Dad rarely seemed to consider how much I was carrying. Since I turned fourteen, my family leaned on me for all sorts of things. Sometimes it was as simple as searching for something online or helping with an internet purchase.
Is it wrong to want a thank you after a favour? But whenever I gently reminded Mum, Dad, or Grandad about the magic word, it was as if Id unleashed a torrent of explanations and sighs
Thats how it always went. I grew up, headed off to university, and still the requests kept comingpick something up for someone (because I had my student grant), help the boy next door muddle through his maths homework for free, drive Grandad to the doctor because hes too old to go alone and gets nervy before visits.
Once you get older, you gather your own pile of thingswork, responsibilities, a girlfriend, and the habit of living in a world of give-and-take. Yet Mum and Dad never quite learned their way around the internet, and asking me to help them find things online or buy something for them felt more and more tiresome. Especially on alternate days when Mum rings to ask me to enter the meter readings, Dad calls for help buying an item online, or to connect Mum to an online seminar since she doesnt know how. Over time, I learned to politely say no to these requests when I genuinely couldnt do them, but somehow this troubled Dad immensely. It hurt him because, in his mind, I owed them help.
Recently, we clashed over it again. We bickered over the phonein a way that was almost dizzy, as if the conversation spiralled in a foggy circle He had decided, on a whim, to take a midweek trip to Liverpool and wanted me to tag along, feeling lost and unable to use Google Maps. I asked which of us was supposed to be the parent, at which point he launched into a furious speech about how hed raised me, helped me, and now it was my turn to help them.
The finale was Dad declaring hed never ask me for help again. For days I felt guilty, thinking I should apologise, but in the end, Dad turned up firstnot seeking reconciliation but confronting me with:
Have you thought about Mums birthday present yet? Shall we chip in and buy her that sewing machine shes wanted? Shell never buy it herself, and we could surprise her.
And there I am againhurt, masking it with a smile as if nothing ever happened.
Does anyone else feel that parents use them whenever it suits? They are adults What would happen if I simply disappeared? How would they manage?
The whole episode is like a dream of spiralling corridors and bottomless staircasesgrown-ups knocking on my door, asking for help, voices echoing help us, help us as if I were the only handrail left in their world.
