The first I hear of it is when he asks me if I know what heroin looks like.
‘Er, I’m not sure. Sort of brown, I think. Why?’
‘I’ve got to draw it for my homework.’
He shows me his exercise book. There’s a cup, some roundish dots, a cigarette packet, a couple of slightly wobbly-looking sticks and something that looks a bit like a very small molehill next to a hypodermic.
‘That’s coffee, that’s aspirin, those are cigarettes, that’s two joints, and that’s heroin.’
‘Very good!’ I say. ‘Lovely syringe.’
I’m particularly glad to see the cigarettes.
‘They kill more people than anything! We saw a video of a man and his lungs were all black.’
‘Urgh! And I met a man who smoked so much he had to have his tongue removed.’
This, sad to say, is true. But will Lawrence remember it when the time comes?
‘But I need more drugs, Mummy,’ he says.
‘Let’s see . . . There’s heroin and LSD and cocaine, um, amphetamines . . .’
The names come to mind in a kind of rhythmic canter, like Tom Lehrer’s song about the periodic table: he-ro-in and L-S-D, am-phe-ta-mines and ecs-sta-seee . . . I don’t sing this out loud.
‘Cocaine’s quite popular,’ I say vaguely.
‘What does that do to you, Mummy?’
‘I think it makes you talk too fast and believe you sound much cleverer than you actually are.’
In other words, like me all the time.
‘So obviously I’ve never felt the need to take it. Or ecstasy. It comes on little bits of paper sometimes with smileys on. And LSD. Do some smileys and you’ve got them both covered.’
At this his credulity is strained.
‘Bits of paper! What’s the point of those?!’
‘You eat them. The paper is impregnated with the drug.’
He snorts derisively.
‘What are they meant to do, anyway?’
I stop – not my instinctive response during most conversations – and think.
I’ve never ingested these two substances either. But here I am, presented with a golden opportunity to influence my child’s future! He’s at the stage where all this is still hypothetical. And although I know that this information will probably never come to mind when he’s jumping about to music in a field with ten thousand others, it’s impossible not to hope that it will, just a tiny bit. The description I’m about to offer could make the difference between life and death one day. I say ‘one day’ to make it sound further off in time than it actually is. In as little as seven years he could be in a tent or a nightclub stairwell about to make a life-changing chemical decision. And here I am, imagining that I have a smidgen of control over the outcome.
Because, is he, in all likelihood, ever going to say:
‘I would have a couple of Es off you, except my mum says they might kill me. Have you got any Kit-Kats?’
‘Well, Mummy?!’
‘Er . . . what? Oh, right. Ecstasy makes you love everybody but it can kill you, er, in some unlucky instances, and, er, LSD makes you see things that aren’t there, often in quite a scary way.’
The former heroin addict I briefly went out with in the eighties told me he was more frightened by acid than anything – aside from his mother.
‘Right,’ says Lydia, ‘I’m definitely not having that.’
Excellent.
‘Unless I can see something really nice, like ponies.’
‘Right . . . Can you both clear up now for supper?’
But Lawrence gestures again at his book.
‘We’re supposed to have thirty.’
‘Thirty?!’
‘We did thirty drugs in the lesson.’
‘Gosh,’ I say. ‘I probably know about eight or ten, but thirty . . .’
‘Remember, it includes cigarettes and caffeine and stuff.’
Phew. We sit down.
‘Did you know caffeine’s quite bad for you?’
‘Well, yes. I do try not to drink too much coff—’
‘And alcohol. You drink quite a lot of wine, don’t you?’
‘Er. Well. A fair bit, yes.’
Has this child ever had any illusions?
I’m sure he’s always known the Tooth Fairy and I had the same handwriting – not to mention a similar tendency to have a few drinks then fall into bed without delivering his pound. He’s a natural sceptic, and therefore, I decide, less likely ever to fall under the spell of drug dealers. This cheers me considerably, although the thought occurs that he and his classmates have been eagerly putting up their hands to tell the teacher whose parents drink the most.
