My Mother ?
A Letter ? on her 81st birthday
I recently wrote my mum on the occasion of her 81st birthday. She lives in Tasmania in a town called Mole Creek for most of the year and keeps an apartment in Sydney. I had read a book by Ruth Reichl called Not becoming my Mother. Definitely worth a read as are all her books.
Here is what I said. I hope it reflects, in the same way, how I feel about what you shared here:
We have never been a family to show much emotion.
Somehow, despite the Jewish influence, we have always maintained strictly Anglican stiff upper lips. When Dad died, I realised that I had so many regrets for not having at least tried to reach across the divide that separated us for so long. Not recognising those moments when he tried to make contact, to show me his world. I was too young to understand when he took me to see Jazz on a Summer?s Day or The Incident. When he begged me to read the Elements of Style. But they remain, always, as critical formative moments in the person I am today.
So, with your birthday upon us, I decided to venture into the world of those things that might remain unsaid and should not be so.
I have wonderful memories of a childhood of freedom. Being able to venture out, at almost all hours into the world to explore, and play. I mourn for my own children the fact that theirs has been such a cosseted and fearful upbringing.
We played for hours and hours. We were the Hardy Boys and Biggles. In the summer we often played well after the day had ended. Hiding games in our garden, hunting in the forest across the road for pigeons, traipsing off down the road to make a nuisance of ourselves with Mike, the grocer or collecting bottles to buy a piece of biltong or a Coke with the deposit money. You never worried or hassled. Laurie would always come traipsing across the Margolis garden nigh on 7 o?clock like Lucy Simpson, to make sure I was home on time for dinner, to ensure that peace and our 7:15 date with Mark Saxon and Sergei was kept.
Or in winter simply lolling around in the lounge with a fire starting in the hearth and singing with Laurie to the latest hits on Peter Lotus. That lounge which I would so often use to build dream castles in, or places to hide under piles of cushions. (until one day my dream castle came smashing down and even then, I don?t recall you reacting with horror or anger).
I have particularly funny recollections of times we spent at the motor races at Kyalami where our interest was rarely the action at hand but more usually the picnic basket we?d brought along. In fact we would sit, where we had no sight of either the start or end of the race, so that we would never know whether a race was on or not and we would certainly not know how it had ended. But that didn?t worry us ? we had chicken legs to get our teeth into.
Our intrepid travels to the game reserve or Durban would always include a well planned stop where we would engage in a full-on ritual of unpacking blankets to sit on, flasks of coffee and a variety of rolls and sandwiches. It often seemed as if those stops were the point of the journey itself. And we always had someone in tow ? Granny Daisy.
Granny Daisy, who took any opportunity she could for a quick stop. Must have been her craving for Ransom or her happy wont to go for walks into the wilderness where being eaten by a lion was a pleasing prospect.
Dad was rarely part of these great adventures. And his great legacy to long distance travel is the Oggle Boggle joke that he told the whole way from FishHoek to Cape Town ? one truly long and lousy joke.
Do you remember how excited we always were to pick him up at Gallagher?s corner of an evening. The kids always hiding in the back seat, him always asking where we were, always the same old gag.
Those were really innocent years.
I don?t think I ever really was aware though of how much you sacrificed to be a mum. Though I have faint recollections of coming by tram over the Jeppe hill to visit you at Jack Blumenthal?s office and being very proud of you as a working person. It is funny how one remembers odd elements from the past. Lift doors that closed mechanically by hand, the fact that you smoked Perilly?s.
And I was completely oblivious to the pain you must have lived through being rejected by that foolish peasant of a grandmother. I do remember waking up to that one Sunday, when they paid a royal visit in their black Zephyr with that measly bag of sweets they used to try and gain our affection, but left you in tears. You should be comforted in the fact that it was only a through her sweets, Cadbury?s Chocolate and Swiss Roll that we connected with Granny Marsha in any way at all. It is of little wonder that dad was so distanced from them.
I always knew I had a home to come to, someone who would always come for me if I needed. Day or night ? you?d get out of bed to come down the passage to comfort me from the weird shapes in my curtain of which I was so afraid.
Or later on when I would call, wanting a lift from some late night event I had been to ? and I would listen for the roar of the Jaguar?s tyres along Club Street that signified you were coming.
Even later on when I lived on the smell of an oily fast food chicken shop in Israel and would phone long after midnight to ask for another small amount of money to see me through. You didn?t quibble or complain.
Sometimes I marvel at what you were prepared to put up with when by contrast my own tolerance for my children is so terribly short. I threw up at Daddy?s feet the night of the Greek Festival ? too much wine. But what was worse, was how you all came to watch me run the 800 at the school sports the next day and how the indiscretion of the night before came home to me down the final straight.
Or the night I came up our driveway in Dad?s old Simca, just as you came home from an evening out. I loved tearing up the sand roads of that neighbourhood in that funny little car and you didn?t blink an eye.
I then surpassed even my own well-tuned level of indiscretion taking your beloved Jaguar over the Havelock mountains into Swaziland where there really wasn?t a road that a self-respecting car, never mind a Jaguar should travel on.
You never said a word.
For all those times ? and they were truly wonderful, innocent and hopeful times thank you. I am today a happy person. I think I am quite well adjusted. I love and care for my wife and my children. I am a moral and thoughtful man. And all of that is from you.