I love a lot of people. No, not like that. I simply hold an interest in others and for as long as I can remember, I’ve been aware of people. Of their feelings, of their differences, of the skin they live in.
And for every truly loved person in my life, I have an image that I associate them with.
Take my brother for example; the fact that he’s a successful 36 year old man doesn’t stop me from perpetually picturing him in a baseball cap holding a joypad. For my friend Emma; it’s a cup of tea, for Stella, it’s laughing on a couch, for Eva, it’s baking cakes, for my dad it’s whiskey and for my mum, it was – and always will be – copious amounts of potpourri.
Everything she wore and owned always seems to be redolent of a vague floral fusion. A scent that now, when I catch a whiff of it, sends me back to monkey bars in a suburban park or Saturday trips to Trocadero.
Much like many children before me – adult or otherwise – I loved my mum. Mostly, I loved her face because somewhere in that pallid sea lay a permanent reminder of the child version of me. As a kid, I loved pleading with her rotund belly to let me be a child for just a while longer, or running up to her bedroom window to say goodbye when she left and knowing that as she reached the top of the road, she would always turn around and wave. And I loved her smell. That unmistakable mum smell that nothing can compare to.
Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a saccharine soliloquy about the wonder of mothers. There was a time when every little thing my mum did annoyed me for no reason and I didn’t understand her. I found it impossible to comprehend why she had made certain choices in her life and why she had accepted her fate so obsequiously. Ashamedly, myriad years were spent upsetting, hurting and making her already difficult life even harder.
And then, 2 months before my 30th birthday, after years of arguments and slammed doors, I finally moved out of home and into my own flat. And for the first two nights, I cried because I envisaged her lonely; taunted by empty bedrooms.
But, as expected, I soon loved independent me and once settled, the experience of doing all of my own washing, cleaning and cooking made me not only be thankful to my mum for all she’d done but it also made me be her. I would make mugs shine with bleach the way she did, I would berate myself for spilling tea the way she once berated me and just like her, I took to turning the heating on full blast and opening all the windows (this was all before the first electricity bill, naturally). And pretty soon, the two of us found our own routine with my mum visiting at least once a week; a visit that I looked forward to and planned for.
Today, when my she visits, it is I who cooks and washes up for us. We no longer sit there in comfortable silence because I’m used to her presence. Today I ask her questions – and not just about being my mum. I ask her about what it was like growing up in a Cypriot village where fun was picking fruit from trees in a field. And I ask her what hopes she has for the future – because people near 60 need to know they have a future.
And when she describes how she fled the war when she was only 18 and how, even amidst the uncertainty and fear, she loved being on a boat and seeing Europe, I kiss her face and thank her for giving me the untold optimism she’s had since birth.
And when she leaves, I run to my bedroom window and wait. And yes, she still turns and waves and that’s when I get it. There will be few people in your life who, when they’ve left you, will still turn and wave and your mum is one of them. It’s a breath giving thought.
And then I go back to clean up the pool of tea I spilt earlier and see a bud of potpourri swimming in it.
thirtysomething 