Earlier on this week, my younger sister, Jane, had cause to rouse a house full of students at around half seven in the morning. I can’t say if she did derive any pleasure from it, but if I were in her position (having a job and living in a house full of students) I’d be pretty hard pressed not to have revelled in the experience.
Either way, the reason Jane felt obliged to wake up everyone in her house was that, over the course of the evening, someone engaged in what might best be described as a “criminal enterprise” had taken it upon themselves to hammer, punch or otherwise perforate a hole in her kitchen wall. This hole is large enough for Jane to confidently peek her head through and glance around her neighbour’s kitchen. This tells us a significant amount more than a simple measure of diameter might – this is not just a sizeable hole, this is a hole big enough to be a source of entertainment. Naturally enough, Ross managed to sleep through the whole night, despite being separated from events forceful enough to smash through a house by just one inter-room wall.
That aside, the point of this blog wasn’t to discuss damage done to their house, nor Ross’s various shortcomings as a human being (manifold though they might be). It’d be wrong to say the whole event seemed unusually familiar to me, but the image I was left with, of plaster, broken into chunks and flecking a smooth surface, did remind me of something. This was despite my never having been in a house that had had walls similarly broken, to my memory at least. Somehow, the image of a broken wall resonated with something somewhere in the leaky archive of my brain, and it took a couple of days for my mind to reclaim it.
I’ve talked before about the fact that myself and my siblings were, in the mother’s absence, raised by a series of (sometimes only in the loosest sense of the word) maternal figures. One of the most accurate embodiments of this was the mother’s sister, who we referred to simply enough as “Waa”, a name introduced to curb the difficulty a child’s tongue has in negotiating the kind of consonant slush that constitutes her Christian name.
We spent some time in Waa’s house, and while there it had occurred to all of us that there were a number of doors in the house that just sort of “led to nowhere”. They didn’t open, and where some of them did, there were bricks instead of rooms. The whole week seems very strange because of it, but for around a week, having things around hat “led to nowhere” seemed not to warrant any explanation. Being a child only slightly more shy than curious, and more than a little fearful of a bearish uncle (and it must be said, an only slightly less bearish aunt), it was easier just not to ask about things. In situations like this, it’s best to have a brother.
When asked about the “mad doors that go to nowhere” Waa was relatively forthcoming. She explained that she’d bought two houses, side by side, with the aim of reclaiming one that had (by means I’ve never fully understood for reasons possibly related to bearishness) been pretty much completely gutted – that is to say, the architectural equivalent of eviscerated. There were still the lines where walls had once been, and I seem to remember various props supporting the whole affair, but this wasn’t a house so much as a kind of dusty, indoor version of outdoors. Sure, it had walls, but they weren’t enough to make it an inside, this was just a piece of outside someone had built things around. They’re very different.
Why she felt the need to show us this house from the vantage point of a first floor doorway, one which literally opened out onto nothingness, I’ll probably never be able to figure out. What seemed most jarring about the whole experience to me at the time was that it was the moment I took to come to terms with the difference between indoor doors and outdoor doors. The door that now separated a wayward child from falling to their rubbly possible-death was (even to my maybe-twelve-year-old hands) disturbingly thin.
It seems now, through the miracle of reason, as though we only stayed with Waa for about two weeks, if even that, but in my memory that two weeks stretches out for months, distorted as it is by the lens of childhood and the number of disturbing details crammed into so short a space. There is something decidedly discomforting about seeing a woman tell someone to turn a lamp off in case it causes a fire, something she made seem not only possible, but very likely indeed.
What was then only marginally less disturbing (for the fact that I understood so little of it) was when someone questioned whether or not a lamp could really start a fire, to which the response was, and I remember this quite vividly, “Well- stranger things have happened, but, knock on wood.” A short knock accompanies the statement, followed by very slight furrowing of the brow, “-or in this case… asbestos.” I’ve always liked to think that was a joke, but I’m not sure if that makes it any less menacing, considering the deadpan tone in which it was delivered and the various other potentially life threatening features of the house.
There were other things that happened there that struck me as particularly mad, but I’m getting tired and want to upload this before sleep catches me.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
And Then There Were Two
Whenever there’s a monumental change to the way my life works, or the way I consider it to work, I worry about my teeth. I’m not sure where the association comes from, but there’s certainly a deep seated connection somewhere in my mind between the big, inevitable changes in the way I live as I grow older, and the gradual decay of my teeth.
I’m not even sure if it’s the degradation of my teeth that worries me so much… I don’t feel very consoled by the knowledge that they’re alright, I just keenly feel the need to make sure that they are, or even that they aren’t. As long as I’m aware, I’ll figure things out.
With that in mind, I should explain that I’m writing this blog having come from the bathroom, where, with the aid of a hand mirror, I established that my teeth are in fine working order. The reason I felt the need to check that my teeth were intact is because my brother leaves for foreign climes tomorrow and we’re not sure when (and indeed, if) he’ll be coming back.
