HOPELESS MOTHER

Secondary school has begun and Max is a new boy. His school bus leaves at eight in the morning from the centre of the village and returns him in the afternoon at four thirty. He’s informed me that my waving, teary presence is not required. I really want to be there. I’m tempted to lurk in the bushes pretending to be someone else, but I think he might spot me. I just want to check he’s okay and, I admit, reassure myself that he gets on and off the bus in one piece. Max is a head-in-the-clouds sort of boy; he never knows where he should be or what he should have with him. I’m fairly convinced he’d forget to get off. I do know he needs to embrace this new independence and gain confidence from it, but I still try to persuade him to let me go with him.

“What if I wear my trainers that you said were cool,” I plead. “Or I could wear dark glasses and just hang around at the back of the queue? We needn’t even walk together. I could just loiter nearby and no one would know I was even with you.”

Max gives me a look of pained charity.

“Mum, they all know you, even the old ones. You worked at school remember?”

Okay I accept that I may not be that incognito a figure but I can’t be the only parent who wants to wave off their child.

“Other mothers must go?” I ask.

“Yeah well you’re not other mothers are you? You’re my mother.”

I feel like I have been condemned, like an old building, a ‘Don’t go there’ sign hanging around my neck.

It is Day Three of school and Max is very happy with the new regime. He likes the bus pass, his lunch money, his new PE kit. He is particularly thrilled with one of the teachers who ‘starts speaking Korean when he’s tired’ - fingers crossed he’s not the English teacher. Max gets up at 6.30 am to do his hair and pack his bag, and all is going well. He’s grateful to me for staying away from the bus stop and even concedes that later on in the term I might be allowed to meet him halfway down the lane.

All this I relate to my friend as we sit drinking tea at her house, having picked up the little ones from school. She smiles indulgently at me, her children are all older than mine at the same school, she’s heard it all before.

“So what’s happening today?” she asks. “Has he got a club?”

I follow her gaze to the kitchen clock. It’s 4.29pm.

I bundle Flo and Bobby into the car and speed the two miles to our house. If I go the back route, I think, we might make it back home before Max does. It wasn’t to be: our route is obstructed by a tractor and then two cars. The drivers are leaning out of their windows having a chat.

“Don’t they have bl**dy telephones?” I yell, much to Bobby and Flo’s delight.

“Bl**dy, bl**dy, bl**dy,” sings Bobby.

We career up the lane swinging into our drive inches before Max.

“Mum forgot about you,” calls Flo proudly.

I said sorry loads of time and we’ve hidden a back door key in the garden - should I be late again. Between us, hopefully, Max will get to school and back without too many hitches. One thing is clear: he’s better off being self-reliant than depending on his hopeless mother.

Life in the Slow Lane is written by Clare Kent. She has three children - Max is eleven, Flo is eight and Bobby is nearly seven - and lives in Wiltshire.

NEXT INSTALMENT: WEDNESDAY 25 SEPTEMBER