Finally, in the middle of her second term of her second year at Uni, Boo invites her mother Carly to visit and stay overnight. Carly is delighted to accept, but a little apprehensive. She knows that student shared households are grotty and messy. She can accept ‘seedy’ as that isn’t the students’ fault. They usually rent in run down houses in dodgy areas from charlatan landlords. But the mess – well she can’t accept that!
She also knows that Boo is permanently embarrassed about what Carly might say. Or do. Before she even gets her train ticket, Boo gives Carly a long lecture about the importance of toilet etiquette. Really, Boo would prefer, if she didn’t do any number 2s. But that just isn’t going to be possible. Carly has a bowel habit that matches her over-exuberant mind. Always racing and rushing and winning. So, the rules are that she must lock the door and place the toilet paper in the bowl before she sits on the toilet seat. This will absorb any annoying sounds and smells. But this requires meticulous planning and Carly doesn’t always have that sort of warning and preparation time. Sometimes she just thinks about going to the toilet and it takes all her concentration to become enthroned in time.
So, these extra regulations are irksome. Really everyone has to do poohs. But actually, come to think of it, when she was at school with those awful open-planned and exposed toilet stalls, she would always flush before doing her business so that no one would hear her. Now Carly is so much more confident she doesn’t care so much. It is normal to defecate. What is the problem here? And then horror of horrors, she remembers meeting a patient (Carly is a paediatrician) who told her that they had an open-style toilet stall at the back of the classroom. This is, for sure, institutional child abuse. No wonder children withhold stool and get constipated. Carly snickers but quickly sighs. Oh dear.
As it takes a while to get the train up to see her daughter, Carly has decided, unlike on previous occasions, she will not just come up for the day. Two and half hours there and the same back, (assuming no cancellations) is too much. Especially as Carly has such a long list of morning rituals to undertake so that she feels grounded. Firstly, she has to light all her candles, take her whopping great big vitamin tablet for women over 50, make a cup of herbal tea (300mls), drink her carafe of 750mls of water. Then she can hop back to bed to read her novel, followed by knitting whilst listening to educational podcasts by the BBC. Then it is the yoga – mostly only 10 minutes, followed by a strenuous resistance 7-minute workout. After that she can reward herself with a green smoothie whilst writing 10 things in her gratitude diary. It is no wonder she doesn’t have time to meditate as well. She would never get on with the day. Oh, and she must feed the cats. But they are unlikely to let her forget. Forever meowing and rubbing along her legs.
So, this means when she goes to see Boo this time, she has to stay over. And there are no spare rooms in her house. And Boo only has a very small bed. In the end they sleep top to toe. It is much easier to deal with stray feet than a big head and mussy hair, not to mention halitosis. There is still a problem though. You can’t be farting in the bed. Well, that sacrifice will need to be made in the interests of maintaining a good mother/daughter relationship, considers Carly magnanimously.
Carly is delighted that Boo has come to the train station to meet her. This is a very good start to the visit. Boo has thoughtfully brought a spare backpack to share the load of Carly’s luggage. Shame it is so cold and rainy up there in the north of England. But the local people are really friendly. Carly can’t decide if she prefers weather over friendliness? This is a difficult call. Also, is it really true that people who live on the equator are totally unpleasant? No, this is a completely ridiculous argument. It is likely this has more to do with poverty than the weather. Boo does tell Carly that there are some rules about clothing that divide the north and south. She explains you can always tell where people are from looking at their trousers. Northerners wear leggings which are flared, whereas Southerners wear the same but in denim. Carly has wandered around this Uni town enough to be able to spot the difference. She is pleased with herself. She quite likes this game. Spot the difference. One of her previous early morning grounding rituals was to do one page of a book with these visual puzzles. She wouldn’t let herself move onto the next one until she had found all the differences. Except after seven continuous days would she look up the answer. She also played one round of patience. This only worked out about once a month. If it did work out and she could complete the game, she felt she was well set-up for the day with good omens. Carly likes to believe in premonitions. She even had a tarot card reading recently.
After a takeaway Vietnamese lunch, they head to Boo’s student house. Carly is a bit horrified when she walks up the path to the front door. She isn’t really sure what to expect. But the front garden is like a litter dumping ground. And Boo’s pyjamas are by the front steps. Then she did remember. Students sometimes get drunk and do silly things. Better to throw PJs out of the window than yourself. But still, Carly is a complete neat freak, so she finds the mess somewhat discombobulating. She makes a note to self. She is NOT to clear up. In her own front garden, yes. But not someone else’s. That is stepping outside the boundary of her daughter needing to do her own tidying. And joy of joys Boo has tidied her room. Nice one. In particular the blanket Carly painstaking knitted in Rowan cotton glace yarn that is on the bed. In one piece. No holes. Phew. But there was a problem. The room was boiling. And the radiator control was missing. So off went Carly to fix this. She trudged around local plumbing shops and returned with pliers and a new cap. But that radiator hadn’t been touched for years. Carly is strong and determined but no amount of persuasion could alter the heat blasting out from the radiator. She wished she had bought some WD40 but Carly erroneously thought she could sort out that valve without it. But she couldn’t. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Carly isn’t good at accepting failure.
In the evening when the household had retired to their rooms, she turned off the boiler. The house cooled down quickly and quietly. And whilst it was dark and the students still in noddy land, Carly switched it back on early the following morning! Phew. All ok. And whilst they slept and the house warmed up, Carly knitted downstairs at the same time as listening to a podcast about the history of mathematics. She was nearly beside herself with glee. It was about Hardy and Ramanujan. And the message was that prime numbers are distorted throughout the universe. Carly was convinced this was really speaking to her. She is obsessed with prime numbers; her son was also studying at Trinity College Cambridge (not maths though!) and Ramanujan was from India where she had just been on her sabbatical. Carly loves prime numbers so much that she has now started arranging meeting people at prime number times, such as at 1031 or 1327. 2357 is her absolute prime number time favourite as each of the numbers individually is a prime too. But she is almost invariably asleep by then!
One of Boo’s flatmates makes Carly an early morning coffee who is really grateful. Carly scrabbles around in the cupboard to secretly find sugar, only to cause an avalanche of lentils instead. She does eventually find a really out of date packet. She also notices a plethora of NutriBullet devices. When Carly was at Uni she had a fork for mashing. She isn’t sure why students now all need to mush up stuff to produce purées. Surely this consistency is only needed when you have babies you are weaning onto solids? Carly does remember this stage with Boo. Then she smiles. This was lovely memory as it was such a warm and cuddly experience. But there was a lot of crying too. Now is much better, she reflects. Boo and Carly can have such wonderful and funny conversations. And some hugs. Yes.
