I knew I had to fly over to Ireland. My mother sounded forlorn and lost in her calls. She said: “Your father’s managing very well.” Then, later: “We’re too old for this.” They were staking out the sickbed of my 86-year-old aunt in a nursing home. Holding her thin hand; saying prayers; doing what you do, as someone you love, fades back to black.
My little family was supposed to go away for the bank holiday weekend to a hotel. “We will go another weekend,” I told them. “OK? My aunty is ill. I should tell her goodbye and I have to go look after granny and granddad.” My six-year-old, phlegmatic: “If she’s your aunty. You should go watch her die.” My four-year-old, passionate: “I’m coming with you.” The baby, disappointed: In me. Again.
Newcastle airport; seven o’clock in the morning, Friday. The hen party jet set. Brides spouting tulle veils and sporting hope frothed garters; bridesmaids dropping Tupperware strawberries into plastic glasses; almost pink champagne. Blonde. Slim.Tanned. All of them. Even the ones who weren’t. Pink champagne at dawn can do that for you.
The hen parties made me feel glad for them. Sad for me. I wanted to catch a flight to New York. Make taxi drivers ramp up the sound system. Dance in cars. Stay up all night. Catch the eye of a handsome stranger. Try on my best friend’s lip gloss. Sparkle. Say: “No it suits you better,” and not believe it. Be born again. Blonde, slim, tanned. At the very least, I wanted the pink champagne.
I take comfort in the fact that once I have, literally, shaken off the children, who make a last ditch bid to smuggle themselves through to departures, I am a World Traveller. I decide the new laptop I am carrying makes me look like the professional I once was. I might even be on a business trip.
As I walk though security, a guard who has used his X-ray vision to look into my handbag calls over his colleague. I wonder if he admiring the laptop. He points to something and a security guard walks back over to the belt. He nods to the bag. I say: “Absolutely.” I want to be helpful and support the fight against world terrorism. Even in my handbag. He takes out and moves aside my laptop, two notebooks, some papers, a black leather diary and a cosmetics bag. He puts in his hand and extracts a jammy knife. I had cut bread in the kitchen, brought the slices and a pot of strawberry jam in to the car. I jammed bread for all three children before I lost the knife. I twisted and turned in my seat to find it but it had disappeared. It reappeared. In time to have me labelled “the madwoman “ at airport security. At Heathrow they would have taken me away to a little room and strip searched me for the matching fork and spoon. As it was, the guard held up the knife for inspection. He looked at it. Then at me. “Don’t get jam on yourself,” I said.
I made it to Dublin. Being away from your husband and children is both wrenching and empowering. These step-away moments make you remember there was a time you could cope on your own; obtain euros, hire cars, figure out how to reverse them. Particularly empowering is the moment on the motorway when you realise you are driving, not so much a sluggish car, as a car with the handbrake on.
It had its revenge. Arriving at the lakeside hotel, I shut the door. It locked. It would not unlock. I press the electronic key fob. (What is it with car keys?) Nothing. I had clicked a switch inside the car marked Lock;Unlock before I climbed out. I did not realise that meant for ever. I try a different approach. I abandon electronics and look for a lock to put the key in. I prowl the car in case a lock magically appears. It does not. I ring my husband. I say: “I have a bit of an emergency.” He says: “I’ll ring you back.” He does not. I have to ring the car hire company and explain. I try to explain without telling them I clicked the Lock; Unlock switch. I have to ring the AA and eventually, a nice friendly man with a garage rings me back. I explain what has happened. I skim over the Lock;Unlock switch. Since this is AA business, the man wants to know what make of car I am in and where I am. Since this is Ireland, he also wants to know who I am, who I am related to and why I am here at all. The young mechanic he sends shows me how to slip the tail of the key or a screwdriver into a small slit in the lower edge of the black plastic door handle to flip it off and reveal the metal lock underneath. I now have options; as a mechanic. Or a master criminal. The young man says I am not stupid, I just need a new battery for the fob.
About this time, my parents arrive back at the hotel. My aunt died in the early hours. I was too late to say goodbye. I am in time for the funeral.
Showing posts with label mother. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mother. Show all posts
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Mother mine
My mother is with us for a few days because my father was called away to Ireland. My mother said: "I can manage." Words which put the fear of God into me. She cannot manage. I said: "Of course you can." Then, we went to pick her up. She is sleeping in our bedroom; we are in the study. Last night, she got lost in our bedroom. I am not sure how long it took her to find the bed again. She said: "It's very dark in there." She is blind. I am sure it was.
I love my mother. I love her as my mother. I love her as my new child. When she visits, she still wants to do things for me. Folding clothes, washing up. Sometimes, I wash clothes so she has some to fold. Do not tell her that. Yesterday, I went to sit with her on the sofa. She said: "I wish I could do more to help. You need help." I said: "Mum. I have help. You do not need to do anything for me. You have done enough." She said: "I want to do more." Her face crumpled, pinked up and her traitorous eyes wept out their salty frustrations. I do not expect my mother to help me anymore. It is my mother who expects to help me. It is my mother who feels let down when she has to sit down.
My mother is not perfect you understand. I was once getting a manicure. The glossy girl doing the manicure was horrified. She said: "Didn't your mother teach you to do your nails? Didn't she teach you to look after your cuticles?" I smiled in apology and then shrugged. The girl in her smart white tunic with her own pretty, buffed up hands, was very young; too young for the unvarnished truth. My mother was too busy telling me to read books, to teach me to look after my nails. To this day, I blame her for my shoddy cuticles.
It takes some time to realise when you are a child, that your parent has become your responsibility. When we are out, I do not know whether to run after the four-year-old in case he flings himself into the road or stay with my hesitating mother for fear she trips and falls. I hover, equally useless, between the two of them.
