When you hear your mothers voice.
“It Will Never Wash”.
A phrase that used to make me stomp my feet and snarl in frustration. That along with “you are not going out in that”, “go back upstairs and put something more appropriate on” and my personal favourite “I’m not made of money”. Words, which at the time, seemed to fall from my mothers lips at an alarmingly regular and totally unfair rate. Phrases and words which as a child and a teenager I swore to myself I would never use. I would be a cool mum who understood things.
Yeah. Right. As Lloyd Grossman used to say Let’s look at the evidence.
- It all became clear during the summer holidays when in the beating hot sun, we were getting ready to go to The Beasts tennis lesson. I was just tying up The Chunky Monkey’s shoe laces, and shouting “COME ONNNN WE’RE GOING TO BE LATE” and I turn around and jump out of my skin as there’s Stinky Spider-Man in his tennis gear. Literally, he’s standing there, with his Spider-Man outfit on rolled up at the legs and the arms under his shorts and t.shirt, his “boots” and gloves under his socks and tucked in his pocket. “You’re not going out like that, go upstairs and take your suit off”. Silently he stomps off upstairs and gets changed, silently I glance in the mirror and see my reflection as my mother.
- Another day I go to dish up dinner, it’s pizza, yay! A firm and always favourite in the Horton household. “BUT I WANTED A SOUP!” was the petulant sulky response of an over tired, already full of sugar five year old. “Well, some boys and girls aren’t lucky enough to choose what they want for dinner. Some boys and girls have never had pizza, you’re very lucky”. He looks at me, glares, and starts to eat. I die a little bit inside.
- He flounces out of school thrusting a letter at me “Mummy…I NEED an iPad” I read the letter, nowhere on the letter does it say he needs one. In fact, it’s very clear that there are plenty at school. We have lots of conversations over the following week about how much things cost, how expensive iPads are which included the little gem of “Mummy, how did you get your iPad?” “I worked very hard and earned enough pennies to pay for it” “Well. Can’t you just do that for me?”. During one of the conversations I used the phrase “I’m not made of money” to which he responds “I KNOW THAT! You’re made of bones, and skin and blood. You just need to work really hard then go to the money machine in the wall”. *sigh*.
- I’m shopping with my mother, The Beast is at school and The Chunky Monkey is busy eating a packet of animal biscuits. We wander around Debenhams looking at clothes and my mum picks something up holding it against her and looking in the mirror. I lean forward, reaching for a bit of the fabric on the hem which I rub it between my fingers and say, with no intended irony at all “It will never wash“.
- During breakfast one morning a bowl of weetabix goes on the floor. My two charges look guilty at me and as I ask if perhaps it’s because the culpit had been messing about with it like I’d asked them not to, they looked at each other before solomely responding with “No…it was Larry”. Now. This would have been a perfectly plausible excuse, if The Chunky Monkey hadn’t been upstairs with me at the time the bowl landed on the floor. After sending them to the hall to think about things while I cleared it up I went out and ask I uttered the words “I’m not mad you broke the bowl, I’m mad that you fibbed. I do not like being fibbed too…” I was transported back to the age of about six where my mother asked if I’d enjoyed my cherry bake well tart at lunch time. Even though I’d swapped it for a packet of chewits I said “yes, it was yummy” so she didn’t know, I knew she didn’t really like chewits. Unfortunately for me I’d left the chewit wrappers in my lunchbox and there was no trace of my cherry bake well tart. I was pretty much told the same thing about fibbing.
It continues with my firing off phrases such as “I do not want to have to ask you again” and “Am I speaking Chinese?” amongst others. So there you have it. The circle of life is catching up with me, I am turning into my mother, please tell me it’s not just me? Have you noticed any little traits or phrases creeping into your day to day life now you have monsters to contend with?