I had a wobbly. I mean a real wobbly. When I told my husband how I’d been, he thought I was saying I was unwell, but to me a wobbly is when one is feeling so emotionally overwhelmed, they react in an irrational manner.
For me, it was heaving a *DofE rucksack into the air, then hurling it across the living room, with an accompanied **expletive that Christians are not supposed to verbalise unless they have the excuse of having only been saved four weeks.
In my regenerated self, no godly attributes were on display as the polythene-bagged contents flew out and landed precariously upon various items of furniture. Sleeping bag, clothes, towel and First Aid Kit were delighted that they had been released from their suffocating interior. After having been squashed in so tightly, I’m surprised I hadn’t broken my fingers in the arduous process of pressing down with all my might.
* Dofe stands for, ‘The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award’ which is a programme for young people designed to instil confidence, new skills, teamwork, healthy lifestyles, and industriousness into them. There are different levels of intensity performed in order of Bronze, Silver and Gold and children usually join the scheme at 13 years old – each level ends with a hiking expedition. This involves traipsing around the English countryside holding a rain-soaked map and half of their lifetime possessions strapped to their backs. In truth, it causes a myriad of blisters in places you never thought could even turn red, multiple fractures of the spine, loose vertebrae, twisted shoulders, bad posture and turns the sanest parents into a basket-case when they see how much their offspring has to carry around on their bones for a gruelling 6 hours.
After sending several emails to my daughter’s school to inquire how on earth she was supposed to fit so much inside a 65-litre contraption that weighs more than she does, even when empty, I was getting nowhere.
Four weeks before the trip, I was satisfied that I had managed to fit everything in, but a week before, she casually announced that there was more to buy, hence, more to take. Her side of the conversation went like this:
“Mum, I have to take two packed lunches. And I’ve been allocated the washing up liquid. No, school are not buying it, you must. Oh, and tea towels. And a dishcloth. No, the teacher won’t be carrying them, I will. No mum, not on my head, in the rucksack. Well, she said I have to fit it in somehow. Mum, calm down.”
The day before, I had been watching a YouTube video about how to fold clothes in amazingly neat ways.
Taking each polythene bag out one by one, I refolded everything that was made of cloth. Slowly, I began to re-pack. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not get all the items into the main compartment like before. The metal crockery pushed the sleeping bag above the drawstring like icing being forced out of a piping bag.
Every other zipped orifice was stuffed full of required items.
“Oh, and I need to provide the paper plates.” came a phlegmatic murmur from the child leaning on the arm of the chair, staring at the television with a remote-control in her hand.
“What? How many? You serious?”
Teenager shrug. Teenage mumbling. Teenager’s biscuit crumbs falling onto the carpet. Paddy McGuiness shouting from the screen in the corner, “No likey, no lighty.” Mother clenching teeth and inhaling deeply.
I think I forgot to exhale, for when I did, a weird noise came from my lungs.
But do you know what it was that finally made me flip? It wasn’t just the fact that I couldn’t get the once compliant expedition clobber back into the rucksack. It was the last comment I heard just as ‘Take Me Out’ was ending.
Sarah looked round at me, smug that now her programme had finished, her memory cells were back in play.
“Oh and… I need to bring the hot chocolate.”
That is the moment when my angel winced as he witnessed my parental hysteria.
That is the moment when a whistle and a hairbrush landed on top the fish tank.
I am so glad God foresaw our angst and wrote a love letter to us. In times of frustration, it is verses like this that prevent me from doing other people physical harm:
“I have told you these things so that in me you may have perfect peace. In the world you have tribulation, distress and suffering, but be courageous – confident, undaunted, full of joy – for I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
In reality, my frustrations were totally my own fault. I was being too hands-on as a parent. The DofE is a great scheme and one of the reasons for it, is to encourage young people to become more independent. I don’t think that packing a rucksack while one’s offspring sits watching, a cheesy dating show is what the dear Duke had in mind when he set it up. Sometimes children need to be left to figure things out for themselves.
Yes indeed, I think the Queen’s husband was very innovative when he thought of this scheme, but next time, I shall do what parents are supposed to do – make one’s child do it all – sit back and stay calm, knowing that they have to make their own mistakes.
Sarah won’t have any fond memories of packing her bag, because I did it for her. Like how the butterfly’s wings are too weak to fly when they don’t go through the struggle of pushing through the cocoon, Sarah didn’t learn to appreciate her clobber and after completing the 3-day camping course, she came back with contents missing. When I enquired where they were, she nonchalantly replied that she left them behind because they wouldn’t fit inside said backpack. Even worse was the fact that the rucksack had been lent to us by a friend, yet Sarah, too tired to hitch it onto her back, had dragged it along a mile of concrete, creating 3 large holes in the bottom.
I gritted my teeth and blamed myself. I had encouraged this complacent, brattish behaviour.
**Another thing I was reminded of, was that God tells us not to sin in our anger. I do not advocate that it is okay for Christians to use bad language. I used a swear word because at that moment, I was not being Jesus-like in thought or deed.
My daughter is now at university and because she is commuting, she carries a very large, heavy rucksack around. There are lockers on campus but they are situated quite a distance away from where she has all her lectures. This means that her shoulders are constantly under great strain, especially as she positions just one strap on one shoulder rather than letting her back take the full strain. I am concerned for her posture and keep sending her Amazon links to laptop cases with wheels.
“There is no way I’m using that!”
she has declared to me on numerous occasions. Naturally, parents never stop caring, but one thing I have learnt from the DofE episode is that there is a big difference between caring and interferring. Yes, I am concerned for her spine and long-term bone health. But, as I cannot force an 18 year old to do as she is told, I have to resort to the fact that she is an adult now and can do as she pleases. So I have decided to delete the wheely cases from my shopping cart and now I’m searching for pictures. Maybe you can help me. Do you know where I can find a snapshot of Quasimodo? Could you send me the link?
