3. Over the past week, I’ve decided that people can definitely hear the truth. So, I don’t have to hide away in my broom cupboard anymore. I want to teach my kids the facts of life without sparing them, and immunise them with stories. And I should be grateful for this opportunity to be with them!
At last, I have time to explain to my kids the background of their upbringing. Even though they’ve experienced it firsthand.
Bea: ‘What are we doing at half-term?’
Resi: ‘Nothing. Holidays are to ensure that the school system doesn’t collapse, the teachers don’t resign, and the schoolchildren don’t revolt. Holidays aren’t for families to do special things together.’
Bea: ‘But everybody’s doing something special. Everybody’s going away except us.’
Resi: ‘Then they’re deluded. Travelling isn’t special. It’s bad for the environment. And for us, it’s too expensive, and for couples like Sven and me, too risky. The divorce rate rises significantly after holidays. And I no longer have any friends you could go away with or visit. I wouldn’t count on your grandparents either. If they’d wanted to build a relationship, they’d come here or would invite you to stay with them. But they don’t, so they’re obviously too busy or not interested.’
Bea: ‘But when you were a child, you did such great things.’
Resi: ‘That’s wrong. I said I did because, like everybody, I was still taken in by the myth of childhood, and wanted to say I’d been really happy at one time in my life. But it’s not true. My childhood was just as boring and dull as yours.’
Bea: ‘But the others—’
Resi: ‘Do you really believe that? Are you inside their heads? Do you go on holiday with them?’
Bea: ‘They post photos on Instagram!’
Resi: ‘Exactly. And you believe their photos? You’re fourteen years old, but you still haven’t figured out that the photos are carefully curated? Two dimensional? Maybe staged? Photoshopped? Posted to impress, brag, or affirm? To make you feel inferior, outdo you, impress you with something that doesn’t exist? Down with holidays! Down with childhood! Stop Instagram! Destroy your mobile phones! Open your eyes and see the truth behind the autumn holidays!’
I’m happy. I feel liberated.
The next two weeks will be lovely as long as I’m completely myself and accept the others as they are.
Misery
Okay, Resi. Keep calm.
Saturday doesn’t count. It would be the weekend anyway, even if Monday and the following two weeks weren’t free.
So I shouldn’t feel depressed when I send Kieran off at nine on Saturday to buy bread rolls — ‘Go and buy something nice for breakfast, here’s five euros — no, take ten instead’ — and while he’s doing that, lay the table and arrange a plate of fruit, and make coffee for Sven, all with that wonderful feeling of being in control and that my life is going well, that it’s Saturday and no one has to go anywhere, and we’ll all have breakfast together, and then see what the day has in store. Sure, we’ll have to go shopping, perhaps clean the bathroom, and most definitely do some washing. I’m wearing my last pair of knickers for the second day in a row, and don’t want to think about how long Jack has had his on. Oh, perhaps it’d be a good idea to go shopping for some basics.
And it shouldn’t surprise me that I feel annoyed when Kieran comes back, stands in front of the fridge, digs a finger into one of the rolls, and squirts ketchup into it, before disappearing into the boys’ room, where Jack is already awake and gaming, despite the rule of no computers before ten o’clock. And, to stop myself getting even angrier, I stick my head around the door of our bedroom and say to Sven: ‘Would you like to get up and have breakfast, darling?’, not in a demanding way, but just as information, and I don’t bother Bea, because I know she’s not mad about rolls for breakfast.
It shouldn’t make me stop and think when I realise that I’m not mad about rolls for breakfast either, and that I can’t remember one single family breakfast I’ve enjoyed, if I’m honest — not with my own parents, brother, and sister, or with Sven and the children. Sven sits there in silence, stubbornly drinking his coffee; Kieran spreads crumbs everywhere, even if he’s sitting at the table; Bea complains that Jack chomps; Jack chomps, and Lynn is too big for her toddler chair and gets her hair in the Nutella. Bea asks why we buy Nutella in the first place, seeing as it’s only made of sugar and palm oil, and I have to assume that she gets this ghastly know-it-all attitude from me, and quickly snap: ‘Let me worry about that.’
My exposure of the Family Holiday Lie doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t fall for the Weekend Lie the next day: the one that says it’s nice to have breakfast together on Saturdays when nobody has to go anywhere, when we can eat fresh rolls with smiling faces, and there’s Nutella, love, and fruit.
But it is a bit strange that I’ve blocked out the fact that I don’t like eating before half past eleven, or feel like talking to anyone, especially to people who don’t feel like talking to me — about what, anyway? And that I think it’s even worse to sit next to each other in annoyed silence, which always prompts me to make plans that consist of my own three points if I’m honest: ‘We have to clean, and do the washing, and then go shopping for new clothes.’
But I understand the problem: The Weekend Lie is persuasive.
It operates with a brutal causality: ‘If I don’t like sitting together with you, then it means that I don’t like you.’
It operates using simple opposites: weekdays are stressful, and now everything is lovely for a change.
It operates cruelly and tenaciously, every five days, all
