If she does live for another ten years, she will end up in a dreaded care home – a place she said she would rather die than enter. The news reports are so ghastly and depressing about such places, I empathise with her fear. I would do everything to ensure she was well cared for but she would have to be dragged there kicking and screaming, and I don’t think I can face the trauma unaided. The charges are atrociously expensive: £3,500 per month, on average. More than three times the cost of the revenue I’d get from renting out her property to help pay for it. And when she does pass away, the house would be sold to pay the outstanding debt – unless, of course, she lives so long that the entire value of the place is drained to the last penny. It’s the sorry story of what is happening to my generation across England (rules are different in Scotland, where care of the elderly is free). The side-effect of increased longevity is penury for the children.
I cannot lie: I could use the inheritance to admirable means. I would be able to realise my life’s dream: to sail across the Pacific Ocean, volunteering on marine conservation projects and helping to raise awareness of what’s happening to our seas. While I’m still relatively fit, I could work for environmental projects and contribute something really worthwhile to the planet without having to worry about working the nine to five.
But, instead, the value of the house will most likely be spent on maintaining the ancient life-form that is my mother as I, too, grow old and my scuba-diving, hill-walking years pass into history. It’s possible I could be in my late sixties before she dies. The futility of that makes me feel very depressed. I have a lot to offer the coral reefs of the Pacific and the orphaned animals of Central America. I need to be keeping very fit, but as long as I stay in an office job in a city, that’s unlikely to happen. In my bleakest moments I worry I’ll drink myself to death instead. This crisis in mother management has driven me to the bottle. I am managing this completely alone as the only living relative. The healthy way out of my alcohol dependency will be travelling and plenty of outdoor life. The alternative is a liver transplant.
I’ve been trying to focus on the positive with my mother. She was always good with money and alert to world news and politics and aware of environmental destruction. She joined Greenpeace in the 1970s and I was proud of her for that. She was always kind to animals and loved pets. But she even denied herself the companionship of a pet after Dad died because something might ‘go wrong’. Her life motto has surely been the opposite of ‘Go For It’. What would that be: ‘Don’t Dare Risk It’?
I find it so sad that she never joined a club or went on day-trips and got to know people. She had so much to offer – she could talk the hind legs off a donkey and had a keen sense of aesthetics. She was always generous, a good cook, a fantastic gardener, and very aware of maintaining good health. She could be nicely turned out, with beautifully styled hair that she did herself in tiny pin-curls, which took hours. She cared about how she looked. She could even have met another man after Dad died. Why did she continue to always expect the worst?
I wish I could go back and meet her as a young girl and help her be more open-minded, show her the beautiful world that is out there. She always loved hot weather but never seemed motivated to try a foreign holiday. We were quite badly off when I was a kid, but we could have afforded a package trip to Spain. Going anywhere outside of the UK was as likely as a trip to the moon. I worry sometimes that something really awful happened to her when she was young, to make her so resentful and fearful. Different kinds of abuse cause personality disorders and anger. Was all her moaning about the war and Dad just a smokescreen masking something far more traumatic? I can’t bear to think she might have suffered at the hands of an abuser; that all this self-denial was down to a simple lack of confidence. People of her generation and class didn’t talk about ‘those things’ and it’s far too late to raise the subject now. I will continue my Motherwork out of duty and, yes, out of a kind of love. But the mystery of my mother will never be solved and there is no one around to ask.
The Reluctant Daughter writes to her mother:
Dear Mum
I wish things could have been different. I wish you could have been happy. I wish I’d been able to get through to you, to penetrate the wall of resistance that repelled every suggestion made to you for how you might make your life easier and more enjoyable. I wish you could have understood something of my world and my interests. But those things never registered with you – you hated modern music and modern art and anything intellectual. It was obvious early on that I was not going to live a life you could relate to. I wasn’t going to get a little catering job and get married to a traditional ‘fella’. I studied surrealist art and psychoanalysis and was swept up in the counterculture and alternative lifestyles. I never got married and I never had children. I know what a disappointment that has been for you. I guess we were both disappointments to each other. I’ve never seen you read a book and find that terribly sad, as books are one of the most important things in my life. We’ve never been able to have a conversation about the popular classics. Not even Chandler or Orwell. You never read them.
I know you were proud of me at particular points – when I got my degree; when I was published; when I taught myself various skills – and you were proud that I’ve always worked since I was a young teenager – but you could never seem to get past how my achievements were down to the opportunities my generation had, and which you didn’t have because of the War. I know, I know, but I cannot help when I was born. It must have looked to you as if I had a charmed life, with my pop posters and fashion magazines, student parties, international travel and free, liberal arts education, whereas you suffered the Blitz, poverty, sexual discrimination and the narrow-mindedness of the times into which you were born. What would you have been like if you had been born just twenty years later? Would you have been freed from that appalling negativity? You never seemed able to let go of the War . . . you were always talking about it. Always. Every time I’ve come to visit you I’ve been told the same stories over and over about the War. I know it was epic and huge, and in the past I encouraged you to be interviewed for archives and reminiscence workshops, which you did. But it was a very, very long time ago and only lasted for six years of your extremely long life.
