Mother

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 colour photos were becoming common in 1971, but the cameras were far more expensive — me on the left, mum holding Jack, Allan on her right, at the seaside, maybe Anstruther, Rothesay or Millport, property of author

It’s coming up on twenty years since you left this dreary earth mum, and I have a question I’d like to ask you.

You used to say “Nobody loves you like your mother.”

You weren’t a sentimental woman, your early life was brutal. But you hung on to your decency, a nugget of compassion. Your love for us. 

You deserved a better daughter. 

We bickered, we often disagreed, but you were right far more than you were wrong. I’d concede every argument for another day with you. Another hour. 

I have so much to tell you, mum. 

Remember how we’d pore over the weird peculiarities of Australian life?Remember how you wanted to know every single thing about my goings on, my babies, my little victories? Oh, mum, a lot has changed.

Nobody sings the song of your life like your mother. 

I am getting older, mum. My hair has lots of grey and I don’t laugh as much as I used to. 

As I approach the age you were when you had your first cataclysmic medical event I’m starting to forget things. That razor sharp memory is, finally, dimming a few details of ages past. A kindness.

But I remember you turning to me as you lay in the hospital bed, and how full of compassion you were for me in my fear for you. “Oh, my wee pet”, you murmured to my cascading tears, “Oh Alison” you tried to comfort me from the agony of your sick bed.

My babies are adults now, one of them never met you and the other doesn’t remember.

I have a newish husband, and I think you’d like him. He’s our sort of people. 

You’d love our back yard mum, the cunning crows and the lorikeets and maggies. 

My cat died a few weeks ago. It was awful hard. It hurt something deep inside to hold her, limp and so terribly small. A lot has happened in the 17 years since I brought her home. So much loss. She was the last link to a part of my past that I never got to share with you.

There were times I could have used your counsel, to dip my cup into the pool of your comfort and wisdom.

I have a hundred different stories to tell you. Sometimes I do and hope you can hear me. 

And I keep thinking of that baby, mum. The one in Sydney. I can hear you saying “That poor wee baby”. I can hear you saying “Nobody loves you like your mother” and my eyes fill with tears for her, for you, for all of us. 

I think of Ashlee, dying in confusion and terror and blood, begging them to help her baby girl.

It’s really got to me, mum. 

I miss your voice, how you’d smile and sing “Hello Dolly” when I walked through the door after an absence. I miss you calling me florrie. I miss your terrible cooking and our lunches in Skirving Street. I miss the clack of your knitting needles and your rare laughter. I miss all of it, the good and the great and the bad and the terrible.

I’d give a lot to bring you flowers and watch your pretty smile light up your face. To have you fix me once again with your astute azure gaze, that Sphinx like focus that could turn into nuclear winter or the gladdening warmth of the sun.

Once, I hung sleeping in your womb, turning to the rhythm of your heart as you sang to me of love and of safety and of home. 

I want to go home, mum. I’m awful tired.

From mother to child, to mother to child, all through the history of our kind, the blood and the bones and the heart of us all. Our mothers. 

As a baby girl, you were the word for God on my lips and in my heart. 

As a child, you were my earth and my stars and the air that I breathed.

If there is a heaven, I will feel your cool hands on my forehead once again.

And so I have a simple question, if you have a moment to spare.

Mum — when do I stop missing you?

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“Mother is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all little children” — William Makepeace Thackeray

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On thinking of Ashlee Good’s baby girl Harriet, who must now live without her mother her whole life. 

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Addendum:
I know a couple of people who did not experience the love of a mother, not because they didn’t have one, but because their mother was lacking. My mother also sometimes said “If your own mother doesn’t love you, who will?” Her meaning was that the world would be indescribably cold and difficult and incomprehensible if the one person who you should be able to rely on to unhesitatingly nurture and care for you did not. 

That is another loss entirely. One I cannot fathom. But I would like to acknowledge it, and say how very sorry I am that you did not feel that love, and that I am so glad you were able to become loving people anyway. 

The Good Biscuits
Of lions, mothers and murdermedium.com

Albanese’s Harmful Half-Truths
Misogyny — the hate crime that dare not speak its namecelticchameleon.medium.com