Why bother wasting time searching for water pipes in the walls when you can just have the job done and dusted within seconds by hammering a nail in wherever you fancy? That’s what Dad figured before he tried hanging a shelf in the laundry for Mum. Her hysteria at the consequent flooding made his life very unpleasant for weeks. Like Mum graduating from dubious cooking courses, I completed the Peter Alexander TAFE Course for Home Handymen, where I was taught a hammer is the only tool I’ll ever need and, while I barely scraped through with a pass, that was enough to gain me the certificate.
It’s simply not my forte. Who has the time to pay microscopic attention to surfaces, tools and other paraphernalia? Jump in, do it, and jump out again, then get on with your life doing far more enjoyable things. Besides, why aren’t we paying someone to do these jobs for us?
Jeff is my polar opposite. He’s been known to agonise over the details of a particular job for weeks, sometimes months. So, when he foolishly asks for my assistance . . . well would Gordon Ramsay ask Jude to be his sous chef? You can just imagine the expletives when Jeff oversees my handiwork – and they do flow thick and fast. I marvel at his fastidiousness, professionalism and determination to do things the right way. But I can’t be expected to be the same.
I avoid conflict
It really takes quite a lot for Mum to blow a gasket. It’s rarely one of us kids who sets her off, or anyone other than Dad, for that matter. I expect being together for sixty years might make some of the things the other person does seem a tad annoying. When I see people on TV who have been married for seventy-five years and they’re still all lovey-dovey, I think, After seventy-five years? Just how gullible do you think we are?
Mum can be mid-conversation when Dad will make one mild remark and you can literally see her shut down like a machine whirring to a halt. For however long, she won’t be able to stand a bar of him. But then she’ll eventually defrost and everything will be fine again.
Jeff is used to my silent treatment now. Most of the time, he doesn’t even know it’s happening or what he’s done to cause it. It’s probably that he delivered a single word with a slight intonation that I can only be left to translate as a personal attack on me. Or perhaps he forgot to wash up his teacup. He just waits for the Arctic winter to pass.
I often repeat myself
While it may be more common for my parents to repeat themselves as they’ve aged, I don’t have being in my seventies or eighties to blame. I know I’m a bit of an internal joke among Vicky, Jane and the kids because I’ve developed this frustrating habit of saying the same thing in about fifteen different ways. This is usually when I’m faced with a situation in which I’m uncomfortable or lack confidence – like confronting the kids about certain behaviours, or if Vicky asks my advice on a serious parenting matter.
‘Anyway, I’m going to stop talking now because I’m just repeating myself,’ is my usual concession during these familial conversations. Not once has anyone jumped to my defence with, ‘No Dad, keep going, we want to hear more.’
* * *
I wonder why most of us see it as such a crime to become like our parents – how we visibly flinch when our partners draw comparisons with them. It’s so easy to overlook all the positive traits we’ve inherited from them and all too convenient to ignore the ones we’d sooner forget. As I navigate my parents’ old age with them, I’m also reminded of certain behaviours I’m determined not to emulate for my own kids. Most of the time, though, I wonder just how much of that will remain in my control. On the odd occasion, I might even do some Petenjude things on purpose . . . just to drive the kids up the wall.
Back at my parents’ house, after our day trip, I get up from Mum’s beautifully upholstered cushions on the freshly painted white cane lounge and go to the kitchen to get us another glass of wine and make Jeff a second cup of tea. Dad is still busy counting out bingo tickets on the dining room table. He stops for a moment to entertain something inside his mind and as he does so his eyes look into the distance to the right, just like I do when I’m deep in thought.
Attention Twilight Waters Residents:
This is a reminder that having Snuggles the cat choose to sleep at the end of your bed is nothing to worry about.
Thank You,
Management
THIRTEEN
More than Just Mum and Dad
‘Tsk tsk tsk.’ Mum makes that sound I’ve become all too familiar with when I hand her a glass of wine. I can’t see any burnt-out cars from their back porch so it can only mean one thing.
