Leaving Home

Despite deep misgivings, was it time to let her daughter spread her wings and fly?

- Raymond Jamieson

Can you please write me a reference?’ Jessica asks. ‘I don’t have any renting experience, and the agent wants a letter saying I’m a good tenant.’

Her words take me by surprise.

I look up from the computer. ‘Does this mean you’ll wash the frying pan? Then I might say the nice things you want.’

The one she used yesterday to make a Thai stir-fry is still sitting by the sink. Since the dishwasher broke last week, she hasn’t lifted a finger. This is one dirty frying pan too many.

She’s sitting at the kitchen table with her boyfriend’s laptop. Still in her pyjamas.

Through my eyes she looks too young to be facing the trials of renting a shared house. And she’s recovering from glandular fever. Most days she needs an afternoon rest. Will her housemates make allowances for that, in the way I’ve done? Somehow I doubt it. It’s harder than I imagined seeing my younger child planning to leave home. Perhaps that’s a mother’s lot. Would I ever feel ready?

‘I need that reference written by three o’clock, so I can take it to the estate agent,’ she says. Then she becomes absorbed in her laptop, oblivious to me. I’ll do my best to write something suitable, but surely any agent would look sceptically at a reference provided by somebody’s mother?

I grind the coffee beans and fill the base of the stove-top espresso maker with cold tap water. It’s a relief to be doing something so normal and predictable. There isn’t much else in my life that feels familiar at the moment.

Jessica’s older brother moved into an apartment with his long-term girlfriend a few months ago. Since then Jessica has been checking out rental properties.