Silly to catastrophise that late-night call from your son

HOME alone, well past midnight.

“Quite late for a sociable call,” I think, switching on the light and tossing about bedding.

“But not, on balance, too late,” I consider, standing beside my bed with ears cocked and eyes peeled for low, insistent vibration.

“Important not to think the worst,” I think, lowering myself to the floor and shuffling sideways under the bed on my front.

“Silly to catastrophise,” I think, retrieving phone from underneath bed and rolling over onto my back into a nest of tossed bedding.

“Hello,” I pant, sitting up, braced for catastrophe.

“Mum,” my eldest son says, “it’s me.”

“Hi love,” I pant, kneeling up, “how are you?”

“All good,” he says.

There is no catch of doom in his voice. I sit back down.

“Mum, are you on your own right now?” he says.

“I am as it happens,” I say, kneeling back up. “So no-one’s there?” “No-one,” I say, “Dad’s out.”

I place my free arm on the wall for support and clamber to my feet. “OK,” he says, “just wanted to check who was about.

“So, how are you Mum?”

“Fully braced,” I might answer, leaning into the wall. Or, alternatively, I could say, “exactly like a tree, love, quivering before a cyclone, about to be torn out by its roots.”

Or: “Well, since you asked, love, right now, I am just like a little rowing boat, bobbing around on the ocean, about to be suddenly freighted from above with a shipping container and sink down, down, down into the black, black depths.”

Or I could simply say, “just suffering from heart trouble, love, from remembering how utterly, terribly contingent upon your being ‘all good,’ my being ‘all good’ really is.”

Instead, I reply: “All good, love, so what’s going on with you?”

“And how are the girls?” he says, and I think, as I tell him how his sisters are, how easy this is; that if emotions were knickers, most days I’d know what kind my daughters were wearing.

I’d know the fabric they were made from and colour. I’d know their stitching, pattern, frills, and gusset. And they’d know mine.

But — and never mind gender clichés — when it comes to sons, I think, it’s different.

Between mothers and sons there is less blatancy; an ever so slight mutual inscrutability that does not at all get in the way of love and loyalty, but nevertheless means that most days, I don’t know what my sons might be wearing.

I mean I know the fabric of their emotions. Maybe their colour. Rarely their frills. But definitely not the gusset.

And how’s his brother, he wants to know. “Happy out,” I say, “he hasn’t told me he’s not.”

I climb into bed. “So how are you, love?” I say.

“Fine, Mum,” he says.

His girlfriend of seven years?

“Great.”

His new job?

“Really looking forward to it.”

The move to London?

“Really excited. It’s going to be great.”

Which only leaves his health.

“Actually,” he says, “there is something I want to talk to you about,” and I think, at this point, about being a parent and how sometimes it all boils down — just like that — to one simple, biological reaction: Fear.

“So what’s up, love?” I say.

“I mean,” he says, “you can tell Dad when he gets back but not anyone else, OK?”

“OK.”

“Actually,” he says, “I think I’d like to tell him myself.”

“OK love. So…”

He’s got a website up in front of him, he says. He’ll forward me the link. He wants to choose an engagement ring and he doesn’t have a clue where to start.

His girlfriend doesn’t know anything about it yet. He’s going to propose in three weeks’ time in London.

“Mum?” he says, “you still there?”

But I cannot speak right now. For sometimes, it all boils down, just like that, to another simple, biological reaction: Joy.