Sorting through my parents’ papers showed them to be good stewards of their money but for whom?
The photographic slides brought them back into my life on the lounge wall, images of how I remembered them, young, confident and attractive, with the high profile job, children at boarding school, cocktail and dinner parties, hob-nobbing it with the diplomatic elite.
A couple. My parents.
Every drawer I open, every cupboard I search through, every chair I sit on, every cup I drink from, reminds me of them.
What they kept is as telling as what they threw away or hid in the garage, the phone they rarely used, the typewriter that went silent once my brother and I had left school, the ticket stubs for cruises we never accompanied them on, two boxes of memorabilia, one for me one for my brother with school reports and a single, unremarkable, lengthy letter from me the first year I was at boarding school, kept for no other reason, I imagine, than they had to keep one of the hundreds I must have written…
My children hardly knew them, and that my parents would say, when I asked them to at least telephone on their birthdays,
“What would we talk about..?”
speaks volumes.
Despite the difficulties of moving here for a year and living where they lived for so long without me, I am euphorically happy.
It is as if I am in my element again.
In America I always felt I needed to get away, as if I was trapped inside one of my mother’s china figurines, bursting to break out.
I thought I’d managed my release when I first left, but my china casing was not the physical environs more the emotional ones.
I had tied myself with invisible apron strings to my parents, wanting to be their child, pulling myself away so that they’d notice me more, perhaps miss me and want me back.
Instead we both flourished in our own ways they quietly with their dog, bungalow, bridge and each other, me loudly with my blue eyed Texan, four children, and homeschool with extraordinary pets.
On sorting through their lives on paper I am beginning to gather that it wasn’t anything I did that caused them to be the way they were.
My oldest daughter pointed out to me in her wisdom of recollection,
“Mum, we had to call and ask if we could pop round while we were on a three week holiday!”
She was right.
I am settling into their house which has become my home. I have sold their furniture and thrown away their treasures and wondered at their taste in art. I have hung on to a few things that are irrevocably them, items I saw in photographs from my childhood. Those awful china figurines!
I can be myself without having to prove anything…they hardly noticed anyway.
I am liberated in the best possible way, full of responsibility and an understanding of who I am because of them.
My oldest girl also pointed out…clever daughter this one too!
“You drop everything to be with us, you never turn us away or say you’re too busy…”
How observant.
I am loving England with all her idiosyncrasies. I missed living here and perhaps I never will again.
For now I am counting the months until we leave. Not so many now.
Soon I’ll be taking my last walk along the lanes and hedgerows of ancient Britain.
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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