‘Mum, you have to stop it.’

I’m being told off by my kids again.

And what heinous crime am I being scolded for this week?

In that post-Christmas sort-out, I stacked a load of serving dishes and offered to bring them down to my daughter on my next visit.

‘But you haven’t got any,’ I reply, stating the obvious. ‘and with just your dad and me, we don’t need this many.  It’s daft them just sitting there.’

Dear god, I am officially old.

I’ve written before about the mountains of Star Wars/Star Trek toys/ ancient games consoles filling my attic and my adult children’s refusal to move their shit. (Thank you for the kind emails offering to take this stuff off my hands – you can hear my kid’s screams of protest from where you are.)

So, me offering a quiche dish and some serving trays is hardly a war crime.

‘Just take it to the charity shop,’ I’m instructed. – the dishes, not the sacred Star Wars.

‘But you might need them if you ever wanted to make quiche!’

I can feel the withering looks down the phone.

So, what does it all mean, this passing on of stuff?

As a young mum, raising a family on constrained means, I didn’t have much. And with no family to inherit from I went without a quiche dish for longer than I can remember. So, when I’m offering my daughter this stuff it’s not just to get rid of a load of old tat (well it is!) but it’s offered with love and care and not wanting her to have to struggle without the essentials. (okay maybe a quiche dish is not the right example here, but you get what I mean.)

I give because I love.

My daughter didn’t buy that either, making me promise not to bring more crap to her house on my next visit.

There are some things that she’d love – the vintage Christmas cake mixing bowl, the signed Victoria Wood book, – she’s not bothered about waiting until I’m dead.

‘But I use them,’ I complain.

I can feel that look again.

When she was 7, she went around the house sticking little red stickers on all of the furniture she wanted when I died. My Victorian bed, the Edwardian dressing table. She had good taste, she wanted nothing Ikea. I still find red dots on random books, on the bottom of vintage lamps.

I don’t think she was a particularly morbid child. As the youngest of 6, she was just getting her claim in early so there’d be no confusion later on. One of her brothers still bristles with outrage.

Thinking about it, I don’t offer these dishes to my sons. Being the mother-in-law is a different relationship to negotiate and my internalised sexism means a son has little use for a quiche dish.

Maybe I should phone and offer it to them, seeing as the daughter is a bust. Just in the name of equality.

Or maybe I should insist that if my daughter wants the good stuff she needs to take the crap as well.

Maybe this is why they all moved to the city – to escape offers of unloved kitchenware.

Here, you don’t need a quiche dish, do you? It’s daft it just sitting there, and it seems a shame for it to go to waste.

originally posted in Lemon Aide.