Nickie Muir: Mission impossible in our family life

Nickie Muir

Since when did families do mission statements? I thought that was corporations and that families were the last thing to be conquered by group-think - the last stake-out of anarchic groups of people thrown together based on shared genetic material and loyalty.

Recently, I spent the night at a house where their guidelines for behaviour were painted on the wall. That's right. Like Chairman Mao's phrases of what good workers everywhere should do or the slogans I remember from other insane or inane leaderships in Myanmar and Singapore.

"Down with the Running Dogs of Capitalism" in the English newspaper in Burma and "Clean your teeth vigorously" (I might have made that up) in Singapore.

I didn't know if parenthood had turned them into dictators - I had once known them well but obviously I had no idea who these people had become. I threatened to graffiti the wall in the night with my alternate version.

The Latin said that he would denounce me and, besides, it would be pretty obvious who had done it.

I worried that this nailing of a behaviour code that was patently untrue to the wall of a family home would give their children mental health issues.

The small person said I was being melodramatic and I should stop judging. I hate it when they use your words against you.

The next day I went shopping and the signs were everywhere - telling families how to be and what they do. It was disturbing: "In this family we do grace and prayer. We do hugs and second chances. We do sorry and we do forgiveness. We do blinding purity and nonchalant narcissism. We do the first person plural pronoun. A lot."

I felt like scrawling "We don't care. Northland. Represent."

The small person said she'd kill me and I was being embarrassing. I said I'd write: "We do rudeness to mothers and hyperbolic statements to intimidate and control."

She said: "Whatever."

I remembered that in my family we do second and third and 57 second chances until we lose count - and lose our minds - but still refrain from violence. Just.

In my family we do extreme evocations of the Virgin, Joseph and the Holy Spirit when we hurt ourselves. Actually, we don't. That's just the Latin - no "we" there, it's all on him.

Just saying. In our family we dob each other in. All the time. That is when we're not setting each other up and then laughing about it.

We do sorry, but usually only when things have gone really pear-shaped and someone's lost an eye. You won't recognise it as a sorry because it comes in the form of a favourite meal or tidying up a bedroom or quietly making of a cup of tea and casually leaving it in a work area.

We also do forgiveness. But only after enough favourite meals or cups of tea have been extracted. Mostly we don't write what we do on any walls because then it wouldn't be as much fun working each other out and because we just don't do lame.