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If you knew how much of your life would be spent waiting, would you still make the trip?

Waiting for ‘oga’
to rouse himself from whatever has seized his mind at the time (heaven
forefend that he should be waiting for you); waiting for the young
ladies to finish colour coordinating, accessory matching and putting
the finishing touches to ‘the look’ of the day; waiting for that police
officer, bored out of his tiny mind, to decide whether to prolong the
pleasure he derives from wasting your time; waiting for that parking
attendant who thinks he can show you how to drive (something that would
not cross his mind if you were male); or just simply waiting because
everybody else seems to think your time is theirs.

I am sitting in my
car in the hot sun waiting for a sixteen year old. I came when I was
instructed to: 1.30 pm she said. I will have lunch with my friends
after school officially closes for half term and will be ready to be
picked up at 1.30. Of course she wasn’t, and of course she was not the
one who provided an explanation because of course she did not pick up
her cell phone when I called (why would she call me?); one of her
friends did.

I am long past
wondering about how our children manage to be so different from us. Try
anything you like at home to mould them onto the template you came
with, it does not work because they simply breathe in this free
wheeling sense of entitlement from the air around them.

Keep my mother
waiting? Certainly I would have to be ad, possessed by some alien
spirit. Infractions like that would earn you a scolding that could
reduce you to dust and remind you of your insignificance in the scheme
of things. It was not quite the equivalent of “I brought you into this
world and I can take you out”, but it was close. It implied a greater
force of nature would correct the imbalance in the universe occasioned
by your incomprehensible behaviour.

And there is little
point going down that old pot holed road, when I was a child …The
answer would come whipping back at you accompanied by gales of
laughter:” That was then Daddy, this is now. Don’t even go there!”
Which leads to another thing, smart quick thinking and eloquent today’s
children can see past the façade of do as I say not as I do.

Where we would
simply accept and keep silent even if we thought differently, they want
an explanation now and one that makes sense so they can throw it back
at you when you are least expecting it. Parenting has become a full
time job. The bulwark of those forces of nature, aunts, uncles cousins
the wider community of family has been permeated by a wild, angry and
unscrupulous world of people seeking their own progress and pleasure at
the expense of yours. This is also matched by a free wheeling media
that forces you to eternal vigilance in policing what your children
read and watch on those constantly available screens big and small.

My mother’s most
potent weapon against me was guilt. “Why do you want to put me to
shame. What wrong did I do in having you?” I used to hate it, but it
worked. Look at me today, married with children and sitting in a hot
car waiting for a teenager!

Could I try that
same tack with her? Unlikely because I do not think it would work and I
could not bring myself to do it. Each generation climbs on the
shoulders of the other and so can see ahead to a future from a
different view.

What I could not
share with my mother out of an old fashioned code of respect, I can
share with my daughter today in the confident hope that knowledge and
not luck will guide her to make the right choices and decisions in
those subjects that do not come on any school curriculum, even today.

But is still
remains a continuous circle of life when your offspring stop being
children and grow more like companions as they traverse that same road
you struggled on and come to understand so much more about what you
were trying to teach them. Daughters come to understand the particular
nature of motherly and wifely toil, and often times you find yourself
looking into a mirror of your past as you watch your children.

The other day
halfway through a morning schedule of juggling work, home and offspring
I was presented with two sets of requests for afternoon pick ups and
drop offs. I had already had to cancel two previous appointments with
my barber that week because of other pressures. But I was planning to
cut my hair this afternoon I moaned. ” Mummy you don’t need to cut your
hair, why are you always cutting your hair.”

I had to turn round and tell that sixteen year old: “You know you sound just like my mother!”