The Mother Who Made Me
It Will Be Beautiful
We’ve just walked into the supermarket when mum leaves me to grab ‘something’ from the food aisles. I’m pretty sure it’s a chocolatey surprise ‘something’. We don’t have Tesco’s in our closest town yet, never mind a massive Tesco’s Superstore like this, and at eleven years old, I’m basically on a foreign holiday. Earlier this morning, we found out what secondary school I’m going to and mum has taken me out for the day, just the two of us, to celebrate the closing of this chapter.
She tells me she’ll catch me back here at the toys, but when she returns, she finds me wandering through the clothes section, running my hands along the t-shirts and jumpers as I amble in a daydream. Clothes shopping is an obligation. But on this occasion, a denim jacket catches my eye. The sequined rainbow on the back reflects the fluorescent lights and I don’t realise my life-long love affair with clothes is about to commence. I just think this jacket is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid eyes on. More beautiful than toys.
I’m startled out of my awe when I realise mum is behind me.
“I thought you’d be at the toys,” she says, clearly surprised.
“Me too,” I reply, equally surprised.
I love this jacket, I tell her, still surprised. Me too, she says, still surprised.
“It’s beautiful. It will be beautiful on you,” she smiles.
I Know How Hard It Is
I place my two-day-old son (how do I have a son?!), Reuben back in his moses basket and crawl into my single bed beside him. Three hours pass in approximately two seconds and suddenly, he’s crying again. Why is he crying AGAIN? The post-birth high has worn off and I think I may have been hit by a lorry during labour. Shock and fear engulf me. A lump forms in my throat and I’m wishing I could go back in time, just three days. Or nine months. My thoughts are teetering on the verge of a much darker place when my own mother stumbles through my bedroom door. She lifts Reuben and says she’ll feed him. “It's okay…” I protest, weakly waving my hands.
She hasn’t caught up on her own sleep since my labour either, and I have a flashback to her holding a cold, damp cloth to my forehead. How does anyone do this without their mum? I remember thinking, horrified. I don’t ever want to do this in front of a man.
But she’s already halfway down the stairs before she responds.
“I know how hard it is,” she whispers back.
I can’t stop myself from falling back into a deep, grateful sleep, even though I know she has work in a couple of hours.
I Thought You Were a Virgin
Three months earlier, I’m the one standing at her bedroom door.
“I really don’t feel good,” I cry, “I think you need to call someone.” I’m eighteen, but I still need her to do the calling.
No, is what I say when the doctor on the phone asks if I could be pregnant.
No, is what I say when the doctor at the out-of-hours surgery asks if I could be pregnant.
At 3am, I hand the straight-talking doctor a urine sample so she can “check for infection”. She stands with her back to us while she does the dipping and my mum sits to my left.
“Well, this says you’re pregnant,” she announces triumphantly, clearly not checking for infection.
No, is what I say as my mum storms out the door.
I scurry after her like a wounded animal.
“What about India…” I blurt out in shock.
“You’re not going to India. You’re not going ANYWHERE. EVER AGAIN.”
Understandable.
On the drive home we do the maths, horrified at a Christmas due date. We talk about what ‘people’ will think. Who to tell. How to tell my dad. What I’ll do about my travel and university plans. Where I’ll get all the baby paraphernalia. How I’ll tell my employer. How I’ll fit a cot in my box bedroom.
The alcohol I’ve drank. The exams I’ve sat. The buildings I’ve abseiled. All with a human in my belly.
“I thought you were still a virgin!!!” she hisses.
“I AM…”
We look at each other for the first time, our eyes saying everything we don’t say out loud.
Her voice softens with her characteristic compassion.
“You and the baby can have my bedroom.”
She Always Makes My Day
“I bumped into your mum in Magherafelt,” my friend says as she takes a sip of coffee. “She’s the most thoughtful woman ever. She never forgets what’s going on with me,” she continues. I smile and tell her I wish I could bump into my own mum while running errands. “They don’t make them like her in Belfast,” I joke, imagining what it would be like to live closer. “She always makes my day,” my friend says, as all my friends do.
