On Not Becoming My Mother

 Meditating on gratitude for my mother requires imagination. 

My circumstances are somewhat unusual, in that my mother didn’t have me until she was in her early forties so that we are divided by not one, but two generations. I marvel at the fact that when my mother was conceived more than eighty years ago, so was the egg cell that was to go on to create me.

Over eighty years ago! It’s a humbling thought that almost a century ago a microscopic scrap of me was actually on this planet. It travelled to India and back, and then apart from an occasional jaunt to Brean Downs or Wales, remained in the West Midlands. And there, courtesy of my father, that oocyte which had matured into an ovum was fertilised and I was born in 1971, two decades after my siblings. It was the year of decimalisation, but I remember in our house there was still talk of bob (shillings) and thruppence (three old pennies) well into the late seventies.

I also grew up knowing a great deal more about World War II, and was more familiar with Music Hall than the Top 40.  There was nothing in our house so modern as central heating or double-glazing. And we were allowed a bath a week. Two inches deep, because the water heater was only allowed on for 25 minutes.  

“You don’t know you’re born’ was a phrase I became familiar with. But, though I inferred its meaning, it’s a peculiar phrase that doesn’t bear superficial scrutiny. Yet to my delight a fabulous internet pedant has managed to glean from its earliest usage that it equates to the Biblical admonition of being blithely unaware of being born into sin and woe (you ungrateful wretch).  That totally makes sense, as it seemed that the luxury of not being on wartime rations and hoping that Christmas might bring more than sixpence and a tangerine was mightily resented.

This is, I would like to emphasise, but the amusing froth on the bitter cappuccino of my mother’s campaign of petty tyranny over her family. A regime that has left her offspring reeling from various forms and degrees of trauma that we manage to survive and live with in our own ways.

Decades on, I am, more or less, the age that my mother was in my earliest memories, and my physical resemblance to these memories is sometimes hard to stomach. I own a very beautiful pair of spectacles, which I think some twisted subconscious whim bamboozled me into buying.  One day at work, when I was wearing them, I unexpectedly caught my reflection in a mirror and was gripped by fear that I was under the gaze of Mother. I haven’t been able to wear them since.

If becoming my mother isn’t enough food for thought, having a teenaged daughter creates the effect of being sandwiched between two identities. I watch my own body coming to resemble that of my mother’s, while I see my daughter’s growing to resemble the body I once had. Naturally both experiences prompt me to contemplate my own vanity and reflect on my mother’s intense jealousy. She was consumed by jealousy – of her few friends; her siblings; her children. Perhaps somewhere in her present pitiable derangement she still is. It must be a truly horrible place to be.

We are such visual creatures, it’s hard to tear our responses away from what we see, or think we see, with our own eyes. But, despite the evidence in the mirror, I only briefly have to compare my own attitude to my children with my mother’s to see there is not the slightest resemblance. My mind boggles at the things my mother felt impelled to tell me on a daily basis, which wouldn’t even cross my mind, let alone my lips.

With the passing of my mother's only remaining sister, a loving, hugely generous and kindly woman, I am reminded again of what an anomaly my own mother is. And finally, I don't have to pretend: the taboo is beginning to wear thin, and tales of her unbecoming spite and mischief are being told. Her kids weren't special, she bullied and abused her younger siblings in much the same way. 

The last time I saw my mother, her Alztheimers was advanced enough for her not to recognise me. When I say this, most people assume it's a premise to an expression of grief, but that's not the case. It was the first time for as far as can remember that she treated me with politeness and spoke to me without malice - simply because she saw me not as her daughter but 'as the nice lady with the little boy'. 

It was liberation. Liberation from a burden I'd carried all my life. Without a barrage of snide remarks, criticisms and open insults, this was a woman I could finally begin to forgive, to regard as an extremely flawed and a very sick human being who has sabotaged a good life into one of spite and sorrow, and now exists in the netherworld of senility. 

The fifth decade of my life has been focussed on facing my fears. But I am fearful of seeing my mother again. I don't want to lose the sense of closure, to risk re-opening the wounds that are beginning to heal. So I can only wish her freedom from suffering, as I wish to be free from my own.

Seasonal, Defective and Disordered

As the days draw in and the sky seems to hang perpetually dull and opaque, the glowering shadow of SAD (seasonal affective disorder) begins to flicker in my peripheral vision.

The falling leaves, the failing light, all signs that the death throes of another year are upon us, needling an incipient anxiety that life is slipping past too quickly. But this year, at least, I have discovered a means of lifting (if only momentarily) the veil of this the gloom-laden smog. I turn to meditation.

Its aim is not an empty mind or a state of utter detachment (or at least, not for rookies like me) and, only occasionally, I am fortunate to conjure bliss from this practice. It’s not a quick fix, or a distraction. It is rather more the means to allow my mind to fix my mind.

I only know one person who claims to find it easy. For most, there are always barriers, either to doing it at all, or to doing it satisfactorily. These obstacles can be external – the pleasant distractions of losing yourself to an evening of TV, or reading a story, doing a puzzle or playing a game; or internal – the ever-churning thoughts, plans and worries that plow through our minds like hurricanes.

