The Cerebral Mum

I admit I’m an addict.

I told myself and told myself that I was not going to post this weekend. I was not going to turn on my computer. And yet here I am.

I actually have a lot of posts in my head right now, but they require too much work with links and research to get them exactly right so this is my filler.

I’m going to write about my mother. And, yes, she is the best mother.

While succesfully avoiding my blog for the last couple of days, I haven’t avoided my computer. In my list of ten random things, I mentioned my mother’s blog. If you visited it, you would have seen that it isn’t very pretty and hasn’t been touched for a while. So I have been building her a new one. Adding many of her old Chronicles (her monthly newsletters to friends and family and even some strangers who just wanted to be added to her mailing list) necessitated a lot of reading so she has been at the forefront of my mind over the weekend.

She is 55. She lives a life that many envy and some do not understand. For the last 10 years she has worked as a teacher in many countries, some of them not likely to top anyone’s “dream holiday” list. She was in Pakistan when September 11 happened. She was in Qatar when the war on Iraq was launched from there. She was in Indonesia when the Australian Embassy was attacked only a few buildings away from where she sat in her office. She was in Afghanistan when, well, when it was as it is now: a military quagmire. She is currently teaching in Sudan.

To fill out her resume, add Nicaragua, Thailand, Mozambique, Estonia and Algeria to that list.

Are you one of those who envies her or asks yourself, Why? I know which one I am.

To paint a picture for you, I could tell you some anecdotes. How in Jakarta, when she heard the explosion and her building shook, the other teachers rushed to the windows asking, What the hell was that?, she said, It was a bomb, and kept typing. How in Kabul, when there were riots and her security detail had her and the other teachers confined to a safe house all day she said to me on the phone, Security won’t be able to keep me here if I run out of cigarettes.

She is a sanguine woman. With my disorderly passions, I am not like her at all.

Except I am.

She has the courage to live a life of her own choosing. She is generous with her love and her love is unconditional. She is staunchly independent, probably to a fault. She carries her own burdens and expects nothing from anyone. (As I said… to a fault.) She works hard and she quietly does what needs to be done.

She is always, and has ever been, just who she is.

In some ways, she has that very old-fashioned woman’s strength. A Portrait of a Lady type, who gracefully accepts the things she cannot change. In other ways, she is still the youthful, hopeful mother of my childhood. Age closes no doors for her. Life remains full of possibilities.

I always considered myself fortunate because my mother was young. (She had married, had two kids and divorced by the time she was 21.) I knew nothing else, so how could I compare, but watching the way my friends could not communicate with their parents, seeing some have to deal with heart attacks and death before they even finished high school, I thought her age was a wonderful thing. I now realise that it was her character more than her age I was fortunate in.

Many people who have young mothers talk about the ways in which their relationship was more like a friendship. I never had that. There was always a line and I think that line was a good thing. She was always a mother. But there was also no gap between us; no subject was taboo and there was nothing in my life I could not trust her with. She never cried in front of my sister and me when we were children. I never knew there might be things she could not handle.

I think that there is an obligation of dishonesty in parenthood in this respect. To a point only, but it is still an obligation. My mother was the rock of my childhood, and my childhood was not easy. I needed a mother like my mother.

Reading back over what I have written, and knowing that I have only described her goodness and not her greys, I still recognise her as my safe harbour. Even though I am grown and I know that she is human. Even though learning she was human was hard - a kind of disillusionment - I am grateful I did not have to face that fact before I was ready to.

And I am grateful that, despite our very different characters, I can see her strengths in me; not so well-formed, not so steadfast, and speaking in a different language, but there nonetheless.

It is passed midnight now and I have not even begun to do her justice. You cannot write about your mother as a filler. So I will end here, with the gratitude I cannot express fully and a song I wrote years ago, during that time when I was learning she was human, when I was learning to stand alone as she did.

Mother

somewhere
there’s someone
who means
something

maybe
she’s not all of you
maybe
she’s who you used to be
maybe
she’s not real at all
maybe
I’m just greedy, I just wanted…

woman woman
child me baby mine

last night
a roof fell
I saw
a shadow

wendy
sew her back on me
she said
that love is always free
it was
my own choice to leave
I know
I am stronger, I just wanted…

woman woman
child me baby mine

last night
a chain broke
I heard
a cock crow

this time
I have lost the game
it feels like
I have missed the last train
once more
life won’t stay the same
I know
you can’t help this, I just wanted…

woman woman
child me baby mine (x2)

somewhere
there’s some word
which means
something

maybe
she’s not all of you
maybe
she’s who you used to be
maybe
she’s not real at all

mother

sometimes I’m greedy, I just wanted…
sometimes I’m needy, I just wanted…
sometimes I’m greedy, I just want you all

Thank you, Mum, for being my rock, and for teaching me to be one.