‘And – are you listening, Mummy? We’re allowed to include paracetamol and things like that.’
‘Oh! Well, in that case . . .’
I reel off a list of every painkiller known to woman.
Peter comes in.
‘What are you up to?’
‘We’re just spelling diazepam.’
‘Jolly good! Drink?’
‘Yes please.’
‘It’s your favourite drug, isn’t it Mummy?’
It is indeed – apart from sugar. If chips and chocolate weren’t legal – and they frankly shouldn’t be – I’d have to hang around in alleys flogging stolen phones for £5 wraps of Dairy Milk. We know the children aren’t that keen on sweets, one reason we’ve been able to steal their Easter eggs; they’ve been known to leave chocolate unattended for months. Peter has occasional binges such as the chocolate teddy, but is otherwise not a slave to his appetites. Clearly the most addictive personality in the house is mine – so we can stop worrying.
In and Out the Pupa
That summer we go on holiday to Italy, where Lydia is stung by a wasp and doesn’t cry. As I’m marvelling at this, she smooths on some anti-sting lotion and says:
‘You may think I handled that rather well, Mummy, but it was in fact only a baby wasp.’
And yes, I know ‘baby wasps’ are actually larvae which can’t fly – but handled? Where is she getting this disconcertingly mature mode of expression? It’s not in the books. We all know to expect them to start getting bigger in some places and growing hair in others; no one tells you what to do when they start talking like Paul McKenna.
She is after all only nine, and still using travel not to broaden her horizons but to increase her vast collection of fluffy toys. Have you ever stood in an airport and wondered what sort of person ignores the little models of, say, the Colosseum or Leaning Tower to commemorate their holiday to Italy, in favour of a cuddly hedgehog holding a plaque inscribed with their star sign? Well, now you know.
Then at supper one night we’re all talking away as usual, and, bursting to say something, she puts up her hand. She even holds it up with the other one and presses her lips together while signalling ‘Pick me!’ with her eyes.
Plus we’ve gone on holiday with other people, which changes things again, because whatever stage they’re at, children are hugely influenced by the company they’re in. Well, aren’t we all? We were once invited to lunch in a massive house filled with grand pianos and priceless sculptures, whose owner demonstrated how to tiptoe – actually mimed Very Careful Walking, like a pantomime villain – so they wouldn’t crash into any of the valuables. So we were all quite surprised when their children threw food, and Lawrence and Lydia – evidently not wanting to be rude – followed suit.
In Italy we’re staying with a nine-, a thirteen- and a three-year-old, so it could go either way. But I’ve reckoned without the place itself, which exerts its own civilizing influence. With the exception of a rogue Coke-ordering incident – the downside of putting all the kids on their own table – they behave beautifully.
‘Well done for being so grown up,’ Peter and I gush proudly in the car afterwards, about two seconds before hysterics erupt in the back. I’ve been urging them to learn some new words, but this is definitely not what I had in mind.
&nbs
p; ‘Ha ha!’ shrieks Lydia. ‘I’m a shag!’
Peter immediately shoots me an accusing look, like the respectable citizen who automatically blames everything on the problem family down the road.
‘No, Lydia,’ says Lawrence, ‘shag’s a verb, a doing word.’
I say to their father,
‘Aren’t they meant to be growing out of this phase?’
‘She seems to be growing into it.’
Why can’t they develop like normal species? You don’t get caterpillars becoming butterflies for a bit, then going back into their pupae and coming out again as caterpillars. If you plotted her mental maturity on a graph it would be like a series of Hokusai waves: going up and curling back, then down again.
I suppose they’re like those friction cars you have to pull into reverse and let go; it’s simply how they’re designed.
Our friend Angela says one reason independence doesn’t happen in a strictly linear fashion is that the separation process is more of a long-term, evolving thing.