In Triratna Buddhism, the two primary meditation practises are mindfulness of breathing and metta bhavana (cultivation of loving kindness).  The first, simply by the nature of our biological need to breathe, is readily accessible and can be key to learning how to pay attention to the state we are in.  Yet, the onslaught of life can be so immense, our detachment from our essential self so great, that the simple question, “How are you?” seems almost impossible to interpret, let alone answer.

But, once you are able to begin resisting the force of your storming brain, or the drip-drip of anxiety, to recognise just when and how far you are being pushed from the pathway of contemplating the in-and-out of your breath, then you can begin to regard a thought as just that – a thought- and not any more real or compelling than the process of gas exchange within your body. Let the thought go on its way, and bring yourself back to the breath.

But how does someone, surrounded by demanding humans, dazzled by dozens of competing obligations, find the opportunity to meditate?

Sara Burns, in her wonderfully down-to-earth and honest book, A Path for Parents (What Buddhism Can Offer), describes how she became mindful of the briefest moments when she could centre herself with a mini-meditation. She writes: “ …try it while watching your children play, or anywhere you have a few spare minutes not talking to someone else…” Easier said than done, you might argue, but it’s a far more realistic goal than meditating for hours on end in an incense scented prayer room, as nice as that would be!

An elderly lady, who attends the same meditation meetings as I do, claims she could never manage meditation when she was around her children. Eventually she decided that she would schedule particular times in her week to ensure she kept it up. Like playing an instrument, the longer you leave it, the more difficult it is to re-engage with the practice.  

Of course, when you begin to still your mind, things begin to float to the surface. They are not always pleasant. Sadly, some people who have suffered loss or tragedy and would benefit most from the chance to heal themselves, find the clarity it brings hard to bear. It’s easier to leave those unwelcome emotions to sink back into the mud, particularly in a world where we are expected to ‘get on with it’. Others can lose patience with our need to deal with our pain – they are probably afraid of facing their own long buried suffering – but we can be hurried through bereavement or topped up with drugs for depression, neglecting the long healing journey we really need to take. But the need to be productive rather than contemplative is the ethos which keeps the behemoth of our global economy lumbering along like a Frankenstein’s monster. 

Halloween is barely over, but snow-flake festooned seasonal food is on the shelves, the TV spews out advertisements of all the things we should buy to attain a perfect Christmas, and city streets begin to heave with stressed-out shoppers with too much to do. I can feel my chest tighten at the thought of what’s to come, the heightened expectations, the diminishing bank balance, the seductive shiny things, the compelling myths of Happy Christmas that blind me to the grasping, hungry beast that I continue to sustain at my own cost.

And … breathe …

What a Chore

 As the chaos of a primary school harvest festival erupts around us, children adorned with fruit and vegetable head-dresses scurry down the aisle and baffled parents are ejected from seats because of someone’s inadequate mental arithmetic. We, the seatless ones, form a ragged crowd around a font bedecked with walnuts and tired-looking grapes, waiting until every impatient posterior is seated correctly and the microphones are plugged in. Out come the mobile phones.

 “This is ‘Crumbs’, explains Fellow-Mum, scrolling through a collection of shots she’s taken of the spectacular mess and chaos her husband is wont to leave around the house. “That one’s ‘Wire’,” she says of a tangle of cable that resembles a crane’s nest. “And that,” -- I can just about make out a bed beneath a jumble of clothes and accessories – “well, for now it’s ‘Untitled I’.”

She sighs. “I’ve got loads of them, Val. It just makes me feel better,” she says.  “But I’m thinking of setting up a Tumblr account or something, so other women can join in.”

I urge her to go ahead with her homage to the slovenly husbands of the world and their eye-rolling spouses. I have a feeling that she’ll be in good company. And, as if to qualify my suspicion, the first thing I see when I open up my laptop at home is an article in the Guardian about housework, and who actually does it . 

Clearly it’s a bone of contention, even between the apparently enlightened and intellectual families behind some of the most middle-class front doors in London. And, for anyone who has felt intimidated by the Cath Kidston/Pip Studio/Orla Kiely standards of household beauty, it is reassuring to know.

Are you more Pip Studio or ...

…Tracey Emin?

But here I must interject with an admission – just in case you are assuming that I too am plagued by a careless, slovenly mate and wish to purge myself of my exasperation.  The truth is I have far more in common with Hannah Marriot and her blind spot for overflowing bins and laundry baskets. My particular omission is the stovetop – no wait, the sink. Or is it the work surfaces? Make it the whole kitchen.

Is it nature or nurture? Is my partner’s allergy to all things greasy, sticky and crumby derived from his no-nonsense rota-wielding mother, or does it go deeper?

Amongst my friends who naturally eshew housework, there is talk of ‘dyspraxia’ a form of mentality where a lack of spacial awareness, an inability to grasp process, means we simply don’t see the mess, aren’t aware of the decimation left in our wake, and cannot make anything as simple as an omelette without breaking the eggs, smearing every surface with yoke, splattering oil up the walls and leaving the shattered debris in a fall-out zone of pans and dishes.

