Confessions of a Bad Mother: The Teenage Years

by Stephanie Calman

  ‘I think we should ring their school,’ I say, over a beer.

  ‘Actually . . .’ she says, ‘I don’t think we need to. I talked to J, and I think he’s learned quite a big lesson over this.’

  And since Peter agrees with her, I back down.

  I’m left feeling envious that J and his mother had a Proper Talk about it and we didn’t. And it still bridles, the way those brazen minxes marched past me without saying hello.

  I’m so hung up on this I never think to ask where they got the booze, and it’s only years later that Lawrence admits some of it came from here.

  Ages 13 to 15: Route Master

  Lydia is going to be thirteen. When she and Lawrence were small, displays of birthday one-upmanship were largely limited to a magician or, if you really pushed the boat out, a chap with a van of exotic animals chosen to startle the kids a bit without destroying the average middle-class living room. There was usually a tarantula. But since then, the stakes have shot up.

  Recently a friend’s daughter was invited to a sixteenth at which the guests each received a going-home present of the latest must-have: an iPod Shuffle. And I learn from a father in North London that his son’s classmate is having the entire cast of Thriller – yes, the stage show based on the Michael Jackson album – to perform the whole thing at the stately home they’ve hired for his bar mitzvah. Not even that long ago the most opulent birthday treat Lawrence had been to was go-karting. Now everyone’s Philip Green.

  The challenge is to find a midway point between Pass the Parcel and getting wasted. But we needn’t worry.

  ‘It’s fine,’ says Lydia: ‘I already know what I’m doing.’

  She invites her eight closest friends to Pizza Express with two provisos: we must pay but not go with them, and they must all – including the one boy in her crowd – be dressed as their interpretation of Lady Gaga.

  ‘I’d give anything to be able to watch you all walk down there,’ I say.

  ‘Well you can’t.’

  As a concession she agrees to take some pictures on her present, a phone.

  ‘But don’t take it out in the street—’

  ‘Because it’ll get stolen: I know.’

  I give her the cash for the meal.

  ‘Don’t forget to check the bill.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And leave 10 per cent – but round it up.’

  ‘ALL RIGHT! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!’

  The thirteenth birthday, such a big deal when I was that age, is in reality less of a milestone than her first non-local bus journey, to a friend’s house about half an hour away.

  When they were small, they could make friends with anyone inside a radius of about two miles; anything beyond that meant too much precious time in the car. But I’d always weaken and make exceptions for children we really liked. And Peter would take them anywhere – ‘Sleepover in Glasgow? Righto!’ – to maintain his position as Top Parent.

  Lawrence has a new friend who lives a train-and-bus ride away. Or it’s an hour’s drive across the river, and the parking is hideous. I’m so anxious about parking tickets I have to hope the clearly interesting other mother doesn’t offer me a coffee. Then, just as we’re hoping they solve the problem for us by moving away, he suddenly masters the route.

  ‘And remember, always sit downstairs, because—’

  ‘The psychos are always upstairs: I KNOW!’

  This has been my policy since a stabbing on the number 37 after one passenger asked another not to throw chips. In my day, you could walk clear across the West End facing no greater danger than someone falling onto you accidentally from a pub doorway. When I was fourteen, I was once walking back from a party, about four miles away, when two policemen pulled up and offered me a lift; they were on their way back to the police station at the end of our road. When we arrived the driver asked for a kiss, which back then didn’t seem unreasonable.

  To help me not worry too much, Lawrence sends me a text from his new phone:

  Staying late to have unprotected sex and accept sweets from strangers.

  Oddly enough, this works far better than Peter saying: ‘Stop worrying.’

  At the Temple of Cake

  Lawrence and I go down to our local high street together, not to get a haircut, or school shoes, or games kit for sports he’s never going to play. We’re going out for coffee.

