When I was a kid, my mum used to talk wistfully about living in a commune. But, looking back, there were times when there were enough of us and we were random enough – two single mothers, heaps of kids, lodgers, a guy in a caravan in the garden, more cats than had names – that it would have been a commune in anyone’s eyes. I don’t know what she was waiting for, some kind of hippy badge?
Anyway, for a while, we lived in the 80s version of a blended family, which is to say there were a lot of us – my mum, her friend, her friend’s three kids (one a bit older and twins) and me and my sister – with a world of wisdom and expertise, none of it in DIY.
I remember everything and my sister remembers everything, yet our memories are completely different. I remember our mum’s friend bought Ribena: it was the most exciting thing that ever happened, because our mum thought squash was a capitalist conspiracy. My sister remembers the friend teaching us all how to do a Greta Garbo impression. I remember the older son offered me 50p to eat his scab, and I did, but he never gave me the 50p.
He remembers that I was always covered in snails, because I had taken a shine to them. I remember thinking the twins were telepathic and a bit magic – and I still do. My sister remembers our mum taking against a beefy cat and nailing a skirting board closed behind him. I remember her friend freeing him; we both choose to believe that our mum must have known her friend would do that.
The kids hadn’t seen a lot of each other in the intervening years, because of life, then two funerals – our mum’s and theirs – happened this year. The sheer number of events we had to catch up on – four divorces (OK, two of them mine), many bereavements, yet more cats – was like listening to a Dynasty plot read by someone on helium. It was exactly like a family, except bigger. It turns out I do want the hippies to send us a badge.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
