What’s something you’ve forgiven but haven’t forgotten?
I’ve forgiven my parents for divorcing. Marriages don’t always work out, and I can accept that.
What I’ve found much harder to come to terms with is their decision to send my brother and I away to boarding school at the age of eight, effectively handing over so much of the responsibility for bringing us up.
I understood the reasoning. My father had been to boarding school himself, although not until he was thirteen. He hadn’t experienced five years of prep school before that. My mother was rather in awe of him and generally went along with whatever he wanted.
But I was only eight. I needed parents, not just teachers and housemasters. I needed people who knew me, who wanted to understand and discover my strengths and weaknesses, who would encouraged my interests and helped me make sense of the world. Instead, much of that was left to an institution whose priorities and interests were not mine.
Then my parents separated when I was nine and divorced when I was eleven. Whatever remained of our family life became fragmented between different households and schools.
I’ve spent the last few years revisiting my childhood through diaries I began writing at thirteen. They are full of friendships, adventures, achievements and the ordinary preoccupations of adolescence. But I’m increasingly conscious of what’s missing: the daily presence, interest and guidance of parents. The continuity of people who are supposed to care: the staff at these schools didn’t – they had their own agenda.
There’s something else I’ve never forgotten. The last time I spoke to my father, shortly before he died, he admitted that he’d never really liked children.
I’ve often wondered what to make of that.
I don’t doubt that my parents loved us, and I understand that they were products of their upbringing and their times. But having raised two children myself, I feel more strongly than ever that bringing children into the world means accepting a personal, continuing responsibility for helping them grow up.
You can delegate their education. You can arrange for someone else to look after them. But you can’t delegate being their parent.
So, it sounds like I have neither forgotten nor forgiven boarding school, but I can forgive their divorce – they had never been right for each other in the first place.
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