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parenting
Now
A crashin the kitchen has me running from my laptop on the dining table. No one uses the dining room, so it’s been easy to commandeer for a study. That and the fact it’s central to the downstairs area means it’s a great spot to sit and work while keeping an eye on the happenings in the house.
Like now.
Twelve eggs are smashed over the floor along with the chintzy china hen they get kept in. “What the f . . .” I manage to stop myself from swearing when I see Mum cowering in the corner.
She looks up at me, rather like an alarmed doe facing a primed shotgun, but I am quickly trying to work out whether she is in the present or not. “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice shaking.
“Mum, it’s cool. Don’t worry about it.”
She starts to fuss and gets on her knees to pick up the eggshell. “I don’t know what happened. The whole thing just crashed out of my hands. Your dad bought me that, you know. He’ll be really upset when he knows I’ve broken it.”
She looks up at me, her face folded in a frown. I hold my breath and wait. “He’s not going to know, is he?”
I kneel on the floor next to her, my knee sliding in raw egg. Reaching for her hands, I hold them in mine, “No, Mum, he’s not. Remember? He died last year.”
She thinks this through, her eyes gazing far into the distance. “I never liked the chicken anyway.”
“Well, that’s okay then.” I decide to change the subject away from my father. It can make her distressed when she understands the reality of the present.
“Are you having trouble with your hands, Mum?” Turning them over, I look at her palms like I might find some answers there. “Do they feel numb or tingly, perhaps?” This is information I should be telling the doctor next week when I get her there.
She looks at her hands as if they are unknown to her. “Sometimes they don’t feel like mine; like they aren’t attached.”
“We can talk to someone about it next week, if you like?”
Her eyes gaze over me before she turns her attention back to our hands. “I used to be jealous when you were little that you had fingers like your father’s. Everything about you was like your father. I could never see anything of my own in you.”
I watch her silently because this is one of those rare moments when she sheds light on my strained childhood.
“I used to think it was really unfair, considering I’d carried you, given birth to you, and then you looked nothing like me.”
“Sorry.”
Mum’s eyes snap onto me, suddenly all seeing and keen. “Is that how you feel about Isaac? That you can only see his father?”
My chest constricts. This is the first time she’s made any direct reference to Isaac since I’ve been home. I mean, she knows he’s there, realises he is in some way family, a relative she can’t quite remember.
“I don’t know, Mum. I guess I see myself more because I’m the one who’s brought him up. He has more of me than anyone else.”
“I wish you’d come home.” Her eyes fill with tears.
"I wish I had too.” I speak around a massive lump knotting itself in my throat. “We wasted so much time, Mum, just because I was angry.”
“You will never be as sorry as me.” She starts to cry. I hold my tears in, drowning as they flow through me, searching for an outlet.
“Come on, Mum. I can clear this up. Let’s get you off this dirty floor.”
I shift her, using my weight to hold her up. When she looks at me, I can see that she’s slipping away again, another frown is creasing between her eyebrows, a different one. “Now, I don’t want you and Dani out all hours and rolling home drunk now you’re eighteen.”
A single tear slides down my cheek. “I promise, Mum. I won’t come home drunk, although you know you don’t have to wait up for us.”
“Of course I’ll wait up, I’m your mother.” She sends me a critically firm shake of her head.
As I settle her in Dad’s chair in the lounge, I can’t help but wonder just how long she is going to remember that she is my mother.
