My biological parents (not those excruciating clowns downstairs) might be sat in a studio somewhere in Montmartre, or in the Congo bottle feeding parrots, or Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf…
Alas for me the fantasy was always quashed under foot: my own foot, that is, as the toes on each are divided equally between a broad knobble identical to my Mothers and a arching hook identical to my Fathers. I wear proof of my DNA on the ends of my size 12’s that pitter-patter ‘yu-mum yu-dad, yu-mum yu-dad’ as I walk down the street.
Still, being at university seems to have been as much about reconciling me with my past as with my future, as much about giving me the space to come to terms with the ‘rents as giving me the gumption to start planning a life without them.
The first thing you realise after getting to uni how wonderful it is to not see them all of the time, not to have them around put limitations on what you can do and when.
The second thing you realise is that your Mum must have been doing a hell of lot of tidying up back there, cos this place looks like a nuclear fallout in there and it’s only the third day in (not to employ crude and outdated gender stereotypes here: it may well have been your Dad who washed the curtains and moved the dirty plates, but by the end I only lived with my dear Mum and I’m pretty sure my Dad’s gaff resembled the average Fresher flat anyway).They say an atheist is only truly tested in his or her belief when the axe is about to swing: the theory that, in the end, we all pray to some thing. I think the extent to which we have become independent from our parents is similarly tested: it’s when you’re getting court threats from the credit card companies, or you’ve gotten someone pregnant, or you’ve accidentally mowed down your tutor on your way to your dissertation meeting that you suddenly find yourself phoning ‘home’ for help. When the shit really hits the fan, you want the people who dealt with your shit in the first place.
For their part, my Mother’s doting optimism and my Father’s world-weary pragmatism have both served me well as I’ve spent three years trying to fashion a life for myself: from the shaky bit in first year when I thought I might have to drop out to change my course, to the nerves that went with putting the first pieces of a magazine together, to the present day anxiety of not knowing what’s going to happen after graduation. Their lives were very different to mine at twenty-two – harder, more responsible - but they advise me, as best they can.
Their reward is to watch me gradually turn into a version of them: procreation, the ultimate vanity project. I am approaching an average sneezing fit of eleven ‘atishoos’, just like my old man, and I have obsessive-compulsions that stop a yard shy of making me a weirdo, just like my old ma.
I value politeness, am vigilant in wearing seatbelts and insisting others wear theirs, will try anything once and still can’t grow a beard. I imitate my Father’s easy charm, and my Mother’s resilient romanticism.
I am, I have discovered, the compound of their strengths and weaknesses, the composite of their quirks: the chemical reaction in the crucible of their love and the marriage between them that worked.
Now, if those adoption papers were to turn up, I’d probably just want to throw them away. Who could be bothered to come around to a whole new set of parents, after how long it took the first time? Unless, of course, my real parents are millionaires. Or movie stars. Or player scouts for Real Madrid…
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