Bringing up boys – I’m old but not THAT old!

Wrinkles

“So did you do that in the olden days?”

The question just pops out while we watch a war movie on TV.

I look at him. “I know I’m old but I’m not THAT old you know.”

He looks at me blankly obviously not understanding a word that I have said and resumes watching TV.

After a while, he pipes up: “Well did you? Before you were a grown up?”

‘Olden days’ I fear is an elastic term in our household it can take in what happened only a few years ago before Bog Boy was born or it could go back to prehistoric times and lighting fires using flints.

And Grown-ups to Bog Boy are an amorphous blob. They are just grown-ups rather than people of differing or even different ages. It dawned on me that he may not be able to work out people’s ages just by looking and I got kinda scared. What if he thought  I looked just like MY Mum and that in fact he thought I was as old as her?

I had to ask if he thought Granny was older than Mummy or vice versa.

This is the same Granny who was only complaining suggesting at Christmas that I dye my hair to cover all the grey, not because she thought I would look better but because she felt she was too young to have a grey-headed daughter.

This is the same Granny who for the past thirty years has weighed less than her daughter – though having lost a whole bunch of weight I am now redressing that balance.

So this age issue takes on a certain amount of significance.

I wait with bated breath.

“Well you say you’re 21 and Granny has to be older than you because she’s your Mummy…..”

Oh what a relief!

“…So she must be 29….”

I think that’s a good an answer as any don’t you?

Mothers!

It can only come from your mother. No one else would be neither quite as frank nor as public and get away with it.

No one else can remind you that you are after all a daughter and not a grown up with a demanding nay even influential job where you are respected and dare I say it…admired, even if it is only in select circles.

So on Christmas day surrounded by loving family she has to come out with it.

"Darling, why don’t you dye your hair?"

I snorted on the gravy and nearly choked unbecomingly on my Christmas turkey.

"What?!"

"It would be so much nicer if you dyed your hair."

I was bewildered. My hair has served me well for 45 years and now she says there is something wrong with it!

"I just preferred your hair when you dyed it."

Now I did dye my hair a few years ago when it first started to go grey but I didn’t think my mother cared one way or the other. And then it dawned on me.

My hair had got too grey!

She wanted me to dye my hair not because it looked better for me to have dark glossy hair but that it was an affront to her to see me with grey hair. Effectively forcing her to admit that she was no longer as young as SHE once was…

However, I must say she may have a point. I am far too young to have grey hair and only the other day someone thought she and I were sisters so perhaps it is in my own best interest….