For some weeks now, my 12-year-old son has been wondering aloud what vodka is like. One of his best friends is Russian and I suspect it has become a topic of fascination between them. What does it taste like, he asks. How drunk does this amount or that amount get you, how is it different from gin, or wine, or beer? Is it the strongest thing there is…? A lot of wondering. A lot of musing. A lot of what any half-sentient parent – which is about the best most of us can manage in this difficult year of our Lord 2023 – would recognise to be coat-trailing.
So, in keeping with good liberal parent tradition I think – I will get ahead of this. I will demystify this entity that he is currently building into an elixir imbued with semi-magical powers instead of a gut-rotting mixture of water and ethanol (lovely in a tonic, though). Instead of letting him build up a head of steam about it and end up experimenting to sickness/stomach-pumping in A&E levels outside my purview, I will nonchalantly offer him some next time he mentions it, as if it were a boring nothing, just a disgusting-tasting liquid that makes you cough and wonder who in their right mind would want anything to do with it. I won’t put it in tonic or anything (it really is so lovely in tonic, though I’ll take it in orange too) or mention that it’s usually imbibed with a mixture. I’ll give him it straight and it will be an education and the best inoculation against the evils of drink that I can give him in the absence of a Christian Temperance Union doling out pledge cards on every street corner or the Salvation Army exhorting abstinence or any of the other things that were once on hand to help us deal with the exhausting business of taking the edge off young people’s stupidity and trying to ensure their survival to adulthood.
So, next time he wonders aloud about the properties of the Slavic potion, I say casually that we’ve some in the freezer if he’d like to try some. His face lights up with delight, disbelief and a little bit of fear, which is always my favourite expression. Yes, he says, after a pause to process this momentous offer, he would like to. So, I get an egg cup down, tell him it’s roughly the size of a shot glass and put (much, much less than a shot’s worth of) vodka in. “You have to drink it in one go,” I say, casually again, even turning towards the sink to get on with washing up to prove how little this bothers me, thus futureproofing his health and my happiness by removing it as a point around which future rebellion can gather. I congratulate myself mightily as I scour pans and plonk them triumphantly on the draining board.
He loves it. Not the taste – a face is pulled – but “the lovely burning feeling in my chest!” is a winner. It is fortunate that I perfected the art of the expressionless internal meltdown years ago because this is the worst one yet. I have set him on the road to alcoholism. At best – if you are of the school of thought that says the tendency lies latent until triggered rather than being created from scratch – years earlier than he would otherwise have gone down it. The guilt, as is customary, weakens my knees, the anxiety attacks my stomach and adrenalised fear floods everywhere else. Why did I ever listen to liberals instead of my mother, who we believed would literally kill us if we ever touched alcohol or drugs (or the wrong towels in the bathroom, but that really was probably going too far)? Why did I not build that lead-lined bunker I used to dream of raising him in as a newborn and the world suddenly seemed riven with hitherto undreamed of dangers?
But. But. I am getting better at this. My recovery period has shortened over the years. Clarity, reason, perspective returned within a few hours instead of months. When I had peeled my nerveless fingers off the sink edge they had been clutching and sat down on a kitchen chair I could acknowledge the truth that has revealed itself gradually to me over the last 12 years; that no one thing dooms any endeavour – even the raising of precious offspring. That is why simply doing your best is OK. There is – and this, I think, is what people mean when they talk about parenthood forcing you to grow up – no objective right or wrong in any of the nine billion decisions you make in an ordinary day. The wisdom of each one stands only in relation to all the others you have made in the raising of your child that have led you to having to make the current one here and now. And this, furthermore, is true not just of the child-rearing business but the whole of life too.
When I say my recovery period has shortened – I realise now that I mean I can move swiftly on from mere maternal crisis to a full existential convulsion. But actually, being able to take a broader view – beyond the narrow confines of your crotchfruit’s wellbeing – is progress! You just need a stiff drink afterwards. Which, fortunately, I had on hand as he hadn’t quite finished the bottle yet.