Louisa Simmonds

Its been a long and exhausting week since child number-one finally decided to leave the nest a few weeks before Christmas. In fact, it has been so completely crazy helicoptering over the move, there’s been very little time to consider the emotional ramifications.

While my daughter is a bright little cookie with a very practical, logical brain that has scored her the sort of amazing job in the city to make me question if we are actually her parents, the organization and creative skills required to furnish a studio within a few days – well, not so much.

And anyway, as she said, what’s the point of having a stylist for a mother if you can’t get her to design your new pad? For free.  Fortunately, she knows me well enough to know that I am unable to resist the challenge of extra time at the mall or to showcase my creative toolbox after just one doleful, puppy-dog-eyed look from my soon-to-be-departed child.

A week to buy furniture, fumigate bed linen, source artwork and kitchen utensils that she might recognize plus a mini Christmas Tree, as well as all those other touches that she would definitely not consider – vacuum cleaner and toilet brush come to mind. A week in which to explain how a lease works, convince her that she does need utilities, and that no, she can’t use the family 4G for her Internet usage, culminated in hours of assembling Ikea furniture in a hot room the size of a cupboard, with a crotchety middle-aged man who decided he was the supervisor, shouting from the sidelines.

I did have some help, in the shape of Kurt who helped load the van hired by the old man and then scarpered off before we could nag him to give us a date for when exactly he’s leaving. And then there was the old man, who ticked one item off his bucket list with the hire of the aforementioned transit van so that he could look like a man-who-can for the first time ever. And (as I’m feeling generous), he really did look like a man with a van for those few hours as NC and ladled on the encouragement to make sure his service extended to most of the lifting.

I won’t mention the language as the three of us attempted to carry the world’s heaviest two-seater sofa bed – much bigger than it looked on Gumtree – up a flight of stairs. Nor will I admit that I almost reached for the (in case of heart attack) Aspirin in my handbag when my ticker began to race worryingly quickly because I thought there was no way it would go through the door of the apartment.

Predictably, the old man refused to put together the furniture, like all professional removalists.

‘I can’t fucking do this,’ I think were his words of despair as he threw the instructions to an Ikea dining chair across the floor, two minutes after opening them – in reaction to which, NC and I shared a conspiratorial ‘TYPICAL’ look and then sent him out for coffee.

I will miss those conspiratorial looks.

I know in my heart that she’s SO ready and that it’s time, but I will miss my wingwoman who shares my asinine wit and enthusiasm for keeping the boys grounded at every opportunity – although, in truth, I’ve got this; I will miss the Tupperware boxes of leftovers she leaves in the fridge – enough to feed the starving Third Word – that this raging environmentalist never eats; I will miss the use of her shoes, her beauty products and her talent for eyebrow plucking, because I can no longer see mine.

I won’t miss the vegetarian who doesn’t really like vegetables, or her howls of disappointment when I jaywalk, use her expensive shampoo or forget my recyclable shopping bags – nor the graphic description of dead turtles that usually follows.

I’ll even miss her drinking my wine.

Maybe.

#Wine #Family #leavinghome #Humor #movinghouse #emptynesting