The Resentment List

Dire warning from Titus this morning.  Fierce Teacher has decreed that any child coughing even once will be sent home immediately.  Panic gripped my heart.  I am half way through my trial period at work, and it would be so nice if I could manage six months without having to take any time off.  I told Titus he was not to cough.  But what if I have to, he said.  Smother it, I told him.  Because I know he is not ill.  Anyone who rides tractors and plays football in the rain wearing only a t-shirt is clearly hard as nails, and it will take more than a bit of snot and the odd cough to render him bedridden. Of course, Titus couldn't leave it at that.  He started listing illnesses and injuries of increasing gravity to test my response.  This game is otherwise known as 'how merciless is my mother?' - I know it well, as it's been passed down to him by Gaia and Hedda.   According to Gaia I am one of the least sympathetic mothers ever.

Children naturally assume the role of upholder of the maternal guilty conscience.  I know that my three have a bottomless pit of incidents pertaining to every area of daily life, ranging from petty disappointments (not checking that the swimming pool was open, and having to drive home again; not reserving cinema tickets and arriving to a sold-out film) to broken or forgotten promises on a larger, more complicated scale (fitting out the doll's house with electric lights, getting pet rabbits).  Thus far the winner has to be Gaia's sixth birthday, when she was given a miniature potter's wheel, lots of slimy clay and powder and all the stuff that you might expect to find in a pottery set.  The picture on the box was enough to send most parents running for cover, being of three children smeared with clay, forming uneven shapes in a room equally smeared with clay.   OK, admittedly it looked fun. But I couldn't bear the thought of the mess, so I kept saying when you're seven.  And then she was seven, and I still couldn't face it, so I put it off another year.  And again, and again, until finally she lost interest in it and we gave it away to a deserving cause.  (I think a local occupational therapy centre, but that is irrelevant.)  Anyway, not only does Gaia sporadically remind me of this.  Hedda and Titus, in solidarity, also wheel it out when it suits their cause.  I swear that one day, when I am old and rich, I will send them all on a week-long pottery course, perhaps in Stoke-on-Trent, and they can muck around and form pots a la Patrick and Demi to their hearts' content.

I just heard an ominous cough from upstairs.  Poor Titus.  I'm willing him through two more 'days' at school - remember they are only there for three hours - and then he can relax into autumn half-term and all the joys that Halloween has to offer, if I only remember to pick up a giant pumpkin on the way home from work tomorrow.  There's an old bloke - he may have served in the last world war - standing by a pile of them at the roadside.  He looks scary, to be honest, which is why I always tootle on past, but I don't want this Halloween to be added to the Resentment List (I can just hear it now: Mummy, you said you'd get us a huge pumpkin.  Since you've been working you forget EVERYTHING!)  so I'll be sure to stop and choose his plumpest specimen, so to speak.  And then gare out the flesh with a sharp knife.  Grrr.