Becoming My Mother
I am slowly but surely becoming my mother. In some ways, this is very comforting. She lived into her late eighties and I’d be well-pleased with that outcome. For years her children have been trumpeting our genetic similarities: wrist, check; Morton’s toe, check; and bulbous knee caps, check. Funny how Mum is beginning to look a lot like us!
Mother was British of the “sticks-and-stones generation,” though I am hard-pressed to imagine anyone throwing any projectiles her way. A decade ago, I took a course about the Mother Complex at the Jung Foundation in New York, figuring I would either put mother to rest, psychologically speaking, or at least try to figure why I was beginning to sound like her. And she would be a hard act to follow. In one paper on the subject, I wrote that my mother had survived three wars, two husbands, seven children and a move to the states in her mid-fifties. The teacher, a psychologist, wrote WOW next to my remarks, reminding me that mother had a pretty long reach after all, and was not yet done with me.
I was told by my mother—and this was confirmed by an older sibling—that she was a tomboy and could beat any boy her age in a running race. On my second running of the New York City Marathon, my mother and family joined me in New York. When I reported to her that I had finished in the middle of the pack (3:20), she asked what took me so long. She also reminded me of her successes taking on all comers in the Kent schoolyard and still had the medals to prove it. End of story.
I am becoming like her in mainly small ways. During the last ten years of her life, mother lived in an addition we built for her. When we were driving away from the house, she never failed to insist we return to check whether she left the stove gas on. She never did. I frequently have this thought when I’m walking out the front door and invariably return to check the stove. Mumbling under my breath that I am becoming more like her. However, if I am in the car and driving, I won’t return to the house, and cherish this Pyrrhic victory as a momentary staving off of the inevitable.
It’s in my weird language ticks that my mother seems most present. I have found myself using the expression, “tighter than a biscuit tin,” first in a novel that I just completed and now sometimes on the New York City subways, where I might mumble the phrase under my breath, thus honoring her while keeping an eye out for the disenchanted who might take umbrage, another term she was fond of. In this instance, I think mother was being quite literal. Our biscuit tin with Queen Elizabeth on top was a bugger to open. So from then on everything that was difficult to open, from an aspirin bottle to ketchup bottle was tighter than a biscuit tin. And the longer she took to open the vessel, the more of a bugger it became. If the wrestling match got the better of her, she threw in the towel with a mournful “bugger all.” I’m not there yet but have been known to say to certain foes when taking umbrage to “bugger off,” silently thanking Mum for my timely response.
Mother was quick to size people up and had a ready collection of slang to cut them down to size. A “nosey parker” was not only someone who stuck his nose into someone else’s business but our next door neighbor in Pittsburgh, in the flesh. She was certain Mr. S. cut his hedge for hours, day after day, so he could spy on her every move. So she spread the nosey parker story around the neighborhood, topping it off with a sympathetic mention of her neighbor’s “trouble and strife,” otherwise referred to as his wife. If mother had been even more mean spirited or spent more time in the Cockney section of East London, she might have called our neighbor Richard the Third, or “turd,” duly refraining from the more obscene American vulgarity. I must wonder whether this rhyming slang has lost some of its bite since Richard was found under a supermarket parking lot in Leicester, England.
Mother had her language limits. When growing up in north London, my brothers and I said “cor blimey” to describe anything the least surprising or interesting. Whenever she heard us utter this phrase, she threatened to wash our mouths out with soap. Only years later did I learn the phrase came from “God Blind Me.” She had a point. I was asking for trouble. How we got away with saying that in church is anyone’s guess.
When mother burned our Thanksgiving turkey, she explained that she was all sixes and sevens, meaning the kitchen got the better of her. The atmosphere was better than the food. Her most popular phrase was probably “Bob’s your uncle” meaning “there you go again” or perhaps you’re driving me crazy. She seemed to save “Lady Muck” for that irritating woman in the supermarket line who was showing off or putting on airs. In other words, getting more attention than her!
I seem to recall her calling something, perhaps a gift, the “bees knees,” or fabulous. I am fairly certain she was not acquainted with the less polite version, dog’s bollocks, but will let the reader untangle that usage. It’s exactly what you think it is.
While watching the English Premier League the other day, I almost uttered “cor blimey” because an announcer referred to the bottom of the first division as tighter than a biscuit tin. This was because the trailing ten teams were so close in points. Mother was so present in the room that I needed a cup of tea. And, she might add, that was “a bit of all right.”
Did I mention my high cheek bones?