Of course, I could choose to allocate some responsibility for my failings to my upbringing. I recall the shock I felt when, at 14 years old, I was told to clean the sink following a domestic science class. “Clean the sink?” I had never witnessed anyone undertake such a task. Surely the act of running the tap makes it a self-cleaning appliance?

Matter!

As for vacuuming, my mother lived in mortal fear that cleaning the carpet would render it bald - far better for it to be strewn with bits and replete with dust than slightly threadbare. Having now lived with wooden floors, which seem to actively breed dust bunnies of prehistoric proportions, I see now that a carpet can also be regarded as a self-cleaning organism (all be it one that induced an asthma attack when my brother was misguided enough to stay overnight at Mother’s).  But, as convincing as these arguments may seem, my sister’s own scrupulously clean domestic environment puts pay to my feeble attempt to avoid blame for my own domestic negligence.

The Woman's Hour and Mumsnet surveys may have set out to show the significant gender bias that exists in the arena of household tasks, but The Guardian article illustrates how, gender aside, domestic labour division is still, in 2014, entrenched in an Odd Couple scenario of tidy Felix Ungers versus slovenly Oscar Madisons exchanging recriminations over piles of laundry and dirty dishes. 

Perhaps the bitterness arises when we interpret an act of domestic neglect as a figurative up-yours; an affront to our attempts to manage the chaos of life. Or maybe it’s all down to how we fail to communicate with each other, and  end up brooding over a perceived insult that was never intended. Take my favourite quote from The Odd Couple as an example :

Oscar Madison: “I cannot stand little notes on my pillow! We are all out of cornflakes, F.U.? It took me three hours to figure out F.U. was Felix Unger."

Chucking Out Time

A fever seems to be raging as Freshers’ Week kicks off and all the children are finally in school. On every street it seems family saloons are being crammed with bulging cardboard boxes, household linens, broken Dysons and trips to the charity shops and the local dump are on everybody’s schedule.

I’m not immune. Perhaps more than in spring, the clear out beckons. Low beams of dazzling autumn sun make it impossible to ignore the encroachment of hoarded tat, threadbare spots on the carpet, grubby finger marks on painted surfaces.

And, inexorably, Christmas is coming, hand in hand with its incipient anxiety. Not just the exhortation to get more stuff, get more stuff, but just where will we put all the stuff when we get it? Where will we even put the bloody tree?

In our cellar, hands on hips, I stand on the periphery of our accumulation of children’s outgrown toys, DIY paraphernalia, towering piles of discarded boxes, teetering stacks of furniture, and I have to steel myself against the wave of despair that threatens to send me running back up the stairs.

Sternly I rein in my panic and tell myself: “Look. For. Stuff. To. Sell.” I know it has to be here somewhere. The spare chairs, the uncomfortable settee, the impulse purchases from IKEA, the things yet unpacked from our move four years ago - they will do for a start. But as I examine some of them and wonder how I will faithfully describe them to potential buyers, I can’t help thinking I need a new word: ‘family-worn’.

Such a term covers felt-tip pen marks that won’t quite come out, the faded flaws created by a vigorous treatment of Vanish to remove said pen marks, the scratches of an impatient dog, a previous owner’s cat, the scurf of glitter, dust and puckered, gum-less stickers that seems to reappear magically within ten minutes of being vacuumed, the graffiti and the Disney stickers that, without a bottle of white spirit, are definitely here to stay.

Mmmm. How to spin it? Shabby Chic? Good upholstery project? Another term I wish I could use springs to mind – how Japanese women refer to their newly retired husbands getting under their feet: sodai gomi (oversize rubbish – see, it sounds better in Japanese).

I am then struck by a mortal fear: what if I do sell these for a few quid, or donate them, in a few weeks’ time? I could witness them re-upholstered, poised in their designer-distressed distinction in the window of one of the chi-chi boutiques of Lewes, bearing a price tag that will make me simultaneously laugh and weep.

So, there they stay for now.

I start small. The bags and bags of plastic bags, the used margarine/ice cream tubs  - proof that the 21^st Century Green ethos of Reduce, Re-use, Recycle is the perfect storm for producing a generation of hoarders on the scale of Edmund Trebus.

I feel cheated of the spate of guilt free ‘de-cluttering’ that accompanied the Blair era. ‘How to de-Clutter’ books and Life Coaches seemed to promise that an empty attic was the key to enlightenment. And what a joyful antidote that was to my parents’ post war penny-pinching (the quarter of a tomato in the fridge, the broken teacups full of dripping, the bags of old tights for tying up the beans).

Their legacy is that I still feel sick with shame when I throw food away.  But, perhaps I should.

Nevertheless, I await with interest the day that my son regards his ice cream carton lunchbox with horror and demands its replacement with something China-made and embellished with super-heroes.

It depresses me to consign all those polypropylene (PP) containers to the bin.  Alongside PET, it is one of the most commonly used household plastics, used as DVD cases, soup pots and, of course, margarine tubs.  They are potentially, recyclable, of course, but according to the BBC there won’t be household collections for another five years. Not even I can contemplate collecting a garrison of PP containers until recycling facilities are available. But then again, if I move aside those old oil cans…