But how do we train ourselves to feel the same?
Peter’s friend Philip, who has four – so only himself to blame – says that if he takes fifteen-year-old Sophie and her friends anywhere in the car, he is ordered not to speak.
‘What, at all?’
‘At all.’
So he’s quite looking forward to her going off.
And his friend James’s daughter, when she used to ask for lifts at that age, would say:
‘Thanks Dad – what will you be wearing?’
Mark, whose daughter went to boarding school, says he was told:
‘OK, when you arrive, go through the gates and stay in the car. Also, don’t wear those dreadful shorts.’
‘How were you supposed to attend the event if you weren’t allowed out of the car?’ I ask.
He shrugs. ‘Await further instructions I suppose.’
In my day, the grown-ups assessed our appearance, not the other way round. Though my father sometimes had holes in his jumpers and my mother once came to collect me in a maxi-length blue and gold kaftan, it would never have crossed my mind to criticize their wardrobe. However shambolic they were, you just didn’t.
Other friends ahead of us on this path warn of financial and domestic devastation. Ah, well that should definitely make us less keen.
We must prepare ourselves for nights interrupted by the front door banging as they come in at all hours, trails of dirty clothes along the landing and hordes of their mates descending on the place like locusts as soon as we go out. But we won’t dare protest, because then they’ll drift away and expose themselves to drugs, alcopops and Pot Noodles.
‘But we love our children; we don’t want them to leave.’
‘Ah, they’ll soon turn into monsters, just you wait.’
‘And in any case,’ says another, ‘they don’t leave for ever.’
Philip and Emma’s two eldest are now at university, and they’re considering moving house.
‘Downsizing? Makes sense, I suppose.’
‘Actually, no . . .’
They’re getting an even bigger place for when they all come back.
But before we have to worry about any of that, we’re coming to the next milestone, and the End of an Era. Well, where we see an ending, for him it’s a beginning. From September we will no longer be walking Lawrence to school.
We’ve been on notice for about a year, as more and more of his friends have begun to walk or take the bus. And it’s pretty much our only exercise: half an hour at a brisk pace past the chestnut trees, with a three-metre sprint in the middle to avoid getting flattened on the South Circular, a terrifying speedway with a crossing island about the size of a lilo between you and certain death. It holds only about four people in intimate proximity, and if one of you reaches out to adjust your bag or even scratch, whoever’s at the edge is flipped into the road.
So there’s that.
Also, he’s not yet demonstrating the level of maturity I’m looking for. Along with drinking black coffee and filling the bathroom with the smell of synthetic cedarwood and manly Lynx top notes, he’s taken to sauntering across the road without looking properly, like Jean-Paul Belmondo going up the Champs Elysées in A Bout de Souffle – though one of the reasons JPB looked so cool, I suspect, was that he didn’t have his mother running after him shouting:
‘You didn’t look both ways! There’ll be no Simpsons tonight!’
And Paris’s most famous thoroughfare has nothing on the South Circular.
To be fair, he is growing up and would be utterly feeble if he didn’t try to push his luck a bit now and then. As Peter says with tedious regularity:
‘My mother told me not to ride my bike beyond the end of the road, but I didn’t get where I am today by doing what she said.’
He does not, however, say this to Lawrence.
It’s left to me, as usual, to state the obvious and absorb the ensuing flak.
‘I am looking,’ says Lawrence. ‘You just assume I’m not.’
He may well be right on this, but I don’t like to give ground. I have in my head a maternal satnav which doesn’t intone ‘Turn left’ or ‘Turn right’ but ‘Look out!’ and ‘Aaargh!’ in a panicky squeal.
I consider suggesting he shows me he’s looking by very clearly turning his head, the way my driving instructor taught me to do for mirror-signal-manoeuvre, so the examiner couldn’t miss it. I can just hear the exchange at the school gate:
‘Oi, Lawrence. Why do you do that weird nodding thing when you cross the road?’