Today, I took the baby and the four-year-old to a little play park in sight of a castle. My mother sat on a bench and the children sat on the swings. When we finished, we walked past the cricket green and stood by the road. I am pushing an over sized buggy; the baby has refused to get into it and is clamped to my hip with my left arm wrapped around her. The baby's refusal to cooperate leaves me with one free hand. I realise that I cannot cross the road with my four-year-old, a buggy, a baby, my mother and her white stick. I think about getting the four-year-old into the buggy but I could not then manoeuvre it down the pavement and up the other side. I think about getting my mother into the buggy but she would never get out of it again. I think about climbing into the buggy with the baby, dangling a leg either side, getting the four-year-old and my mother to hold on and straddle-walking it across the road. I decide that would kill us all. I abandon the buggy. I think: "I will cross the road with everybody and come back for the buggy." I start doing a complicated minuet. I hoik up the sliding baby, arrange my blind mother on my free arm and instruct the four-year-old to take granny's hand. Suddenly, a stranger waiting for a bus says: "Let me help." And I do. I let her help.
I love my mother. I love her as my mother. I love her as my new child. When she visits, she still wants to do things for me. Folding clothes, washing up. Sometimes, I wash clothes so she has some to fold. Do not tell her that. Yesterday, I went to sit with her on the sofa. She said: "I wish I could do more to help. You need help." I said: "Mum. I have help. You do not need to do anything for me. You have done enough." She said: "I want to do more." Her face crumpled, pinked up and her traitorous eyes wept out their salty frustrations. I do not expect my mother to help me anymore. It is my mother who expects to help me. It is my mother who feels let down when she has to sit down.
My mother is not perfect you understand. I was once getting a manicure. The glossy girl doing the manicure was horrified. She said: "Didn't your mother teach you to do your nails? Didn't she teach you to look after your cuticles?" I smiled in apology and then shrugged. The girl in her smart white tunic with her own pretty, buffed up hands, was very young; too young for the unvarnished truth. My mother was too busy telling me to read books, to teach me to look after my nails. To this day, I blame her for my shoddy cuticles.
It takes some time to realise when you are a child, that your parent has become your responsibility. When we are out, I do not know whether to run after the four-year-old in case he flings himself into the road or stay with my hesitating mother for fear she trips and falls. I hover, equally useless, between the two of them.
Today, I took the baby and the four-year-old to a little play park in sight of a castle. My mother sat on a bench and the children sat on the swings. When we finished, we walked past the cricket green and stood by the road. I am pushing an over sized buggy; the baby has refused to get into it and is clamped to my hip with my left arm wrapped around her. The baby's refusal to cooperate leaves me with one free hand. I realise that I cannot cross the road with my four-year-old, a buggy, a baby, my mother and her white stick. I think about getting the four-year-old into the buggy but I could not then manoeuvre it down the pavement and up the other side. I think about getting my mother into the buggy but she would never get out of it again. I think about climbing into the buggy with the baby, dangling a leg either side, getting the four-year-old and my mother to hold on and straddle-walking it across the road. I decide that would kill us all. I abandon the buggy. I think: "I will cross the road with everybody and come back for the buggy." I start doing a complicated minuet. I hoik up the sliding baby, arrange my blind mother on my free arm and instruct the four-year-old to take granny's hand. Suddenly, a stranger waiting for a bus says: "Let me help." And I do. I let her help.
Monday, April 09, 2007
"Tony, Tony, turn around"
Do you know how I really know there is a God? My (blind) mother found the car keys this evening. Hurray! Six days they were missing. I went through the house, garden and gutter inch by inch. We rang the police and asked in the nearest pub to see if anyone had handed them in. I ransacked my sons' drawers, wardrobes and under bed, darksome places as if my boys were teenagers and I was looking for cannabis. We were visited by friends up from London with three teenagers of their own; I put a £50 bounty on the car keys and set them loose. Still nothing. I offered my own children a £5 bounty. Zip. Nada. My mother gets put in charge of the baby and starts amusing her by going through a toy box and bingo. The baby had presumably filched them and then staggered over to one of her crates of toys and dropped them in it with all the other good stuff. I would not mind but I had been through the boys toys in case they had done the same thing. My mother had prayed to St Anthony (the Catholic saint you pray to when you lose things). I had prayed to Saint Anthony. My 82-year-old Aunty lit three candles on successive days to Saint Anthony. (Apparently, I owe her 30 pence. Infinitely cheaper than the adolescents.) It turned out my boys were innocent of any car key crime, my husband is a man of infinite patience and I still need my mother. The best bit, aside from the fact it was my mother who found the keys, which in itself I consider deeply cool, was that I could rescue the bunny ears and face paints from the boot. That is how we had tea. Late, but with whiskers. It crossed my mind, while I was painting rabbit noses over freckles, that I could say a prayer and ask him where my London life went.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
That Cabaret Life
Why won't children let their mothers sing? I like to sing. Admittedly, I can only remember the first line of any song. Still, I like to sing that line and do it tunefully. But children like to keep their songbirds caged and dark. "Don't sing," my youngest son dictates from the table where he plays with plastic soldiers, guns moulded and ready. "I mean it. Don't sing." He fires a cannon and three men die in friendly fire. "Why not?" I ask, my painted smile slipping as I stand in the spotlit darkness of my kitchen cabaret. "Why can't mummy sing?" I lob my question into the blackness and hear my six-year-old's voice: "We like it quiet." This from boys who moments before, arms spread wide and mouths a-roar, were jet screaming round the table. The super trouper flickers and turns off.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Howzat
I think there are two kinds of people in life - pancake tossers and people who do not toss pancakes. Today, two pancake tossers arrived in my kitchen with eggs, strawberries and smiles. The 14-year-old daughter broke eggs (not eggcups) with aplomb and tossed pancakes merrily from a buttered pan. She tossed them and her circus skilled mother dipped her knee to catch them on a plate. Sometimes, the laughing girl tossed a pancake and with all the confidence of youth, held her own plate out - fearless of a fatal fall. Sometimes, she just tossed them, let them fly awhile and then snatched them from oblivion, splat, back into the pan. Her mother taught her well. I love that age in girlhood. That adolescent "look at me with shiny hair tossing pancakes in the air" age. All performed with hungry boy and baby watchers agog with admiration.
