There are some things that are certain. Winters will be cold, London will be grey, the pub will be warm and people in your group of ex pat friends come and go. But for me I know that my parents will always be there for me. No matter what happens they will help me out, bail me out, provide me with a roof over my head and a delicious dinner. Also that in our own minds we are the stars in our own stories, we see things from a very skewed point of view sometimes.
Another certainty is that sometimes when my parents are around I will be reduced to acting like a teenager, despite my best efforts. My sister and I are the same, I guess that no one pushes your buttons like your family. So when my parents decided to come and visit me in the UK, I should have expected what would have happened.
I was excited beyond belief about seeing my parents. It had been 18 months since we had seen each other in the flesh and I had planned out an itinerary that would show them as much as possible in the two weeks that I had them for. When they arrived I was very tired and a bit cranky. Excited but cranky. I had been working crazy hours to enable me to have time off to spend with them, and their flights were redirected so they were landing at crazy a clock, and were delayed due to the ques through customs.
We headed home and they went to bed, whilst I baked for a friend’s birthday at the pub. We had a great night, drinking and dancing, laughing with my friends. They went home a bit earlier, unable to stay up as late as me due to the jetlag. We had a great time whilst they were here, but the way that I remembered it for a wee while is that our time was coloured by my bad behaviour.
I remember especially being frustrated on the tube with my parents. To my great shame at one point I pushed my mother off a tube. When I eventually was able to tell one of my friends this, she cracked up and said that we all have had to do this at one time or other, that our parents no matter how old or young they were, are unable to cope with the tube and that they think that it will be like NZ where they can take their time. I eventually bought this up with my mother, she just laughed and said that it was for her own good and that she had not given it a second thought.
I was further surprised when my Mum mentioned to me she and Dad both thought that I had been so good to them when they were here. When I said to her that I felt bad, as I thought that due to my bad behaviour that their trip had been ruined, she again said that she didn’t realise that I felt that way and that they did not feel that way at all. I now feel better about this trip, not guilty at all. So I guess that is when I realised that the world did not revolve around me. (that was sarcastic!) And also realised that my perception of my moods was not always accurate either.
This was further highlighted to me, when a friend that I had written a letter too, told me that when she first read it, that she was so pleased to hear from me. Then she said that she read the letter again and was very upset as I sounded like I was very unhappy. Which is not true, so maybe I wrote the letter on a bad day. I was in a hurry to get it in the post but still did not think it was that bad. Maybe she noticed chinks in the happiness that I did not.
What I am trying to say in a very roundabout way is this – things always look different in hindsight, and that they are never as bad as you imagine. So stop dwelling on the past, remember the happy times and plan for a happy future. That is my lesson for today anyway.
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