  We sit in the window of the place with a French name, owned by a Cypriot and staffed by Czechs, watching the pavement traffic. There’s a noticeable contrast between the youngish nicely dressed women with pushchairs and the slightly battered-looking old men: the neighbourhood past and present.

  ‘There’s still a launderette here,’ I observe, ‘but for how long?’

  ‘You mean by the time we leave, will it have become an overpriced maternity wear shop?’

  We get our coffees and as we sit there, something lovely happens.

  I feel the spirit – or no, it’s more like the atmosphere – of my father, who died seventeen years ago, sitting with us.

  He used to take me out for tea and cakes, a ritual whose restorative qualities he first experienced during the drudgery of National Service. Imagine how it must have felt to escape marching and being shouted at for the maternal attentions of warm, buttery waitresses with tea in a pot and a home-made teacake or scone. I was three when he first took me to Patisserie Valerie, where Madame Valerie herself received me, a goddess of plenty at her temple of cake, in an ambience of vanilla, lemon and chocolate tinged with just a hint of cigarette smoke. If I ever imagined heaven, it looked and smelled like that.

  And I’m filled with a sense of peace and well-being.

  And for a little while I feel that I am my father, and Lawrence is me. If I can manage not to mention homework or tidying, it will be perfect.

  Dad, I wish I could tell you I did have children after all – despite your telling me to – and I’m glad I did.

  ‘Mum?’ says Lawrence. ‘Are you OK? Hello?’

  ‘Mm, just – enjoying being here with you.’

  Ages 14 & 15: Relationships Through the Ages

  We ask Lawrence what he wants for his fifteenth birthday.

  ‘A bass. I know the one I want: all you have to do is pay for it.’

  ‘That sounds wonderfully effortless. Why a bass?’

  ‘Well, it sounds cool. And it has only four strings, so I figure it might be a bit easier than a regular guitar.’

  Ah, that’s my boy.

  We ask the school to find him a teacher. They take six weeks to get back to us, and when they do it’s a guitar teacher – not the same thing at all. Meanwhile, he starts teaching himself using online tabs and YouTube.

  ‘As most people choose the guitar,’ I say, ‘bassists are always in demand.’

  ‘Let’s not get carried away.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  The bass has a particular resonance for me.

  We sit down together at the computer and watch clips of top practitioners around the world.

  ‘My first true love was a bass player,’ I say, without thinking.

  ‘Really?’

  And before I can qualify this – or even think how I feel about it – he has typed in his name and there he is, performing on Top of the Pops in 1981.

  The intervening decades fall away. It’s so like seeing someone come back from the dead that I feel quite shaken. I ended it because of a misunderstanding I’ve felt badly about for over thirty years. I thought he preferred someone else, felt too devastated to talk to him, and just shut him out. On the other hand, I learned just about enough from the debacle to stay in therapy long enough to start confronting my fears, get married, have children and actually stay married.

  So far.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Mm? What?’

  ‘He looks really cool.’

  What a relief: in 1981, most of us looked rubbish.

  ‘So what did he play?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

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bsp; ‘What bass?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  He looks aghast.

  ‘For someone who went out with a bass player, you really don’t know much about it.’

  Shortly after this, he gets a girlfriend himself.

  She is polite and very pretty, with porcelain skin. Despite her petite figure she likes food and eats healthily, so instantly gets my vote. She doesn’t talk as much we do, but then no one does. Hang on – an awful thought occurs: she might be nervous around me. Me!

  So I make an effort to reduce my domestic footprint, and not to be so blunt or frank or LOUD all the time, and strive to distil my overbearing presence into something benign but not bland, which means I end up saying:

  ‘Would you like a drink? How about something to eat?’ about fifteen times a day, like a Jewish RoboMum, while my non-Jewish half snaps: ‘Shut up! She probably just wants you to leave her alone.’