‘Oh, it’s quite normal: just to show my mum I’m looking both ways.’
Then I step out from behind a tree.
Aside from that, it’s such a nice walk we sometimes argue over whose turn it is. There are two parents and only five days in the week, so it’s never fair.
The new school is so near he’ll almost be able to leap from his bedroom window through the gate. And what we adults will miss, apart from the exercise and the chance to get all the conkers before everyone else, is the conversation.
It used to be fairly basic topics, like which country the sick stain on the landing looks like – most of us think China – to topics you might call a bit more sophisticated.
‘Say you’ve got a square or a hexagon.’
‘OK.’
‘And all its sides are equal. You can turn it six times, or four if it’s a square, so that it fits into itself. So the Order of Rotational Symmetry is six.’
‘Great!’
I try to think when I can use this in everyday life:
‘We’ve just bought a table for the garden.’
‘Ah, but what’s its Order of Rotational Symmetry?’
Sometimes he tells me the names of clouds. I tend to get cumulo-nimbus mixed up with nimbo-cumulus, for example, so he often has to tell me again. Or he explains about unstable compounds, which makes me think of marriage, one reason he’s likely to go to university whereas I never did.
Or sometimes we just walk along designing our ideal house. We’re both quite keen on energy-saving features, like a magnetic force that could suck all the rubbish into a chute straight to the dump, or a device to prevent unnecessary bending. Or we choose which superpower we’d like to have. I’ve once sat in front of a whole chocolate cake and not eaten it, but I don’t imagine that counts.
‘Right, Mummy: would you be able to fly, become invisible, be telekinetic or set things on fire?’
‘I’d choose telekinesis.’
But my reason is totally sad: to make shirts iron out their own creases and used games kit leap up the stairs. That’s the trouble with parenthood. It not only reorders your priorities to the point where you go into a lingerie department and automatically look for something with ducks on it, but even re-edits your fantasies. I should be saying I’d like to be able to fly over the Grand Canyon or to Mars, but I wonder where I’d put my alarm clock and change of pants. One of my dreams at his age was to be able to get into a sweet shop at night without being discovered; now it’s wanting socks to jump into the dirty washing box. At least at twelve I had some ambition.
Occasionally I think of something I know, like:
‘Do you know why Goldfinger’s number plate is AU 1?’
And he says,
‘Yes. It’s the symbol for gold. You’ve told me that, like, loads of times.’
‘Oh. Have I?’
So I suppose that was the last autumn I will ever walk home for breakfast, my pockets bulging with conkers like advanced ovarian cysts, and the last time we’ve stood on the bridge and waved at the Eurostar zooming along beneath. Gone are the days when we stopped to watch a digger. And perhaps last Friday was also the last night I will ever wake up, boiling hot, an unexpectedly smooth, slender arm flung over my face and a sharp little knee in my side. How many Lasts are we going through, without even realizing? But – looking on the bright side, maybe soon we’ll no longer have to say,
‘Go to bed! Daddy and I are tryi
ng to have what’s left of our evening!’
To which Lawrence now retorts:
‘Don’t have kids, then!’
We have now arrived at school. I gaze up at the chestnut trees, taking a last look. He was three when we first brought him here, carrying his Duplo crane to show the Head.
I ask him:
‘Are you looking forward to being older?’
‘Yes. I want to learn responsibility.’
I want to ask whether this could start with finding his pencil case, PE bag and swimming kit, all currently missing. But just the thought of saying it again is so tedious I say instead:
‘What are you looking forward to most?’
And I am not at all prepared for his answer.
‘Driving. And getting a girlfriend.’
So we’ve gone from superpowers to actual powers; adulthood is no longer some mythical state, but clearly visible on the horizon.
‘Really? I thought boys of your age viewed girls as – well, pointless.’
‘No way! Mum . . .’ He grips me by the arm. ‘You have NO IDEA.’
‘Eh?’ I say, ‘What d’you mean . . .?’
But the bell is going.
