None of the grandmothers could collect the child from the nursery, so I was forced to pay a small fortune for childcare. I was fuming as I wrote this down, for today I had quarreled again with my own mother and I could not bring myself to call my husbands mother either.
We were lucky, at least, to have two grandmothers mine and my husbands. Lucky is perhaps too generous a word, for neither of them truly acted as grandmothers. Both lived a stones throw, about a hundred metres, from the Littleton Nursery, yet each stubbornly refused to fetch our son. I could do it myself, but my workday does not finish until six oclock, and I could not be there in time. My husband, who works the night shift at the steelworks in Sheffield, could not always manage it either. Consequently we had to employ a parttime nanny, a cost that has weighed heavily on the familys purse, despite the presence of our grandmothers.
My own mother finished work at four and passes the nursery every evening on her way home. Her life at the moment revolves around herself; after divorcing my stepfather she has taken to relaxing after work, putting on face masks and the like, to keep looking youthful. Every weekend she has some activity booked a trip to the cinema, a gallery opening, a catchup with friends. She only ever looks after her own son, and that too on the occasional weekend. She claims my grandson disrupts her routine, darting about the flat and breaking her meditation. She loves to dispense parenting advice, yet refuses outright to get involved in the actual care.
My husbands mother tells a different tale. She never left the house for a job; she has always been a housewife. She raised four children within a threeyear span, the eldest being my husband. One would think she could step in, yet she insists that looking after her own brood is enough, and that she has a mountain of household chores cooking, cleaning, laundry, feeding the family and then tidying up after everyone. She says she has neither the time nor the inclination for a grandchild, even though her younger sons, now eighteen and twentyone, are fully independent.
On one occasion she took my son from the nursery and was visibly indignant. She claimed she had no time to do anything else, while her husband returned home weary and hungry from work. Later she told me that I should have been the one to look after the baby, not rely on her, and that we could no longer count on her assistance.
The cost of looking after our son gnaws at the family budget. I am livid at the hypocrisy of the grandmothers, who meet their grandson each Christmas and wax lyrical about how much they love him and who bought which present. We do not need the gifts; we need genuine help.
So today I had to phone my mother, practically begging her to collect my boy from the nursery because we could not afford a babysitter. We cannot expect anything from our parents, be it financial aid or real assistance. My husbands mother will not help financially either; she says her husbands meals out eat up the whole grocery bill.
I cannot envision a way out of this bind. Every penny we earn goes toward food, clothing, household supplies, and still we must pay the nanny. How can we persuade our grandmothers to lend a hand? This memory lingers, a reminder of the strain that families once faced when support was promised but seldom delivered.