Mum * purple heart *
I scroll my contacts and stop at Mum *purple heart*. I tap ‘call’ and then hang up when I remember she’s at work. Instead, I begin to type a text, but my screen glitches from the tears dropping from my cheeks. I attempt to click ‘send’ as my back slumps down the kitchen units and I rest my head against a cupboard door.
My pelvis is sore on the cool, hard floor, but I don’t care. I am done. My throat burns and my head pounds as I exhale from a day of managing my son’s violent meltdowns. Or rather, a Summer of them. Maybe, a year of them? A lifetime?
Granted, he’s going through something. And I’m the punching bag. In a matter of weeks, I’ve finished university and started a new job. He finished Nursery School and left the university childcare. We've both moved church and community (for my job). And he’s failing to settle into his new childcare.
These are the days I wish my son had a father. Selfishly, so I can share the emotional weight of raising this boy. I have a whole village of friends who have been a daily support for years, but they are transitioning into their own new seasons and we are working on finding a new village in ours. But I wish I could share the hard stuff with someone who is as invested in him as I am. Someone who knows the colossal weight of, well, everything.
My mum texts back almost immediately. She asks what caused the big feelings (his, not mine) this time and we talk through my day, moment by moment, right up until the scene where I read the Gruffalo with sobs breaking in my voice at bedtime. While he doesn’t bat an eyelid.
I tell her I’m not coping anymore. I want to give up. It’s all my fault. I made a mistake taking the job.
Growing up, I hated that mum had to work so much. But now, I get it. I see it. She sacrificed so much of herself for us. We couldn’t survive on my dad’s wage and she suffered grueling shift work with thousands of miles commuting back and forth, all while giving us her best. As I conjure up every ounce of my own strength to get up from this floor, I wonder how she did it for so long. Or how she’s still doing it. She’s great at her job and she enjoys it, but I wonder if I missed out on this superhuman gene she possesses.
U need a break. Book sum cheap flights n I’ll take Reuben to cvan for a weekend. Here’s dates for my hols, she texts back, along with the dates she has booked off for her own ‘break’.
I dismiss the notion immediately. The guilt would be the end of me. He loves going to the caravan with my parents more than anything else in the world but usually, I’m working when they take care of him. That’s how I justify it. Sure, I’ve dreamed of hopping on a plane alone, but I don’t know what’s worse. Leaving my son, or leaving him to go on holiday without him.
But then something inside me shifts. Mum is right. I do need a break. I can’t keep going like this until there’s nothing left of me to give.
So, I get to work and book flights to Lisbon for the next week.
The Curse of Time-Keeping
Security at Dublin airport is notoriously slow. I know this. I’ve planned my travel times perfectly, so it’s going to be okay. Or so I think. The 3am bus from Belfast had more stops than I anticipated, and when I woke up at the airport, it was later than I originally calculated. But it’s still going to be okay.
Despite the *boarding* symbol flashing beside my Lisbon flight, I don’t panic. I place all my belongings on the black belt, reveling in the ease of carrying one small backpack and wheeling one small suitcase. Not a pram or a Paw Patrol rucksack in sight. There isn’t a baby strapped to my back, or my front, or a tantruming toddler refusing to be searched. My hand luggage is just that: luggage that actually fits in my two hands.
After I make it through, I pick up the speed. It’s 6.15am and take-off is at 6.30am. In my head, I’m early. But I begin to feel sick as I realise how far away the gate is. I don’t remember this airport being so big, I think. This terminal is going on forever. I begin to run.
The two female flight attendants laugh as I reach them, as if I’m wild for even attempting to approach my gate. The paperwork is done, they say. It’s not our problem, they say. Go to check in and book another flight, they say.
I sob and say nothing.
