My Mum’s Magical Vanishing Act

My mum has a nervous chortle which bookends all her comments in conversations.

My youngest sister has a signature laugh also — but hers is an authentic explosive volley that lights up the darkest room.

My mum serenades the house before leaving by stating the obvious.

My mum snorts when she laughs wholesomely at something funny and her whole body squinches.

My mum has a Wing Chun reflex to say “no” to anything, especially help, which she dodges and defends like any skilled martial artist; when forced to accept help, her discomfort would make you think she was allergic to it.

My mum only watches movies in which nothing “bad” happens.

My mum says, ‘I think I’m going a bit loopy.’

My mum used to fall asleep in the afternoon watching British murder-mysteries, bake-offs, and archaeological and antique roadshows.

My mum’s eyes water up at anything sad on television and labels everything a “tragedy”.

My mum is always cursing the flatscreen and wheeled remote control for not working properly.

My mum loves marmalade and figs and is always surprised by the news she’s the only family member who does. She also loves the choc-mint and orange-choc combos, asparagus, avocado, and always make giant salad bowls for dinner even though my father won’t touch “rabbit food”.

My mum always suspects she’s getting blamed for stuff when she’s not hence her war cry, ‘Well it’s not me!’

Growing up my mum’s war cries were “Stop being so obstreperous”, “You drive me to drink”, “I’ve had it up to here”, “Grow up!” and “You’re a pain in the neck”.

My mum remembers the parfum we bought for my birthday whenever I wear it, and phones me on my way back home after seeing her to apologise for not saying goodbye.

My mum never not says, ‘Everything’s fine.’

My mum never wants anything and when asked pathologically says, ‘No, I’m fine.’

My mum says, ‘I haven’t had a love in a long time,’ and my love bursts.

To understand my mum’s spectrum of “fine” you have to appreciate it’s a rich, semantic lexicon — when dining out it translates to her restaurant meal being so horrible she can’t eat it. We know she’ll never complain because making a fuss in public then being put in a home are her two biggest nightmares. Later she’ll admit it was “dis-GUS-Ting” but she didn’t want to make a scene.

If my mum had a mantra, it’d be her lifelong pensive sigh stating, ‘If it’s not one thing, it’s the other,’ which is why I know, deep down, she thinks life is a sacrifice and a struggle.

My mum bemoans getting old, groaning as I remind her about her weekly medical appointments and saying, ‘Why does life have to be so fucking difficult.’

My mum’s favourite thing is to potter around the house.

My mum loves to say “Très bon”, “higgledy-piggledy”, “c’est la vie”, and “stop fiddle-faddling about”.

My mum says she’s got the “heebie jeebies” when she’s struck by a ghostly frisson of dread or fright.

(When Mum tacitly accepts my help I know she’s genuinely feeling out-of-sorts.)

My mum is British-born and has the doughty wartime gumption of a ward nurse. Her concern over our wellbeing is her marrow; gruff yet inexorable, and the reason growing up we were never allowed to quit anything we started, and never got a day off school because she self-diagnosed stress as the universal cause of every childhood ailment and complaint.

My mum loves the Royal Family and will fiercely defend the Monarchy like they’re her extended family because the Queen is her surrogate mother.

My mum receives gifts with an uncomfortable level of guilt, which makes her unstoppably eager to rush out to the shops to buy flowers, bubbles, and cards of heartfelt thanks in return.

My mum says, ‘I think I’m going potty,’ then corrects herself and says, ‘going dotty,’ and we both laugh.

My mum always thinks she’s the one being made fun of.

My mum is a pinball host who irrepressibly ricochets from the coffee table to the kitchen sink, rallying dishes and forever interrupting conversations to ask if half-full cups and glasses are finished or whether anyone wants a top-up.

My mum loves giving way more than receiving, and as a doting wife selflessly acquiesced to my father her entire life because more than her own happiness, she cherishes the happiness of others more. Hence her philosophy of life, ‘Six of one; half a dozen of the other,’ (which to me implies Mum never viewed the life-glass as half full or half empty; life just is, and you soldier through it).

My mum has the keen gaze of a dilettante antiquarian, and hearing of a classically trained virtuoso.

My mum always reverts to Italian on vacation or in intercontinental restaurants and says, ‘Grazie, grazie,’ to everyone because she gets flustered trying to speak the language — and everyone smiles.

When my mum thinks someone is being disingenuous she says, ‘Give me a bucket.’

My mum can’t stand loose power cables, an unmade bed, and closed venetian blinds facing upwards.

My mum’s flaws are exquisitely transparent and beautiful.

My mum LOVES Christmas and always made sure the holiday was a fairy-tale extravaganza of food and mayhem. The front door is decorated with a wreath, promptly at the start of Advent; bowls of seasonal cherries, sugared almonds, and candy canes then begin to blossom in the entranceway to greet guests; storage boxes of heirloom decorations quickly adorn the tree and house; colourful lights start blinking at night; the hulking Victorian dinner table in the “good room” is immaculately set days before with posh placemats and coasters, Granny’s silverware and the good China, and every skerrick of mahogany real estate is embellished with Christmas crackers, ornamental candles, Roses chocolates, crystal wine and water glasses, and a glass salt-and-pepper cellar.

Finally, Christmas Day arrives with kitchen chaos and a prodigal smorgasbord of cold meats and chipolatas, cooked turkey breast, her mother’s potato salad recipe, three other random garden salads, and a seafood bounty of prawns, crayfish, scallops, oysters, and smoked salmon, which is self-served from the breakfast bench because there’s no room on the table; and for dessert mum presents her famous four-layered trifle which she refuses to serve standalone so it’s decadence is complemented by a pavlova or meringue shells with whipped cream and fresh fruit.

