Teach Your Children?

This week, from Saturday to Thursday, I was in Boston, the one in Massachusetts. It had seemed like a good idea when I agreed to it, but that was when it was still an idea, a future illusion, a distant reality and weeks and weeks away. With one week to go, as I started to check the weather forecast and check the dress code for the business event I’d accompany my husband to and check the luggage allowance and check if we had enough toilet rolls and check if anything fitted me, I began to get the anxious feelings. I said even though it would be marvellous to escape and live in freedom-from-responsibility for a few days, I wasn’t sure if I could do it. I wasn’t sure if I could leave my four children home alone for five nights in Belfast, the one in Northern Ireland, 2981 miles and a massive ocean away. And I’d started to tell everyone I met about this mad thing I was doing, and it was as if I either wanted them to give me permission or reassure me that my children would be fine without me. And as I zipped up my suitcase and wheeled it to the car and kissed the sleeping foreheads goodbye and hugged the child who had set her alarm to wave us off and did the journey to Dublin and went through security and presented my face and my fingerprints and watched the clock and found the gate and fastened my seatbelt, I still wasn’t sure if I could do it. And when they closed the doors and secured the cabin for take-off and it was too late now and we accelerated down the runway and lifted off the ground and I knew unless I figured out how to use the wi-fi at 37,000 feet, I would be out of contact with them for 6.5 hours, there was a lump in my throat and I tried not to cry and I reached for my husband’s hand and I thought this is the hardest thing I will ever do, leave them. And I reckoned it’s always right that they leave me but never quite right the other way round.

And the whole time I was in Boston, the one in Massachusetts where I did the Freedom Trail and the Salem witch trials and the official Harvard walking tour and a harbour cruise and the 360 degree observation deck and the Cheers bar, it was if I had disassociated from my normal self. I was being carried about by some other force and moving around like some other version of me and even though no one asked because there were no obvious physical signs of my matrescence, I wanted to tell them about the quartet of girls I’d left behind, the 20-year-old who’d end up doing all the washing, the 16-year-old who’d only empty the dishwasher when she felt like it, the 14-year-old who’d deep clean the fridge and ask for a large payment to be transferred to her bank account, and the 19-year-old who’d cook all their dinners. I’d tell them I’d left very little instructions other than be kind to each other and visit your grandparents. And there were times I reckoned this was a really good thing I was doing, spending time reacquainting with myself while my husband worked, breakfasting alone, reading books alone, lingering over coffees alone, following maps alone, navigating the streets alone, finding places alone, wandering through parks alone, doing tours alone, figuring out stuff alone and just learning to be alone and I was handing myself a gift, one that I’d look back on and be glad I’d gifted to myself.

And on the fourth day when my body clock still stubbornly refused to align to Eastern Daylight Time and I became obsessed with time zones and I’d continue to mourn all the meals I couldn’t finish and all the hours I’d lain awake, I’d wake abruptly at 4am EDT and realise it was already 9am British Summer Time and I’d quickly reach for my mobile and see that I’d slept through it all, that stuff had happened minus my oversight. The 19-year-old had flown to a concert in Manchester, the one in England, and I’d missed all the details, the early start, the forgotten ID, the return trip to retrieve it and there were three messages in a row from her, “through security”, “boarded”, “landed” and she’d known to tell me it all anyway, each step of it, even though I’d know nothing about it until it was all over. And I had some sort of revelation about time zones and sleeping and letting them go, that they were fine without me, that they’d let me know if they needed me, that the communication channels were always open in some way and that maybe all I’d been doing for the last twenty years was giving them a code to live by and teaching them how to leave me well.

As the plane left EDT late on a Wednesday evening, there were no messages to send. In Belfast, the one in Northern Ireland, it was the middle of the night. I’d think about the former colleague I’d bumped into in Terminal C. She’d looked behind us, expected an additional entourage. “Are you on your own?” she’d said. We’d talk about the urgency of getting back without any delays. A-level results were available online in less than six hours. There would be a decision on a place on the much-anticipated course at university. I needed the pilot to find a shortcut so I could be there for that moment, the opening of the virtual envelope, even if it was only via an iPhone. As the wheels hit the tarmac, I turned off airplane mode. I waited for enough bars to appear. “How are you?” I typed at 8.07am. “Fine” she said at 8.09. Information would gradually emerge. The grades weren’t quite enough to meet the conditional offer. The insurance choice was currently on the table. I wanted to absorb any disappointment. I wanted to give her advice. I wanted to suggest what to do next. I wanted to leap into action, even though there were no actions available to me. But this was her future, not mine. 24 hours later, when the jet lag was wearing off and my body clock had mysteriously snapped back as if it had never been away and my 19-year-old had taught me all I ever needed to know about patience and acceptance, there was an update. We’d find out via a WhatsApp screenshot. A place was now confirmed. She would be doing what she’d always wanted to do. There was a lump in my throat and I tried not to cry and I reached for my husband’s hand.

I’d think about the two books I’d read in Boston, one about a group of friends in their twenties, the other about a group of friends in their seventies. All are flawed and messy. All numb themselves with something, drink, drugs, self-loathing, regret. They seek solace in churches. The books were about grief and loss. They were about clinging on to a time that’s gone, about not knowing who you are. They were about the quiet desperation of a generation. They were about mothers whose children leave them. One made me more afraid than the other, the going back to a previous generation, not the heading towards the next. I realised I was somewhere in the middle, that I still had the chance to both teach and be taught, that the secret to living is never to believe that the older you are, the more you have to impart, the less you have to learn. There were things I’d never have known about my children if I hadn’t left them.

“And each of the three let go, plunged down and felt herself carried, lifted up in the great sweep of the water’s force, and then – astonishingly gently – set down on her feet again. They breathed, and wiped their eyes, reached for each other again, waited for the next wave¹”.

1. Quote from Charlotte Wood’s The Weekend, which is a must-read in my opinion.