Reluctantly, I admitted that I was not one of life's pancake tossers. I am too worried the pancake will decide it has had enough of me. Sadly and finally, it could bundle up its batter on the way down to the floor, to rest there reproachful and eggy. Worse still, it could fold itself in two and fly out of the open window, abandoning me to my empty pan and hollowed out expectations. Life surely has disappointments enough I think. Why would I invite disaster into my kitchen? I never toss a pancake.
Today though, I tried. It flew and flipped and landed back. Howzat.
Reluctantly, I admitted that I was not one of life's pancake tossers. I am too worried the pancake will decide it has had enough of me. Sadly and finally, it could bundle up its batter on the way down to the floor, to rest there reproachful and eggy. Worse still, it could fold itself in two and fly out of the open window, abandoning me to my empty pan and hollowed out expectations. Life surely has disappointments enough I think. Why would I invite disaster into my kitchen? I never toss a pancake.
Today though, I tried. It flew and flipped and landed back. Howzat.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Blog to book in 60 seconds
Should I write about the book deal? I wasn't going to because there is such a sense of unreality about all of it. But people seem to want to know what happened so this is it...
I blogged. Someone read it. Someone else read it. Someone else passed it on. The political bloggers linked to me and the world went mad. I blogged some more. Someone read it. Someone liked it. Someone passed it on. A publisher e-mailed me. A book was mentioned. Money was mentioned. I tucked my skirt into my knickers, said "Ok then" and looked for hidden cameras.
The Sunday Times, my alma mater, decided to write about it. They decided to do a front page story, a leader, run excerpts and take my picture sitting on a rock.I got cold and the world went mad.
Blogger readers sent best wishes. Blogger readers hated me. Blogger writers wrote like me. Blogger writers wrote better than me.
What has a book got to do with my life? I am not going to mention it in future because I feel it is just something I will do at the computer in between reality. But for the record, thank you to everyone who said: "Well done. Good on you." Some have been immensely generous in their support. Some (like my mum) have been happy for the world to meet them when they weren't necessarily looking at their best.
Blogging is a strange and wonderful thing. I reached out into cyberspace because I needed to - not in any expectation of a book deal. What is a book deal after all? Better than a book deal, any book deal, have been the kindly comments, e-mails and messages from strangers who aren't strangers any more who said: "I read you and you made me laugh" and "I read you and you made me cry". My book deal isn't so much about money, it is more to do with the fact that blogging is a force to be reckoned with. Ultimately blogging is people willing to commit time, effort and emotion. How cool is that?
There will be haggis balls and pease pudding at the book launch. If I finish it.
I blogged. Someone read it. Someone else read it. Someone else passed it on. The political bloggers linked to me and the world went mad. I blogged some more. Someone read it. Someone liked it. Someone passed it on. A publisher e-mailed me. A book was mentioned. Money was mentioned. I tucked my skirt into my knickers, said "Ok then" and looked for hidden cameras.
The Sunday Times, my alma mater, decided to write about it. They decided to do a front page story, a leader, run excerpts and take my picture sitting on a rock.I got cold and the world went mad.
Blogger readers sent best wishes. Blogger readers hated me. Blogger writers wrote like me. Blogger writers wrote better than me.
What has a book got to do with my life? I am not going to mention it in future because I feel it is just something I will do at the computer in between reality. But for the record, thank you to everyone who said: "Well done. Good on you." Some have been immensely generous in their support. Some (like my mum) have been happy for the world to meet them when they weren't necessarily looking at their best.
Blogging is a strange and wonderful thing. I reached out into cyberspace because I needed to - not in any expectation of a book deal. What is a book deal after all? Better than a book deal, any book deal, have been the kindly comments, e-mails and messages from strangers who aren't strangers any more who said: "I read you and you made me laugh" and "I read you and you made me cry". My book deal isn't so much about money, it is more to do with the fact that blogging is a force to be reckoned with. Ultimately blogging is people willing to commit time, effort and emotion. How cool is that?
There will be haggis balls and pease pudding at the book launch. If I finish it.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Mothers and daughters
My mother is a fastidious, ever-busy little body, neatly suited and booted with hair like the Queen. She smells of Chanel No 5 and floral perfumes that carry jasmine notes. Not yesterday though. When I arrived, her hair was spread across the pillow in an iron-grey frizz and she was lying still and sad. Loudly, I said: "Mum, mum, it's me" and I placed my hand against her cheek as I do with my own children and I bent to kiss her. "Is it you?" she grasped my wrist and pulled me closer into her and hung from me like an eight-year-old daughter would and cried into my neck, sobbing at the latest pain to strike. Sickness is a heartless robber, preying on the old. It carries a rubber cosh and a cold barrelled gun that it holds smack against an old lady's wrinkles while it shouts into her face: "I want your dignity, right now. Hand it over, you old bat." The Daily Mail should run a campaign.
She told me the nurse was going to give her an anemone. I thought this unlikely. The bustling Scottish nurse arrived, not with flowers but with rubber gloves. Mother mine, teeth biting into the cotton pillow and tears falling onto my hand shrieked in silence as the nurse got on with it. Old age smells of shit and shame not Chanel. Do not go there. Find another route into the hereafter. Old age is not the way to go. People are not nice to you. They do not bring you flowers. Instead they carry rubber gloves and make you cry and bite the pillow.
My mother is the best reason I know for living a life of decadence and debauchery. No cigarillo smoke, gin slings or mistakes between the sheets. Instead, a life of heroic virtue, good deeds and care - her own aged and bone-tiny mother, an early husband who coughed blood and died, arthritic sister, small pupil-children taught to bake, cancer patients, the list drones on, and me, ofcourse. The parish council, the school governing body, the catholic educational board. Her reward for all that goodness? An invitation to a garden party - too sick to attend, sorry - and an old age of broken health. Well poo and phooey! Her goodness did not keep her well. She still got old and sick and I will learn by her mistakes. I will inhale smoke from pink cigarettes, drink absinthe and have unrepentant sex with strangers in dark places. I will buy my sons a kitten, call it "Trixabelle" and torture it.
