Quick.
Ha! ...... But this is not a post as we know it. I just realised that if I don't write something today the archives will miss out the whole of October. This afternoon I am going to London for a week.

My son is coming back from University for the weekend because it is his birthday on Sunday. As usual he is 'not sure' what he would like as presents, causing maximum irritation, time and trouble for the rest of us as we trail round shops hoping for inspiration. I was clearing out his crammed bedroom in the flat after he left and found, buried deep in a corner, a carrier bag filled with unwrapped but UNOPENED presents from last year. All expensive things which I had bought in desperation from the 'future gadgets' section of a big store. Not only had we both forgotten about them but he had actually mentioned that he would quite like two of these things when pressed last week. I could wrap them up again but I am not so mean and will just hand over the bag.

After some telephone screaming, on my part, of 'Say one thing you'd like. ONE. You can have ANYTHING'. He reluctantly revealed that he'd maybe be pleased to have some 'cool CDs'. 'Fine.... which ones?'. 'I'm not sure but the guys (his older sister's friends) are always playing them in the car. I can't remember what they're called'. 'Could you give me a hint here? The TYPE of music, perhaps?'. 'Well, not really, they are all different types'. 'Look, tell me a type that they are NOT then. Are they heavy metal?'. 'Don't be ridiculous, hardly, I said COOL'. Oh ... Aaaargh! And I have go through it all, but worse, again for Christmas.

My older daughter is low because all her girlfriends are suddenly either buying flats with their boyfriends or getting MARRIED. She would have been doing the same - the flat buying - if she hadn't just broken up with her boyfriend of three years and she feels left out. It's the first time she has been without a 'steady' since she was about seventeen and I am working hard to keep her feeling positive. From my own experience, the idea that you have children young and then have a second burst of youth and freedom when they leave home is a complete myth. For a start they never seem to leave home and their problems and demands actually get more serious and time consuming as they get older.

Also, the second burst is nothing like your first youth as YOU ARE NOT YOUNG ANYMORE. Her best friend from college is married and already has TWO children and lives as a housewife. I was saying to her how weird it is to think of how, when she was born, I became totally selfless and put the children before my own interests and pleasures at all times. Worried myself to death about schools and exams and sporting prowess etc. Killed myself to do everything I could to get them into the best universities and propped them up emotionally through endless years of every sort of problem. And, in almost all her friends' cases - whose mothers behaved in a pretty similar way - within five years of leaving higher education they were back in the endless loop of selflessly starting their children off at the 'right' baby school. WHAT WAS IT ALL FOR?

I now see that I never really sat down and thought what I wanted the end result to be, ideally. Did I want my children to be doctors, actors, missionaries, happy housewives? I have no idea - and still don't. But if I hadn't taken the academic side so seriously - and wasn't constantly helping one of them to work towards one of the stream of vital exams - then I could have had more of my 'own' life. Neither of my daughters want an academic career. They both have a high IQ (over 130 at least) and both got 2.1 degrees but the older one is brilliantly artistic and also wants to be a cast1ng @gent. The younger is a sh0e d3signer. My son's dream future would involve 'not working in an office and sort of pottering about'.

I realised that for many people, including them, an older form of upper class education would have been the ideal. Literature; foreign languages; history and geography; a smattering of science; drawing and painting; dancing; flower arranging; how to run a household and riding, tennis and skiing. All taught lightly and without excess. Add in some computer skills and there you have it. Anything else they wanted they could find for themselves and I needn't have been such a martyr. Oh well, perhaps they'll take my advice about how to bring up my grandchildren - as if.



- posted by Iris @ 10/19/2004 09:40:00 AM (0) comments comment