“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.” Oscar Wilde wasn’t entirely right about this one. The reality is a bit more complicated.
My mum didn’t much like her own mother, from what I could tell; my granny Crann reached 4ft 10in at peak height, but was more or less down to eye level by the time I remember her, and her modest stature dictated the course of her life. Her original ambition was to work in the Post Office; except you had to be able to see over the counter. She had a brief and scarring attempt at teaching, but corporal punishment is harder to administer when your pupils are taller than you, so with some relief she accepted the hand of her childhood sweetheart, and tried strenuously not to leave the safety of home again.
In due course, my mum came along, and then her little brother. And her mother said to her, “You’re too old to sit on my knee now, you have to be a big sister to Harry.” So she went and sat on her daddy’s knee instead, and learned to love science and engines and cricket, and despise cooking and domesticity. And who knows what they talked about, who knows what sort of darling daughter my stressed, busy, bossy mother once was. Maybe he made her squeal with stories of the mouldy biscuits and corned beef he’d eaten in the bogs of the Somme, and maybe she decided then and there that adventurers ate whatever there was, and never threw anything away.
How can you ever know your parents? You missed the best bit of their lives.
The sphere of Granny Crann’s life was small, and its core was the kitchen table, where she let me spend as long as it took to make jam tarts and always told me they were wonderful, even against the wonky, smeary evidence. My mother’s kitchen was barely big enough for her, and she certainly didn’t encourage visitors, least of all those who might want to spend more than 14 consecutive minutes cooking.
So, of course, I learned to love the kitchen, and thereby rebelled against my mum’s rebellion.
But however far and fast you run, one day you’ll realise you’re back where you started. It’s not called a life cycle for nothing. Take leftovers. Saturday being shopping day, our fridge has to be emptied on a Friday night. Somehow, whatever’s left has to become a nourishing meal for four. However hard I try, I can’t quite bring myself to throw it away and summon a nice takeaway instead.
My mother couldn’t either, and her solution was Wednesday Pie, so called because it consisted of a pastry lid over the remains of the joint and whatever else was left by mid-week, usually including baked beans. The beans gave a glossy, unctuous thickness to the sauce. I loved it so much that I made it for my own family, though I failed in spirit by opening the beans on purpose, having somehow forgotten to start them off three days early. The children loved it, though they immediately noticed that the beans were organic, and not Heinz.
They weren’t Heinz in her day either. I can vividly remember begging her theatrically not to shame the family by bringing home economy baked beans and detergent instead of Heinz and Daz. Bad enough she shopped for own-brands at the Co-op – unbearable if any of my friends should come over for tea and spot the evidence.
But the Co-op beans were no more nasty than the Whole Earth ones I inflicted on my own children, and about a third of the price. And somehow I happily dismissed their pleas for Babybel, Ribena and Kellogg’s Variety Packs, even while nursing these livid psychological scars of my own.
Her motives for using up leftovers, rejecting big brands, and inflicting the results on her hapless family may have gone by different names from mine, been ascribed to different prejudices and principles; but the distressing evidence is that, in the end, it’s all about control. And that, to my surprise and considerable shame, is the thing I seem to have inherited most unarguably from my mother.
• Sheila Hayman blogs at mrsnormal.com