She told me the nurse was going to give her an anemone. I thought this unlikely. The bustling Scottish nurse arrived, not with flowers but with rubber gloves. Mother mine, teeth biting into the cotton pillow and tears falling onto my hand shrieked in silence as the nurse got on with it. Old age smells of shit and shame not Chanel. Do not go there. Find another route into the hereafter. Old age is not the way to go. People are not nice to you. They do not bring you flowers. Instead they carry rubber gloves and make you cry and bite the pillow.
My mother is the best reason I know for living a life of decadence and debauchery. No cigarillo smoke, gin slings or mistakes between the sheets. Instead, a life of heroic virtue, good deeds and care - her own aged and bone-tiny mother, an early husband who coughed blood and died, arthritic sister, small pupil-children taught to bake, cancer patients, the list drones on, and me, ofcourse. The parish council, the school governing body, the catholic educational board. Her reward for all that goodness? An invitation to a garden party - too sick to attend, sorry - and an old age of broken health. Well poo and phooey! Her goodness did not keep her well. She still got old and sick and I will learn by her mistakes. I will inhale smoke from pink cigarettes, drink absinthe and have unrepentant sex with strangers in dark places. I will buy my sons a kitten, call it "Trixabelle" and torture it.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
A Catholic superstition
There is a window halfway up the staircase of my parents house. There, the glass swirls around itself in a thick and crazy dance. You cannot see out and you cannot see in through it but as a young child when I climbed the stairs, a plaster Sacred Heart reached out wide to me from that windowsill, his heart aflame, ready to embrace. So familiar was he, burning for us all, that I forgot him quite; but one day when I was total grown, I glanced across and noticed that although his heart still flared, the plastered crimson of his cloak and the chestnut of his hair had faded back to white. Undeterred by age though, he reached out still for the souls that climbed the stairs. Then horror, my sightless mother, dusting, knocked him off his perch. His arm fell off, his holy head rolled far and snap - his body broke in two. A second suffering for this ersatz Christ. Guilty catholic woman, tearstreaked at the demise of her companion through 50 and more years, gently placed his body in a box and bag-wrapped it. An Asda shroud. Accomplice father dug a garden hole, said a quiet prayer and buried quick her shame. Now a new, most sacred heart stands sentry on the sill and blesses those who slide by on their aged way up and down the staircase rails. I do not like this newcomer to the family home. I think his cloak too bright, his head too big, his heart too tame a flame contains. While underneath the clay soil where tortuous rose roots grow, the broken saviour burns on and waits for resurrection day. My mother confesses to me later: "I think there may be someone by the bushes too. I can't remember who."
Friday, February 02, 2007
Honour thy father and thy mother
Since, my parents crashed their car, I have been struggling to break the tight-fingered grip of small children and get down to see them. My four-year-old hates me going anywhere at the best of times and he was unconvinced by my argument that granny and granddad needed me. He told me: "Granny can look after herself. She's old enough."I just hope he does not go into a caring profession.
Every time I rang, I could hear my mother's agonised groans as she inched her way across the fitted carpet to talk to me or to fetch my father. My mother's best friend was looking after them which was an enormous help to them but made me feel even worse. There she was, popping on the kettle, persuading them to eat while I was miles away, effectively letting them get on with it. First of all, I could not go because I was too sick with flu, then I was told no one would thank me for giving my mother what remained of my cough so I was to stay away until I shook it off. When I was relatively cough-free, my eldest came down with the same thing which kept him awake half the night and out of school the next day, then the four-year-old needed a hospital check-up for a recurrent stomach migraine. I finally thought I had everything organised and everyone well enough for me to be able to spend a long weekend with my mother and father. I was heading for the breach - a bit late, but better late than never. The builders start on Monday but I had already told my husband that he was going to have to clear out the house next door by himself this weekend because I could not reach on that. I had, however, booked childcare to provide weekend cover so he could shift boxes and rant about how much rubbish we have accumulated. I was set - the guilt eased slightly. That was till this morning when my nanny rang to say she had vomiting and diarrhoea and was not coming in. The roses were bought and lay gorgeous across the back shelf of the car, the leatherette bag was zipped, the baby all but in the car-seat, but I was going nowhere. I ended up wailing down the phone to my broken-ribbed mother - she really needed that, by the way: "I'm so sorry, I wanted to look after you but I can't. I've got to look after (sob) everyone else (gulp, sob.)" And I felt so guilty. I felt as guilty as I would have if I had been calling to say: "Look, I'm not coming. I've decided to take a city break in Prague. I'll drop you a postcard."
Actually, from where I am standing Prague sounds quite good.
Every time I rang, I could hear my mother's agonised groans as she inched her way across the fitted carpet to talk to me or to fetch my father. My mother's best friend was looking after them which was an enormous help to them but made me feel even worse. There she was, popping on the kettle, persuading them to eat while I was miles away, effectively letting them get on with it. First of all, I could not go because I was too sick with flu, then I was told no one would thank me for giving my mother what remained of my cough so I was to stay away until I shook it off. When I was relatively cough-free, my eldest came down with the same thing which kept him awake half the night and out of school the next day, then the four-year-old needed a hospital check-up for a recurrent stomach migraine. I finally thought I had everything organised and everyone well enough for me to be able to spend a long weekend with my mother and father. I was heading for the breach - a bit late, but better late than never. The builders start on Monday but I had already told my husband that he was going to have to clear out the house next door by himself this weekend because I could not reach on that. I had, however, booked childcare to provide weekend cover so he could shift boxes and rant about how much rubbish we have accumulated. I was set - the guilt eased slightly. That was till this morning when my nanny rang to say she had vomiting and diarrhoea and was not coming in. The roses were bought and lay gorgeous across the back shelf of the car, the leatherette bag was zipped, the baby all but in the car-seat, but I was going nowhere. I ended up wailing down the phone to my broken-ribbed mother - she really needed that, by the way: "I'm so sorry, I wanted to look after you but I can't. I've got to look after (sob) everyone else (gulp, sob.)" And I felt so guilty. I felt as guilty as I would have if I had been calling to say: "Look, I'm not coming. I've decided to take a city break in Prague. I'll drop you a postcard."