‘How long term?’
‘Well, one of mine still didn’t want me to wave to him when we met at the theatre for his birthday last month.’
‘How could you tell?’
‘The way he stood, really, when he saw me across the foyer, with his arms pinned to his sides.’
He’s twenty-eight.
Maybe she has a particularly strange wave.
But then, our desires aren’t straightforward either. We want them to grow out of reciting rude words in the back of the car, but not to stop curling up on our laps. At times I want them to stay this age forever, a feeling that evaporates whenever I find it’s taken me an hour just to get them into bed.
And, again in the car, we overhear this:
‘And then rum . . . sugar and mint.’
I hiss at Peter:
‘That’s how to make a mojito!’
He laughs, quietly so they don’t hear.
I turn round.
‘Are you telling your little sister how to make a mojito? How do you know what goes in a mojito?’
‘I’ve had one,’ he says casually.
‘What?! Where?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. In a bar somewhere.’
When we come back from holiday, things seem to calm down.
‘Could we go shopping together one day?’ Lydia says.
This is it! The First Mother-and-Daughter Shopping Day Milestone – well, apart from shouting at each other in the bridesmaids’ section of BHS.
Though I am waging a – largely futile – campaign to get her to save rather than spend, I really feel quite moved. Only recently I was in M&S and passing the ‘first bra’ section, felt a lump in my throat: just a 30AA lump, but still.
‘Oh yes!’ I say. ‘We can have a lovely day together.’
‘We could go to the Build a Bear shop!’
Ah.
This is the current girl craze. They go to a party where a woman hands out teddy bears with little hearts inside their chests that you can remove, or put in, or something – though not in a cool or even educational way – and clothes and accessories, from strangely wide tops and shorts to sunglasses. And ‘birth certificates’ with the child’s name on as parent. The typography is truly horrible.
It costs the host’s parents I don’t know what, and afterwards the child comes home and makes you go to the Build a Bear shop and ruin yourself. So, basically they’re Tupperware parties for six- to nine-year-olds, except that no one ever burst into tears because they hadn’t got every single size of plastic vegetable storer. Actually, maybe some people did. I collect spherical pebbles, so who am I to talk.
‘No, Lydia,’ I say. ‘Because you’ve got two already,’ not to mention a stack of their bizarre accoutrements like flip-flops – they don’t have toes – ‘and soon you’ll grow out of that and wish you’d spent the money on something else.’
Suddenly she is furious.
‘I’ll NEVER GROW OUT OF BUILD A BEAR – NEVER!!’
And she storms out.
‘This is all part of testing the boundaries,’ says my mother.
‘Yeah, but couldn’t she just ask where they are? This is knackering.’
She laughs supportively, but I get off the phone before she starts telling me what I was like at that age.
The thing is, it really is exactly like an argument with a teenager, really exactly. The terrible thought recurs: what if childhood is adolescence? The whole bloody thing?
When they’re little they adore you, even – though it may not seem it – through the tantrum stage. You’ve brought them into the world, are the source of their entire life-sustaining universe, and you know everything. Then they discover they can gain knowledge that you don’t have.
‘Mummy, did you know that three times three is nine?’
‘Gosh, is it really? I never knew that.’
Or, if you’re Lawrence – in Year Five:
‘Lydia . . . did you know that the angle of the average erection is 160 degrees?’
Which is the sort of detail you get from PSHE these days.
But it happens much sooner than that.
We just don’t realize it.
Maybe that’s because we’re looking at the wrong things.
What if we paid less attention to Key Stage One and other academic issues and continued more in the vein of nursery schools? So they start with learning how to use the loo, how to line up for lunch, sit down quietly and listen and so on. Then reading, of course, and counting. And drawing. Oh, and loving Nature, the way we did before it became the Environment. Then they go onto the next level of vital abilities that will sustain them for life.
