Mother Love
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday June 13, 2015

I joined the tail of the takeaway coffee queue as two women settled themselves at an empty table beside me. The older woman signalled the waitress by gesticulating above her head. The younger one looked away, abashed.

The older woman ordered a latte.

“Can we keep that door open?” she asked the waitress politely, pointing at the cafe’s front door.

“It’s a bit stuffy.”

Her companion appeared mortified. “Mum!” she whispered urgently. “It’s fine.”

The waitress obligingly edged the door ajar. The mother smiled her thanks and leaned across the table, eager to chat. She looked sweet, sensible, middle-aged.

I guessed the daughter was about 15, fully grown but still gauche. She was clearly miffed at having a mother make preposterous demands of a waitress.

My mum and I once inhabited the same parallel universe. Aged 16, I feared a shopping expedition was doomed if Mum suggested she join me. What if she wore her enormous paisley scarf? What if someone overheard her making a fuss in the change rooms? Would she reflect badly on me? I was such a teenaged twerp.

But if I rewind my memory further to when I was small, I can remember my desperation to be near her. The smell of her was a heady melange of Oil of Olay, Velvet soap and talcum powder. I can recall the shape of her beautiful hands, the slender fingers, their perfect oval nails. I loved her smooth muscled calves; can still hear the buzz of her Remington Princess electric shaver as she sanded her legs before tennis. I’m still able to summons the scent of her Coty lipstick; how she’d kiss my forehead as I sat in her lap, my head tucked under her chin, breathing in the warmth of her neck. Nothing ever went wrong in my life when she was around.

Until I was eight. I’d started a new school. Mum had a new job and a new habit of arriving late to collect me.

“Mr Elsner needed me to type a letter,” she’d say.

Or: “I had to take dictation.”

I didn’t care about the demands on a working single mother, because I was the last child left clinging to the monkey bars in the deserted playground. All my friends were home drinking Ovaltine and snarfing Gingernuts. My mother was likely dead. She’d been hit by a truck. Or shot by a bank robber. By the time her battleship-grey Sigma rounded the corner, I was already in an orphanage and inconsolable. The world was a fearful place without her.

Age 11, she whacked me across the ear. I’d been whining and thrashing about while she tried to brush my knotted hair. I deserved that slap. But I pretended to be deaf for two days.

“Pardon?” I strained, cupping my good ear so she’d have to repeat her question. On day three she apologised, but I was tired of being deaf by then. It was a hollow victory.

Aged 26 and living in Sydney, I couldn’t wait for her visits. We’d drink G & T’s on my cramped balcony and plan weekend adventures in the Blue Mountains. She was as much fun as any of my girlfriends. They came to her for advice about terrible bosses and wayward boyfriends. She could empathise with any problem.

She walked me down the aisle the day I was married. She was as excited as I was, until she saw the crowd and had to pause to overcome her nerves. When I was pregnant, she’d feel her way around my belly while explaining to her unborn grandchild the importance of following the Eagles.

As I grappled with the stricken nights and foggy days of multiple motherhood, she’d arrive with a cottage pie and a tray of baked apples. Then she’d gather up baby, toddler and nine-year-old and herd them to the park to play Frisbee.

My children call her Noo-Noo. Always have. None of us can remember why. This year, Noo-Noo’s 79th, she and I are spending a lot of time in doctors’ waiting rooms. I now hold her arthritic hand the way she held my grandmother’s. I see her skin has become crepe-paper thin, the knuckles swollen, the fingers painfully bent.

We laugh at what’s become of her beautiful hands, what the years will do to mine. She tells me she found her missing keys in the fridge. Ten minutes later she tells me again. I smile and nod but I fear for the prospect that mother and daughter are reversing roles.

The doctor writes her another script to add to her collection. We go for coffee before I drop her home. She talks about the opera season in New York, how much she’d love to go. “Maybe I should stay closer to home,” she says. I think I hear a tinge of unease. But she’s already up and gleefully inspecting the cake cabinet.