I have never known what to say to you or how to make conversation so that you don’t turn it into a diatribe of how awful things are/were. As a child I was embarrassed by your dogged refusal to embrace the changes happening in society. Next to my schoolfriends’ mothers, you were sullen, unsociable, almost wilfully dowdy, cramming your beautiful hair under a scarf – but you didn’t have to be like that! You could have blossomed and embraced change and enjoyed the easy living of the New Britain. You chose instead to blame my father for everything we didn’t have. You didn’t want to have people round to our house, so I spent most of my evenings after school at other people’s homes and I saw how different their lives were.
In the 1970s it seemed everyone was having fun, having dinner parties, trying out new foods, going for days out together, enjoying themselves. But not us. You always made the excuse that our house wasn’t well-decorated enough to have visitors, but it really wasn’t that bad. It’s as if you denied yourself the pleasure and contact of friends. I even used to pretend I was part of someone else’s family so I could feel something of that bonded love and warmth that was missing in my own home: dads who would chase the kids round the garden, drive them to camping adventures, have a barbecue, ride bikes etc. And parents who would show each other affection – what a shock that was! In later years, Dad’s stroke was the reason people couldn’t come round, as you didn’t want them to see him like that. Always something. Always a reason not to socialise. And yet, when you found yourself in social situations in public, you were chatty, informed, charming. These situations had to occur spontaneously; they could never be planned, as you would refuse to attent such gatherings.
I tried so hard to get you to embrace an optimistic outlook, but y
ou weren’t having any of it. You would tell me again and again how Dad was unambitious and wasted his musical talent. How you could have made something of your life if it hadn’t been for Dad or for having me. How your life was blighted and thwarted by bad luck. How it’s ‘too late now’ (it was ‘too late’ in 1970, according to you, and in 1980 and 1990, and you’re finally, definitely right, because now it is too late).
I see archive film of the 1920s and ’30s and I’m looking at a lost world, a country that might as well have sunk into the sea. It has changed so radically as to be unrecognisable. The twentieth century saw more changes than any century that preceded it – being the most troubled yet most exciting time there’s ever been. Even radio was a new invention when you were born. And those of your generation, creaking towards three-figure ages like soon-to-be-extinct beasts, must surely feel so alienated by the modern world. I’m sorry I am part of that which you reject. I’m sorry I couldn’t be the daughter or friend you wanted. I apologise for being so unlike you. The gap was just too big.
In love and sadness,
Your daughter, Anna
THE DISAPPOINTING DAUGHTER’S MOTHERWORK
Debbie, our transcriber, felt as though nothing she ever did was good enough and she wanted to find a way to get her mother to put down her Angry Birds and talk to her. Here’s how Debbie got on . . .
If this Daughterhood were a degree and if I were in university I’d be in serious trouble with my tutors. If I were being marked out of ten, I’d be lucky to scrape a two and a half. I am failing at my daughterly duties in quite a spectacular way. I just can’t seem to make any of it work.
The plan was that I would bring my mum away with us on holiday. We hatched it at one of The Daughterhood meetings. I would find some quiet time with my mother. Nothing too dramatic. A quiet walk on the beach maybe. A cosy lunch on a shady veranda somewhere while Stephen took the kids off on an adventure. I’d tell her how I’ve been feeling. She’d nod and say she understood. She’d put the iPad away and say, ‘That’s enough Angry Birds for now. I want to spend some quality time with my daughter.’ Reader, it didn’t happen.
The camping holiday in France was a disaster. Mum was sick before we left with a terrible chest infection and for a while we thought she wasn’t going to make it on holiday at all. I had a bad case of Undaughterly Thoughtitis. I know she didn’t get sick on purpose but the timing was terrible. It was going to be hard enough keeping her happy without the added pressure of her being sick away from home.
She rallied for the first couple of days. It was almost as though she was making an effort, although she was never far away from Angry Birds or her iPad. But her condition got worse, the kind of sickness that renders the most mild-mannered person cranky. My mother is not a mild-mannered person. I insisted she go to the doctor. That morning I planned to take her for coffee after the appointment, just the two of us. Maybe we would get to talk. But my two eldest boys had been pushing my youngest into the hotel swimming pool and they were banned from a planned beach trip for misbehaving. So they came with us, too. That slimmest of chances for some mother-daughter time was lost.
The rest of the time she was unbearable. If she wasn’t criticising all of us, especially the children, who she said were too boisterous and loud, she was holed up in her ‘room’ in the tent communing with the Angry Birds. On the last day of the holiday she annoyed my husband so much with her bickering and negativity that he fecked off on his own for a few hours and left me to deal with it all.
