2 hours ago
10
Mum was a brilliant non-giver of advice. Now Dad, he had his pearls. “If you do something, do it with a good heart.” It sounded platitudinous to me, but he had a point. And then there was his favourite: “If you think something bad about someone, say it up there [pointing to his head] but not out loud.” Dad was a good man, but that infuriated me.
Mum played a bigger part in my life. She often had to fight like crazy for me – to keep me in school when I’d told the dinner lady to fuck off at the age of five (no, I don’t know where it came from); to take on the doctors who labelled me a malingerer when I had encephalitis; to allow me back into mainstream education after I’d had three years off, and finally to persuade the University of Leeds to let me in after I’d messed up my A-levels.
She did so much for me that I assumed there would be loads of advice she’d given me. And it was only when I thought about it that I realised Mum’s great gift was not to advise me but to let me make my own mistakes, not judge or bollock me for them, but discreetly help me out of them.
Often, I didn’t know that she’d gone to war for me till years later, and even then it would accidentally emerge or I’d discover it from others. I didn’t have a clue about the battle she had had with the local authority to ensure that I didn’t see out my education at the open-air school where nobody took exams, or how she begged the University of Leeds’s English department to give me a chance because of what I’d gone through earlier in my life.
I don’t think I often sought her advice, either. Maybe because I was cussed. She died a couple of years ago, and now I chat to her in the shower. But I still don’t ask for advice because I know she’d bank on me muddling through, helping out behind the scenes if necessary.
When she was alive, I used to pick up the landline and say, “I was just passing the phone and thought I’d give you a little ring to say I love you.” And she’d often say “You must be psychic …”, meaning she was just thinking about me. And maybe that was why she didn’t need to give advice. There was a psychic element to our relationship.
So the advice she gave was felt rather than spoken, and then she went to work on my behalf when I needed her most. I think I might have inherited that from her. I’m not a great adviser – I don’t give lots of it, and don’t feel it’s particularly wise when I do. I certainly can’t think of a lesson or adage I need to pass on to others to enhance their lives. But I know I’ll always go out and quietly (or not so quietly) bat for those I love when they most need it.
