March 5: Mothers, Daughters

My mum and sister came today to help. I have a zillion jobs to do in the house, the chief one being to move all the boxes that are hogging my lounge up into the loft so I can make the downstairs habitable. It seems that moving into a new house is like that. You can have one floor clear at any time. Any more than that - no chance. I’ve got three floors (the top one, technically a loft but it’s got a carpet and Velux window). The estate agents described it as ‘exciting loft space’ and as sad as it is to admit it, I quite agree. When I first moved in, I lived up there, hiding away, enjoying the cold air while the builders invaded downstairs, knocking down a stud wall between the kitchen and lounge, then building me a new floor out of engineered wood (the old joists and planks had rotted), and fitting me a new spangly kitchen, with window to boot. The downstairs and bedroom floor (where the mess expanded to) were no-goes. Then, that done, I moved more clutter into the bedrooms, shut-up the loft and lived downstairs. At the moment, though, I don’t have any floor clear. There is mess and boxes, and cans of paint and tools everywhere. The plan: to shift everything to the third floor and never open the loft-hatch again.
Mum arrives. She brings yet more tools, to fix a cupboard to the wall. I haven’t asked her to. Or maybe I have. I can’t remember but I may as well concede right here and now that what happened next was probably largely my fault. We argued, loudly. I didn’t want her to screw the cupboard to the wall. For some unknown reason, the walls are plasterboard, and I want a carpenter to do it properly. I had plenty of other jobs for them to help with if they wished. But I can’t take on everything at once. And she does have a habit of trying to 'force' things on me.
I tell her – I know, I know, very cruelly – to stop meddling, to stop trying to do things for me, that I will ask for help when I need it and don’t need her taking over.
She flips. Then rants, crying as mothers do (well, mine does).
‘I don’t know anything that’s going on in your life. I don’t know who is going to look after you when this baby is born. I don’t know how you are going to manage. I don’t know what you are going to do for money. I don’t what FTB’s involvement is going to be. You don’t tell me anything. I feel completely excluded from it all. I don’t even know where you are going to have this baby. You think only of yourself and you are selfish. You don’t think about what all this is doing to the rest of us.’
God, and I thought I was stressed.