I envy those mothers blessed with highly efficient offspring, who keep their rooms perfectly clean and ordered and who find Saturday jobs as soon as they reach the age of fifteen without being bribed, and who display such an independent streak, their parents never have a day's worry about how they will survive in the big, bad world.
I am not one of those parents. I am one of those who excavate skull pendants and safety pin necklaces from the washing machine filter, along with the occasional banana skin or a bracelet made from ring pulls. My nerves are hardened to a steely shell built over years of finding strange and alien items under my child's bed, not to mention three years worth of empty cups and glasses, the unimaginable remains of which are still adhering to the edges of the plates and solidified to a concrete like crust. Lovely!
I am the stolid survivor of a phone call from the school to say would I ask my daughter to refrain from drawing three dimensional penises on her jeans. She had drawn them with such consummate skill they appeared to be leaping out of her back pocket; I was assured by a scandalized deputy headmistress.
I am one of those irresponsible creatures who will still lend a tenner to a naughty eighteen year old who has blown two weeks allowance on clothes and wants to go to the movies. The wisest parent would, of course, refuse further funds until better sense was being shown, but I prefer the saying 'you are only young once' to 'look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.' This last font of wisdom obviously originated with someone who has never met my daughter. Paper money runs away like water and pennies get left in your jeans pockets and eventually go in the washing machine - everyone knows that!
What, I ask myself, panic stricken, is she going to do when faced with her first utility bill, or her first mortgage payment? Will she even read it? Will she shove it under the bed, site of her favored filing system since she was about eight years old? Will she lock herself out of her accommodation on her first night and be stranded, at the mercy of passers by and any lurking villain? Will she remember to lock the door at all?
My dearest girl is not one of those to whom maturity has come easily. Life's responsibilities have always been to her a bit of a drag; much better to scoot out the door and head for the beach with a crowd of friends than iron next week's laundry, let it wait till tomorrow. Well, why not indeed. The problem is, the same pile of ironing is still waiting for her attention three months down the calendar and her bedroom resembles a bomb site.
Now that this lovely, affectionate, sunny child is ready to fly the nest, how will I survive without her tread on the stair, or the sound of her trying to break into the house at two in the morning when she has forgotten her key? Who will drive me mad with requests for rides to town when she is gone? And how will I heal my poor breaking heart if any harm comes to her?
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