Tab Tries: flying the nest

She’s Leaving Home (Bye Bye)

My parents and I were always close.

Imagine the Brady Bunch crossed with the Von Trapps, but with significantly less singing and fewer camp outfits. 

We were those annoying people who would kick others out of plane seats to sit together; those generally pain-in-the-arse people who would be unsuitably cheerful in unsuitable depressing and miserable situations. Basically, those people you just want to slap.

So. Fucking. Idyllic. I want to vom

I was no doubt a little princess: my parents nurtured my naivety and innocence and we were very content living in our own little world, ignorant of everything else around us, having a happy, sing-song type of family relationship as a result.

During the Christmas holidays, however; there was a change, and it hit me over the stuffing and pigs wrapped in blankets.

Soz guys, Bridgemas used up all my festive cheer

It was not necessarily a bad change, but a change all the same.

There was some deep underlying, unmentioned ‘thing’ that seemed to be hiding in everything from the lumpy Bisto gravy to our crooked party hats and useless cracker jokes.

The change? I had finally grown up. 8 weeks ago I would never have dreamed to have said it; but now, knee-deep as I am in Cambridge, it is a reality.  University had burst my baby-bubble.

Those aren’t real mountains, they are highly paid actors

Living alone is the culprit. At Uni I was in charge. I could lie in, be untidy and work to my own routine. After this to maintain the all-singing all-dancing family of my childhood.

To put it another way, our rehearsals were scheduled for different times, we were in mismatching outfits and could not synchronise our steps accordingly. The show stills goes on with good reviews, but more in real-life motion than an animation.

University is not the place for helpless princesses, but more gutsy women who have to cope and lead their own lives. Watch Frozen, it pretty much sums it up.

Over the holidays, I remember liking this new style of ‘rolling’ with my parents. I was every woman, had R.E.S.P.E.C.T (Sing it Aretha!) and was independent.  But now back in my second term, I can’t help but mournfully look back at the ‘Disney Days ’ we once had and nostalgically wish that I was still that little girl with pigtails skipping down the lane lost in fairy stories and make-believe, to a family of bears! 

We are still close, but in a different way; no longer the Brady Bunch but more of a modern family.