Parents who'd have them!

I have one who is merrily killing themselves with heart disease and doing nothing about it.

Another who is deeply concerned I might offend their sensibilities without any concern about my own

and another who, though deeply selfish likes to give me that tag.

Yes I do have three, and I'm not identifying who is who.

They screw you up your mum and dad... is there any hope for my kids?

Sorry to hear this. Will any of them be going to your/Meerkat's recital? It's not too late to ban them!

Ambs
x

Ooh I hope they'll all be there, then you can have the fun trying to decide who is who!

I wouldn't mind if I still had mine ...

Ah, I have 4 parents - twice the trouble, really!

a 'part' quote from Larkin?
good book by Oliver James... quite a sober thought provoking book.

I have now been without mine for a number of years. As I grow older so my understanding of what my parents were grows deeper. They were not the perfect parents we would all like to have but in retrospect they did the best job they could possibly have done, given their circumstances.

Try having four mothers-in-law.

My husband has four 'mothers'. Birth mother, two ex-stepmothers and a current one. All are around! All jossle for place at his graduation photo, our wedding pics and every occasion since. All detest each other and at first I used to laugh and think it was so great these 60s hippy people still participating in a family life for the sake of their children. However over the years their personal 'beef' with other seeped through and now I am fed up of trying to 'deal' with it/them.

Hubby loves them all and wants them all at everything. Many times I wish that two/three of them would just not show up. When they do, each will try to outdo the other as the 'most important person in the room'. They have accorded themselves status according to how many children they have with my father-in law. Only one has remarried so she gives herself more 'points.' Number 4, has no children at all, but has been around the longest and runs herself ragged trying not to be the wicked stepmum, but her longevity and staying put has given her much status. She has retained her looks and figure so this narks the others.

My husband cant see any problems whatsoever. He thinks its great and calls them all his mothers. He will say things like "these are my mothers" and laugh when people look a bit taken aback.

Sometimes I feel I am observing some ancient retired hareem!

People often only remember the first line, but the poem ('This Be The Verse') is profoundly pessimistic throughout, and not really directed at any particular parents at all:

Man hands on misery to man
It deepens like a coastal shelf
Get out early if you can
And don't have any kids yourself.

In my view, PL was a dreary old man who couldn't be more wrong, but there you are.

I certainly wouldn't presume to comment on any one else's relationships with their family, so what follows is merely a personal reflection.

For myself, I've found that as I get older, I understand my parents better (And tout comprendre, tout pardonner, though they certainly had more to pardonner than me!). As Mark Twain said (roughly)

'When I was 17, may father knew nothing. When I met him again after several years, I was surprised at how much the old man had learned'.

nick

I had one who 'merrily' killed himself with heart-disease - what a thoughtless, selfish thing to do it was too but in the end it was his own loss so who cares!

I have one who is a hypochondriac and treats every age-related irritation as an excuse for attention (and isn't even interesting with it, just ignorant, thoughtless and selfish (not a blood-relative thank goodness). Sadly life will be a lot more pleasant when she goes and I'm doing everything in my power to make sure nobody can/will say the same thing about me - I would never dream of behaving towards others the way she does.

I have one who lives with his head in the sand... totally, but is very lovable with patience.

And another who is happily doo-lally which is quite nice because they were a horrid person before their brain became fried so it's all worked out in the end.

But I am still glad I have them even if they all could do with a good shake

Mine could have done the parenting job a lot better than they did and there's no doubt about that but we have all survived of sorts. But it's telling, I think partly, that I don't have kids (for various reasons...)

oh yes, I accept that about the PL quote... it was used there (if you know the book by James) to imply how much of an influence parents have on their children. Nature - Nurture debate. So there is some truth behind it all.. though PL may well have had a much more jaundiced view of Life for whatever reasons, I don't know.

I like the latter quote too! Nice twist.

I think my biggest irritation is when they try to impose their feelings on me.

I get around it now with excuse me, I'm nearly 40 now and have my own opinions and,although it is very kind of you to try to protect me. It's abut time for me to stand on my own two feet.

No-one tells you that you start having to parent your parents as if they're a bunch of adolescents by the time you are in your late 30s.

Luckily they are in sound mind, I have friends with parents suffering from Parkinsons and they're in a much harder position.

I have to say I have been lucky with my mum. We have a very good relationship. I still feel like a child sometimes, but then I am her child whatever age I might be.

I have a wonderful step-dad who has been very good to all of us. At the same time, I regret not getting to know my dad better before he passed away suddenly at the age of 56 back in 1983 when I was 20. I'm glad I have my step-dad but I wish my dad was around to see my achievements too.

Or, in the words of my Grandad, "when I were seventeen, I thought my father were ever such a fool. By I were twenty-one, I were capped how much he'd learnt!"

I think most of us bond more with one parent than the other. I always told my mum everything. This was fairly natural, I suppose. She had always taken me to school when I was younger, while my dad went to work. Thus, she knew everyone etc, while my dad wasn't quite so tuned in. My mum herself worked for the second part of the week, and she was a teacher in the same area as my dad was a teacher. This meant that she knew everything that was going on with me, but also what was going on with my dad, as she worked in an almost identical line to him. My mum was dazzlingly efficient, and did domestic things on the days she wasn't teaching. It all seemed to work somehow.

When my mum died, it was suddenly clear as to how much closer I had been to her than I had been to my dad. I had always spoken to my dad, but if there was something "below surface level" that was worrying me or whatever, I had always spoken to my mum. Since I was 14 by this time, I found it very hard to suddenly bond with my dad and speak to him in the way I always had with my mum. Thus, we never really had a great deal of discussion about how we felt about things as they went along - we were just fairly quiet with each other and trod our own paths. We've never really been as close as I'd like, because we've never been able to open up to each other, because we never used to. This means that communication hasn't always been brilliant, which hasn't improved things in general.

I could go on and on like this, but I won't, or I'd be here forever. It is almost ironic when we get so that we have to "look after" parents. I wish my mum could have seen some of the things and met some of the wonderful people who have come about over the past couple of years.

There was a sort of "moral" to finish all this off... When I think what it was, I'll come back...