There’s No Pleasing Some Mothers

 

I cried yesterday.  Like a baby – tears and snot and everything.

I haven’t cried for four years, then yesterday – blub city.

My baby left home.  For good.  For real.  For ever.  

I hope – I don’t want to be one of those mothers stuck with a forty-year-old layabout who won’t get a job and expects me to cook and clean and iron for him. I’ve done my time; I kept him fed and watered and clothed and alive.  I’m not doing it again.

Four years ago, we took Tory Boy to university and as I said goodbye, I shocked us all – including me – by bursting into tears.  I cried half the way home.  At the traffic lights just outside the campus, I looked behind to see a row of cars with a bawling mother in each front passenger seat.  Guess I’m normal, after all.

I did my crying then for my baby leaving home, becoming a man, yadda-yadda-yadda.  I didn’t expect it to happen again.  All this week I’ve been chivvying Tory Boy along, to get his room packed up.  He took a small case yesterday and the rest will be sent on once he has a permanent home (it may be the YMCA for a couple of weeks until he gets settled).  Although he will always have a home with us etc., etc.,  if he needs it, I’m not keeping shrines to my children when they move out – I want storage space and office space and a spare bedroom.

I love my kids but I’m a pragmatist.  They know that, which is why Tory Boy – Tory Man – Assistant Producer Boy-Man-?? What?  What?  What should I call him? – which is why he knew I meant it when I said I would be permanently furious if I had to pack up his stuff for him.  I want the child out.  I want him to feel as if he’s moved out.  He’s a man now, with a job and a life and he doesn’t need a bolt hole any more.

Which is why I burst into tears and sobbed on his shoulder when I said my goodbye.

Mothers!  Can’t live with them; can’t please them by moving out.

 

Joke 504

 

Farm (Photo credit: Gobinath Mallaiyan)

This is from my friend Becky at Winnthinking.

She writes:

Lovely little story from Michael Neill, a highly respected coach who writes great books. A timely reminder that if we want to change things for the better, we have to be prepared to do most of the legwork ourselves!

*

A minister is driving through the country when he comes across a truly glorious farm being tended to by a lone farmer.  Keen to remind the farmer of the source of his blessings, the minister pulls over to the side of the road and calls him over.

“The Lord has blessed you with a beautiful farm,” said the minister.

After a few moments’ reflection, the farmer nodded his assent.

“He certainly has, Reverend – but you should have seen it when he had it all to himself!”