Experimentation in the form of
Jack Common, Kiddar’s Luck
Now, before Mother’s self inflicted incarceration and ‘recovery’ – if you could call it such – we would often journey into town together. This was long before she had passed her driving test, and while she was still dependent on her electric wheelchair for mobility. The council had been called in to make the doors wider and install a ramp down our pathway in place of the front steps; placing square, wooden railings down the sides, to keep naughty children from jumping off the concrete side without having the ability to first swing under a so-called sturdy beam, which bowed under the weight of my ten-year-old bottom.
These journeys started with me walking by her side, keeping up with the steady thrum of the motors; or walking behind her as if pushing it – a favourite pass time of mine, as it made me appear strong and skilful. The trips, however, tired me out, and often times I would be found standing on the back of the poor, overworked beast as we trundled back up the steep hill that lead to our little rented accommodation.
One of these excursions marked a change in transport, as I decided that if I had wheels of my own, I would keep up much easier with my mothers contraption. The logic seemed sound, so I adorned my rollerblades and began the race to town. Later I could be found with my knees locked in place as I hitched a ride behind her chair, giggling at the odd and constant vibrations that shot up my legs from the uneven pavement.
(words, 262)
Experimentation in the style of:
Marguerite Duras, The Lover
The trips into town stopped after mother’s recovery, as far as I remember. Stopped, of course, until she learnt to drive; then nothing kept her indoors. This was due to her giving up far more than just the morphine all in one go. I read her diary entry, or she read it to me. It told of how she had been cruel to my father in the evenings because he had ‘given me a hard time’, which meant that I, in turn, had made things harder for her. How she had undermined his attempts at authority. How she refused to ever use a wheelchair again – which, naturally, failed after several years, after her health deteriorated further.
There was another diary entry I read of hers once. This one I remember all the more clearly because of the sure sense of guilt I felt for reading it. Secluded away in the bedroom, that, even then, my brother had departed from and left as ‘spare’, she had written it. The blue ink was spread seamlessly across loose pieces of paper, and, being loose, I happened to glance across them. I’m there, twelve years old, still in my uniform because changing out of it doesn’t yet feel obligatory as soon as I am free of the hell hole, leaning over the paper, darting glances at the door, sure that I’m about to be caught in this awful act of intrusion. I remember the vague content of that entry, they’ve haunted me for years. It detailed her dreams, or, at least, her waking from dreams. She would often fall asleep in her chair, only to either be wakened, or wake from a nightmare. The way she looked at us, with fear, even when I tried to coax her into full consciousness; perhaps I only noticed after the diary. She wrote that, when she woke, we weren’t us: we were demons. We looked just like us, but she knew better. That it wasn’t until father spoke to her, woke her fully, that we became human again. Only Dad’s voice could do it. I remember thinking: that’s what true love is. I stopped trying to comfort her when she woke, looking at us with fear and disgust.
(words: 274)
Experimentation in the style of:
Edmund Gosse, Father and Son
My mothers’ deterioration into the haze of extended morphine exposure had been so slow that, in my childhood, I had failed to recognise it. Her continual lapses in consciousness were made into a form of family joke – later in life I would realise this was probably as much for her benefit as it was for mine. However, during my eleventh year – the first of many spent in the uncomfortable embrace of the local Girls Grammar School
The gentle, sleepy, doting woman, who had, for many years, been my closest friend and defender against the strictures of my Father, began a week long struggle against her own body. She lay on the sofa in the living room and writhed, gasped, and cried. Much of her worse symptoms, I am told, she managed to hold at bay while her youngest child was present; much of the paranoia growing unbearable whilst the young girl was out of sight, especially whilst she was at the Girls School for the grammatically unchallenged. She would have terrible visions of the girl being stolen from her, or hurt in some unforgivable way; of her little girl in pain, lost forever.
The week’s end saw the emergence of a new woman: The Mother.
This woman looked like my mother had, spoke with her voice, but moved with a purpose. The Mother was strict, unforgiving, and had the disadvantage of a strong memory, and the propensity to remember my crimes.
(words: 257)
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