Actually, from where I am standing Prague sounds quite good.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Cherry scones
.jpg)
A friend invited me for coffee this morning. As we arrived, she was still rubbing her fingers free of doughy gloves and the smell of baking cherry scones hung about her busy kitchen, spilling fragrant through the open door into a wintered garden. "Drop by for coffee, I'll make scones," I say it out loud to see how it sounds. Unconvincing, in my case. She, on the other hand, knocks out a warm batch of home baked treats with the same nonchalance as I swill a crystal glass of cool and gooseberry-tanged chablis.
Some friendships you keep for a life. Others for only a train-ride. Some friends you lose and never know why and when you are old, you think: "Whatever happened to?" or "What did I do?". Some friends you mourn; some walk away and you do not notice. This friendship is spring green and sweetly brief, lasting weeks. Now my new friend is about to move somewhere bouncing hot and sandy to feed oily egg and cigarette thin chips to fat Englishmen who would prefer to eat their egg and chips at home. I want to say to her: "Don't go out of my life. You have only just arrived there." But in her head, she has already quit this place for a different tomorrow.
As I drink the coffee and graze on blossom-coloured cake, I gaze at the bonfire of trucks and old jeans piled up on her dining room carpet, salvaged from the rooms upstairs. Each of her four boys is allowed one black plastic bag of toys to tote with him into his new and sunnier life. One final boy is missing - her oldest. Seven years ago, she lost him. Just 13, he slipped through her floury fingers in one of those "Dear God" disasters that make you catch your breath. Mowing early summer grass and daisies, he cut the lead. Zap. A boy-child. I have seen his face smiling out of a sharp school photograph and in his mother's eyes, you can see him yet.
They are packing for the sun and a fresh start. I admire her determination that the four remaining boys will run from school bench straight into a warm and salty sea, nylon homework bags, spray-wet and abandoned on the beach. But I will miss her. She is a new friend and no one else will make me pastries and froth my coffee. While she was packing, she found bed treasures her missing boy once slept with, his teddy bear and a keepsake velvet cushion. In a suitcase at the top of a wardrobe, she found his summer coat, its pocket packet rustling, the crisps long gone. Prawn cocktail. She slipped the packet back into the coat and the coat into a bag to carry with her.
Some friendships you keep for a life. Others for only a train-ride. Some friends you lose and never know why and when you are old, you think: "Whatever happened to?" or "What did I do?". Some friends you mourn; some walk away and you do not notice. This friendship is spring green and sweetly brief, lasting weeks. Now my new friend is about to move somewhere bouncing hot and sandy to feed oily egg and cigarette thin chips to fat Englishmen who would prefer to eat their egg and chips at home. I want to say to her: "Don't go out of my life. You have only just arrived there." But in her head, she has already quit this place for a different tomorrow.
As I drink the coffee and graze on blossom-coloured cake, I gaze at the bonfire of trucks and old jeans piled up on her dining room carpet, salvaged from the rooms upstairs. Each of her four boys is allowed one black plastic bag of toys to tote with him into his new and sunnier life. One final boy is missing - her oldest. Seven years ago, she lost him. Just 13, he slipped through her floury fingers in one of those "Dear God" disasters that make you catch your breath. Mowing early summer grass and daisies, he cut the lead. Zap. A boy-child. I have seen his face smiling out of a sharp school photograph and in his mother's eyes, you can see him yet.
They are packing for the sun and a fresh start. I admire her determination that the four remaining boys will run from school bench straight into a warm and salty sea, nylon homework bags, spray-wet and abandoned on the beach. But I will miss her. She is a new friend and no one else will make me pastries and froth my coffee. While she was packing, she found bed treasures her missing boy once slept with, his teddy bear and a keepsake velvet cushion. In a suitcase at the top of a wardrobe, she found his summer coat, its pocket packet rustling, the crisps long gone. Prawn cocktail. She slipped the packet back into the coat and the coat into a bag to carry with her.
Friday, January 26, 2007
The thin blue line
As my mother lay ill in bed, bones aching and eyes tight shut, a shiny silver-buttoned policeman knocked on the door. "I've come about the accident," a young man told my father. "Who is it?" my mother, feebly called. They climbed soft-carpetted stairs to her bedroom, the policeman and the stooped offender; a gilt-framed Sacred Heart watching from the anaglypta wall, a rosary-wrapped St Anthony bearing witness from the dresser, as the policeman cautioned my aged father. "Now I don't want you getting upset but I have to caution you," he told him, this aged threat to the public good. "It's like what happens on TV," he reassured them, getting out his note-book and a black-inked pen. The plaster saints looked away in shame. "You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence ..." the youth chanted on. My mother, crash-bruised and still in shock, began the ages old lament of the criminal's wife. "My husband," she speaks out from the soft pillows, in between her tears, "did nothing wrong. It was an accident."
Later, steel-tempered by her encounter with the law, this fan of TV's Morse and Frost rings. "I told him straight," she says. "Coppers don't frighten me."
Later, steel-tempered by her encounter with the law, this fan of TV's Morse and Frost rings. "I told him straight," she says. "Coppers don't frighten me."
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Beauty and the Beast
Various things happen when a woman reaches a certain age. There is a moment in her youth, when she unzips her make-up bag and wipes a sponge around a peachy cream in a silver compact, she loads a sable brush with beige powder and looks into the mirror ready to start her work. She scrutinises the face in the glass and pauses. She thinks "What is there to do?". She uses her thumb to flick the powder from the brush and the cosmetic dust explodes into the sunny morning light flooding the bathroom. She lets the water run warm from the tap, holds the sponge beneath it and the foundation runs in rivulets down the white porcelain and into the drain. She zips up the flowered make-up bag which came free in a glossy magazine she never read. Fresh-faced and perfect, she goes out into her day. There is another moment in a woman's journey when she unzips a larger and all together more expensive make-up bag. Rubbing at tired eyes, she fingers the duelling scar slashed across her cheek by the egyptian linen sheets. She gazes at her face and thinks: "Where do I start?" and then "How long is this going to take?"
