It’s one thing to love your children – but you do have to prove it.
Jemima Lewis writing in The Daily Telegraph fesses up:
When the working mother screws up, she really screws up. This week, George, my four-year-old son, appeared in his first nativity play. Only somehow his nursery forgot to tell me when and where it was happening, and – being an amateur at this parenting business – I forgot to inquire.
I was in the office, an hour’s commute away, when the nanny rang in a panic. The curtain would be going up any minute: George would be singing Little Donkey, Little Donkey, and there would be no one in the audience to wave at him like a crazed air traffic controller and then sob noisily throughout his stage debut.
At times like this, you realise that good parenting boils down to two things. One: loving your children. Two: proving it. Both my parents worked throughout my childhood, but I don’t remember one carol concert, speech day or school play without them in the audience.
Granted, my mum usually brought some knitting, and my dad a copy of The Spectator, to see them through the longueurs. But whenever my turn came – even if I was only manning the triangle, or stuck at the back of the choir miming the words of some godforsaken madrigal – their applause was as thunderous as if Maria Callas had made a surprise appearance.
I’ve looked it up on Google, and George is at the age where children start laying down their first memories. I’m praying that this one – the one where Mum sent the nanny to clap on her behalf – might slip through the synaptic net. And next year I swear I’ll be there in the front row, clapping until my hands blister, belatedly proving my love. Or at least exorcising the guilt.