  And in a moment of unwelcome clarity I realize that, to her, my whole identity is Boyfriend’s Mother. There is nothing – not lines on the neck, not grey roots or a stomach like badly packed shopping – as ageing as that. It feels doom-laden, like the moment in every female actor’s career when they see the dread words on the audition script, brutally highlighted: The Mother. Once you pass into that glamour-free zone, there’s no coming back; it’s supporting roles only from now on.

  ‘I’m not sure I’m ready for this,’ I tell a friend.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘They’re fifteen: it’s not as though they’re going to get married.’

  No, though for the next three years it is a little bit like it.

  The only unsettling moments come when I mention that Lawrence has a girlfriend and at least three people we know say, with undisguised eagerness:

  ‘Ooh! Are they having sex?’

  But here’s the plus side – a very big plus in my view: it’s clear that our son is naturally monogamous. This is brilliant! And I can think of another massive advantage this will bring.

  During one of our regular coffees together, I say to our friend Patrick, who also has a boy and a girl:

  ‘Hey, I know how to solve the problem of boys and porn: get them in a relationship! No substitute for the Real Thing, eh?’

  ‘OMG, you actually think it’s one or the other?!’

  And he laughs, leaning forward till he’s almost out of his seat.

  Orange is Not the Only Black

  I’m making an effort to spend more time with Lydia, now fourteen, which largely involves watching more television. It’s on the advice of my friend Teresa, whose children seem to adore her. So I’ve decided to do what she does.

  ‘What’s the number one tip?’

  ‘Be interested in what they’re interested in.’

  ‘Right!’

  But why does that have to be television? I hear you say.

  Because the alternative is Minecraft.

  And I love watching TV; it entertains and informs you, and asks for nothing back. The interactive generation don’t know what they’re missing.

  Luckily our kids are old enough to remember the old, traditional amusements, and have no trouble sitting passively on a sofa, although Lydia will insist on making something at the same time. There are always three of you in any relationship: you, her and the sewing machine. She can’t watch the subtitles on Scandi noir because she’s looking down most of the time, and the more suspenseful scenes are frequently drowned out by the sound of ka-chunking.

  ‘I don’t mind what we watch,’ she says, ‘so long as it’s not about serial killers, corruption or floods.’

  I don’t know what she has against floods.

  She’s already on series two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so I plunge in with that. Despite its ancient vintage – it began in 1997 – it’s held up very well. It doesn’t matter that I’ve already missed a few episodes, as the plots are quite similar; there’s something untoward about the new student at the high school, English Giles looks something up in his Old Library, new student turns out to be a vampire out to kill Buffy, a battle ensues and she wins – though only just!

  Then after about eight or nine episodes of that, she shows me a new drama, Orange is the New Black. But my internal auto-correct refuses to separate it lexically from Jeanette Winterson’s classic Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, so I can’t help calling it Orange is Not the Only Black. And once it’s gone into my brain like that I really can’t seem to change it, which really irritates both her and Lawrence, who likes it too. And it’s something my mother does.

  But in fact it doesn’t matter what I call it, because in the second or third episode, the unpopular new inmate is served a used tampon at lunch. This being an American prison it’s in a bun, but still.

  ‘I don’t want you to think I’m – disapproving,’ I say. ‘I just, I’m just not sure I can—’

  ‘It’s OK, Mum.’

  ‘And I’m definitely not criticizing the lesbian sex in the showers . . .’

  Which is pretty explicit.

  ‘It’s OK!’

  Now I’ve annoyed her again.

  The next time I ask what she’s watching, it’s another new show: Game of Thrones.

  ‘I’ll give it a try.’

  After all, it can’t possibly be more explicit or outlandish than Orange is Not the Only Black.

  In episode one, a girl with silver hair is betrayed into marriage by her brother, teaches her barbaric new husband how to have face-forward sex, then, cheered on by his men, eats the raw heart of a horse.

  ‘If you don’t like this,’ says Lydia, ‘we can always watch something else.’

  Actually it’s the wanton use of the subjunctive that gets me. Daenerys Targaryen, the silver-haired one, says – while being taken from behind:

  ‘I would look upon your face.’

