Things I wish my mother had never told me

Having recently listed a number of things that I wish my mother had told me in years gone by, I've now got to thinking about the other things. 

The things that she told me that I wish I'd closed my ears for, that have left me sorry I ever listened.

Some things, I wish I didn't hear because she was often right, and I don't like being wrong.

Others, again because she was generally right, and I can't help thinking of what I messed up by not taking her seriously.

You can be anything you like.

Although I’m grateful to my Mam and Dad for always telling us to believe we could be anything we wanted to be, and for actually believing it themselves, there’s one little problem with it. 

I feel a bit guilty that I didn’t become a doctor, or a writer, or one of the other professions that I allegedly could have achieved with my hands tied behind my back.  If I could be anything I liked, why didn’t I make the most of it and become an explorer, or an astronaut, or something else exciting?

Why did I drift along like a gom, never quite finishing anything and letting things happen to me, when I was supposed to be being all Gray's Anatomy, and flying through medical exams?

Or was it just my parents who thought we could do anything we liked? 

A woman’s work is never done.

The reason I wish my Mother hadn’t told me this is not because of any exhaustion or bitterness I feel for all the work I do every day.  Quite the opposite, in fact. 

It’s more of the guilt (God, it’s exhausting, all this guilt.  I wonder if it’s because I’m supposed to be an Irish Catholic?). 

I know that my mother and grandmother did a lot more work than I do.  For a start, they both know (or knew, in Gran’s case) how to make bread from scratch, with bread soda and buttermilk and the whole nine yards.  These are women who made casseroles without using a stock cube or a packet of powder, and actually wash their hand wash only clothes, rather than leave them in the bottom of the laundry basket until they’ve been there for so long that they’ve gone out of fashion.

They also washed their floors with alarming regularity, and raised their children, through the terry cloth nappies years, without needing to go on a spa break every few months.

Whereas I work a seven hour day, make His Nibs do his share of the housework, and pay a lovely woman to do my share. And I still need a spa break every now and then.

Then I have a lovely big sit down and watch a boxset or write little stories on my laptop.  Invariably accompanied by a cup of coffee or, on a good day, a glass of wine.

This woman’s work is quite often done.  And I’m quite pleased about that.  Feck it, I’ll live with the guilt.

Always look after your teeth.

More excellent advice from Mother, and Dad, who never had a filling.  They were completely right.  Having spent a considerable amount of time with the dentist in her much younger years, my mother spoke from experience and wisdom.  She told me often enough, that I didn’t want to be spending too much time with the dentist, that it’s all very unpleasant there.  And I’ve always brushed my teeth. I floss, but it would be a big lie to say that I do it three times a day, like I’m supposed to.

And yet I’ve ended up with more fillings than average.

The upshot of my mother’s excellent advice is that when I go to the dentist, I’m shaking as I walk up the stairs, and clammy by the time I’m told to relax in the chair.  I was once having a filling when the dentist ceased his work very suddenly.

“Christ, we’ll have to stop” he yelped at his nurse, who had refused to hold my hand through the procedure, on the grounds that I was about thirty six, and I wasn’t in labour.

“She’s hyperventilating.”

It was true, I was actually hyperventilating.  As I lay there, trying to breathe, they had a discussion about whether they should call a doctor, or even an ambulance.  Then they had a chat about whether they should knock me out (I assume they intended to use an anaesthetic, rather than a blunt object), since they couldn’t carry on with the filling while I was in that state, and it was at a rather delicate stage.  Not the time to abandon the project apparently.  That threat helped me to cop onto myself, I can assure you.

I combat my terror by avoiding the dentist at all costs.  And, if I’m honest, only going there when I can’t stand the pain of toothache anymore.

I might have been better off just being told to brush my teeth, and leaving it at that.

You’ll be gorgeous in a veil.

This is the greatest lie my mother ever told me in my life.  It was when I was six, and was making my First Communion. 

For some reason best known to herself, she had had my hair shorn to an inch in length, all around.  In fairness, it was the seventies.
There’s a reason why little boys don’t wear veils.  Because veils don’t go work on the shorn locks of a small child.

In the seventies, some of my younger friends might be surprised to know, Communion veils were made of a ring of wire, with what looked like a piece of my Granny’s net curtain hanging off it.  None of the tiara and crown efforts you see these days.  It was a simpler time by any standards. 

It didn’t suit me for the four seconds it sat on top of my head.
After that, it pitched violently to the right.  Happily, the wire ring caught on my right ear and prevented the veil from falling off entirely. 
I don’t know if the decade that style forgot is an excuse for this either, but we used white hairgrips to attempt to hold the veil onto my inch long hair.  So I was left with a veil hanging off my right ear, and about five bright white clips in my dark brown hair.

Not a happy sight.

I didn’t have a veil when I got married.  I had hair that was at least two feet long, and a sort of feathery fascinatory type effort that didn’t have a wire ring, or any sort of netty fabric.

Finish what’s on your plate.

This one has led to a lifetime of trouble for me.  I think it would have been much kinder in the long run to allow me to eat half my dinner if that’s what I wanted.

Because years of being told that eating everything on my plate is the right thing to do has caused endless tears (usually in clothes shop changing rooms) and torment.   I still do it to this day.  It’s so ingrained in me at this stage that it’s quite frightening. 

I was out recently, among friends and colleagues, when we were provided with platters of treats.  You know the sort of thing, mini spring rolls, chicken goujons, onion rings (God, I love onion rings) and even though there was a platter for each table, I seem to have taken it upon myself to finish the plate.  But it wasn’t a plate.  It was supposed to serve about ten people.

The following morning, when I arrived to work, I started shouting at some of my friends

“Why didn’t you stop me last night?  I can’t believe you let me do it!”

They were very surprised.  They assumed that I’d mugged someone or gone home with the barman or something.  Which would be good going, since I left, sober-ish, at twenty past eight.

I was talking about the platter.  They were kind about it, but I suspect they pitied me. 

I’m helpless in the face of fried batter.

It’s all my mother’s fault.  But I love her anyway.