‘Never mind,’ he says. ‘Let’s think of somewhere to walk to when we no longer have to walk to school.’
‘Mm, that’s a nice thought,’ I say, wanting to savour the moment. But he calls ‘Bye!’ and goes through the gate, leaving me completely disoriented, like a swimmer flipped over by a sudden change in the current.
Doctor Not in the House
The Jewish American comic Rita Rudner used to tell a joke about a pregnant woman who says to her friend:
‘We’ve had the scan and we know what it is: it’s a lawyer.’
And we’re now pretty sure, eleven years in, that we’ve had a doctor.
Lydia has announced her intention to Do Medicine. Top Trumps! If only my father was alive; ideally you need at least one Jewish or Asian grandparent to fully experience a moment like this. It’s our reward for not being overly ambitious.
‘See?’ I want to say to all the pushy ones, with the Oxbridge Entrance questions pinned to the sides of their cots: just be laid back and chilled like us, and your children will be effortlessly brilliant.
It starts with Doctor in the House coming on TV.
It’s decades since I’ve seen it, and I’m surprised to find it doesn’t contain that much actual doctoring; most of the film is taken up with James Robertson Justice barking at people and a plot by one St Swithin’s rugby team to steal the hospital mascot from the other.
Lydia loves it. The medic’s life, particularly the flirting and mascot-related subterfuge – with patients a peripheral distraction – hugely appeals.
‘You do know that being a doctor isn’t mainly hiding behind doors and stealing toy pandas in striped scarves, don’t you?’ I say.
She fixes me with a furious stare.
‘OF COURSE!!’
We tell quite a few people, as having comprehensively failed the sciences both Peter and I are beside ourselves with excitement, but also awe; medicine is properly Grown Up. And she is genuinely keen on doing Biology and Chemistry to GCSE and probably beyond, so it’s definitely no flash in the bedpan.
OMG OMG OMG! Our daughter is going to be a doctor!
Her weird preoccupations and extreme lack of squeamishness are now starting to make sense.
Handily, I have also just learned of the Wellcome Collection, a world-renowned research body with a huge trove of bizarre and somewhat macabre finds from Henry Wellcome’s extensive travels in the nineteenth century, such as shrunken heads – which look like testicles with faces – and antique fertility charms, including a Japanese one of a naked ivory couple entwined inside a tiny hollowed-out gourd. It is perfect for kids.
They also hold lavish exhibitions, copious talks and events, all free. Fancy ‘A Guided Tour in British Sign Language of the Institute of Sexology’, for example? And there’s a library where you can look up obscure medical info like the first use of mare’s urine in fertility treatment.
‘This is such great timing!’ I tell Peter. ‘This place is ideal.’
As Lawrence is also feeling quite sciencey at the moment, I take them both, starting with ‘Meet the Elements’ – a lively, browsing sort of event one Friday evening with a delightfully non-educational ambience, more like a party. The demonstrations include liquid nitrogen being spilled onto a table where it forms tiny droplets that jump around as if they’re alive! Wow!
‘Because it reaches boiling point below room temperature,’ explain the demonstrators.
I am absolutely none the wiser, but the kids look vaguely as if they understand, which is what counts. After all, my role now is purely as the vessel for their greatness. So when I see on the website that Professor Brian Greene – Director of the Center for Theoretical Physics at Columbia and literally one of the Cleverest People in the World – is coming to talk on string theory, I say to Lawrence:
‘Let’s pop along!’
It doesn’t matter that I don’t even understand the title; all I have to do from now on is facilitate. My grandparents escaped an absolute monarchy so that their children, when they had them, would be free. And when my confidence failed me, my dad would say:
‘We didn’t flee all this way on our flat feet so you could give up,’ in a really supportive, encouraging way.
So I now see myself on a continuum, a player in a greater story, The Calman Trajectory, my lack of academic achievement a blessed irrelevance. I doze off in my seat to the erudite murmur of Brian Greene’s multiverse, relaxed in the knowledge that my children are going to Do Great Things in the World.