I am at,indeed, past that "Where do I start?" moment at the vanity table. As the fine laughter lines begin to tell around my eyes and jaw, I begin to see my mother in my face. As she was when I was a child, plaiting my hair and tieing it with yellow silk bows, turning grey wool socks inside out, folding them back to slip over chubby feet. But as I begin to see my mother in my face, the real McCoy slips from me. I look at her carefully coiffed and greying hair, her hesitant walk and white stick and I think: "My mother is getting old. I really do not want my mother getting old. She never told me she would get so old. When exactly did that happen?" Now, instead of baking sultana cakes and folding vests, she wears elastic stockings on her legs, an electric whirli-gig seat climbing the staircase instead of her.
Last night she rang to say: "Daddy and I have had a little accident". It was late and I was lying, melancholy, on the sofa contemplating sleep. My husband again away in London. It was oblivion dark outside and the wind so strong off the sea that it had twice pushed open the frontdoor like a bar-room heavy. Eventually, I had snicked the lock to keep the rude wind where it belonged. "We wrote off the car" I heard her say, the gusts now knocking at the sash-window. "We're fine. I broke a rib, that's all, and your father is a bit bruised." They had been crossing a carriageway, given the nod by the driver of the car in the lane nearest to them but unseen by the driver of the car in the other lane. A classic accident. As she speaks, I play it out in my head. My father, ressured by the kindness of the other driver, slowly, oh so slowly, old man slowly, pulls out and across the road and whoomph. Slammed into by the other car, spun round and round in squealing, metal-shrieking fear. Twenty minutes on the side of the road waiting for the paramedics; panic attacks under a yellow airtex sheet in a metal framed bed in the accident and emergency cubicle. "It could have been worse," she said, cheerily. "Because I'm blind, I was relaxed when the car went into us and everyone was very nice." I should have been there. I should have draped them in foil blankets and given them sweet tea, held their soft papery hands and told them they were OK. I do not want them to go out any more. I want them to live in a wardrobe, safe from the mishaps of old age. I will bring them food in plastic trays, a torch and a wind-up radio. I will keep them safe from harm.
I am at,indeed, past that "Where do I start?" moment at the vanity table. As the fine laughter lines begin to tell around my eyes and jaw, I begin to see my mother in my face. As she was when I was a child, plaiting my hair and tieing it with yellow silk bows, turning grey wool socks inside out, folding them back to slip over chubby feet. But as I begin to see my mother in my face, the real McCoy slips from me. I look at her carefully coiffed and greying hair, her hesitant walk and white stick and I think: "My mother is getting old. I really do not want my mother getting old. She never told me she would get so old. When exactly did that happen?" Now, instead of baking sultana cakes and folding vests, she wears elastic stockings on her legs, an electric whirli-gig seat climbing the staircase instead of her.
Last night she rang to say: "Daddy and I have had a little accident". It was late and I was lying, melancholy, on the sofa contemplating sleep. My husband again away in London. It was oblivion dark outside and the wind so strong off the sea that it had twice pushed open the frontdoor like a bar-room heavy. Eventually, I had snicked the lock to keep the rude wind where it belonged. "We wrote off the car" I heard her say, the gusts now knocking at the sash-window. "We're fine. I broke a rib, that's all, and your father is a bit bruised." They had been crossing a carriageway, given the nod by the driver of the car in the lane nearest to them but unseen by the driver of the car in the other lane. A classic accident. As she speaks, I play it out in my head. My father, ressured by the kindness of the other driver, slowly, oh so slowly, old man slowly, pulls out and across the road and whoomph. Slammed into by the other car, spun round and round in squealing, metal-shrieking fear. Twenty minutes on the side of the road waiting for the paramedics; panic attacks under a yellow airtex sheet in a metal framed bed in the accident and emergency cubicle. "It could have been worse," she said, cheerily. "Because I'm blind, I was relaxed when the car went into us and everyone was very nice." I should have been there. I should have draped them in foil blankets and given them sweet tea, held their soft papery hands and told them they were OK. I do not want them to go out any more. I want them to live in a wardrobe, safe from the mishaps of old age. I will bring them food in plastic trays, a torch and a wind-up radio. I will keep them safe from harm.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Making whoopee
When I returned to work after my six-year-old was born, I automatically became one of those mothers who are convinced they would be infinitely happier at home. These mothers think that quitting work would rub away the years on their face and boost both the IQ and life-chances of teenie-tinies who do not yet know how to cut up their own food.
My work-station consolation was a silver-framed, happy days photograph of the children and the thought of a patient and loving nanny at home who cared for my children with greater efficiency and better humour than I ever did. We saw our former nanny during the weekend in London and, about the moment she gave the children whoopee cushions, I went off her. Whoopee cushions - there is a good toy for the train especially when your husband insists you sit in the quiet coach because the other carriages are so busy.
The "quiet coach" has signs which dictate the terms of the peace: no mobile phone calls; electronic equipment to be used in silent mode and "chatting" (a past-time the railway company obviously does not approve of) to be done "quietly and with consideration for others." As my husband pointed out, the signs said nothing about whoopee cushions.
We took up our seats, blew up the cushions and the party began. "Daddy, daddy, listen." The whoopee cushions did their job. A gift, as they say, which just kept giving. It gave so loudly and with such ferocity that one of them popped and the boys were forced instead to decorate their baby sister with googly bloodshot eyeballs, drooping in brass loops from black plastic spectacles. Another gift from the ex-nanny who does not have to live with that picture in her head.
I heard the slightest "tut" as a fellow passenger in court shoes and a neat business suit marched by our mobile joke shop on her way to the buffet. She met my eye and glared. I looked at the boys realising with sharp horror that she was not just tutting at the grotesquery of the babe and the tomfoolery of my sons. How do you explain to a stranger who despises you that your children have not just spent 55 minutes burping their little bottoms off? Which is worse: "I'm so sorry my children are inveterate bottom burpers," or "I'm so sorry, I let my children play with whoopee cushions in the quiet coach. Shoot me now but put a silencer on the gun first."
