engelsk rettelse..

Hej, det ville være en kæmpe hjælp, hvis der var en der lige hurtigt og overordnet gad kigge min stil igennem for fejl...

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In this British short story from 2003 we are introduced to the main person Sylvia Furnish. The story is told by a third persons narrator from Sylvia’s point of view and the story takes place in Doniford, a small community near the sea.
Seen from a broadly perspective, this story is telling us about how much the expectations from a mother can affect her children’s futures and their relationship.
The story touches the themes: separation from parents, immaturity, obligation and breaking free from your normal standards.

Sylvia is a middleclass woman who lives alone in a rented flat on the upper storey of a two-storey house. She has two grown sons and her husband left her when the boys were 12 and 14 years old. She feels guilty and has a bad conscious, because her sons has been abandoned by their father. She feels that it has reduced their chances to succeed in a bright future. All they had before her husband left them, was taken away from them except from a small shop, in which she works. She is ashamed of what her boys has accomplished in life, and that increases her bad conscious, because she has been the dominating role in their development, which hasn’t gone in the right direction according to her.

Everyday, Sylvia’s attention is on some young (probably) single girls, whom she sees walking down the street and visiting her shop with their children. Their presence and actions makes her reflect on her own life as a mother. She knows how hard it is to bring up children alone, and how easy children can steel the youth and energy.
,,it was Sylvia that gave birth and life to it again and again, who freshened up her shame each spring’’.
Sylvia regrets that she became a mother so early, because she wasn’t ready to the commitment it required to be a mother. She witnesses young girls each spring making the same mistakes as herself, and she feel bad about it, because in the long run she knows how the immaturity influences the children.
,,(…)but her face was a child’s face(…)reverted to innocence when you got her on your own.’’ The girls aren’t mature from Sylvia’s point of view, and she fells sorry for the future of the girls’ babies.

One of the mothers has a little boy called Troy who stands out. He is a black boy, and from the first sight of him, Sylvia judges him and compares him to some Brazilian children from the television. Except from the difference, Troy makes Sylvia think of her own boys in that age. In Troy’s age, Sylvia’s boys were also as innocent, unformed and ready to get their identities formed, like Troy is in the story.
When Sylvia is confronted with Roy’s childhood, it reminds her of the childhood of her own boys, and she enters the strict and dominating mother roll again. Instead of making allowances for the fact that Roy steels a chocolate bar, she forgets he is just a little child and exposes him as a thief. Afterwards she regrets her action and wants to make it up for her harshness.
,,She had had a rule against her own boys having sweets from the shop when they were small, but she felt that if Troy came back again tomorrow she might be able to find a little something for him.”
Sylvia realizes that she cant follow the footsteps of the past where she denied her children so much, which probably led to that they missed out on so many things in life. It is important that children learn by their own mistakes in life instead of being kept away from making any.
Sylvia has so many regrets through the whole story. To begin with she feels that she had done her best to give her boys the best foundation in life, and blame them for throwing their future away. But after the episode with Troy, Sylvia begins to realize that she also is to blame for the development of her children, and Troy’s presence makes her understand that she has to change her behaviour.