And, of course, the car broke down on the trip home and we had to call out the AA. This led to another barrage of criticism from my mother, which led to another painful bout of me feeling like a disappointment to her. When we finally got home, she went straight to bed.
She was up the next morning and went off to meet some friends for coffee. She left immediately, without even saying goodbye to the children, who were all still in bed. Her parting shot was a story I’ve heard so many times before – this is the abridged version: she cannot cope with the chaos of my house and the lackadaisical way I parent my kids. And that I need to ‘sort myself out’.
She hasn’t spoken to me since. I’ve phoned a few times but she doesn’t answer.
I’m a useless member of The Daughterhood. I can’t seem to make any kind of progress at all. I feel like writing to Natasha to tell her I want to quit. But being a Daughter isn’t like being in The Bunker. You can’t just up and resign. Not from the role of daughter. It’s a position that never ends. There is no way out of this gig and, anyway, there’s nowhere to go even if you wanted to.
Despite everything, though, there are days when I still feel hopeful. I have a clear idea of what I need to do with my mother so that some measure of healing can happen. I would like to sit down with her and talk through her problems with me and mine with her. If I got the chance I would tell her that, yes, my house may be a mess, my life may be chaotic and noisy, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong or bad or that I’m a failure. It just means my life is different and, perhaps, strange to her. It’s a world away from her very ordered existence where everything is in its place and she can lie in her bed and play Angry Birds to her heart’s content.
Now is not the right time for this Motherwork. Sometimes in life the timing is just off. I get the sense that my mother is still grieving so much for my father that she cannot deal with anything else. I worry that she is suffering from depression. When I’m not giving out about her childish addiction to computer games, I’m conscious those very games may be an important escape from all that she doesn’t want to face. It’s better than a whisky habit.
I’ve been thinking a lot about motherhood and daughterhood. It’s only for a certain period of time that your mum is there for you and, after a while, the tables must turn. You have to be there for her. It may sound simple and obvious but this has been a huge realisation since I first started listening to The Daughterhood files.
I’m trying to hold on to the good parts. I never witnessed much love or intimacy between my mother and father but she showed her love during his illness in a profound and inspiring way. He couldn’t walk and he could barely talk, because the cancer had advanced so far. She nursed him at home until the end. I was there every single weekend to give her a break, just to go to the shops or to get out of the house. Friends and neighbours also helped out but she didn’t like to impose.
I was down there helping every chance I got. I knew what she was facing. And during the really difficult time when my father was first diagnosed, she would have phoned me up just for a chat. She said things during these conversations I could never have imagined her saying: ‘I love you. Thanks for helping me. Thanks for listening. I really miss you.’ We had a closeness then but it just seems to have melted away.
She is lonely, sad and angry. It hurts so much that I can’t help her with that. There is still an unspoken bond between us, but no real closeness. I could, I suppose, drop everything to attend to her. Couldn’t I? No, I could not. The demands of work and family are too great at the moment. Dropping everything is not an option. This does not make me a bad daughter. I just have to keep telling myself that.
The Disappointing Daughter writes to her mother:
Dear Mam
I am not quite sure where to begin, or where to end.
You have been with me and for me, in your own way, for all of my life. But there are still a few things that I want to explain and maybe to understand as well.
Becoming a mother myself has helped me make sense of a couple of things that puzzled me. One was that you cannot always fix things with words. Sometimes silence and brushing things aside is what is needed. A good night’s sleep fixes a lot of things and everything is back to normal and makes sense again the following day.
Secondly, there is no such thing as a perfect parent. Everybody basically muddles through. When I look back now at things that annoyed me as a younger person I can see, completely and clearly, that you were just doing your best, always.
I also see that you were taken for granted, not listened to, hurt, disappointed and unappreciated by me.
While I feel I can talk to you about anything, I don’t. Your reaction to many things I discuss with you is not what I would expect at times. And I must admit I wonder to myself about your own state of mind, and your own issues. You are not my caregiver any more. You are your own person again and I must look after myself.
I have been so hurt over the last couple of years with many of the things that have been said and done. While I realise you have to keep everybody happy in the family, there have been moments when I just cannot understand your motivation.
That being said, I want to thank you for being the best mother you were able to be. For all the selfless and thoughtful things you have done. For being there for me in times of strife and picking up the pieces and making me move on. For being a wonderful Gran and giving my children the love and affection that I don’t always have time to give. They love you to pieces.
This letter started in my mind as a list of criticisms. A flurry of all the times in the last several years that I have been hurt or misunderstood or felt hard done-by. When Dad was dying, I did spend many moments alone with him talking about the past, trying to fix things that needed to be mended and saying sorry for all the things that I hadn’t done. We realised quite quickly that we didn’t need to. It might sound trite but the unconditional love a parent has for their child and that a child has for their parent, even when there’s been years of misunderstanding and arguments, really does conquer all.
The Daughterhood Page 20