The Times Magazine 5feel like so much of parenthood could
be explained if I knew anything about
physics. I wish I knew about physics.
For instance, at 18 and 21, my
children are still “my children”, but
they aren’t my children any more – so
that looks like some deep Schrödinger
shit right there to start with.
Another example: when children-
not-children hit their mid-teens, something
really big happens. It feels like a... polarity
reversal. Everything gets flipped, almost
overnight.
Previously, your children were something
you put all your energy into – every
interaction with them would take time,
thought, love and empathy. You would end
the days feeling righteously knackered and
empty. Little children absolutely drain you
of your energy. That flow is one way only.
At some magic point in their teenage years,
however, the polarity flips. They start giving
you energy. Your default is to be a little tired
and schlumpy and set in your ways – because
you are older now. But every time you hear
the front door crash open and their voices
in the hall, it’s not just the dog who leaps off
the sofa and starts wagging. You press “Save”
on your document and come downstairs,
ostensibly to “make a cup of tea” – but, in
reality, to watch this beautiful fizzing tide of
youth sweep into the house, phosphorescent
with ideas and new words and some thing they
found in a skip that they find hilarious.
Last time, it was a small toddler’s pop-up
turret tent. Orange and red striped, it was
there, in the front room, when I came down
on Christmas Eve. When I looked inside, an
18-year-old girl I’d never seen before was fast
asleep in it.
“Hi,” she said, opening one eye. “Welcome...
to my circus.”
Other random things that have turned up
in the house: a pet mouse; three drag queens
and a sewing machine; a pink child’s bike; a
boy who stayed for a week. To be honest,
I can’t be sure he’s not still here. And I love
all of it. I find my children and their gang
so amusing and enlivening that, when they’re
all around the kitchen table, I pretend I’m
cleaning out the fridge – so I can eavesdrop
on them longer. I threw a birthday party for
one of them recently, because I just liked
having him around so much. We went to
Fortnum & Mason for high tea, and he woreI
CAITLIN MORAN
What my grown-up kids have taught me
I used to tell them stuff. Now it’s the other way round
ROBERT WILSON
a revolving bow tie he turned on every time he
took a sip of champagne. These are the kind
of great ideas we just stop having as we get
older. This is why you need teenagers around.
I feel like the ageing team captain of a
long-running TV panel game when the hot
new stand-up appears as a guest and steals the
show. It’s not my show any more. The pressure
is off. I can just sit back and enjoy them.
The young have a bunch of skills they don’t
even realise are skills yet: they can bite down
into toffee without being scared; their lives
can change during a single night out; they
can all talk at the same time and yet still hear
each other. They can wear anything – they’ll
come downstairs in one of your old dresses, a
clown hat and wooden clogs, and look stunning.
They roam around, dragging you out to, eg,
Elephant and Castle, which you last went to in
the Nineties, when it was simply a roundabout,
but has now turned into a dizzying citadel of
skyscrapers and hot Korean restaurants. They
take you out into their world, which is huge.
And they are fabulous, if knowingly patronising,
tour guides. “Mum, this is... south London. Don’t
worry – there are Waitroses here.”
And it’s all circular, of course, because the
reason you stopped wearing mad clothes, or
travelling far or seeing people, is because you
were stuck at home looking after them when
they were small. They made your life small- they made you old – and you were sighingly
resigned to that being for ever.
But now – now the polarities have reversed - suddenly clothes and people and energy and
the world are tumbling out of your kids, back
into your life, and you realise you never lost
all that stuff after all. It was just being stored,
carefully, in them – as if they were little
Tardises – until you reached a time you could
all enjoy it together. God, you should never
have moaned. In the end, you sacrificed
nothing at all. It’s all come back to you, with
dazzling interest. Now, you’re the one sitting
on the sofa, holding your iPhone in the air
like a querulous toddler, shouting, “I DON’T
UNDERSTAND IT!” until a teenager comes
and fixes it. Somewhere deep in space, a
mysterious button has been pressed and your
kids aren’t people who are living in your world - you are someone living in theirs instead.
That’s the physics of it, I think. The pressing
of a Space Button. The reversing of the
polarities. I don’t really understand physics.
Maybe the kids do. I’ll go ask them. n
‘When their gang sits
around the kitchen
table, I pretend to
clean the fridge so I
can eavesdrop longer’