Public Warning – these final words were written by an emotional mother, aided by a large dose of nostalgia and a box of Kleenex. Sniff.
I can still remember the very moment I found out I’d been offered a weekly newspaper column. The call came in during the week before Christmas 2003. Our boys were spending the day with their auntie, and husband and I were celebrating surviving the festive shopping scrum with a quick game of pool in a local bar. I blame excitement for the fact that I missed the next three shots.
My remit was simple: with two children under three, my job was to write about the funny, worrying, stressful, happy, bizarre, brilliant and quirky things that happened in our family every week.
I’ve never had to look too far for material.
There was the big meeting with a Hollywood producer that was almost scuppered by a wee boy and a protest situation regarding Buzz Lightyear pull-up pants.
Then came the nursery days when I wrestled with all those work/stay at home, eat organic/commando-crawl into McDonalds, Tweenies/Teletubbies dilemmas.
I wrote about their first days at school, their nativity plays, and the summer holidays that involved baking buckets of cupcakes, a league of footie sessions, and a visit to a chiropractor when I put my back out while teaching Low the Elder to ride a bike.
My annual Christmas debacles made it on to the page every year. And, no, I still haven’t managed to cook an entire yuletide feast without a seismic disaster – but, thankfully, my lovely extended clan still keeps coming back.
Our jollies to shores near and far usually had a similar theme of mayhem and bedlam. I may never recover from the staycation to a rain-soaked Loch Tay with four mums, seven sons and twenty-two wellies. And our brood are so injury-prone that we began to choose our holidays by locating a fabulous hospital and booking a fortnight all-inclusive at the nearest beach resort.
Today, daily life is a million miles away from that phone call almost fourteen years ago.
It’s now the summer of 2017 and my boys are fifteen and sixteen. Low the Elder passed all his exams, got selected to play basketball for both Scotland and Great Britain and he is fleeing the nest this month, off to bounce a ball at a sports academy far from home. Low the Younger still belts out a tune on the saxophone, when he’s not playing basketball for the Scotland U16 squad and conceding to my pathetic pleas to accompany me to the latest superhero flick. Chances are that if he manages to scale the barricades I’ve propped against the front door, he’ll follow his brother on the road to independence in the not too distant future. Another sniff.
As soon as they started school, I stopped using my sons’ names in this column, choosing to protect their privacy while they grew up.
Now they’re shaving and in possession of their own front door keys, I’m lifting the ban for this final chapter.
Callan and Brad Low, thank you. You’re still, and will always be, my favourite people on earth and I’ve adored every minute of being your mother – even the ones that involved eye-rolling and huffs. I’ll miss doing that.
And as we start on the next chapter that will take you into fully fledged adulthood, I just want to ask that you abide by a couple of conditions.
Call me every day – and pretend that you don’t mind, don’t think I’m over-protective, and that I’m not listed as ‘It’s Her Again’ in your phone contacts.
You must visit your parents at least once a week, otherwise I’ll hunt you down.
Your first tattoo had better say ‘I love Mum’.
If I ever get another shot at that meeting with a Hollywood producer, please make sure you don’t cause any underwear-related delays.
And if Dad and I go missing the first weekend after you’ve moved out?
We’ll be in the pub, having the long-awaited rematch from that pool game in 2003…
Love you more than words. Because I said so.
Mum x
We hope you enjoyed this book!
Shari Low’s next book is coming in spring 2018.
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