I am melting in the Salthill sun, sitting on one of the old fold-up chairs we remembered at the last minute to get down from the attic and throw in the boot of the car when we left Dublin. A woman’s voice is blasting over the tannoy from somewhere near the bright yellow diving tower, the one we’ve seen on the news but never visited until now.
The woman is calling out the names of swimmers as they complete the Frances Thornton Memorial Galway Bay Swim. The swimmers are ploughing their way through the bay’s jellyfish-infested waters from Aughinish in Co Clare to the diving tower in Co Galway, a distance of 13km, raising money for a cancer charity.
I am looking over at my twin daughters who are splashing in the shallows with friends who are also fellow cast members of a show that’s being performed as part of the Galway International Arts Festival. And because my daughters are WIG (Working in Galway) it means that for 10 days I am WFG (Working From Galway).
I text my friend, who is melting in the London sun, the news that I am WFG. He’s not having any of it. “You are a stage-mother, just face the facts,” my friend texts back.
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He’s right. I’m a stage mother watching my daughters from the other side of the small beach, keeping my distance. It’s a stage I’m going through. I need to face the facts. My daughters are at an age now where suddenly distance from me is important. I’m too loud, they tell me. I’m too embarrassing. I try too hard. My so-called jokes are not funny. I’m ruining their favourite songs by liking them too much. I’m singing all the words wrong.
I stopped reading parenting manuals years ago, but a quick internet search on the teenage years tells me they are “individuating” and that the distance they are insisting on is only natural.
“It’s important that parents or caregivers allow children to undergo the individuation process. While parents may want children to live the same way that they do or embrace the same values that they have, they must recognise and respect the fact that their children are unique individuals with their own paths in life.”
They need to carve their own paths. Embrace their own values. I should not take any of it personally, the experts tell me. I’m trying not to take it personally. Instead I show them Kevin and Perry sketches on YouTube and they roll their eyes.
My mother is on the other fold-up chair beside me. She wears a large blue sunhat and strange yellow sunglasses that protect her eyes, which are riddled with macular degeneration and are worse now since a cataract operation. She’s listening to a book and gazing out at the Atlantic Ocean as the names of women and men finishing the Frances Thornton Memorial Galway Bay Swim are called out. “Good woman, Aisling. Keep her lit, John.”
Her knee is dodgy, she walks with a stick, and she wasn’t sure about getting on to the sandy part of the beach, but we took her arms on each side over the stony part and she made it here. Another transition. Another stage.
My mother is a vibrant 82. But it’s getting harder to pretend age isn’t withering her. Withering us all, because nobody escapes. I sit melting and perimenopausal on a battered fold-up chair, thinking about the stages we’re all going through.
I’m a stage mother. I’m WFG, supporting my daughters in something I longed to do as a child but never quite managed, not in any professional sense. I listen to them talking about costumes and stage cues and director’s instructions and backstage shenanigans. Some part of me, the teenager who had bit parts in youth theatre shows and dreamt of more, feels momentarily part of something I was never quite a part of.
It’s called living vicariously through your children, and the experts are very clear that it’s not to be encouraged.
“Most parents want their children to have excellent lives. For many, this means encouraging children not to make the same mistakes they did… when combined with a parent’s regret about their own childhood, it’s easy to see why some parents project dreams onto their children.”
There are better ways to do parenting. “Keep her lit, Mary. Good man, Sean,” says the voice from the diving tower. The swimming race was started by two friends, Ronan and Kevin, who had an ambition to swim Galway Bay. Kevin’s mother Frances, who had cancer, suggested they might do the swim as a fundraiser, and Ronan’s mother Judy came on board to make it all happen.
The two women were there from the start, supporting their sons, helping to organise bucket collections and bag-packing initiatives all to raise money for Cancer Care West. The first race went ahead on July 30th, 2006, and more people joined in 2007. More than €100,000 has been raised for charity since then.
The race was named after Frances Thornton, who died on April 21st, 2008. On April 21st the following year, my daughters came into the world. “Do your best and try to be happy doing it,” was apparently one of that brilliant mother Frances’s favourite phrases. It’s good advice.
I know as this new stage of parenting continues I’m going to keep getting words wrong. But I also know sometimes I’ll get them right. I’ll keep trying, Frances.