My work-station consolation was a silver-framed, happy days photograph of the children and the thought of a patient and loving nanny at home who cared for my children with greater efficiency and better humour than I ever did. We saw our former nanny during the weekend in London and, about the moment she gave the children whoopee cushions, I went off her. Whoopee cushions - there is a good toy for the train especially when your husband insists you sit in the quiet coach because the other carriages are so busy.
The "quiet coach" has signs which dictate the terms of the peace: no mobile phone calls; electronic equipment to be used in silent mode and "chatting" (a past-time the railway company obviously does not approve of) to be done "quietly and with consideration for others." As my husband pointed out, the signs said nothing about whoopee cushions.
We took up our seats, blew up the cushions and the party began. "Daddy, daddy, listen." The whoopee cushions did their job. A gift, as they say, which just kept giving. It gave so loudly and with such ferocity that one of them popped and the boys were forced instead to decorate their baby sister with googly bloodshot eyeballs, drooping in brass loops from black plastic spectacles. Another gift from the ex-nanny who does not have to live with that picture in her head.
I heard the slightest "tut" as a fellow passenger in court shoes and a neat business suit marched by our mobile joke shop on her way to the buffet. She met my eye and glared. I looked at the boys realising with sharp horror that she was not just tutting at the grotesquery of the babe and the tomfoolery of my sons. How do you explain to a stranger who despises you that your children have not just spent 55 minutes burping their little bottoms off? Which is worse: "I'm so sorry my children are inveterate bottom burpers," or "I'm so sorry, I let my children play with whoopee cushions in the quiet coach. Shoot me now but put a silencer on the gun first."
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Books and buckteeth
Feeling much more together now we have made a decision about the house and staying here - at least for the moment. Frankly I would rather make a bad decision than no decision. I hate living in limbo.
Went out into the rainy darkness to my bookgroup last night. Bookgroups, blogs, downshifting - how zeitgeist am I? Unusually, we had an author - or should I say Author. I was vaguely uncomfortable about the Victorian scene of the creative man all white beard, fob watch, ivory handled cane and distant gaze sitting in the damask armchair while his female disciples asked respectful, twittery questions and hung on his every word but what can you do?
Nice chap, cabinet maker in his real life. After his father died, the cabinet maker wrote a book about his dad escaping Poland at the start of the Second World War - a memoire of a displaced person. I really didn't like the book. It rambled and was very dull but you can't say that when a nice man has driven four hours from the wilds of Scotland to talk to you, can you? It's out of print now so this was a big deal for him. Instead, I said it was "lyrical" and "beautiful written" which is true in parts but not so lyrical you would want to read it. We even had dinner in his honour rather than tea and cake. Unfortunately, I had forgotten we were having dinner so I had already eaten. Politeness then dictated I had to sit down and look like fish lasagne and garlic bread was just what my life had been missing.
As the plates were being cleared from the table though, he made the mistake of asking the group whether anyone had any criticism of the book. That is what he said but what he really meant was: "This is winding up - can we keep talking about my book please? Say something to warm my heart's cockles that I can think about as I make my cabinets." But one of the group only heard the words and not the meaning behind the words. "Well I thought it was difficult to get into and confusing in places like when you...", she chattered on. This is the literary equivalent of telling a mother her child has buckteeth. Consequently, his cockles distinctly chilly, the delightful man looked slightly hurt and fell back to nodding a lot.
I am always amazed when people don't hear what is behind the words. Another member of the group leant forward across the table to earnestly inquire whether you could still get a book published if you had a great idea for one but your writing wasn't much cop. This woman obviously wants to write a book if she hasn't started already. There was a whooshing sound from the heavens as an enormous jackbook came down on her literary dreams and another member airily dismissed such aspirations: "No. Never. That just wouldn't work. It's the same with students and essays. If they can't write, there is no point and did I mention your child has a monobrow?"
Went out into the rainy darkness to my bookgroup last night. Bookgroups, blogs, downshifting - how zeitgeist am I? Unusually, we had an author - or should I say Author. I was vaguely uncomfortable about the Victorian scene of the creative man all white beard, fob watch, ivory handled cane and distant gaze sitting in the damask armchair while his female disciples asked respectful, twittery questions and hung on his every word but what can you do?
Nice chap, cabinet maker in his real life. After his father died, the cabinet maker wrote a book about his dad escaping Poland at the start of the Second World War - a memoire of a displaced person. I really didn't like the book. It rambled and was very dull but you can't say that when a nice man has driven four hours from the wilds of Scotland to talk to you, can you? It's out of print now so this was a big deal for him. Instead, I said it was "lyrical" and "beautiful written" which is true in parts but not so lyrical you would want to read it. We even had dinner in his honour rather than tea and cake. Unfortunately, I had forgotten we were having dinner so I had already eaten. Politeness then dictated I had to sit down and look like fish lasagne and garlic bread was just what my life had been missing.
As the plates were being cleared from the table though, he made the mistake of asking the group whether anyone had any criticism of the book. That is what he said but what he really meant was: "This is winding up - can we keep talking about my book please? Say something to warm my heart's cockles that I can think about as I make my cabinets." But one of the group only heard the words and not the meaning behind the words. "Well I thought it was difficult to get into and confusing in places like when you...", she chattered on. This is the literary equivalent of telling a mother her child has buckteeth. Consequently, his cockles distinctly chilly, the delightful man looked slightly hurt and fell back to nodding a lot.
I am always amazed when people don't hear what is behind the words. Another member of the group leant forward across the table to earnestly inquire whether you could still get a book published if you had a great idea for one but your writing wasn't much cop. This woman obviously wants to write a book if she hasn't started already. There was a whooshing sound from the heavens as an enormous jackbook came down on her literary dreams and another member airily dismissed such aspirations: "No. Never. That just wouldn't work. It's the same with students and essays. If they can't write, there is no point and did I mention your child has a monobrow?"
