REMEMBER WHEN
I was Mom to five and wife to you –
Always a baby in the womb or at the breast or on the hip –
Warm wet babies and toddlers in our bed.
All those endless years of carrycots and prams, cots and highchairs,
Tricycles and bicycles, a thousand bits of scattered Lego underfoot,
Tangled kite strings and dismembered dolls and sticky fingers and faces.
Remember when the nights were screaming kids and urine-soaked sheets, -
Bedside flasks of steaming Horlicks.
And your calls shattering my nerves in the wee hours
As you rushed off to labour wards.
Remember when we suffered through the measles and the mumps,
The grommets and the braces – not to mention
Endless colds and coughs and bumps and bruises.
Remember the internecine feuds between brother and brother?
The ever-changing constellations of sibling alignments?
The rowdy meals and messy tablecloths stained with juice and milk?
Remember the endless years of kindergarten and big school,
The handed-down safari suits in fading beige
With ink stains on the pockets?
The lift clubs – good old friendly Bertie over the road
Hooting for tardy Bob, morning after sunny morning.
Till one fine sunny day old Bertie blew out his brains –
Drove to the Linksfield Clinic and ended his troubles there.
Remember when homework multiplied by five
Filled every afternoon and evening
And we relearned our Latin, mastered the New Math,
Struggled through essay after essay, and project after project.
All those speech days and sports days,
Interminable Parents’ Evenings, exams, Matric.
Wonderful school holidays, the sea, the family flat
Sandcastles and surfing, friends, drives, fish from the boats.
Remember when I lived in our yellow Kombi-
Packed with kids and dogs and bikes and balls.
Forever ferrying to school and extra lessons and the orthodontist.
But remember when Joan’s friend Mary’s Dad –
Was stabbed to death next door!
So shocked was I – hearing of the tragedy on my return from Pick ‘n Pay -
I left all those pounds of yellow butter to melt in the car.
Remember when the University years arrived?
All those academic dramas and the graduations?
Our babies turned into doctors, actuaries and mathematicians!
But you were long gone by then!
Day by day, week by week, and month by month
You broke my heart with women, drink and cold indifference.
Remember when the truck arrived to fetch your bed?
That day when you said: “You sure you want this?
You’ll be sorry! You’ll be a lonely old woman one day!”
And I cried huge racking dry-eyed sobs after you went.
And I remember when I had no husband,
When the children had no father – not to speak of,
Not really.
I remember the hideous battles with pubertal psyches.
I remember the endless cruel nights
When I twisted in anguish over errant teenage kids
Out driving unlicenced.
Hour after hour straining for returning sounds.
I remember when it was girl friends and boy friends –
Parties and dates and break-ups and scenes.
Till the real thing came along,
And then I remember when there were weddings.
But even before the weddings the departures began –
Remember when we saw Peter off to Houston
And Mark off to Sydney
And Joan off to Los Angeles
And Dick off to Cape Town?
And Bob’s business here made his visits rare?
Heart-wrenching goodbyes, each and every one.
And for long years now it’s just the odd email
Or once in a long while a welcome telephone call.
Sometimes a birthday card or gift.
Visits come rarely – none of us is rich.
And I think about these five adult men and woman
Who pursue their busy careers and mastermind their kids
And love and fight with their spouses
In Sydney, Houston, LA, Cape Town, Johannesburg.
I think about them, and I mourn their distance,
And I yearn for their faces and their embraces.
And you – you’d been long gone from us –
Your second marriage and two more kids increased that distance.
And finally you died – three years you’ve been a-mouldering in your grave.
Remember when we fell in love,
Remember that total peace and security that seemed for ever
Remember that family life, that fullness.
Can you remember – there among the dead?
Is there remembering in Heaven? Or in Hell?
Perhaps Hell is just that – remembering.
So now I am here alone in a quiet and empty house.
Full of things, but empty of people, empty of love.
Of course I’m glad to be done with nappies and measles,
I delight that all the fights have receded into the past;
I’m happy to be free and my own person.
But I remember that I am sixty-seven, gaunt and frail.
The telephone hardly ever rings now.
The big rooms would be tidy if I didn’t spread my workpapers everywhere.
To create the illusion of business and meaning.
I’ve read that insomniac babies cause insomniac parents,
And it’s a fact I wake at 2 or 3 or 4,
And listen to the silence and wander through unpeopled rooms
And remember when I was Mom to five and wife to you …
Anonymous