“It is a look that is full up to the top with the history of us”
We’re meeting in a minute, yet I still haven’t decided which of mum’s apothegms to invoke today.
Right now, I’m considering the relative merits of, “Beware of self-pity”, and “Change is the rule of life”. The big guns. It’s a tough one.
But there’s a chance I might not have to invoke either, for my daughter and I are sparing ourselves the messy, painful details of an airport goodbye, with its weird, Mayflower-voyage essence of finality; her boyfriend is taking her to the airport, so we shall not be upsetting ourselves with any essence of finality nonsense at all today. No. We. Shall. Not.
Instead, I’m simply picking up my daughter from her boyfriend’s house, where she drove at nine this morning to print off her boarding cards, and taking her for breakfast.
After which I’m going to say, “Barcelona is just a hop,” give my daughter a quick, hard hug and walk to my car without looking back.
Then I’ll drive home, and that’s it.
And you know what? The way I’m feeling right now as I pull up outside her boyfriend’s house — all wise-old-bird-and-rock-of sense — I think I might have finally acquired an aptitude for goodbyes.
I really think I might have.
“Sorry about the armchair on its side, love,” I say, as she and her boyfriend approach the car, “I forgot to take it out of the car before I left. One of you will just have to squeeze in the boot and sort of squish yourself inside its legs.”
Her boyfriend — ever the gentleman — would like to oblige but since he’s built like a bunker he cannot, so he opens the boot and while my daughter folds herself up inside the armchair legs, he buttresses her with luggage.
After she has origamied herself in, I close the boot. She looks up at me through the boot window, knees on chin. It cannot be comfortable. But she’s laughing.
“It’s only to town,” I say through the boot-window, “two minutes. I’ll drive carefully. Can you survive in there till then?”
“I’m grand,” she says, still looking up at me through the window — all dusting of freckles and whimsical smile, “I’m actually quite comfy in here.”
In the café, I give her two bird decorations to dolly up her room in Barcelona, a card and a gruesomely cheesy badge saying, “A daughter is a gift of love,” which I bought, even though it is as poor, weak, flat and lame a description as, “A cake is something you eat.”
She laughs her head off at the badge and shoots me a look. I can’t describe this look, but in it, somehow, it has all that we’ve ever been to each other, and what we are to each other now. It is a look that is full up to the top with the history of us.
I drink my coffee and then I hear a single sob resound in the cafe.
It’s mine, and it sounds like a sob that’s been locked up in a geyser for 10 years.
Then I hear another. It’s my daughter’s.
This one is quieter and responds to reassurance quite quickly.
Then there is an urgent flurry of scrambled eggs and toast. Then I say, “Barcelona is only a hop,” give my daughter a quick, hard hug, and walk to the car without looking back. Then I drive home. And that’s it.
At home, as I lug the armchair into the conservatory, I invoke “Beware of self-pity.” I invoke, “Change is the rule of life,” too.
I invoke them until my daughter texts me at 3pm: In Barcelona. So hot!!! :) It’s only a hop Mum! X
And this is when I think that there isn’t a way of acquiring an aptitude for saying goodbye to your children. There just isn’t.
Even when you’ve got used to inhabiting a world of constant leave-takings — in which nearly every meeting with your children leads to a parting — goodbyes are simply that part of parenting for which it’s impossible to acquire an aptitude.
You endure the unbearable, you bear it. And that’s it.
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