Have I Done Ok As A Mum?
This week, Lucy gave blood and gave up physics. Both were her choices. For days, the ‘Sloan Family’ WhatsApp group was alight with her preparations. There were regular reminders that she needed to be there at 5.15pm to donate a pint of O positive, there was a trip to Tesco the night before to get something nutritious so she could eat in advance and avoid the risk of fainting. At 4.07pm, on her way home from school, she texted to ask ‘anyone in the vicinity of the oven’ to put her ready meal in to heat up. We knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that she had to leave the house at 4.55pm so she wouldn’t be late. She’d read all the instructions, she was fully clear about what to expect, she had an exceptional knowledge of the universal donor. “No-one can come in with me,” she said, “I’ll message when I’m finished”.
At 5.12pm, we got the first update from inside the building. “Iron levels are great”. “The lady said cottage pie was a good idea,” came a few minutes later. By 5.36pm, she was done. She had cotton wool. She’d stopped bleeding. She’d taken a selfie. “Just having juice,” she said.
She showed us her arm, her donation pin, we listened to A LOT of detail. She’d given her date of birth seven times, everyone else was older than her, she had to lie down in the recovery area longer because it was her first time, she wasn’t allowed to do strenuous activity, they’d been impressed that a seventeen-year-old had made the effort to donate her blood. There was an additional update on the cottage pie. She’d been asked if it was homemade. I wondered if I should have mashed some potato, sent her off fortified with half a pound of butcher’s mince. No-one else’s day could in any way compare. “I’ve saved three lives today,” she said. “What kind of juice did they have?” asked her sister.
Ten signatures were required to drop A-level physics. It seemed excessive but then I imagine it’s not a decision that should be taken lightly. We’d played good cop, bad cop. Her father had told her she should continue with it, it would help her get a job. I’d told her, there was more to life than a job that involved physics and there was no point in doing something she didn’t enjoy. “If I drop it, I’ll have more study periods and I can focus on my other three subjects,” she explained. That seemed sensible to me. “She wants to drop physics so she can do extra hockey,” said her ‘less likely to have the wool pulled over his eyes’ dad. I’d randomly met her study supervisor in an entirely different context. I’d described who she was. “Oh yes, she’s the goalie,” he said. “She’s not usually in study. She’s always helping the PE teachers”. In the end, neither of us stood in her way.
I’m middle-aged, possibly perimenopausal, I already have an adult child, I have elderly parents, I can’t find clothes that suit me anymore, I revisit the past and try to predict the future. There are a number of things that keep me awake at night. Am I successful? What is success? Who am I neglecting? Do people like me? Have I done ok as a mum? I’m not sure I’ll ever know the answer to that one. What outcomes should I be looking for? After all, parenting is just a social experiment conducted without any control variables. No matter how my children turn out (and what does that even mean), I’ll probably always question if I should have continued to work full-time when they were small, I’ll wonder if I’ve made a mistake being about so much now they are big. Is my timing off? I am basically their 3.30pm taxi in inclement weather or when their bags are too heavy. They are embarrassed that I call myself a writer. But, unless we can live two or more lives simultaneously, we’ll never know if our choices were the right ones. The road less travelled is always either road because we don’t have the option to travel along both and compare notes. As Oliver Burkeman1 says:
“… it’s easy for me to fantasise about .. a life spent achieving stellar professional success, while also excelling as a parent and partner, while also dedicating myself to training for marathons or volunteering in my community - because so long as I’m only fantasising, I get to imagine all of them unfolding simultaneously and flawlessly. As soon as I start trying to live any of those lives though, I’ll be forced to make trade-offs”.
But still, I look for some sort of evidence that I’ve done ok, that they have turned out ok, reassurance that I didn’t mess them up like Philip Larkin’s mum and dad. But really is how they turn out anything to do with me? It’s madness to believe I am fully responsible. I couldn’t control that pandemic that disrupted their schooling for two years, I can’t control the places they’ll go, the situations and individuals they’ll interact with, the world they’ll be living in.
I am currently working my way through the back catalogue of Desert Island Discs. It doesn’t feature the average mortal, all those interviewed have achieved something that counts as success – they are musicians, actors, scientists, journalists, authors. They talk at length about their childhoods. Most of them have been far from straightforward. Bono’s mother died suddenly when he was fourteen, he had a difficult and fractious relationship with his father, Kirsty Young’s father left when she was a few weeks old, Baz Luhrmann was reticent about being sent to any desert island, he’d grown up in the Australian outback, only returning to Sydney when his parents divorced. The music producer, Rick Rubin’s mother was totally devoted to him. “My mother’s full-time job was me,” he said, “she was my driver”. She asked him where he wanted to go, took him there, indulged him, waited for him, watched him. It was only later when he’d moved far away that he realised how intense this was, how stifling. “I don’t think she actually saw who I was. She had a fantasy version of who I was”. In contrast, Steven Spielberg’s mother Leah, who inspired the free-spirited Mitzi in The Fabelmans, was devoted to her own life. She was a concert pianist. She had her own gifts and dreams. “She celebrated life, she lusted after life,” he said. I concluded it wasn’t their parents that secured their success, it was the removal of parental expectation that enabled them to forge their own path. I reckoned the only successful outcome of parenting is allowing them the freedom to make their own choices - produce Jaws, bring Aerosmith and Run DMC together, change pop history, give blood, drop physics. Perhaps to do ok as a mum, all I need to do is get out of her way.
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management For Mortals
You are doing great as a mum! We will never be perfect to them and they'll all go through a phase where they criticize their parents before becoming parents themselves and realizing what a difficult job it is.
I do recognize some of your interrogations in myself as well. However, as long as we raise them with love, allow them independence and the freedom to make mistakes, they'll be fine!