My son’s back home – and my mothering skills have gone out of the window | Emma Beddington

My graduate son has been back home for five months now. In this economy, he might be stuck here a while longer, meaning we’ve shifted from the extended holiday phase to a new normal. I feel like the William Munny of mothering – a creaky gunslinger dragged out of retirement for one last job, like Clint Eastwood’s character in Unforgiven. Having Seen Things and survived, I had settled into a dourly ascetic afterlife of silent staring and infrequent laundry, measuring out my life in coffee spoons of cholesterol-friendly flaxseed. How rusty am I at mothering? Will I go down in a hail of bullets?

Well, I can still wash, dry and fold multiple loads a week and ensure an uninterrupted supply of milk. It’s muscle memory, instinctive as breathing. I’ve lost other skills, though, like deciding what’s for dinner. I quit cooking the minute we dropped him off in halls in 2022 and wasn’t expecting to get my guns (guns = repertoire of five Meera Sodha recipes) out again. My husband and I have lost our conversational skills too, conversing in rambling, repetitive shorthand, and it’s unnerving having someone around to notice how much we talk about pigeons (constantly).

My worst old-timer trait? I’m realising that, to my shame, I’m a controlling curmudgeon now, with inflexible opinions about where things go, which bowls are acceptable and what should be eaten when. My son’s always catching me muttering crossly to myself as I move jars around, hide the pint glass I hate or re-sort the recycling. Despite that, I love him being here – he’s very fun company and extremely forgiving (except when I try to make him eat mouldy maple syrup). What an unimagined bonus to get extra time with one of my favourite people; shame it’s at the expense of his sanity. Here’s hoping Alan Milburn’s final Neet review works miracles and saves him and all his boomerang peers from more evenings of pigeon chat and dodgy fridge dregs for dinner.

Of course, when he does escape, as older friends remind me, if I’m lucky I might get another last job after this last job: grandparenting.