'If you are lucky to have a parent or two alive on this planet, call them.' OK, JK Simmons, you’re on, I thought, punching in my Mum and Dad’s landline number after watching a YouTube clip of the actor’s emotional acceptance speech. The telephone rang. And rang. And rang and rang and rang. And went to voicemail. Stupid parents! Where are they when I need them to validate my keen sense of filial duty? Who leaves the house the day after Oscar night anyway? Curse them!
I am bloody lucky. My Mum and Dad are both alive (at least, I hope they are, they have yet to reply to my message) and I love them very much. They are not perfect, any more than I am a perfect kid. But we have a good relationship, and it’s getting even better with age. Especially when I remember that I am a woman who is nearly in her thirties, and I’m as responsible for our communications as they are.
Not everyone I know has a relationship with their parents - or as Simmons points out, living ones. It’s a privilege. And that means that no matter how tricky, sticky or awkward the Christmas dinner chats get, however many times they wilfully misunderstand your job, or ask impertinent questions about your relationship, you owe it to them, and to yourself, to keep persevering and putting the time in as long as you’re capable of communicating with each other after a fashion.
Relationships are porous. They grow and evolve as much as we do, and ideally, they stretch to accommodate us. We know that we change dramatically as we move from childhood to adulthood - and that it can be very, very hard to persuade our parents to see us as the adults that we have become, especially if they are still sometimes paying our phone bill or picking us up from nights out. What we don’t discuss to the same extent is the way they change. My Mum was five years younger than I am now when I was born. She’s been married to my Dad for over 30 years, and they have watched the world - and their place in it - change dramatically. I expect them to be as still and steady as a rock in the ocean, so I can keep being a wave - furious, rushing, disruptive. But communicating with your parents as an adult isn’t just about making the calls. You’ve got to listen to what they have to say.
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Like I said, what we have isn’t perfect. I catch myself treating my parents the way I’d treat no other human being. If something good happens at work, I’ll ring them up to brag about it, in a way that I’d never dream of doing with anyone else. (Like many women, I’ll attribute all successes to luck, but my Mum gets to hear ‘And the sub editor said she’d never seen anyone use an Oxford Comma so elegantly!’) If I had money troubles, I would certainly ask them for help first. In fact, I have asked them, on more than one occasion, and I have yet to pay them back. And I know that while they’re proud of my work, they wish A) I wouldn’t write about sex so much and B) I would just sort myself out and pick a career that a reasonably talented five year old could draw. My Dad has an iPad and a Kindle but has not read or downloaded my Made In Chelsea ebook. ('Well, I don’t watch the show so there isn’t really much point, is there?')
The point is that I know they love me in a way that still terrifies and confuses them, many years after the moment they met me when I was squealing, hairy and covered in gunk. I know not a day goes by when they’re not wondering about the welfare of me or at least one of my five sisters, that every major practical, financial and emotional decision they have ever made since they became parents has been undertaken to benefit their kids in some way - and that they have probably spent a full year of their lives driving to and from parents’ evenings.
None of us asked to be born, and most of us will be angered, infuriated and frustrated by our parents during our adult lives. But even if the love feels far away sometimes, you can usually tap into it over time. If you bring a little life into the world, you have a responsibility to look after it - and if the people who raised you did even a half way decent job, you’ve got a responsibility to build an adult relationship with them, and see them as people with hobbies, hopes and wholly relatable flaws. Even if, on a bad day, five minutes with your mother makes you want to chew broken glass, keep trying - then you’ll get to find out what happens on a good day. Make the call.
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Picture: Matilda Hill-Jenkins
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.