I may have mentioned once or twice that I am very much missing my sons who are both away and having the time of their lives, leaving me in a rather forlorn empty nest.
But I’m fine now. Not because I’ve stopped missing them, but because a combination of their TikToks, a few songs from the past and a quiet word with myself has, as Elbow would say, “seen me right”.
Their regular social media posts of their travels or their latest university night out make me ridiculously happy.
Like when my younger son Joe and his college mates organised an I’m A Celebrity themed night and each one of them was wearing a navy t shirt with their name and phone number printed on it in white. They then mocked up the opening of the show for a TikTok, over the famous I’m A Celeb theme music. The fact that they were having a whale of a time doing it made me smile.
Or when my older son – on his backpacking trip around the far East – was brilliantly blindsided by an old school friend who’d travelled thousands of miles to surprise him in a bar in Vietnam. The look on his face when he turned round and saw his mate and gave him a huge hug was absolutely delightful and brought a tear to my eye.
When the boys were growing up, my husband and I were never really “helicopter parents”. Now they’ve left home I’ve become more anxious from scrolling through their social media.
The first I knew Oliver had gone paramotoring was seeing his incredible video from the skies (literally a “pilot” carrying a backpack-mounted small motor with a propellor with Ollie sitting alongside him underneath a mini parachute). Had I know in advance I would probably have been beside myself. Thank god I only realised when I watched his footage.
One evening Joe shared a video of him and his mates dancing to 80s music in a club – singing every word to ABBA and The Proclaimers. And then it dawned on me he was in the exact same nightclub playing pretty much the exact same music where I danced many a night away when I was at the same university, Liverpool, more than 30 years ago (The Razz, if you’re interested).
It set me on a path of warm nostalgia for a different time, but also it struck me as a good moment to evaluate my own present. I wondered if I’d thought then that three decades later I’d be living my best life all over again vicariously through my sons?
What was I thinking at their age? Apart from the fact that I had the best time at university with some incredible people, I know I’d worked out I wanted to be a journalist and hoped I could make a career out of it.
I knew I wanted children one day and probably the usual things – a happy, healthy life, great friends and a bit of seeing the world. Ambitious yes, but not greedy.
I also wondered how different my experience would be if I was a student now. I know I’d be obsessed with TikTok – I can say that with certainty because I’m quite obsessed now.
Yet, like anyone who is lucky enough to get to university I made mistakes. The odd night(s) where I drank too much, the decision to go for that 80s big-hair-perm, maybe the occasional unsuitable boyfriend; but there was no social media around to make me feel even worse about it.
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So as much as I love seeing my boys’ posts, I think I’m quite glad smartphones weren’t around for me, even if I’d like some real phone footage to go with the memories I’ve stored in my brain.
I adored my time at Liverpool Uni. I love the fact that Joe chose to go there in part because he knew how much I loved the city. I made some amazing friends, had the best laugh and it gave me a great launch pad for my professional life through writing for the uni newspaper and volunteering at Toxteth Community Radio.
So seeing my son living every minute to the full has reminded me of the promise I made to myself after getting through cancer treatment – I still have an awful lot of living to do myself.
Victoria Derbyshire is a journalist and broadcaster
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