‘What?’ I ask hesitantly.
‘Doreen Blackwell.’
It must be one of the women who attend bingo – they all have similar names. You’ve got your Irene, your Maureen and your Doreen on one hand, and your Pauline, your Colleen and your Noelene on the other. They tend to congregate according to rhyme.
‘Poor Doreen,’ I say, trying to jump the conversation to its inevitable end.
‘Not her. Her husband!’
‘Tsk tsk tsk,’ I say, but the sarcasm is lost on my mother.
One of the other unfortunate side effects of ageing is that you tend to socialise mostly with the fellow aged. This could be due partly to the fact that young people are dismissive and condescending towards their elders, if they’re visible to young people at all. Or it could be that older people find the young interfering, irritating and downright impossible to understand. After all, you don’t often see seventeen-year-olds hanging out with the twelve-year-olds in a high school playground, do you? There is also the common bond that the aged share – their communal fight against an invisible enemy: the passing of time.
When you’re old and you spend the vast majority of your waking hours with other old people, well, the odds are stacked against you that a relatively high proportion of your friends won’t be rocking up to bingo the following week.
‘It’s just unbelievable,’ Mum continues.
‘Let me guess. He had a heart attack. While playing golf. Under an umbrella. In a thunderstorm. Struck by lightning. Then he died on the operating table after they discovered his body was riddled with cancer. Riddled!’
I cop a dry, unappreciative look from Jeff. Then Mum starts to smile.
‘No,’ she says. ‘Gangrene. They had to take off his leg.’ She tsks again. These days, her tsks are the equivalent of ‘The Last Post’, a flag at half-mast.
‘Gruesome,’ Jeff says. ‘Was he registered as a donor?’
‘Jiffy!’ Mum snaps. But she smiles again. ‘Honestly.’
This almost continuous reporting of the ailments and deaths suffered by people I have never heard of has become like a sport. I quickly dismiss the usual suspects – cancer, old-age, osteoporosis and organ failure – as uninteresting but am utterly rapt by the more unique demises. The more complex and unfortunate, the louder the volume and number of my tsks. Poor Jolene’s multi-level diagnosis of MS, Parkinson’s, cancer and anaemia had me sounding like frigging Skippy.
I don’t think I’m quite as grim as I may be coming across. Given Mum’s white-coat-induced hysteria, I have come to the realisation that the best way of dealing with any diagnosis of hers is to try to find the humour in it. Yes, even her bowel cancer. I knew well enough that she was surrounded by more than enough people who were going to feed her with dramatic pauses, tears and fears about the absolute worst-case scenario. Jeff and I both believed that our role, therefore, was to keep her laughing as often as she could. I don’t believe it’s listed as a form of medicine in any GP’s kickback chequebook, but I’ve never doubted its health benefits.
Even when I saw Mum at her most vulnerable during her months of radiation, I put aside my own pain and fear and pushed through with a ‘this is a walk in the park for you’ kind of attitude.
I made a lot of jokes at Mum’s expense, and quite a few at Dad’s (when he wasn’t within earshot). A nurse’s chronic failure to find a vein to stick a needle in Mum had us in hysterics – so much so that the nurse had to walk away to allow us to compose ourselves. Mum’s two greatest fears were losing her hair (cue the Kojak jokes) and ending up with a colostomy bag (cue the imagining of many scenarios where it leaked in public). By laughing in the face of these demons we somehow, miraculously, managed to keep them at bay. There are countless accounts of people whose positivity helped them beat serious diseases. I saw Mum cry once, when she was confronted by a line of seriously ill people in a grim, dark and altogether horribly depressing cancer treatment room. Within a minute, Jeff and I had her laughing again and that was it – the one small emotional outburst she’d needed. Laughter didn’t send Mum into remission, but it sure made her getting there an easier journey. For all of us.
* * *