I don’t know why Lydia decided to draw a line under the argument with Poppy, or how Lawrence was able to shrug off the punch in the lunch queue. It’s an invaluable skill, one that I would give anything to have had – to have now. And perhaps that – along with the arguing and the incredibly tiresome stubbornness – is how they grow up.
So later on, instead of worrying so much about whether they’ll be doing ten GCSEs or be first violin or the lead in the school play, we could notice if they’ve learned how to negotiate, or to disagree with their friends without falling out, or to expend less of their energy on the effort to be popular. And if you think that’s a side issue, ask any woman over thirty-five how many unnecessary things she’s done in her life just to be liked.
Each moment, with every single spark of their energy, they’re focused on gaining the skills to become independent beings who – one, not so far-off day – won’t need us. And this might be part of that.
Am I saying we should all roll over and rejoice in our kids being impossible? Not at all: if we don’t argue back they tend to find more spectacular ways to rebel.
Two’s a Crowd
The children used to deploy numerous creative strategies to try and get to stay up later:
‘Would you like a foot rub, Mummy? You know you like them.’
‘Oh, what’s that book? I love books.’
‘Would you like another glass of wine? Shall I get it?’
And the old standby:
‘I love you, Mummy! You’re the Best Mummy in the World.’
A mere year or so on, however, they no longer need to. They are so energetic, and we are so worn out, that the unthinkable has happened: last Saturday we fell asleep before them.
As with so many of these stages, it’s happened far sooner than we expected. To paraphrase John Lennon, growing up is what they do while you’re reading books on child development.
We blunder around looking for voices breaking and bosoms burgeoning, deciding that if we don’t see them, our kids must be the same as they were last year. But they’re not. We’re just missing the subtle indicators that show us the true picture.
We had a classic example this week. Having hitherto enjoyed only a superficial acquaintance with the hairbrush, leading to shouting matches on the doorstep every time we left the house, Lydia had n
ot only brushed and tied back her hair, but fallen asleep clutching the formerly reviled object. I called Peter in and we stood transfixed together over her recumbent form, like Howard Carter discovering Tutankhamun with his golden flail. Her previously preferred night-time companion, the disturbingly lipsticked Build a Bear, now lay on the floor with its skirt up.
‘It brings a lump to the throat,’ said Peter.
And as development indicators go, it beats the hell out of flouncing and door slamming.
So not only do internal and external changes not always happen in sync, there’s a sort of zigzag pattern to it. For example, Lydia’s allowed to go to school by herself now if she wants to; it’s a short walk with only one scary main road and Doug, the nice lollipop man, to see her across. I’ve already embarrassed her by snapping at drivers using mobiles and telling some of the older girls to wait for the green man. The older girls! So going alone would bring at least two benefits. She’d gain more independence and I wouldn’t be there to show her up. Also, I’d get more time in bed.
But she doesn’t always want to. Or she wants to go on her bike, which is too small. When she pedals her knees hit the handlebars. But when I said, ‘We’ll consider it,’ She said: ‘Well, I’ve considered it and I’ve said Yes.’
And then later, when it flared up again:
‘I’ve taken your comments into account.’
As for Lawrence, he’s showing no signs of the rejection he should be inflicting on me about now, when boys are meant to reinforce their masculinity by shifting away from their mother towards their father. If anything, he’s oddly polite.
When we meet a neighbour in the street and I tell him to say hello, he says:
‘Mum, I think we can safely say I’ve passed the point now where you need to tell me to do this.’
See what I mean?
And he’s right. The ‘say hello’ reflex is one of the habits I’ve got from my mother. It’s not even conscious. I don’t find myself thinking: ‘I must start doing all the things she did that irritated me when I was that age.’ It’s just preloaded, like a game on your phone you don’t want.
I’m getting the same amount of affection as ever.
But one evening, I perceive a change. A cheery irony has lately begun to creep in. When I said,
Confessions of a Bad Mother: The Teenage Years Page 6