The Edge of Vision

The lives of carers – of parents, of partners, of children – become subsumed in the lives of those for whom they care. But resentment and great love can co-exist, as Polly Devlin discovers

Stella was standing in front of the glass combing her hair when Suzanne, her daughter, walked in. Stella is well named because she is a natural star, a beautiful actor who gave up her stage career to look after her husband and family. Now, though, she was looking distraught. “What’s wrong?” Suzanne asked anxiously.

Her mother turned round “What’s wrong?” she wailed. “Only that I look about a hundred”. Suzanne couldn’t help laughing. “But mum” she said, “you are about a hundred.” Suzanne was only slightly exaggerating. Stella is 98. Suzanne has left her life, her friends and her home in France to go back to Ireland to look after her beloved old mother and she does it with great grace. I am amazed and abashed because I do not think I could do such a thing. I am fundamentally selfish and too impatient. But Suzanne makes me think again. There might be hope for me yet.

“I didn’t think I could do it. I’ve been thinking about this and have not really sorted out my feelings about it, except that I have always known that I could never have been a professional carer, just not enough patience or what might be called goodwill towards humanity and not much goodness at all. Much too selfish.” And yet she has done it. Why? Where do we find the resources to tip our lives head over heels and help those whose lives have also tipped over; from being, for example, a sane person in a familiar world to living in a wild scenario with no boundaries in Alzheimer country; or a child with cerebral palsy; or a mother like Suzanne’s who has suddenly broken her bones and is immobile. It’s the old rag and bone shop of the heart. Love.

This story appears in the May issue of The Gloss. Find more features like this in next issue, out June 4

It's Complicated

Two new books outline the way in which the male and female brains differ, pointing to seemingly significant differences between the sexes, but isn’t the truth about men and women’s minds a little cloudier than that, asks Bridget Hourican

At certain strategic moments in childhood arguments, my brothers always played their trump card: “You’re getting hysterical” uttered in low rational male tones, immediately catapulting me and my sisters into, yes, foaming hysteria. Nothing anyone has said since has maddened me as much. We didn’t know that the etymology of “hysterical” was the Greek “hysterikos” for womb, but we knew the boys were dealing a low sexist blow, even if we couldn’t have defined sexism.

Other things we believed as kids: that boys were better at art and sport, had a better sense of direction, and knew about operating machines; girls were better at making up stories, were more responsible, and better at baking.
God knows where we got all this – not from my parents and not from example: my brothers were, and are, rubbish at anything mechanical; my younger sister could beat up most of the boys in her class; my older sister made bread you could break your teeth on. Now as adults, my older brother can’t find his way to the corner shop and has to rely on directions from his wife (who has the spatial awareness of a London cab driver). And, having spent my life overly compensating for that early accusation of hysteria, I tend to argue in an aggressive, rational, ordered way (which annoys the hell out of people and is far less fun than smashing plates and hurling wild insults).

This story appears in the May issue of The Gloss. Find more features like this in next issue, out June 4

Measuring up

Writer Emma Hannigan isn’t a perfect wife – at least not in comparison to her saintly grandmother – but she has learned to live with it, takeaways and all

I’ve been a wife for almost 15 years. Until I began writing my latest novel Perfect Wives it never occurred to me to question my own performance. In the book, I explore the lives of two very different women who become unlikely friends. On the surface, they don’t have a huge amount in common but as they get to know one another it’s obvious they’re actually striving for the same thing – perfection.

I think it’s good to have ambition. A little bit of a competitive streak can encourage us to push ourselves to the next level. But have we all lost the run of ourselves? Is there too much pressure on women today to be the perfect wife?
In my grandmother’s time, her role as a woman was clearly defined. She was a housekeeper and mother. It was her job to make sure the children were washed, dressed, fed and ferried to their various schools and activities. My grandfather worked outside the home and brought home a wage packet each week. Perhaps my grandmother was unique in so far as she was also the accountant in their house. Granddad handed over his brown envelope every Friday and left all money matters from paying bills to the housekeeping budget to his wife. My grandmother managed their funds to the last penny. She even gave him his exact bus fare each morning with enough to buy the paper.

I still marvel at how amazingly my grandmother coped. I admired her growing up and now in adulthood those feelings have multiplied. She passed away in recent years and she left a very large space in so many lives. If there were a perfect wife points system, I’d say she’d be a record holder. I’m not sure how well I’d fare.

This story appears in the May issue of The Gloss. Find more features like this in next issue, out June 4