Monday, 28 June 2010

Family Fortunes

It is a time of echoes.

A weekend at my parents' house, my brother and sister there. So many days like that, waiting and waiting for lunch - not allowed to help - while Mum goes hysterical in the kitchen and the vegetables wilt to a uniform soft sludge after their hour-long languish in the hostess trolley. We sit in the garden and drink glass after glass of wine, listening to Dad shouting his familiar refrain: "you stupid bloody woman". It's a wonder we're not all alcoholics.

My sister is writing her dissertation for her Masters in psychotherapy. She's chosen the topic of family dynamics. Guess what she's chosen for the case study? God knows she's has enough therapy of various different kinds herself to be an expert connoisseur. Conversations with her about this kind of thing normally make me want to slit my wrists - but I realised as she interviewed me that this is because the discussions were always initiated by her, and she was always telling me how to interpret my childhood.

How irritating. My childhood is where it belongs. In a big black box nailed shut with a big Do Not Disturb label on it. Or maybe it should say Here Be Dragons or something more exciting. Not all the lovely happy memories of course, not the snowmen and sandcastles and car-washes and learning to waltz standing on Dad's feet and sitting very still with our canary perching for the first time ever on my finger, and being allowed to take things out of the twin-tub with the long pale wooden tongs. I think the box is probably post-puberty and contains embarrassing episodes of knicker inspections (was I still wearing any? were they inappropriately damp?), chopping the lock off my diary with bolt-cutters, screaming hormonal arguments and all interspersed with furious studying to make sure I got good enough grades to go to university. See? These things are best left in their box.

Anyway, for once my sister was asking me what I thought. Novel. She's already interviewed my brother: this only took about three minutes as he's not the thinking type. She had some structured questions and it was interesting to reflect on them. The last one in particular. How would I like my children's experience of childhood to be? That's easy. I don't want those girls to grow up feeling the way I feel. I want them to feel that loving them is the easiest thing in the world, and that it's impossible, inevitable that they will be loved all the way through their lives.

There were other echoes too. None of us mentioned that we will hardly have days like this now, mooching about together, since she's moved to Australia. She thinks my parents might split up. I think they won't, why go through all that hell together, locked together in mortal combat all those years, then wait until you're 70 to take the big step? Hmmm food for thought there.

More to come, it's still working through. My outsize satin nightie from Mum was aced by her gifts to my sister of shampoo for dull and lifeless hair, skin brightening face scrub and the most hideous pair of openwork multicoloured crochet trousers with appliqued woollen roses (I kid you not) that mankind has ever known. I am going to dare her to wear them - this dare is worth serious money, probably £100 at least. They are truly appalling. I was glad to get the nightie and the book about broccoli, on reflection. My brother received Clearasil and a book called How To Clean Your House.

I felt weird when I saw this photo at the top. Released as one of a selection by Aug Sun Suu Kyi's family to celebrate her 65th birthday, it shows her tending a barbecue on the Norfolk Broads. Thus proving my theory that everyone's family photos from the Seventies are the same, whether on the beach at Margate, on a bike ride at Hornsea, or being a beautiful and iconic symbol of nationhood in an ancient Oriental kingdom.

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