With the brother’s departure so imminent, the father was kind enough to organise a family dinner, something we haven’t had in this house in quite some years. Present were the father, brother, myself, two sisters and close family friend Mary. Having left when we were all still young enough not to hold it against her, the mother phoned in from overseas, spoke briefly to the brother and promptly broke contact. No greetings passed on to the rest of us, but that’s life.
This seemed a strange state of affairs to Mary, but it’s entirely in line with my working theory of our relationship with the mother. Effectively, our mother was a wonderful, maternal figure for the first few years of my life (though slightly fewer for the siblings). Unfortunately, to borrow from physics, she had a relatively short half-life; while she was our mother she burned bright and beautiful, and accordingly, those years are incandescent in my memory.
I remember them now as warm, sunny times, times spent collecting blackberries to be made into a jammy preserve, which would later be spread on some kind of pastry I’ll never know the name of, but seem to remember enjoying tremendously. In subsequent years we would still gather berries in the field behind our house, but I remember the making of jam being as a once-off. I wonder now if that was the point, that the fun was in the collecting; my mother, the brother and I plucking berries from bushes, learning to avoid the ones that looked unripe while the sun beat down on the knee high grass around us.
Afterwards, I remember the buckets of blackberries standing, monumental on the drainer and, to borrow a phrase, sitting there until the growth of (to borrow a phrase) a rat grey fungus, glutting on our cache. In my child’s mind, they had sat there forever, huge buckets of fruit and pulp, sweet and warm, just waiting for someone to take the care to make it into a sugary food. It seems more likely that they’d just been there days, but that’s speculation – I don’t know how long picked berries last.
Unfortunately, as is the way with such things, the happy state was destined to be short lived, and slowly the relationship grew dimmer, eventually degrading into a kind of a “dirty bomb” of a relationship, with fallout effecting all sides. She later left the father under terms that have never quite been made clear to me, though I’m happier in my ignorance.
In the years that followed, we were raised by a kind of compilation of maternal figures who were kind enough to lend their efforts to our upbringing. Together they formed a kind of quantum mother, and it would be their collective influence that guided our development, alongside that of the father.
A solid 70% of this involvement came from Mary (a neighbour, close friend of the mother and mother to Ross, who I still consider my second brother). That should go some way towards explaining why, when the (biological) mother expressed so little interest in 75% of her progeny, I felt no deep desire to investigate my current dental status.
The fact is, I now associate the making of jam with Mary, rather than the mother. This is despite the fact that I can’t honestly say I remember Mary ever making jam. Moreover, those memories I do have of picking berries with the mother seem interchangeable with those of picking blackberries with Mary; again, I can’t honestly say this ever happened, but that’s the way childhood memories are I guess. The smells and tastes are so very vivid, but the people seem interchangeable as long as the feeling is about right.
What’s interesting is that, despite my having understood it to be the case for most of my life, I’m quite sure Mary hadn’t considered herself a mother figure to us and I’d worried that saying it might cause offense… I’m not entirely sure why, but I imagine being accused of being a kind of consummate (if accidental) mother might not be the perfect end to a day.
All that aside, we had a pleasant dinner and reasonably cheerful conversation and picture-taking, though all with a vaguely uncomfortable undertone. The fact is, I don’t see my brother nearly as much as I should, and the reminder so close to his leaving that we get on well while we are together seemed a little unusual.
What really summed up the evening though, and the reason I decided to write this blog before we drop out to the airport tomorrow morning, was the game of backgammon that my father and brother started while waiting for a taxi to arrive and take him away. Naturally, the wait for the taxi wasn’t quite long enough to allow for a full game of backgammon, and their game was interrupted.
I happened to walk back into the kitchen before anyone else had had a chance to clean up and saw the backgammon board open on the table, dice and pieces lying strewn across the board as they had been in play. I thought there was something very sad about that board and its father-son game, sitting open and unfinished, abandoned just as it really got started.
I imagine there’s a very shrewd observation to be made about the fact that backgammon is a game fundamentally about getting all of your pieces home, coupled with my brother leaving home and their game being interrupted, but that kind of observation is a little too visceral for me to really get at elegantly, Jane would do better, and I’ve always been clumsy with sentiment.
I guess the other reason I’m writing this now is because I’m not sure how I feel. I know there should be some amazing depth of feeling, and indeed I do feel loss, but at the moment I’m more disappointed that I didn’t get to see them finish their game than anything else.
At times like these I always wonder how I should feel, and I imagine that’s how everyone feels, which should probably make it alright. For now I’ll have to satisfy myself the same way I always do. My teeth are big, white and mostly okay. There are a couple of fillings and some wisdom teeth coming in, but overall they’re alright. Some staining, but that’s to be expected.
I’m not even sure if it’s the degradation of my teeth that worries me so much… I don’t feel very consoled by the knowledge that they’re alright, I just keenly feel the need to make sure that they are, or even that they aren’t. As long as I’m aware, I’ll figure things out.
