About 30 years ago, my mother (then in her 60s) saw an offer of topsoil. She ordered 15 tons of it as she was a keen gardener and was displeased with the quality of the soil she had in her garden.
The soil was delivered in a huge heap to the pavement and road at the end of the drive to their house in a cul-de-sac. She then called my brother and me, at the time both working full-time, with small children, and asked us to come the next day, a Saturday, and move it for her. To be honest, I don’t think she’d had any idea what 15 tons of soil would look like. Not that she admitted that.
We both turned up and worked for several hours to shovel and barrow it to the back garden, and to the beds in the front garden. It was difficult to distribute it all because the gardens were not that large.
We both thoroughly resented that we were asked to do this job. Our mother didn’t really give us any room to say no. Our two (younger) siblings were either not asked or did say no - we never discovered. We were thin-lipped when we arrived, and the whole time we were doing it, we grumbled and made sarcastic jokes with each other, although our mother did not hear any of that because she stayed out of the way, inside the house while we worked. It was pretty hard work too, for a civil servant and a teacher, not used to manual labour. We were thanked at the time, but much in the way that you’d thank someone for doing some small thing. The whole thing was never mentioned again (except between my brother and me as a private running joke.)
I think now that my mother was likely embarrassed about having ordered so much, probably in error, and it being so visible to her neighbours. Appearances were always important to her.
My question is this. If I was a better person, having agreed to do the job, should I have done it with ‘a good grace’ and not grumbled about it? Should I have been sympathetic and tactful about my mother’s probable mistake and been pleased to help her out of an awkward situation? Obviously I can’t change the past, and my daughter says I should just forget about it. But it does prey on my conscience that I was not nicer about it at the time. What do you G’netters think?
WORD ASSOCIATION - 9th May 2026
