It is Saturday morning. We have to leave at 10:45 am to pick
up our son from a rugby match and then drive to a festival a couple of hours
away. One of our son’s friends has stayed overnight.
I wake up, have a shower, get the boys up, give them
breakfast, empty and then load the dishwasher, make coffee for her and me, drop
them off at the rugby, pick up lunch on the way back and, for about a
half-hour, sit down to watch some sport on TV. It is 10 am.
She has done essentially nothing other than given
instructions to our cleaner who has arrived at 9.
Comes out of the shower. ‘Oh, there’s tons to do … can you
do it?’ And then, ‘Oh, it’s only 10:15, I’ll do it.’
Then, suddenly, at 10:40, ‘can you empty the bins in the
bathroom, take the rubbish out from the kitchen, get his stuff ready for after
the rugby ….’
Don’t mind doing any of that but do resent being harangued
and instructed at the last minute. Why not some timeliness and organisation?
Then it is Sunday evening. English as a subject is not our
son’s strong point but he is trying – as she herself has told me. Now and again
I check his homework but he clearly resents it and, actually, I can’t help him
with myriad other subjects – so we need to trust him. And, overall, he is doing
very well.
She clearly had some beef going and went on at him that I
should check his work. I later suggested to her that it was wrong to – suddenly
– get on his back when he is doing well overall and appears to be trying in
English. We should be objective about it and so, if there are concerns, we
should make an appointment with his English teacher and get some facts
together. After another diatribe which was mainly ‘noise’, she agreed.
Our son, while speaking to his mum, had copied what he had
written and sent it to himself by email – leaving the document he was working
on blank. However, all I had to was Paste and I could see what he had written –
which was pretty good actually! I think.
Perfectly pleasant week-end spoiled by her temper. I
remember my mother being like that – continuously losing her temper and often
haranguing. I struggled to shake it off but our son appears to be made of
sterner stuff and does not seem to get down.
Soon – if not already – he will
begin to ignore all the noise.
