Not counting the many thousands of words I spent complaining about being pregnant, I wrote my first column about my son, T, 18 years ago today, when he was three hours old. Someone said, “Is there some kind of union you could join? Because I’m sure you’re entitled to at least one whole day of maternity leave,” and I was baffled. As far as I was concerned, they should have held the front page – this wasn’t work, this was a dispatch from the frontline of a brave new world.
除了抱怨怀孕的无数文字，我还在 18 年前今天写下关于我儿子 T 的第一篇专栏，当时他只有三小时大。有人说：“你能加入某个组织吗？因为我确信你有权至少享受一天的产假。”我感到困惑。在我看来，他们应该把头条留给我——这不是工作，这是来自一个勇敢新世界前线的报道。
Anyway, some time passed, and T could suddenly talk, and then some further time passed, and he was his own person, out there in the world, and then I blinked, and he was as tall as a tree. People always say to you, “Treasure this time, it goes by in a flash,” right at the moment you have an armful of toddler, puree in your hair and a mouth full of wet wipes because you ran out of hands – which in retrospect was fortunate, because it meant you couldn’t say the thing you would otherwise have said.
无论如何，时间过去了，T 突然会说话了，然后又过了一段时间，他成了一个独立的人，在这个世界上，然后我眨了眨眼，他已经长得像棵树那么高了。人们总是对你说：“珍惜这段时间，它转瞬即逝，”就在你怀里抱着一个蹒跚学步的孩子，头发里全是泥，嘴里满是湿纸巾，因为你手忙脚乱——回想起来这是幸运的，因为这意味着你无法说出你本想说的话。
But I’m not kidding around – this time passed in a flash. I can’t really recall how I spent it, except it can’t all have been staring out of a window, because I was constantly in a rush. And now here we are, and he’s a grown-ass adult, and nothing has changed in so far as he is still him and I am still me, except everything has changed.
但我说的是真的——时间过得飞快。我实在想不起来我是怎么度过的，除了不可能一直在窗户外凝视，因为我一直在赶时间。现在我们到了这里，他已经是一个成年人了，至于他仍然是他自己，我仍然是我自己，这一点没有变，但一切都变了。
Technically, it’s now ethical for me to write about him again. Years 2012 through 2025, it wasn’t really OK, since he could read it but he couldn’t meaningfully consent. Even though I knew that, it didn’t stop me, so I guess this next phase will be my apology years.
技术上，现在写关于他的文章是道德的。从 2012 年到 2025 年，这其实并不合适，因为他能读到它，但无法做出有意义的同意。即使我知道这一点，它也没有阻止我，所以我想这个阶段将是我的道歉年。
There are a lot of things I now have to butt out of: it’s none of my business whether he’s vegetarian or how often he washes his hair or what his phone manner is like. And, truthfully, 18 is a completely arbitrary watershed. There are mothers who will see themselves into their graves telling you you’ve had too many potatoes (like mine, for instance), and mothers who, very early on, leave the boundary-setting to a favourite teacher plus CBeebies, then sit back and hope for the best.
现在有很多事情我必须放手：他是不是素食主义者、他多久洗一次头发、他的电话礼仪如何，这些都与我无关。而且，坦白说，18 岁只是一个完全随意的分水岭。有些母亲会一直管到入土，告诉你你吃了太多的土豆（比如我的母亲），而有些母亲，在很早的时候就把界限设定权交给了一位喜欢的老师加上 CBeebies，然后坐下来，寄希望于最好的结果。
But let’s say you’re setting the age at which an adult human can say “This is none of your business”: 18 is that age. I don’t know why this is so devastating to me; his manners are lovely and I don’t care how clean his hair is. He isn’t even going to university for another year at the earliest. I walk around the house, fighting back tears, muttering “Nothing has changed”, like Theresa May.
但假设你设定了一个成年人类可以说“这与你无关”的年龄：那就是 18 岁。我不知道为什么这对我如此打击；他的举止很可爱，我不在乎他的头发有多干净。他最早还要再过一年才会上大学。我在房子里走来走去，忍住泪水，嘟囔着“什么都没变”，就像特蕾莎·梅一样。
If I had any respect at all for his adult autonomy, this would be the moment I would stop trying to make friends-by-proxy with the parents of his friends. The mum-alliance was a matter of life or death when they were tiny, because how else would you make common cause and blame some Third Other for giving everyone nits? Over time, it transpired that these were very beautiful, unexpected, late-life bonds, but now … now it would just be weird.
如果我还有一点尊重他的成年自主权，那现在就是我停止试图通过他的朋友父母来交朋友的时候了。当他们是小孩的时候，妈妈联盟是生死攸关的事情，因为除此之外，你怎么能团结起来，把责任推给某个“第三者”，说他们给每个人都带来了虱子呢？随着时间的推移，我们发现这些是非常美丽、意想不到的晚年关系，但现在……现在这只会显得很奇怪。
Of course appalling misdeeds of mine will come up when he gets a therapist, in the fullness of time, but surely by now, those can’t be helped. So my final adaptation, now, is to not just acknowledge the adulthood, but make an effort to actually believe it. No more grabbing his arm when we’re out and about, going: “Look, a horse! T, it’s an air ambulance!” Trust that, whoever’s lost their keys, it’s more likely to be me than him. Accept that just because I made it, it is his hair to do what he wants with.
当然，当他最终去看心理医生的时候，我的可怕行为会浮出水面，但显然，现在这些已经无法避免了。所以我现在最后的适应就是不仅承认他的成年，还要努力真正相信这一点。不再在我们外出时抓住他的手臂，说：“看，一匹马！T，这是一架空中救护车！”相信无论谁丢了钥匙，更有可能是我而不是他。接受我虽然创造了它，但他有权按照自己的意愿处理自己的头发。
