My mum doesn’t ask me questions about my work. It’s not because she’s uninterested. It’s because she doesn’t understand what I do. I suppose fields like PR, marketing and business development to my mum are like hedge fund management and M&A to me (though I wonder how my mum can’t navigate an airport yet is better at managing money than I am).
Print journalism is a bit more tangible. However, I once handed my mum a copy of a lifestyle magazine that I’d edited while we were in a hotel room. Within minutes she’d swapped it for another magazine lying on the coffee table; she hadn’t spotted the difference between the two.
Mum recently described me as a ‘high flyer’ to Trustafarian, who nodded indulgently. (When I asked if she’d be proud if I worked in McDonald’s, she replied in the affirmative.)
It took a while to teach my mum how to use Skype. When I advised her not to think about it too much because it worked intuitively, she replied, ‘I keep getting into things I can’t get out of’ and laughed. Yes, she thinks it’s a metaphor for her life. (Meanwhile, my father emailed my previous workplace asking how I’m enjoying my new job. My former colleague forwarded the message to me.)
There’s one thing I can be certain that my mum will ask me, though, ‘Have you got a new boyfriend yet?’
‘No.’
‘Well you have lots of friends,’ she said kindly.