  And thus invents the missionary position.

  ‘Well,’ I say, ‘maybe something else? Just, you know, this time.’

  She flicks through the programmes she’s recorded on the hard disk.

  ‘Supervet – that’s good.’

  We watch Noel the silky-voiced Irish vet surgically attach high-tech orthopaedic implants to the stumps of the amputated legs of dogs. No bloody, sinewy detail is left out.

  ‘Er . . . I’m sorry, but I feel a bit sick.’

  ‘OK – this is an animal programme with no operations in.’

  It’s called Animal Madhouse. A dog is brought to the vet repeatedly nibbling its own willy.

  ‘Urgh’, I say, ‘that’s disgusting!’

  ‘They don’t have opposable thumbs, so I guess this is their only option.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t . . .’

  ‘OK . . . Embarrassing Bodies . . .?’

  ‘All right, let’s try that.’

  We watch a man with a bent penis and a woman with excess flab on her vulva – quite a surprising amount of it – bravely submit themselves to examination. The surgery is at least off camera, but I cannot quite take the cushion away from my face.

  ‘OK . . .’ says Lydia. ‘What about this?’

  ‘Tattoo Fixers? What’s it like?’

  ‘It’s really good: you’ll like it, I promise.’

  I watch as a series of well-meaning victims with tattoos that don’t look like Bob Marley, Elvis, Nelson Mandela and, again, a penis, troop in to have them inked over with more acceptable images, like roses. There’s also a cute-looking receptionist who does nothing but come in as they reveal their various epidermal catastrophes, and say:

  ‘Oh, my God . . .’

  ‘Oh, my God . . .’ I say too.

  The tattooists are a sympathetic bunch with cool hairstyles and some very competent tattoos of their own, but again, I cannot look.

  Eventually I say:

  ‘How about something I’ve recorded? I’ve got one or two saved for you, actually.’

  We flick along: I stop at Jane Eyre with Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska.

  ‘This is good.�
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  ‘I’m not really in the mood for a film.’

  ‘OK, how about the Oliver Postgate documentary?’

  The one about the making of Ivor the Engine, The Clangers and other timeless classics of British animation. Without them there would be no Wallace and Gromit, or Shaun the Sheep. Without—

  ‘I’ve seen it.’

  I know, but I can’t delete it. Just having it there makes the world seem a better, less threatening place.

  ‘We met Peter Firmin, d’you remember? You showed him the Baby Clanger you made.’

  ‘I know! I was there. What are you telling me for? And it was Tiny Clanger.’

  ‘I’m not, I’m just – remembering.’

  A tense silence descends.

  And it dawns on me that the distance from those adorable creatures on their small planet to bent penises, lesbian shower sex and the eating of raw horses’ hearts has been a good deal shorter than I anticipated. In three years Lydia has moved on considerably, and I’m still trying – and she might say, failing – to catch up.

  In a year from now, she will go to Comic Con as Rhaegal the Dragon from Game of Thrones, with her friend Freya as Daenerys, Mother of Dragons and Queen of the Random Use of the Subjunctive. She gets into her shimmering green and bronze costume with handsewn, foldable wings. And Tiny Clanger and I stand in the hall and wave goodbye, as she extends her wings and heads for the train.

  Festival Dad

  As Lydia’s lot reach Year Ten, they’re encouraged to do the Duke of Edinburgh Award, known popularly as D of E. There are three levels – Bronze, Silver and Gold – designed to promote teamwork, self-reliance and walking in very wet socks. Lawrence has done it up to Bronze, then dropped it. Lydia can’t wait to do the whole thing.

  Those who complete all three levels – hiking twenty kilometres a day for four days with a pack that’s a quarter of their weight, camping in the wild, learning a skill and volunteering – get to go to Buckingham Palace to receive their awards. If she gets a move on she may even qualify before the actual D of E becomes too ancient to hand them out.