The world is beautiful

 

The morning Call

Picking up the phone with a sigh, I can hear Radio 4 and the bustle of my husband making breakfast downstairs. The same time every morning. The phone call to my mother was a promise I made to my dad shortly before he died. For almost twenty years, the routine has been the same—alarm at six, down to make the tea, then the call just after seven.

In the earlier years, if I was a minute or two late, my mother would call me with a sharp inquiry, demanding to know why I hadn't phoned on time. But lately, as she's grown less mobile it takes her longer to reach the phone,  so it’s closer to eight by the time I ring.

Ours has always been a difficult relationship. As a child, I feared her. As a teenager, while my friends shared secrets with their mums, I learned to keep mine locked away. It was a shock to discover other girls’ mothers were soft and gentle—people to run toward, not away from. Even now, her disapproval can silence me.

Every morning, we have the same conversation. It reminds me of the church services I used to sit through as a girl—words spoken by rote, oddly comforting in their familiarity and complete disregard for meaning.

“How are you this morning?” I ask, knowing the question is an invitation for her to complain about her troubled sleep and her stiff knee. I sit back and let her voice fill the quiet of the bedroom. It always surprises me how, even after all these years, I feel resentful that she has so little interest in my life. Has she ever wondered how my day went?

That disappointed anger has sparked many arguments with my husband over the years. He once told me I seemed to enjoy feeling invalid—and, truth be told his  comment held   more than a ring of truth.

But aren't we all shaped by how we were raised? I tell myself.  I was the baby, the second girl, the one who broke the symmetry of the “perfect” family. My cries often went unanswered until I learned how to live with disappointment.

“What did you do yesterday?” I ask, though I know the answer now brings nothing new. It used to prompt tales of trips into town—the man on the bus who said she looked young, the woman in the bank she’d known for years, the checkout girls in Tesco who adored her. I used to picture her as a queen on her daily promenade, graciously receiving admiration as she passed along the High Street. And I’d feel guilty for not sharing that reverence.

Now, as her legs can no longer take her outside, her yesterdays have become nothing more than memories of trips she used to take. And despite everything, I find myself pitying her and  the smallness of her world.

“I’m tired,” she says, and I hear  a tremor in her voice that wasn’t there before. And despite myself,  I want to say something comforting. She had always refused to speak of getting old and  dying—as if by acknowledging it, it would become  real. She had placed herself, spider-like, at the centre of our enmeshed  family web, watching as we try to  break free from the  tangled silk that bound us.

“I know, Mum. I know you’re tired. You’re very old.” It was  all I could find to say. I know she wants to hear that I love her,  and so—with the heavy realisation that my  once-fierce mother is  now frail and as needy as a child—I find myself whispering, “I love you, Mum.” Into the phone.

I hear the click and the dial tone hum in my ear as she hangs up.

I don’t move.

I think about the toast going cold downstairs. About my dad’s face when he asked me to promise. About all the years I kept that promise.

Then I press the red button, set the phone down, and listen to  the silence in the room .