One Life
One Mothers' Day ...
“I decided this Mother’s Day is a celebration of being alive,” I tell the two most obvious mother figures, my 83-year-old stepmom on her way home from church, newly widowed, and my 89-year-old mother-in-law, fighting with her body after a small op to chop out a rare form of skin cancer. In three weeks, she’d planned to be dancing up a storm at her granddaughter’s wedding, the first of seven to tie the knot, in the UK.
My stepmom, blood grandmother of six and great grandmother of three, though trying to bite on the celebration bit, is distraught to hear that I am going to watch the IPL cricket - because my dad, who died three months ago, would’ve given his eye teeth to be there. I am trying as hard to celebrate that rather than relegate the possibility to the ash heap.
This time last year I was in Symi, a Greek island just across the Aegean from Turkey. I was recovering from a heavy bout of flu, it was my first trip since being run over five months prior, and I was about to head off on the back of a motorbike on a tour of the island. I had also just spotted the most perfect bougainvillea to make a virtual card. And a boat bearing the name and initials of my mom (who died in a car accident halfway through my matric year), Ann Elizabeth, aka Alpha and Epsilon, appeared round the first bend at Pedi Bay.
Twas a surreal day. From Pedi, we biked up diagonally to Toli on the northwest corner for a solo turquoise dip. Then back east through roughly cultivated vineyards to pebbled Marathounda Bay, where we snorkelled and ate vermilion shrimps and skewered lamb at an outdoor taverna. The waitress smashed a few plates in the kitchen. An English couple, equipped with deep sea kit went out diving amidst the hundreds of translucent tropical fish. A man across the bay hollered loudly to a woman, who yelled back just as loudly as a child crying in the background. A goat hung its head endearingly over the patio palisades. The contrasting bikini air made me feel like I was in a noir Mediterranean movie.
I went back and typed a charged message to my holiday neighbour, who had lost her son eight days earlier to Covid complications, and would celebrate his 58th in three days. I told her she must’ve been so very proud of him when, as a young man, after his inauguration at Prince George circuit in East London, he raced Formula One for Porsche in Japan. The next day, energy spiralling palpably, she sent me a pic of a surfboard imprinted with his name in mosaics. Made by her friends to greet the sea opposite her house.
This year we’re at jam-packed Chinaswammy in Bengaluru, India, in probably the worst seats in the entire vibrant stadium, right next to the DJ box. Our team, Royal Challengers, (because we lived here for nine years and because South African Faf du Plessis is captain), is playing Delhi Capitals. There are three American pompon girls swirling silver tinsel each time a six is scored or a player is run out. A pair of petite sari-clad women on my right are cradling their not-yet-walking bambinos, while the speakers beat out Karnataka vibes. One child’s father has only one arm. He cannot clap or wave his phone torch. On my left-hand side, a hip young granny in a kurta arrives half an hour late with her pre-school-aged grandson wearing a RCB cap. The little dude has no clue why he has to hop up and down, but by the time he leaves he is ululating wildly whenever RCB scores.
Travelling home with friends, the matriarch is beaming because her 29-year-old son has finally, through mutual consent, chosen a wife, with whom he will be living in the family home. With her daughter happily married and living in the States, she is already envisioning grandchildren.
Back in our room, I re-watch the streaming, from St Francis Bay in the Eastern Cape, of my sister-in-law’s mom’s memorial service. A lively eulogy written by her granddaughter on a yacht somewhere in the Caribbean. The youngest of seven whose mom died when she was seven, the outspoken and well-read grandmother of seven had been vehemently cheating death for 31 years since a heart attack at 49. Like the columnist who also read a eulogy she’d written, I bonded with her through the books we read.
Travelling with me, too, in my wallet: a photograph of my gran in full military uniform and a pair of wooden baby shoes, which I use as a travelling talisman. Born and bred in Edinburgh to a shoemaker who was badly gassed in World War 1, my mom’s mom was conscripted in World War 2 as a stenographer in Alexandria, Egypt, where she met and married a South African, never to return to her homeland. In six years, he was dead, following a car accident, in 38 years her eldest daughter was dead, and 50 years after birth, her youngest daughter was shot dead by an unstable volunteer soldier on weekend duty.
Mother’s Day. Memories. Memorials. I have a largely idealised memory of my own mother, and no biological children, partly out of choice, partly circumstance. Regrets, which I anticipated, there are sure to be. But overall, the bittersweet is grounded in sugar mountain rock.
Each movie a tender reminder that you only get one of these.