My mum loathes Christmas with her liturgical war cry, “I’m over it!” predictably marking the midpoint of the Advent calendar when her anxiety balloons with the demands and stresses of the silly season.

My mum says, ‘The old brain’s not working like it should today.’

My mum gets super angry watching the six o’clock nightly news on television, treating it like a live sporting event, loudly commentating to the segments and exclaiming how “shocking” the world is.

My mum religiously reads the obituaries in the daily newspaper, and macabrely focuses conversational stories around anecdotes of friends’ medical testing, cancer, and death.

My mum still cuts pertinent newspaper articles out of the morning paper and saves them for my older brother.

My mum still pushes cash into my younger brother’s hand when my father’s not paying attention, which isn’t hard anymore because he swallows days on the internet, sermonising to old friends on the phone, and sleeping in front of the Formula One.

‘I’ve got a lot on my mind,’ is my mum’s equivocal catchphrase because she worries about EVeryTHinG — the war in Ukraine, Ebola outbreaks in Africa, her children; not knowing where they are, the good samaritan on the nightly news who was slain while trying to break up a fight — which is why I have to make fun of her to calm her down even though I know I’ll spend my life missing it when it’s gone.

My mum swears whispers and says, ‘sssshiiiT,’ under her breath when she’s annoyed.

My mum swears more and more and says, ‘I can’t keep track of shit anymore.’

My mum says, ‘My fucking mind is going,’ and ‘I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing anymore.’

My mum’s latest catchphrases are fixated on halves and eating as little as possible so she says, ‘I’m only eating half,’ followed by, ‘Won’t you eat some? You eat half.’

(I hate myself when I snap and have a go at mum for being a Mum.)

No matter how tired and grumpy, my younger brother can always make my mum laugh — and although I shouldn’t think it, (and mum would never admit it), he’s her favourite because she remembers him the most.

My mum loves throwing out trash and is obsessed with emptying the household bins, constantly ferrying refuse from the bathroom and kitchen bins to the wheelie bin outside. My younger brother, who lives at home, puts his wastebasket outside his room to stop my mum coming in all the time even though she still does to make his bed. He always shouts, ‘Stop ferreting around in the bins,’ when he hears my mum rummaging through his bin. She snorts and hollers back through the closed door, ‘I’m not FER-retting.’

My mum hates leaves, and on overcast days never fails to remark, ‘I hate this weather.’

My mum’s arch nemesis will always be the Kreepy Krawly.

My mum defines her beautiful insanity by picking leaves up off the ground like she thinks it matters; she’s always caught doing it on her way to and from the wheelie bin in autumn, which she does right before a stormfront, moaning on her old-new knees.

I think my mum hates inclement weather for the same reason; imagining all the deciduous trees shedding wilted leaves to sully her driveway and swirl around her is her ultimate Tuttle nightmare.

My mum repeatedly asks, ‘Aren’t you cold?’ and demands I put a jumper or shawl on in winter despite pointing out to her someone who’s over forty can generally work that out for themselves.

My mum moved with her family from England to Australia when she was twelve but her Acadian dream of retiring to the British countryside has never dimmed. She religiously watches daily episodes of Escape to the Country, and still affords subscriptions to Scottish Fields, Country Life, and the National Trust solely on her part-pension payments.

My mum eats like a starving kitten over the kitchen sink yet argues every mealtime she has no appetite.

My mum railed us when we were kids to eat over a plate; now she doesn’t care and at best, eats over a single ply from a kitchen roll boasting, ‘Saves on washing up.’

My mum now washes dishes like a bachelorette, treating hot, soapy water like a magical, dunking potion.

When my mum sees pictures of my grandfather she scoffs and says, ‘Horrible man,’ but doesn’t know why.

My mum licks her fingers to pick specks of dirt from the floor then licks her fingers again and double dips.

My mum’s sense of hospitality is legendary because it’s the warmest interrogation — welcoming guests on arrival by waterboarding them with incessant offerings of every conceivable food and beverage option, which she used to easily provide before my father was forced to do the shopping, when her pantry was a fully stocked doomsday prepper’s supermarket.

My mum says, ‘I think I’m losing my mind,’ and ‘my mind’s had its day.’

My mum says she must be going round the bend when she asks, ‘What did we just talked about?’

My mum says, ‘I think my brain’s getting addled.’

‘My fucking mind is going.’

When my mum tells stories, there’s so much convoluted and discursive backstory; the dynasty of characters, misleading tangents, and colourful tapestry she fabricates puts literary giants like Salman Rushdie and Xavier Herbert to shame.

My mum is a delicate balance of stubborn and lazy.

My mum is a selfless, baroque ocean queen who deserved better.

My mum represents an opposing force in the galaxy, reminding and reprimanding you of her universal, resiled importance whenever you act.

I turn on a ceiling light, ‘Make sure you turn it off!’ I open the fridge door and the decree is swift and loud, ‘Make sure you push it shut!’ I rest a champagne flute on the breakfast bench, ‘Are you done with that.’

My mum still throws me under the bus with a mischievous laugh to take her husband’s side when I try to defend and help her.

When I sleepover my mum always knocks and gently cracks the guest bedroom door before bedtime like when I was young; she says goodnight, queries if any of her other children are in the house, adds a giggle, a finger-flutter wave, says, ‘Sweet dreams,’ and closes it like a child closing the hinge of a dollhouse.

My mum, my only hero is performing the slowest magical act of vanishing. She is an ancient butte burning golden in the afternoon light, only to quietly disappear as the eternal sun folds inevitably to night and moonlight chisels stone back to desert sand.