Peter and I then take them back to the Wellcome, to see ‘Skin’ – a comprehensive exploration of everything from tattoos to the bubonic plague, which holds their attention for four hours. Lydia is particularly fascinated by a twenty-minute video on impetigo, featuring abundant close-ups of ravaged arms, torsos and so on, and watches it three times.
That night, she goes to bed with the British Medical Association A–Z Family Health Encyclopedia (Revised Edition), which has some really juicy pictures.
Soon after, she demands a hefty and quite dense two-volume work on anatomy for her thirteenth birthday.
‘It’s quite expensive.’
‘But it’s for her career, so . . .’
‘Isn’t this exciting?!’ we say to each other, about once a day.
Then one day I realize doctoring hasn’t been mentioned for a while. The British Medical Association A–Z Family Health Encyclopedia (Revised Edition) is back downstairs and the two-volume work on anatomy sits in a corner of her room, gradually disappearing under a mound of clothes.
Not long after the last sighting of the anatomy books, I come in to a really hideous smell emanating from the kitchen.
‘Um, Lyd? What’s that on the stove?’
I know she’s not interested in cooking.
‘A mouse skull. I’m just getting it clean.’
And she busies herself cheerfully with some little bones on the dining table, like Delia Smith at a crime scene.
‘And – is that a scalpel?’
‘Mm. Got it online.’
‘You know what?’ I tell Peter. ‘I think her thing could be pathology!’
I’ve just heard Professor Sue Black, the famous forensic anthropologist, on the radio, and I have a feeling about Lydia’s speciality, you might say, in my bones.
‘Hey, Lyd. There’s this woman who identifies people who’ve been dead for ages, hanged from trees or killed in wars and stuff. She went to Kosovo, and – well, anyway. And she identified a paedophile just from the unusual shape of the end of his thumb on the edge of a picture. Amazing, eh!’
Surely this is the closest humans will ever get to having superpowers.
She looks at me blankly.
‘Cool. I’m just off to Mimi’s to get a mouse – a whole one.’
‘OK. And – why?’
‘To stuff, of course!’
‘Right.’
‘They’ve got a load of them in their freezer. For their pet python.’
She skips off happily down the road.
‘I feel we’ve veered off a bit here,’ I tell Peter, my hope of being a doctor or pathologist’s mother still glimmering faintly on the mental horizon, now less a vision than a fast evaporating mirage.
‘It’s good that she has such varied interests,’ he says.
When I come down later to make supper I am greeted by an unusual tableau.
Mimi’s mouse is standing in a home-made transparent box, holding the little ukulele keyring Lydia got in her Christmas stocking, but with the actual keyring removed so it looks as though it’s playing the instrument – like a tiny rodent Eric Clapton.
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘How did you know what to do?’
‘YouTube. It’s really easy. You just have to make sure you don’t pierce the guts, so they don’t leak. You have to get the skin off, a bit like pulling off a sock. First you make a shallow cut, at the sternum . . .’
‘OK, that’s great, thanks.’
‘I think I’ll do a rabbit next.’
‘Don’t tell me Mimi’s got those in her freezer as well.’
‘Of course not: their snake is far too small. I’m going to get one from a reptile food supplier.’
Well, duh.
Then while she’s browsing frozen mammals, Peter finds a dead squirrel, lying neatly in our garden, at the edge of the pond. And her eyes light up, like Indiana Jones’s when he sees the golden idol.
‘What did it die of?’
‘It’s got no marks or anything: natural causes, I suppose.’
‘Can I have it? Please please?’
‘Really we should nail it to the back door,’ I say, ‘as a warning to the others.’
Once you’ve seen a bird feeder after they’ve finished with it, you realize these ‘cute little creatures’ are in fact mindless thugs. They also bite the heads off baby birds. If we’d deployed them to fight the Nazis, the war would have been over much sooner.
Confessions of a Bad Mother: The Teenage Years Page 12