By Roz Hartley
It’s that time of year when, up and down the country, mothers and fathers are pushing groaning trollies down the aisles laden with kettles, toasters and irons (they won’t use it – put it back) wondering if they have taught their eighteen-year-olds enough life skills to successfully navigate their first term at university.
The corner of my own lounge has been commandeered for an ever-growing pile of duvet, pillows, towels, bedside light, toilet brush, cuddly toy, cuddly toy.. didn’t they do well?!
I know, as I drive my own six-foot-tall, eighteen-year-old off this Friday, that I have done all I can. He knows what he knows. He knows how to use the washing machine (but shows no interest in doing so). He knows how to cook a pasta bolognese (but still would rather order a takeaway). He knows that eating five a day keeps you healthy (and that cherry-flavoured cola doesn’t count). He knows that living at home has been easy and warm and free and that he is stepping out to manage his own money (or lack of), his own time and his own responsibilities… and he can’t wait!
And set against the backdrop of all this newness for him was an invitation for me to attend my own university reunion. Would I like to meet up, thirty years on, with a motley crew of fellow alumni, a bit balder, a bit rounder, a bit wrinkly-er than the versions of ourselves who graduated three decades ago? Always trepidatious about these things (just what do you talk about when the inevitable “what are you doing now?” has been covered) I made sure there were enough going that I still spoke to regularly and ticked “yes”.
Pre-reunion was a funny old time. What should I wear? How much effort should I make? Should I crash diet? Should I have a new haircut/pedicure/wardrobe? All self-induced madness, of course. After thirty years of not seeing these people, did I really care what they thought about the effects the ravages of time had had on me? Maybe!
Within an hour of the get-together, none of it mattered. We were dancing on tables, knocking back tequila and singing along loudly and out of tune to “so Sally can wait”. Yes, we are older and greyer but the eighteen-year-olds are still inside us. Yes, we have proper jobs and mortgages and school runs and arthritis but we are all still here and we know how to belt out a bit of Oasis. What a wonderful, life-affirming night it was!
So, as I wave goodbye to my own undergraduate later this week, I will try not to overdo the list of things he should and shouldn’t do and let him find his own way. After all, we all managed to work it out…
(Although, I can’t promise his “good luck” card and present won’t have a slight angle!)
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