Parting from parents

A busy day yesterday. With the master at home, pacing and looking for something to do, I suggested we caught up with invoices. This is not my favourite occupation – frequently long-winded when we have to look up our incoming invoices for prices etc., but needs to be done, if only to justify M’s non-retirement. That took most of the afternoon, and prior to that, I knocked out the end of month statements, so that, where appropriate, they could go out together.

We had a quick evening meal and went to Yvonne Arnaud Theatre for a performance of Kindertransport by Diane Samuels. For those that don’t know, the kindertransport brought into the UK – with the authorities’ agreement - 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children from Germany and Austria, escaping from Nazi persecution, sometimes never to see their original families again. A friend who died in January, was one of those children who arrived here, in 1939, aged 15 with her younger siblings, to live with English foster parents. No further transports took place, once the war had started.

The play tried to compare the feelings of mothers sending their children away, knowing it was for their own good and attempting to hide their true feelings. The author therefore showed Evelyn packing up possessions to send her child to college, while at the same time, her mother was preparing Eva (Evelyn) to leave Germany for Britain. The two stories ran concurrently, while the foster mother – eventually adoptive mother of Eva/Evelyn – moved between the two stories.

In the foyer, we met the daughter of a neighbour, here with a school party studying drama, and she explained this structure before we started watching. (This was helpful because it took me a few moments to understand what was going on.) There was a huge block of young people, brought in by coach from various schools. A very good move, I thought, for the theatre and the schools to arrange this and give teenagers the chance of focusing on this piece of history.

Strangely enough there was a piece on the radio this morning about parenting, in which it was agreed that loving your children did not mean holding on to them, but attempting to send them out into the world to stand on their own feet. Sending children off to achieve their independence can never equate to sending your children away, believing not only that you will never see them again, but also that your own death is imminent and that their lives will be at risk if they do not go. Nevertheless, when your children leave you for the best of reasons, it's sometimes hard to face.