Mum's the word
Mrs. Jones: The sex is really very surprising. The other night I woke up and felt a huge...
Bridget: Goodbye, Mum! Bridget puts down the phone (v.g idea).
Watching one's mother play the dating game is wholly disconcerting. Especially when one considers that it is a process which in theory should only happen prior to your existence.
"Don't forget your condoms, Mum": the most memorable phrase from a recent account by one woman about her experiences when her mother started to date again. For me too, having to aid my mother in navigating the sexual arena is a profoundly disturbing position. And I'm not joking.
When my mother split up with her boyfriend of eleven years (my putative stepfather), she became 'single' again. And so she began to trample on my own rites of passage as her daughter.
Although up at Oxford, I was assured by my younger sister that my mother was enjoying being single again; seeing who (or what) she could reel in, by all accounts. Indeed, my mother even informed me that by exuding confidence at dinner parties she was getting considerable attention: "You should try it, darling". Well, what works for her....
I felt myself metamorphosing into a nineteen year-old mother and she into a forty-four year-old teenager. Within a month a new boyfriend was introduced who, apparently, she was to wed in four months' time. Observing the new couple together only made me more aware of my assumed role. Yes, he was the type of man you would want to bring home to meet your mother, but the short time span of the relationship concerned me. Don't you want to want to wait a bit longer? Why don't you try living together first? Does he have a job? Who are his parents? How are you going to pay for the wedding?
When at home, my sister and I would greet our future stepfather over the breakfast table and look at each other in disgust as our mother, wrapped in a dressing-gown/kaftan style creation, fussed over him and asked him what else he wanted with his continental breakfast. That we were not being particularly accommodating was evident but, selfishly, we felt as a puppy does when the baby arrives.
Although never stated explicitly, our presence was unwanted because it meant that the house was a familial area and not a love-nest. In my newly-acquired moral zeal I viewed this morning-after wooing as entirely inappropriate. Too many boundaries were being crossed too quickly. Not that I expected my mother and her lover to sleep in separate rooms, but I was staunch in advocating that the pair should be seen (when behaving) and not heard (at all).
I was jealous of this man for taking away my mother, for turning her into a reckless teenager who behaved in a manner I viewed as my prerogative. We couldn't both be wide-eyed, love-struck youngsters and I found myself adopting all the cynicism that results from two failed marriages - hers, of course.
I didn't think the wedding would go ahead, so I wasn't surprised when my mother confided in me that she thought her husband-to-be had cold feet. The irony of the situation was not lost on me when she asked for relationship advice. Play it cool, I advised and he'll stop backing off.
RULE-1: Don't call him. RULE-2: Behave in an indifferent manner when you see him. RULE-3: Never ask your daughter for these kinds of tips.
What might have appeared as a mother-daughter bonding session was in fact a distinctly distasteful scenario. I had seen my mother in a new light and observed a dichotomy: she was a mother and also a woman frightened of being alone in her old age. Although I didn't like the latter incarnation, it certainly enabled me to eliminate comic potential from the idea of an older woman dating again.
Mum was not a mutton-dressed-as-lamb figure trying to recreate her youth, rather she was a middle-aged woman terrified of being alone and unwanted, coloured at the edges by the hysteria of Annette Bening's character in American Beauty. Desperation distinguished her from her younger counterparts. Moreover, the urgency inherent in the process of growing old alone painted her as a tragic, rather than a comic, figure. I began to understand the pathetic predicament of a woman who had spent half of her life bringing up children and thus compromising her career, only to become isolated again.
In Bridget Jones' Diary, Mrs. Jones feels so ignored in her role as matriarch that she runs off with orange-faced Julian and forces Mr. Jones to acknowledge her as she sells him gold-plated diamante earrings from his television screen. My mother threw herself into finding a man to prevent herself from remaining alone and unnoticed, and in so doing, my sister and I were forced to view her sexual capacity in all its lurid detail.
Helen Fielding releases Mrs. Jones from the shock of surprising sex and returns her to her husband (and no sex). The adventure is over. My mother married her boyfriend three months ago, and I can only hope that she will not have need of my relationship advice again.
Names have been changed in this article for reasons of confidentiality.
17th May 2001