The Mum Who Got Her Life Back. Fiona Gibson
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Название: The Mum Who Got Her Life Back
Автор: Fiona Gibson
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Юмористическая фантастика
isbn: 9780008310974
isbn:
Things that happen when your kids first leave home
• You keep checking to see if they’ve texted to say they’re managing without you. They haven’t … because you’ve only just moved them into their student halls and are still sitting in your car, in the car park.
• You realise it’s no longer necessary to buy those two-kilo bags of potatoes. They just go green and start sprouting.
• You also stop buying The Big Milk and switch to the smallest carton. How tiny you are! you think, the first dozen times you spy it in the fridge.
• Friends say things like, ‘You might miss them at first. But when they come home on visits they’ll trash the place, and you’ll be relieved when they go back to uni.’ How harsh, you think. I love my kids. I’ll never think of them in that way.
• You realise you could now have sex in your own home without worrying about the kids overhearing. Or perhaps you’re thinking more along the lines of, Shall I redecorate to mark this new chapter? Perhaps your mindset is less ‘shag pad’, more ‘upgrading of cushions’. Either way, it’s pretty thrilling.
• Towels remain on the towel rail and the loo roll sits, unmolested, on its holder.
• The washing machine goes on about twice a week. You start to feel proud of your tiny carbon footprint.
• No one criticises your home-cooked lasagne. You don’t even have to make lasagne, with all the chopping and stirring it entails. Dinner can be a pot of hummus and a boiled egg if you feel like it.
• No one crashes in, switching on all the lights and frying things at 3.30 a.m.
• After a while you stop thinking, My God, this is weird! Where is everyone? You’re not missing the days when it looked as if wildebeest had stampeded through the kitchen, whenever someone made toast. Gradually, you become used to them not being there, and – it almost seems criminal to admit this – you don’t completely hate it.
This signifies that you have transitioned, relatively painlessly, into being a HEN: a Happy Empty Nester. Yes, you’re still a doting parent, but no longer in the day-to-day sense, which suggests that your new life has begun.
So, what now?
Since my children left home, nothing terrible seems to have happened. There has been no evidence of malnutrition or the taking of shedloads of drugs. No one has phoned me, crying, because they couldn’t get a crumpet out of the toaster. At eighteen years old, my twins Alfie and Molly seem to have coped perfectly well during their first semester at university … which means I’ve done a decent job as a parent, right?
Naturally, their father, Danny, should take some of the credit. But the moving-out part was down to me. Danny is an independent film-maker and he was away shooting down south when I took Molly to her student halls. In the seven years since we split, his career has blossomed; he is pretty famous in film circles, and incredibly busy. At least, too busy/famous to drive Molly from our home in Glasgow to her university halls in Edinburgh.
‘Well, this is it,’ I remarked with fake jollity as we lugged her possessions into her stark little room.
‘Yeah,’ she said casually, tossing back her long dark hair.
‘You will be all right, won’t you?’
‘’Course I will!’
I cleared my throat. ‘Any time you need me, I mean if you need anything, I’ll come straight over.’
‘Mum, I won’t need—’
‘No, I know, but …’ I stopped. My daughter has always given the impression that she rarely needs anything, from anyone.
‘I’m not dying,’ she said, smiling. We hugged tightly, and I was immensely proud of myself as I hurtled out of the block, shoving my way past more new arrivals with their stoical parents and desk lamps and mini fridges and, in one instance, a gerbil in a cage, which I was pretty sure wasn’t allowed in halls. Only when I was safely back in my car did I allow the tears to spill out, and had to mop my face on a waterproof umbrella sleeve.
Two days later, I drove Alfie to his own halls further north, in Aberdeen. The city felt chillier and greyer than it had when we’d come up for the open day (his father had been too busy/famous to go to that too), and I reminded my son several times that he might start wearing a vest.
‘You can just leave my stuff here, Mum,’ he said, indicating the floor on the landing.
‘Really? Can’t I come in?’ But he’d already scooted into the flat to find his room, and so I stood there, waiting, like a FedEx delivery person.
Moments later Alfie reappeared, and we fell into a pattern of me fetching stuff in from the car, lugging it up three flights of stairs and handing СКАЧАТЬ