Quick, grab the mop, Mum’s coming!
MUM and dad are visiting for the day. They’re both pretty easy-going people. Mum doesn’t put on white cotton gloves to run her fingers along surfaces and check for dust. And she doesn’t complain if the towel I’ve put in the bathroom appears to have been run over by a tractor. Nor does she sniff the inside of our toilet bowl.
And yet, at 6.00am on the day of their arrival, the mop kicks into action, the first of three washes is stuffed into the washing machine, the television is baby-wiped, and the toaster is shaken upside down to liberate its antique crumbs.
Is this normal, doctor? It’s 18 years since I flew the parental nest. For most of that time I have lived a fairly tidy, occasionally messy, but functioning life, independent of Those Who Know Everything And Always Have Kitchen Foil.
I pay my phone bills on time, do all the school runs without forgetting anyone (almost), have life insurance (I think) and know who to call when the loo starts flushing repeatedly, all by itself, during the night.
In other words I don’t need to prove I’m a grown up: I just am one. Yet, my parents are coming to lunch and I’m nagging the kids to clean the garden, put away their bikes and pull out the weeds while they’re at it.
A friend of mine in her early thirties says she hates herself for it. Before a parental visit she banishes the children while she attacks all known grime. “If it’s cold or raining, I’ll bung on a full-length video – something like Lord of The Rings or Harry Potter – which gives me a couple of hours to knock the house into shape. If I get the timing right, they don’t have a chance to wreck it again before my parents show up.”
Not that her children are still ogling the screen when their grandparents glide in. “Nope, the TV’s off in good time – I’m aiming to portray myself as a perfect mother, remember – and out come the felt-tip pens and colouring books.”
Both sexes appear to be blighted by this trait. On the first night my best mate’s boyfriend stayed at her place, he was up with the lark, yanking on jeans, and demanding the number of a taxi. This was not the wake-up call she had hoped for.
“Sorry,” he babbled, “but I’ve got to get home. My parents are arriving at lunchtime and I’ve got to take my duvet to the launderette.” Very romantic.
Sorted adults? Forget it. Bung a parent into the picture and we skid backwards to childhood. When I was 10, it mattered that Mum and Dad thought I was clever and great. And at 38, it still does. I show off. “See how tidy my home is? How I’ve remembered to change the water in my vase of lilies? Look – all the boys have had their hair cut, too. And new business cards printed. Aren’t I sorted? Are you proud? Haven’t I done well for myself?”
Cruelly, though, the façade soon crumbles. I lose my house keys only when my Dad’s here. The exhaust pipe always parts company with my car when I’m taking Mum to Nicosia. And if she’s here for a few days, a major electrical appliance is bound to develop some terminal illness. When Dad calls by, I dread the moment at which my phone starts bleeping because he inevitably pipes up: “Is your battery low again? Haven’t you managed to charge it?”
Just like when we were kids, parents hone in on your cock-ups (“Just look at the state of your room!”) without praising your achievements (“Top marks – you’re wearing matching shoes”). Once, when I left a friend’s house early, ranting that I had to blitz the bathroom in preparation for my mum’s brief visit, she gave me a pitying look and asked: “Does it really matter? It’s you she’s coming to see, not your bathroom.” She was right of course. She didn’t swoon at the sight of all our toothbrushes, neatly lined up in their rack.
I’d love to adopt a ‘take me as you find me’ approach, but it’s unlikely to happen. As soon as I hear Mum and Dad’s car come round the corner, I’m applying lipstick, booting Lego under the sofa, stashing a dirty grill pan in the oven … “Hi, mum! Gosh, you’re early. Excuse the state of the house.” I tell myself it doesn’t matter and that she won’t notice the eggshells in the sink. Dad saunters in with gardening tools (Mum made him bring them to get rid of the jungle-sized weeds) while she greets the children in the kitchen, which despite my efforts still smells of fish.
She follows me down the corridor where the bathroom cupboard lies open, a jumble of towels cascading out of it. More horrors are lurking in my sons’ bedroom. Duvets are sticky with chocolate and other substances I don’t wish to investigate.
She trips on the tangled-up Internet wires in the hallway. As laid-back as she is trying to be, she is finding it pretty difficult to restrain herself from saying something. She glances out into the garden at Dad and sighs, knowing what she’s going to have to do: “I don’t suppose I’ll be seeing much of the garden today …”
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
