You may not be familiar with the phrase ‘having kittens’, but most parents will recognise the state of mind it describes… that vaguely panicked feeling when you see your children, whatever their age, risking their necks or doing something equally fraught with the possibilities of disaster. Some parents retain that feeling for a long time… others become inured through habituation. I believe I fall into the latter category.
My younger son and his partner are just back from holiday. I am not a worrisome mother; I do not fret about the small problems, the risks or the distance, but I have to admit to a few private concerns about my sons’ safety, just occasionally.
I do not have visions of air crashes, or shark attacks, in spite of my younger son kindly informing me, the day before he flew, of the shark attack on the jetty of his hotel … just after he’s mentioned packing the new diving gear… No, I do not panic. Honest. I think instead that the odds are very much against it. Though, I have to admit to the occasional shiver as I remember that the improbable has already happened in our family.
My eldest son was never accident prone, though he managed to indulge in some pretty spectacular stunts that left their holes in his skin. Most memorably the skinned back from the skateboard incident… or the gravel and the mountain bike… But whatever Nick has fallen into he tends to come out okay. Even being stabbed through the brain he managed to survive triumphant.
Alex, on the other hand, may possibly have more than his eyes from me. If there was an accident waiting to happen Alex was in the middle of it. From fish bones stuck in throats to barbed fishhooks through fingers… from setting the rug on fire to hammering a screwdriver through his toe… a toe, moreover, already once broken from chasing spiders a few years before. Which may be where an unmentionable fear comes from… hmmm… And that, of course, was before the motorbikes….
For the past ten years my son has been a biker, starting from the inevitable moped right up to the gorgeous beast he now rides. I have a folder full of pictures of his past bikes, many of which ended up in ditches or spread down roadsides as he learned how to really ride and there were many interminable waits at the hospital casualty department to see what he’d broken this time. Miraculously, it never seemed much more than a toe. There is a theme here, you think? I remember very well being finally allowed into the surgery where he was immobilised on a back board… to find his only concern was that the ambulance crew had cut his leathers off…. But he had flatly refused to allow them to take the scissors to his boots! It is a good thing that I am not a panicky mother… I even rode pillion….
My son also has a passion and an affinity for animals. And fish. I may have had a bit of something to do with that too, and I have a lovely if faded photo of him feeding tigers as a teenager…Okay, his brother went in with the wolves that day, and I won’t forget in a hurry watching them check him out for half an hour, up close and personal, before the alpha female rolled over and let him rub her belly. It was a time when they were up for anything, from aerobatics to jumping off tower cranes on an elastic band… I’ve got used to it… sort of.
So it didn’t surprise me when Alex, on past holidays, made friends with elephants, camels and dolphins and failed abysmally to make friends with the local arachnids. Apart from being utterly jealous, I was unmoved by his cuddling of tiger cubs and calmly awed by his proximity to their parents. It was obvious there would be animals on this trip too.
As I said, he came back from Egypt at the weekend… the laptop full of photos. He flicked through the desert trip… tearing hell for leather across the unlit blackness of the sands in a buggy… he barely touched on the camels and the fire dances… and spent no more time than was needful on the ‘holiday snaps’. I was, however, treated to an in-depth look into the coral seas, where fabulous fish sail like jewels in the clear water…
“What’s that?”
“Dunno, but it was huge and you should have seen its teeth… evil.”
“What’s that???”
“Jellyfish.”
“….?”
“Stingray.”
“…?????”
“Barracuda… it was this big,” says he stretching out his arms.
No. I don’t panic. Really. They are only fish….
“This camel was really friendly.”
“Erm….”
“Cobra.”
Yes, I could see it was a cobra… though quite why he had to have it wrapped round his neck I will never know. The hooded snake did not look particularly pleased. Nor, to be fair, did Alex… not with the brandished fangs so close to his own…
I’ll give them their due, the pair of them; my sons have guts. Whether in the visible acts like riding down mountains at top speed, abseiling, or wearing a cobra as a scarf… or in facing the challenges that life has thrown at the pair of them. They have courage. It has nothing to do with knowing no fear… the pair of them each have their own fears, and yet they face them. I have never yet seen them beaten by any fear that has less than eight legs.
When the fussy eater calls to say he is having sea slugs and fish stomachs for dinner; when a grief-stricken face smiles for his brother with love, when a hand is there in yours, steadily offering reassurance beyond their fear and your own… you see the courage.
I don’t say it often enough. I am proud of my sons.
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 
I would surely be in a state of perpetual panic. LOL
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You get used to it 🙂
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Funny,lovely and touching, Sue; I do hope I get to meet both of your lads one of these days! xxx
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One of them in April, I believe, Ali xxx
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HOORAY! xxx
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All being well 🙂 xxx
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