I have to walk with security through some dodgy back-passageway of the airport like a member of the mafia. My only crime being my lack of time-keeping. I guess they don’t usually need an accessible route from Flight Gates to Check-In. I mean, no one wants to go backwards when they’re going on holiday. This can’t be happening.
My family has an airport story. Doesn’t every family? It’s a Dublin airport story, in fact. Heading off on a big family holiday to Spain with my aunt, uncle and cousins, my mum (the quiet matriarch of my family) was beyond organised. She’d been packing for two weeks. The passports and boarding passes had been sitting on top of a special shelf all Summer. She was holding us together, as usual.
At check-in, the one I’m standing at now, she handed over four passports. But there were five of us. She forgot her own and ended up driving from Dublin back to Castledawson and then back to Dublin again, while we went on ahead to Spain (thankfully my aunt kept my dad and us right in my mum’s absence). She caught a flight later that night and it was the sweetest reunion.
Now, the lady at the desk tells me there’s one more flight to Lisbon going out tonight. I smile politely knowing that my bank account reads 0.00, after I used the last of my supply to buy my flights and grab some euros.
My thumbs scroll for the bus timetable back to Belfast, but I’m too heartbroken to face it just yet.
So, I call my mum. It’s her birthday. She isn’t awake yet. And when I finally get through to her, she moves from groggy, to angry. To sympathetic. To thoughtful. And then to action. She reaches into her bucket of limitless grace, once again. “I’ll send you money for another flight from my savings and then you can pay me back monthly… or something. You have to go. Let me know when you’re through security…again.”
“But…”
“Just go…”
After security I sit down to some scrambled egg and call her back.
“Mum? Happy Birthday.”
Home Safe
My thighs stick together in the heat as I walk home from school in the sun. I hate the trouser part of my primary school uniform, and trousers in general, so this is the price I have to pay. My house is fifty yards from the school gates and walking home by myself is still a novelty. I feel like a grown up, but as I turn around the corner and walk towards our backyard, my eagerness to get through the back door tells me I’ve still some maturing to do.
I walk into the porch and I can hear Countdown on the TV and the clickety-clack of mum’s knitting needles on the other side of the door. I think there’ll be Fruit Pastilles on the kitchen bench. It’s her day off. And as she looks up from whatever creation she has on the go this time, I feel safe. I don’t know why, but I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s my favourite day. Not because of any special activity or exciting event, I’m just happy to be home with her on an insignificant weekday. Just to have her in the house. This is when I’m most content.
You Are Beautiful
My six month old, Asher, is beginning to fuss in the pram. He hates the pram. And the cot. And the carseat. And his dad. And anywhere that isn’t on me. We’ve just finished coffee and I ask mum if we can have a quick look around the sales. Recently, I’ve been selling clothes more than I’ve been buying them. But this is less about the clothes and more about my attempt to psyche myself up for the car journey home, where Asher will most-likely scream for twenty minutes straight, and I’ll arrive at my destination with a migraine, just in time to pick Reuben up from school.
I. Am. Exhausted.
My pale face tells the story of my hourly night-wakes, mum tells me. I head for the baby clothes, brushing a tye-dye, rainbow coloured cardigan in the ladies department on my way.
I’m too anxious about the drive to focus on the array of adorable baby dungarees, so I circle back to the front of the shop and find mum standing near the cardigan. Somehow, she sees my two-second cardigan glance and tells me to try it on. She always sees. I whip off my jumper to reveal the beige, milk-stained vest-top underneath, and I wrap the soft, woolen rainbow around me.
I love it, I say. Me too, she says. You deserve a wee treat, she encourages, knowing I’ve already resolved to save the cash.
“It’s beautiful. You are beautiful. I’m buying it,” she announces, as she pulls it off me and marches to the cash desk. “I’m always buying presents for my grandkids, but I want to get you something for a change.”
I scamper along after her smiling, as I always do, at one more of her habitual acts of kindness. An ordinary moment, a small piece slotting into a much larger story, of one mother making another.