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Mouses and houses.
I have never had so little control over my life - ever. Unless you count that one time in the hot-tub when far too much wine had been drunk and a guard had to be posted incase I slipped beneath the bubble-filled waves and was permanently lost at sea.
Here I am in windswept, muddy Northland when I have Beatrix Potter's townmouse written all over me. I know the marriage vows say something about "in sickness and in health" - I am sure, however, they didn't mention "up in the North and down in the South" because I wouldn't have signed up for that. I come from Leeds - I have "done" the North and you know what, I like dear old London town just fine. I feel like I am a character in one of those epic sagas of a Northern lass who gets hersen' down to London and suffers vicissitudes along the way, oh yes. But does she let them get her down? She does not. She's got grit has our heroine and she makes a reet success of her life in London and she gets a posh job and brass and nice frocks and a fella and then bugger me, if the fates don't decide to blow our scrappy heroine back up North to the mud she thought she had escaped so long ago.
But it is not just the mud and the loneliness. Three small children hang off our heroine at every available opportunity (or at least when they can't find the nanny) and they should know that really their Mam is not just their Mam, she is a career girl. Well maybe she is a little passed her sell-by for the term "girl" but there was a time when she definitely wanted to conquer the world. I mean, in what chapter did it all start to go so horribly wrong?
Was it that fateful moment, clutching a tear-stained photo of her little ones, she handed in her resignation at t' Big t'Office where she had t'Big Salary. Now, her glory days behind her, she works at home and when I say "works at home", at the moment she pretends to work at home because she hasn't actually done anything she got paid for since October. Soon, the nanny will notice and then there will be talk in't t'village about our soft-focus heroine being no better than she should be.
Anyway, enough of her. Cut. Pull focus and back to me. And the house.
To say we have dithered about what to do about the house is putting mildly. Let's spend nearly nine months waiting for planning permission to knock two houses together and go through a very painful tendering process. Yes let's do that. Then let's take some advice from estate agents and our accountant and decide we can't knock them together after all because we won't get back a big chunk of the £120,000 building costs when we come to sell one big house rather than the two little ones. OK, then let's decide to go househunting. (This involves vast and incomprehensible arrays of numbers on bits of paper and calls to a variety of building societies - some of whom laugh at us.)
I know what! On the same day (today) as having a meeting with a prospective builder about the original plans, let's go see another house we could buy for the laughable sum of £615,000 which we could just about afford if I sell the children's kidneys. Luckily for them, I didn't like it although my husband did. If, however, he thinks I am letting him decide which house we live in up here, he has another think coming. By four o'clock in the afternoon, we are so fed up with not knowing what to do, we decide we will go back to London. That's straight then. By 7pm, I decide that is a bad idea because we will feel we have been beaten by the system and if we go back to London I want it to be for positive reasons and not because we can't make up our mind between scrambled or fried eggs on a morning.
There was a time when I used to be quite good at making decisions. The latest decision, incase you are interested, is to knock the two houses together (what do estate agents and accountants know anyway?) and stay. I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow. Over breakfast when I shall be having cornflakes. Or porridge.
Here I am in windswept, muddy Northland when I have Beatrix Potter's townmouse written all over me. I know the marriage vows say something about "in sickness and in health" - I am sure, however, they didn't mention "up in the North and down in the South" because I wouldn't have signed up for that. I come from Leeds - I have "done" the North and you know what, I like dear old London town just fine. I feel like I am a character in one of those epic sagas of a Northern lass who gets hersen' down to London and suffers vicissitudes along the way, oh yes. But does she let them get her down? She does not. She's got grit has our heroine and she makes a reet success of her life in London and she gets a posh job and brass and nice frocks and a fella and then bugger me, if the fates don't decide to blow our scrappy heroine back up North to the mud she thought she had escaped so long ago.
But it is not just the mud and the loneliness. Three small children hang off our heroine at every available opportunity (or at least when they can't find the nanny) and they should know that really their Mam is not just their Mam, she is a career girl. Well maybe she is a little passed her sell-by for the term "girl" but there was a time when she definitely wanted to conquer the world. I mean, in what chapter did it all start to go so horribly wrong?
Was it that fateful moment, clutching a tear-stained photo of her little ones, she handed in her resignation at t' Big t'Office where she had t'Big Salary. Now, her glory days behind her, she works at home and when I say "works at home", at the moment she pretends to work at home because she hasn't actually done anything she got paid for since October. Soon, the nanny will notice and then there will be talk in't t'village about our soft-focus heroine being no better than she should be.
Anyway, enough of her. Cut. Pull focus and back to me. And the house.
To say we have dithered about what to do about the house is putting mildly. Let's spend nearly nine months waiting for planning permission to knock two houses together and go through a very painful tendering process. Yes let's do that. Then let's take some advice from estate agents and our accountant and decide we can't knock them together after all because we won't get back a big chunk of the £120,000 building costs when we come to sell one big house rather than the two little ones. OK, then let's decide to go househunting. (This involves vast and incomprehensible arrays of numbers on bits of paper and calls to a variety of building societies - some of whom laugh at us.)
I know what! On the same day (today) as having a meeting with a prospective builder about the original plans, let's go see another house we could buy for the laughable sum of £615,000 which we could just about afford if I sell the children's kidneys. Luckily for them, I didn't like it although my husband did. If, however, he thinks I am letting him decide which house we live in up here, he has another think coming. By four o'clock in the afternoon, we are so fed up with not knowing what to do, we decide we will go back to London. That's straight then. By 7pm, I decide that is a bad idea because we will feel we have been beaten by the system and if we go back to London I want it to be for positive reasons and not because we can't make up our mind between scrambled or fried eggs on a morning.
There was a time when I used to be quite good at making decisions. The latest decision, incase you are interested, is to knock the two houses together (what do estate agents and accountants know anyway?) and stay. I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow. Over breakfast when I shall be having cornflakes. Or porridge.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
