One of Them
Well, the way I see it, parents aren't there
to be liked, mister, no more than we like
kids. Kids ! Didn't ask to be brought into
this world, and very few of us ask to
be taken out: you owe them food in their
bellies, an obligation, to be schooled,
to make them better people than we were:
but they're not people, not any more than
grownups are. They've a secure right and how
could they have that if we showed weaknesses,
wrote down how we feel, what's really wrong with
your aunty, missed the power bill, the meals, the
garden in the weekends ? It's lonely here,
on the top, as well as down below but
you bring
them up, you teach them right from wrong,
you give them the things you didn't have. That's
real life, see, one of us always needs the
other. A kid can't move, or find food, or
know, better than us, what's good for it, can't
let it get away, grow dreams into the real
world, forget the mortgage, miss its homework:
One day I'll be a burden,
won't be able to move, or feed myself,
make my own way to the john, you'll have to
do it. Guess it may come as a shock for
you suddenly to find that all along,
under the stern morality, "don't lie
to me, boy", under the "take only what
belongs to you", "go back and give that to
Mrs Draper and tell her that you took
it from her counter and your dad'll pay
next Thursday," "pay your bills", "an honest day's
work and an honest day's pay", under the
unmarked wall of adult adamite were
reams of gold, marked, unspoken, secrets from
our owners. I was strong for you boy, we
never argued in front of you children,
never admitted we were in debt, the
things we didn't give you were for your own
good, not that we wouldn't have given you
the earth and our own lives, taught you the fight
to make ends meet. We taught you 'treat your mum
with respect' and clipped you round the ear, but
we never let on, that your mother had
feelings; looked at your cold knees in the night,
and wept, that sometimes when she looked at me
she trembled. We never let on, boy, the
nights I came home drunk without the pay at
all, what we thought when the boys and I went
out on strike, how it felt when you left home
and school, why
we worried when you sniffed round
that girl at the dairy thirty miles gone,
or came home on that big bike of yours and
no word of how you'ld pay - worries me to
this day the things we let you get away
with. You're an adult, you've got duties lad.
Being human, this time round, just wasn't
one of them.
Alice Thorpe
12 April, 1999
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