 THE IN-BETWEENER by
Helen Franks
(daughter,
wife, mother etc etc etc)
There was a time some years ago
when Thursday was my hate day. That was the day I would attempt to buy up the contents
of my local Waitrose. Two loaded trolleys, a massive
sort-out of plastic-bagged groceries when I got home, and then delivery time.
First it was my parents. They were
both in their late nineties, still living in
their own flat, and as the crow flies a mere five minutes from me, but give it ten in the
car. Then there was a daughter, her partner,
their two-year-old and new baby. Even nearer en route.
I shopped for them all. Well not for
the new baby, though she was the reason for my helping out.
And yes, as an extra, there were me and my husband too.
It’s what happens when you are the in-between generation, the one
that answers to the description of daughter, daughter-in-law, mother, mother-in-law,
grandmother, wife. The one who still makes Christmas
dinner for the family. (Men can be in-betweeners
too, but not every Thursday.)
On Wednesdays, in preparation for the Big Shop, I would get my
parents’ list. It was always the same - eggs, milk, lemonade, soups, bio
yoghourts, olives.
Naturally, I would add a few forgotten extras - bread, potatoes, fruit, fish, the
sort of thing you might forget when you get to ninety-plus.
My parents were the unwilling recipients of Meals on
Wheels just two days a week. It was the deal
we reached after their very effective attempt at sabotaging the delivery system. When the MoWs first arrived my parents, denying all knowledge of the arrangement despite months of agonising discussion, sent the
food back.
They talked themselves into
believing that they still shopped and cooked most of the time, and had to be convinced
that a few guaranteed hot dinners on the doorstep were no bad thing, given that my mother
was suffering from arthritis and rarely left her flat without help, and my father had an
unconventional approach to cooking which amounted to wilfully disregarding instructions,
especially printed ones.
Understandably, they got bored with the MoWs, but they also got bored with
everything else, with disheartening speed. There was
a craze for poached salmon, so I made some for several weeks at their request. Then poached salmon was out, and no amount of persuading
could re-instate it even months later. Home-made
leek and potato soup met a similar fate, as did some of supermarket ready-made meals which
gained sudden popularity and were equally suddenly dropped without explanation.
In case you are wondering about the
olives... My father had a passion for them
- kalamata olives, green olives, stuffed olives, herb-marinated olives, olives in jars, in
cans, in plastic containers. None of these ever met his expectations. And then I found plain canned pitted black olives. A bit tasteless, I’d say, but my father could
get through a few tins a week. He also liked sardines and anchovies (only certain brands). Lots of anchovies. Perhaps
it was the salt.
(Yes, he did have raised blood pressure, but so would you at 97 with or
without a pinch or two of salt, if you worried as he did about the way the country was going to the dogs, the state of the world and Brent
social services.)
 My daughter’s family was easier to please. ‘Pasta’, said the two-year-old, as they
all do. And mushrooms, for some reason. For them, my only problem was to keep an eye on
artificial colourings, synthetic flavourings, hormone-fed meats, chemically-sprayed
vegetables, waxed fruits and products from politically incorrect countries. I do that anyway, but you know how you can slip sometimes
- buy a ready-cooked chicken and then wonder
about its provenance, or succumb to a
fruit-flavoured yoghourt with a list of ingredients from hell.
All this made my weekly shop perplexing to say the least. The only way to cope with funny looks at the check-out was to pretend to myself that I was buying for a soup
kitchen or for a sheltered accommodation unit. True
in a way.
Once home and wading in a sea of plastic shopping
bags, came the even-more-terrible bit. Waves of
groceries spread themselves over the kitchen floor. I
did try to pack separately for each family as the stuff came through the conveyor belt in
the store, but people in the queue behind clucked
and shuffled at the extra delay so the filing system had to be jettisoned.
I sorted out the chaos at home and would then go delivering. It may have been done on wheels, but I felt like a
witch on a broomstick, doling out air supplies over the skies of north west London to
the marooned and housebound below.
People rarely refer to the pleasures of being an in-betweener because
it’s more fashionable to grumble, embarrassing to admit openly to the rewards of
giving, and not easy to live with a saintly reputation. So
I‘ll dwell on the irksome and the nearly-last-straws for a bit longer.
There was the day when I nearly threw a tantrum
because my carefully-planned schedule hit the dust yet again. I had arranged to take my mother to the doctor, then go
to the chemist for my daughter, then return home and finish a chapter of a book I was
writing. Having delivered my mother home, my father
appeared at the door clearly dressed to go out.
‘Just a
short lift, it’s on your way home,’
he pleaded. But of course it wasn’t and then the chemist had shut, and... I was simply furious!
 And so it went on, till they died and my
grandchildren got older, and my daughter less needy, and I asked myself then and sometimes now, what did I do
it for? Responsibility, duty, compassion? Yes, yes. But
it’s still a couple of four-letter words that count most. Being right at the heart of the loving and the giving is
a privilege. Don’t let anyone tell you
this caring business isn’t a pleasure, whatever the pain.
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