It never said that in the brochure!

As I peered over the top of my Sunday paper and snuck a quick glance at my two teenage sons, I marvelled at how on earth I had got here. Married, middle aged with two teenage sons. For many of you, I’m sure adulthood has arrived and you’ve keenly grasped the mantle with both hands, super confident that you know where you are going, having nailed your life expectations. That has never been the case for me. I’m forty five this year and still haven’t quite decided what I’m going to do when I leave school. The fact that I have two teenage sons is quite disconcerting.

And another thing, when you realise that you are expecting a child, (Never mind thinking about special needs, after all everyone wishes for a healthy child and rightly so.) your mind can only make a small leap to visualise perhaps the baby stage, maybe a cute toddler. That giant leap some fourteen years hence forth is not quite within the boundaries of your imagination. Well, not in mine anyway. Plus it seemed such a long way off. Thank goodness, because I think you might stop right then & there and run for the hills.

Some great stuff is being written about the teenage brain and how to try and understand it. Apparently none of the grumpy moods, relentless arguments and monosyllabic grunting are any of their fault, a detail Charlie my thirteen year old delights in informing me. From thirteen to twenty the brain undergoes a monumental development stage, allowing teenagers magnificent leaps in creativity, logic and the ability to retain lots of information at the front of the brain. (Which we, the over forties, (i.e. old people) would struggle to achieve).

So why’s it all my fault? Mum gets it in the neck for everything. When Max or Charlie can’t find a missing wallet, book, coat, pair of shoes, it’s apparently all because of me. The great ‘steal everything’ fairy deliberately goes around the house messing up all their stuff and hiding it, just to be annoying – me, obviously. Plus they can’t find a piece of cheese in a fridge.
‘Mum, have we any cheese?’
‘Try the fridge sweetheart.’
‘I know, but what shelf?’
‘Try the third shelf love.’
‘No, you’re wrong, we haven’t got any. Mum?’
‘What’s that then?’
‘Oh, you never said it was behind the butter!’
They take all good things like clean sheets and good food totally for granted and have to be reminded to say ‘please and thank you’ on a very disheartening regularity, oh, and they smell.

My saving grace is a chat and mug of tea with my mate Caroline. With her I can moan and wail, truthfully recounting my woes. The ‘perfect mother’ image can be discarded at the door as we consol one another. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I love the fact that her three girls are as bad as my two boys. Caroline’s daughters are beautiful, charming and delightful. How encouraging to be told that they turn, like a pint of dodgy milk, into insolent, sullen and uncooperative wenches, completely on a par with my sons. It gives me such comfort to know that I’m not alone; other people (especially people who I rather like & admire) are having a rough time of it too.

The mum’s at school look so together and efficient decked out in stylish Boden and killer heels, with large expensive handbags. This morning I still had deep conditioner in my hair, so forced a flat cap over the soggy lot and covered my flannelette pink & brown spotted pyjamas with my large full length overcoat(if it had been summer I would have added a giant bug-like pair of sunglasses). I looked fine.
‘Mum! You can’t take me to school like that! Say we have a crash and you have to get out?’ (And I know what he’s really thinking is, ‘say one of my friends sees you.’)
‘Fancy getting the bus Darling?’
‘Can you tuck your trousers into your Uggs? And drop me by the roundabout, NOT in front of the bus stop at the school gates.’
Max came out with a classic yesterday.
‘Mum, where’s my mobile phone?’
‘No idea darling, can you remember who you last rang? Perhaps it’s on your desk?’
‘Ah, yes, here it is. Oh Mum! The batteries dead! You forgot to charge it!’
What a relief to discuss our inner fears of how awful we are as mothers and what a terribly hard, thankless and exhausting job it is.