An inevitable consequence of writing about family is that sometimes people will ask after them. Colleagues will inquire: “How’s Mum? Enjoying her Alexa?” when I’ve written about the gadget Mum thinks makes the best daughter; while friends seeing me in a miniskirt tease, “Auntie B would be horrified!” since I detailed her conservativeness. Recently, I was texting someone with a daughter, and she said: “I hope when my girl grows up we have a bond like you and your mum.”
Which was funny because I read those messages in my therapist’s waiting room looking for help to cope with said bond.
“My family is my own climate crisis. A disaster that will destroy anything once nurtured,” I might say on the sofa. Or, “I think the family is a corrupt institution designed to embed servitude into children and it should be abolished.” (“OK,” she’ll reply. “I see you’re feeling stretched by commitments again.”)
My problem is one of expectation: I expect things from my family as they do me, even though expecting someone to act a certain way because you want them to is surely the road to madness. I wonder where I get such notions of perfect, non-fighting families from – television? Books? Perhaps I contribute to this, too.
But writing about happy family moments – the first holiday I took as an adult with Mum, the children’s gifts she still buys me as her “baby” – has its personal upsides: it’s easier to see my relatives as others do. So I’ll pay this forward. I’ll prompt my friends to talk about the jokes they cracked with their folks, and note to my partner that his football trophy is still on display on his sister’s mantelpiece. The truth is, even in the anguish and pain of family life there is too much love and too many kindnesses to count. We’d better lend each other a hand.
