There it was, my first home for the first nine months of my life, looking like a bloated tongue or maybe a piece of used gum that was hanging off from where it had been stuck. My sister and I scanned the photos the doctor had given my mum. It was a comic strip featuring the last moments of my mother’s uterus, and there was the long rod that clamped the ovaries in place and then the gore; a bloody scene my fragile male mind couldn’t make sense of. We sat either side of her bed, trying not to pay mind to the catheter bag or accidentally squash the drip leading into her wrist. It struck me how quickly the roles of the parent and child can reverse and that’s quite something considering how dedicated my mother is to her role (to the extent she is offended if you do not want/let her mother you.)
Now, not to suggest that our relationship is strained but lately we have found it difficult to see each other more than once a month. She wants me to spend weekends with her when I’m more open to an evening so I can do other things with other people I haven’t seen in some time. She wants me to live with her again when I think it would be like escaping one war zone and seeking asylum in another when all I want to aim for is to move out and away from the family and South East London. Seeing her so fragile though, with tubes sticking out of her, did bring out something in me – an instinct. One that fucking depresses me…
We sat and watched Japan being devastated by one disaster after another. Once my mum’s boyfriend arrived and parked his arse across the room from me I decided it was time to leave, “You don’t have to go though do you?”
“I’m going to go and get something to eat-
“Yeah but you could come back, visiting hours go on til ten.”
I told her I might come back on my way home. She was stuck in her bed, holding her stomach in place, Japan was being enveloped by a giant black wave and all I could think about was how I needed looking after. Perhaps it’s the shock of seeing a parent like this. One in pain and discomfort and another (my dad) who has to keep a pen to shoot himself with if his throat seizes up and not forgetting the worry of his blood pressure. It’s simply how things go, they get older and the children inherit the responsibility. It’s quite shit.
Maybe that’s why I have found so many surrogate parents over the years. Particularly at work where I’m around a great deal of middle aged women who wish their sons, they admit, were like me (although they probably wouldn’t if they knew half of what I get up to.) It was the end of show party, the smell of rum pervaded the air, thick and sweet, and tanned Jo threw her arms around me and I felt her menopausal flushes heat the tight space between us. “I so wish you were my son, I would be so proud of you” she tells me. I tell her I am her son “just a little bit.” and pinched an inch between two fingers to emphasis the littleness.
Is this a habitual practice between all people or perhaps young gay men? That they take on these part time parents? I see Jo, confide in her and know more about her life lately than I do about my own mother’s and what did it take to make me feel that twinge of concern and responsibility towards my biological mother? Her going into the hospital is what it took.
I don’t feel guilty about that, something that feels natural, as do not all young people grow into adults and detach themselves?
[My mum is currently spending the next three weeks recovering and all is well, she's put her feet up and is being looked after]
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WordShock 7:13 PM on April 13, 2012 Permalink |
It’s now a second draft. Thanks Hugh and Thom. Third draft…I’ll see…