With that in mind, I should explain that I’m writing this blog having come from the bathroom, where, with the aid of a hand mirror, I established that my teeth are in fine working order. The reason I felt the need to check that my teeth were intact is because my brother leaves for foreign climes tomorrow and we’re not sure when (and indeed, if) he’ll be coming back.
With the brother’s departure so imminent, the father was kind enough to organise a family dinner, something we haven’t had in this house in quite some years. Present were the father, brother, myself, two sisters and close family friend Mary. Having left when we were all still young enough not to hold it against her, the mother phoned in from overseas, spoke briefly to the brother and promptly broke contact. No greetings passed on to the rest of us, but that’s life.
This seemed a strange state of affairs to Mary, but it’s entirely in line with my working theory of our relationship with the mother. Effectively, our mother was a wonderful, maternal figure for the first few years of my life (though slightly fewer for the siblings). Unfortunately, to borrow from physics, she had a relatively short half-life; while she was our mother she burned bright and beautiful, and accordingly, those years are incandescent in my memory.
I remember them now as warm, sunny times, times spent collecting blackberries to be made into a jammy preserve, which would later be spread on some kind of pastry I’ll never know the name of, but seem to remember enjoying tremendously. In subsequent years we would still gather berries in the field behind our house, but I remember the making of jam being as a once-off. I wonder now if that was the point, that the fun was in the collecting; my mother, the brother and I plucking berries from bushes, learning to avoid the ones that looked unripe while the sun beat down on the knee high grass around us.
Afterwards, I remember the buckets of blackberries standing, monumental on the drainer and, to borrow a phrase, sitting there until the growth of (to borrow a phrase) a rat grey fungus, glutting on our cache. In my child’s mind, they had sat there forever, huge buckets of fruit and pulp, sweet and warm, just waiting for someone to take the care to make it into a sugary food. It seems more likely that they’d just been there days, but that’s speculation – I don’t know how long picked berries last.
Unfortunately, as is the way with such things, the happy state was destined to be short lived, and slowly the relationship grew dimmer, eventually degrading into a kind of a “dirty bomb” of a relationship, with fallout effecting all sides. She later left the father under terms that have never quite been made clear to me, though I’m happier in my ignorance.
In the years that followed, we were raised by a kind of compilation of maternal figures who were kind enough to lend their efforts to our upbringing. Together they formed a kind of quantum mother, and it would be their collective influence that guided our development, alongside that of the father.
A solid 70% of this involvement came from Mary (a neighbour, close friend of the mother and mother to Ross, who I still consider my second brother). That should go some way towards explaining why, when the (biological) mother expressed so little interest in 75% of her progeny, I felt no deep desire to investigate my current dental status.
The fact is, I now associate the making of jam with Mary, rather than the mother. This is despite the fact that I can’t honestly say I remember Mary ever making jam. Moreover, those memories I do have of picking berries with the mother seem interchangeable with those of picking blackberries with Mary; again, I can’t honestly say this ever happened, but that’s the way childhood memories are I guess. The smells and tastes are so very vivid, but the people seem interchangeable as long as the feeling is about right.
What’s interesting is that, despite my having understood it to be the case for most of my life, I’m quite sure Mary hadn’t considered herself a mother figure to us and I’d worried that saying it might cause offense… I’m not entirely sure why, but I imagine being accused of being a kind of consummate (if accidental) mother might not be the perfect end to a day.
All that aside, we had a pleasant dinner and reasonably cheerful conversation and picture-taking, though all with a vaguely uncomfortable undertone. The fact is, I don’t see my brother nearly as much as I should, and the reminder so close to his leaving that we get on well while we are together seemed a little unusual.
What really summed up the evening though, and the reason I decided to write this blog before we drop out to the airport tomorrow morning, was the game of backgammon that my father and brother started while waiting for a taxi to arrive and take him away. Naturally, the wait for the taxi wasn’t quite long enough to allow for a full game of backgammon, and their game was interrupted.
I happened to walk back into the kitchen before anyone else had had a chance to clean up and saw the backgammon board open on the table, dice and pieces lying strewn across the board as they had been in play. I thought there was something very sad about that board and its father-son game, sitting open and unfinished, abandoned just as it really got started.
I imagine there’s a very shrewd observation to be made about the fact that backgammon is a game fundamentally about getting all of your pieces home, coupled with my brother leaving home and their game being interrupted, but that kind of observation is a little too visceral for me to really get at elegantly, Jane would do better, and I’ve always been clumsy with sentiment.
I guess the other reason I’m writing this now is because I’m not sure how I feel. I know there should be some amazing depth of feeling, and indeed I do feel loss, but at the moment I’m more disappointed that I didn’t get to see them finish their game than anything else.
At times like these I always wonder how I should feel, and I imagine that’s how everyone feels, which should probably make it alright. For now I’ll have to satisfy myself the same way I always do. My teeth are big, white and mostly okay. There are a couple of fillings and some wisdom teeth coming in, but overall they’re alright. Some staining, but that’s to be expected.
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