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Back
home with the family
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Much
as we love our children, most of us don’t really want them back home
with us when they are old enough to make their way in life, though of
course we don’t usually refuse them… But what’s
it like from the children’s point of view?
Matthew Shawcross, back home at
29, continues his diary…
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This
January I turned 30. Daunted by the magnitude of the occasion, I decide to
stay at home
and have a quiet nuclear dinner with Mother, Brothers and Girlfriend.
(Father is off interpreting in Strasbourg.)
By the 22nd of January, the enormous pine tree is
finally overthrown from its corner of the room, so we need to fill the
place with life somehow. Older
Brother, not without a hint of complacency, quizzes me for my thoughts and
feelings on entering the new decade. Everyone seems to react to it
differently. Mother worries about when I will get back to doing a proper
job. Older Brother is consoled and reassured. For Younger Brother and
Girlfriend, both barely out of their teens, my reaching 30 is a source of
great amusement. As
for me, I think of Alexander the Great, who had already conquered the
known world and died, or of Schubert, who had probably written at least
500 of his 600 songs (not to mention the nine symphonies, fifteen string
quartets and so on), before syphillis would carry him away the following
year. I rack my brains for great men who started late and still lived with
their mothers at 30. I see no pictures. Since
the second round of chemotherapy was suspended,
Mother has had more bad days than good. She's also been on a strictly
vegan diet, as well as cutting out olive oil, and any food packaged in
plastic or tins. Cooking for the rest of us can be something of a penance
under these circumstances. So, for Christmas, Older Brother and I served
up chestnut bourgignonne pie and galettes of potato and exotic mushrooms.
And tonight, Older Brother is chef once again. On the menu, sea bass and
beans for us, home-made potato and leek soup for Mother.
It’s therapeutic, this reversal of roles, providing nourishment
instead of always being on the receiving end.
"Actually,"
he said, "I've got a job. I'm starting on Thursday." He is an
Executive Assistant at the Royal Courts of Justice. On his fourth day in
the job, though, he has come home with the flu. Mother worries that this
will earn him instant dismissal. The rest of us are simply bewildered at
the thought of Younger Brother, who after all only recently it seems could
not read or write, taking minutes and advising on legal policy. I have come to the conclusion that being 30 is no great landmark after all. I have ten years till the next big one to write my symphonies and conquer my empires, rather than counting the vanishing days. Now where was that file of ideas for novels? . . . Matthew has moved out of the family home and will not be continuing his diary for the present.
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