JUST when you think you've got life sorted... The trouble with living in the country is that it keeps your children dependent on you for that much longer. When the midwife gives you that list of post-natal exercises and the days for the clinic, they might just as well give you a chauffeur's hat and be done with it.
I have driven miles on behalf of the boys. To be fair, they were quite good about buses and - once their drinking days started - cheerfully reckless about taxis. Smaller Son would even walk to work - a mile uphill and across the A1, once even in a howling blizzard on New Year's Eve, which he has never let me forget.
But there are some things that you cannot just leave to their own initiative or your own hard heart.
We are stuck between two hospitals. Although things - touch wood - have been fairly quiet of late, we have an impressive entry at both the Friarage in Northallerton and the Memorial in Darlington. And before it all closed down, we'd had our moments at the Duchess of Kent in Catterick too. And Middlesbrough General.
Of course, you can't just pop a sick child on a bus and expect them to get on with it. But it's never just the emergency, there are always all those routine follow-up appointments, which a 17-year-old should be quite capable of sorting by himself - if he could only get there.
Then our doctor is six miles away in Hurworth. Our dentist is in Northallerton.
And throughout the boys' childhood and adolescence I have worn a little track between them all. All those emergencies, all those routine appointments, all that driving, all that waiting, all those days just swallowed up.
Dental appointments always involved a dash to pick them up from school in Richmond, hurtle down to Northallerton. Drive round in circles looking for somewhere to park. Then the waiting - trying not to hear the sound of drills coming from the next door surgery.
By the time Senior Son could drive, he was about ready to leave home anyway, so I never really had the benefit of his mobility. But now Smaller Son is still at home, can drive and has a car. It is the dawning of a new age - for me as well as him. So when he was complaining about his teeth recently it was easy. "Ring up and get an emergency appointment," I said breezily. "Take the car to school and you can go straight there."
And he did. Ho, ho, I thought gleefully as I pottered happily round the house, this was liberation. His teeth were no longer my problem. Oh bliss.
It's like all those small steps - from the time they learn to feed or dress themselves. Or can finally reach the taps to get their own drinks, or walk to school alone. Each one is another small freedom for a mother. And now it was the dentist. Another responsibility off my list. I think I might even have been singing with the joy of it all.
I did get a bit perturbed as the skies blackened. The wind howled. Sleet and hail swirled around the house. A bit disconcerting for the lad, I thought, but good experience.
Eventually he turned up. He staggered into the kitchen, so pale you could see his freckles. He had a hanky clutched to his mouth. To ease the problem with wisdom teeth the dentist had immediately taken out one of his top teeth.
The poor lad had driven through hail and sleet with a mouth full of blood and an injection rapidly wearing off. And now he stood bleakly in the middle of the kitchen trying to find the Paracetamol.
Did I feel guilty? Of course I did. Those few hours freedom had cost my conscience dear. So much for liberation. And to think I sang.
But as we all know, a mother's place is in the wrong. Always was and always will be.
Happy Mother's Day.
Published: Thursday, March 7, 2002
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