Thai green vegetable curry with rice
Today I will be talking about generational trauma, including child abuse and bereavement. Not exactly light-hearted stuff for a Friday evening, so I won’t take it personally if you want to skip this one.
Every time talk turns to family history, I can’t help thinking of the classic Philip Larkin poem, This Be The Verse. It’s the one that starts “They f*** you up, your mum and dad…” In my family, as in many others, that’s definitely true.
While my dad’s family is quite interesting, and I will share some of that another time, it’s my mum’s family that most shapes my life now.
Mum’s mum was the youngest child of a loving couple, the only girl, adored by her three older brothers and doted on by her father. If things had stayed that way, I think things now would be very different.
But the father died (of what, I don’t know – I’ll have to dig out mum’s old family history research and find out), and my great-grandmother remarried to someone who turned out to be a wrong ‘un: he physically abused his new wife and step-children, and treated my grandmother as the household slave.
At some point the new couple had another child, a boy, who was dismissed from his parent’s attention the moment he was weaned, to be raised by his teenaged sister. Once my grandmother was old enough to get a job outside the house she was permitted to do so, but every penny she earned was confiscated by her step-father.
Somehow she managed to find the time and energy to court a handsome young electrician, who had learned his trade in the Navy during the war. When he discovered the truth of his girlfriend’s home life, he arranged with her boss (who already knew what was happening from the number of times she arrived at work with blackened eyes and broken bones) to assist her in moving her stuff from her home to his parents’ while her stepfather was out of the house. The local police officer was on standby in case he came home early and took exception to the plan.
From then on my grandmother was safe, but her youngest brother lost his protector. When things got too bad at home, would cycle 50 miles or more to the refuge of his older sister’s house. He couldn’t have been more than 10 the first time he felt the need to do this.
My mum’s upbringing was thankfully much happier, free of the concerted physical abuse my poor grandmother faced, but couldn’t exactly be described as emotionally nurturing. My grandmother had a black belt in the arts of manipulation and emotional blackmail: every time I visited her I made a little bet with myself on whether she would talk to me or greet me in sulky silence.
One Christmas my mum had to ask one of Nan’s neighbours to do a welfare check as she wasn’t answering her phone or her door to me and mum. Only my tearful declaration that I had been genuinely terrified for her welfare prompted a reluctant resumption of communication.
All of which goes a long way to explaining why my mum acts as she does: she’s just doing what her mother taught her. I often feel myself to be doing what her mother should have done, teaching her that the appropriate response to another person’s distress is reassurance, not threats or mockery, and that people are valuable for themselves and not just for what they can do for you.
When my dad died, I wept to my then-therapist that I had lost the only person whose love didn’t feel conditional. I think my sister felt the same about me – her behaviour to me was often so outrageous that its only purpose seemed to be testing me to see if I would withdraw my affection if she pushed me far enough.
Now I live with mum in a state of constant caution: I find myself weighing and discarding topics of conversation on the basis of whether they will cause a negative reaction from mum. Some time ago I was recommended a self-help book for adult children of “emotionally immature adults”: I bought it, and it has been sitting on my Kindle ever since, as I feel too guilty to even start reading it.
They f*** you up indeed.
This afternoon Lady Friday came around and, while I was very half-heartedly (not even quarter-heartedly, really) doing some research for my current OpenLearn free course (Mental Capacity – important in my current circumstances, but a long way from interesting imo), mum appeared at my door, waving an envelope.
Yesterday she received a letter from a company that provides insurance cover for her washing machine, hoover, and microwave, at the extortionate price of over £500 a year. We could replace all three for less than that.1
I told mum I was intending to cancel her policy with immediate effect. Mum panicked, as she does with anything involving change, and summoned Lady Friday to confirm that I was doing the right thing.
I’m glad mum trusts Lady Friday so much, but at the same time: really, mum? Do you have that little faith in me? 🙄
As it was, I didn’t get to speak to anyone as, having worked my way through the automated menus, I got told no-one was available to speak to me and to try the website instead. Which I did, but would have left someone like mum unable to cancel and paying out money for nothing for another year.
Shame on you, Hotpoint.
As this is already a very long post, I’ll keep the dinner portion short and sweet: Thai green curry from Simply Cook, using half the curry paste to keep it very mild, using two of mum’s favourite veg (aubergine and sweetcorn). It was OK – I think it needs all the curry paste to give it a decent depth of flavour.
That’s it for tonight. I’ll be back tomorrow with my usual, less intense style of rambling.
- I just checked, and yep – we could replace all three for £470, and that’s replacing old with new and improved. ↩︎
Is it pineapple sponge today? 