare five minutes the other morning I chanced upon a poem by Sharon Olds called Still Falling For Her. It’s a paean to the poet’s mother and, whilst ode poetry like this usually leaves me cold, I was hooked.
It was a moving tribute with some breath-taking imagery but what grabbed me more than anything was the title, Still Falling For Her.(“I think I may go on falling, like my own flesh, for the rest of my life, and maybe I’ll still be falling for my mother after my death.”)
It speaks to me of the passionate, all-encompassing crush-love I have never felt for my mother (I am sure she won’t mind me saying that as I am not entirely sure she feels it for me). It reminds me of the adoration I have always felt I should feel but simply don’t. And it reminds me of the first few days of my own daughter’s life and how my heart soared every time she gazed at me. It reminds me of the overwhelming desire I had and still have to make her proud of me, to make her fall for me.
If you could turn back the clock and drop in on yourself Scrooge-style at the age of 16 what would you say to yourself? Better still, what do you wish your mother had said to you?
Me? That I could be gorgeous. That I was gorgeous. Let’s face it, all 16-year-olds are gorgeous aren’t they? I desperately wish my mother had stood me in front of the mirror and told me to stick on a mini-skirt and show off my fantastic (in hindsight, granted) legs.
I wish she could have pushed me out the door with a large dollop of self-esteem instead of a huge chip and, most of all, I wish she could have taught me that a pair of tweezers, a razor and a spritz of deodorant could have made the difference between years of romantic wilderness and more snogging than I could ever imagine (but more on that later). A fellow journalist is looking for snippets of “things you would like to tell your daughters”. If you would like to offer your own, please comment below and/or email her on gcantle@hotmail.com.
Thanks for reading!
I went to a party on Saturday. It was the party of one of my best friends’ three-year-old daughter. His (my friend’s) mother was there. I’d never met her before but I barely left her side. Why? Because she smelt nice. She was wearing earrings and a nice frilly blouse. Halfway through the party she went to do the washing up. She fussed over people and she cradled my baby in her arms and made faces at her. Afterwards I texted my friend and told him I loved his mum. I think he thought I was a lunatic.
I have exhibited this behaviour for the last, thirty-cough-something years. As a child I would go to friends’ houses and gaze incredulously as their mothers would fuss around them, cleaning up after them, being (what they perceived as) over-bearing and (that dreaded word) “mumsy”. I would sigh longingly as I watched them dodge over-zealous hugs and kisses and I would go home and sit in my room and wish I had a different mother.
I couldn’t tell anyone. In fact the whole idea of not adoring your mother is taboo in girl-world. Women idolise their mothers. It’s what they do. Your mother is your best friend. A mother’s love never wavers. Blood is thicker than water. Et cetera, et cetera.
But that was my childhood. And this is now. I channelled my energies into obsessing over, I mean finding out about, other people’s relationships with their mums, I began the long process of fixing my relationship with mine. Oh, and I made a daughter of my own to fuss over…
This blog is about those other relationships and how they work. It’s also about how they break down, how they are fixed and how they aren’t always what we want them to be.