My Mother’s Hands

My mother had dry, cool hands.

When she rubbed them together they rasped,                                                               always cold, but warm. Mothers are many people.

When my head was hot her hand, then as large as my head, felt cool.                                        I can close my eyes and feel her hand on my brow, right now, like a cold dry cloth.  Even when I was older than my mother, I wished for her hand on my head                        when I was hot and tired and sick. Even yesterday.

My mother’s hands cooked, and slung a rag across the bench fast to clean it.  She would time herself out to the easel and paint with a knife, cerise and red and indigo blue creeping to  her fingernails. But quickly cleaned away, quickly.

Her hands would grip the steering wheel of our big old green car packed with children, hurling us around corners. When she braked her hand reached across to protect the child in the passenger seat. She would take her hand off the steering wheel to cross the chest of the child.

She did not have the gentle hands that other mothers had.  Her nails were shaped into pointed ovals, sharp like her temper, she died when she was younger than I am now which is a curious thing. I was in my mid twenties then, a very young mother myself.   Now I am older than her but still young. There is a strange crossing of time when you become older than your mother.

It is many, many years now since my mother died. I remember the colour of her eyes, her wild Katherine Hepburn hair and her hands, long fingers, pointing with her little finger, smacking, stroking, tidying, tucking in, holding her knife and fork just so and covering her mouth when her eyes laughed.

Once towards the end of her illness we went shopping for a pair of trousers that would not hurt her stomach. Mum was serious and tired and sick. It had been her birthday and she was saying that when you are dying no-one buys you presents that last, it had all been soap and talcum and hankies and nighties. Everything felt wretched and cold and muddled that day. Baby was fussy on my hip and I hoped the others were being good for their grandfather.

We carried new, dull, elastic, tan trousers into the changing room and crammed ourselves into the tiny space. She had sat on the little triangular seat  and watched while I struggled to get the trousers off their hangers.  I have always been terrible with those clips on hangers. Give them to me, she would have said, but that day she sighed and leaned her head back. She looked up. Without a word she reached with her long fingers  and idly hooked a white net bag off the wall. It was one of those things  you put over your head when trying on dresses to protect the un-bought clothing from the make-up on your face.  Her fingers  snagged this net bag off the hook. Sitting back up and without a word, she opened it and dropped it over her head. She put her hand straight over her mouth then made a face with her eyes, peering through the net, this was so unlike Mum that I giggled nervously. She pulled the bag down over her face looking like a bank robber – we both giggled, hers like a croak, then we laughed, she wiggled her head and very soon we were hysterical. It was like a gate had opened, not a window or a door, a gate, a huge gate. A flood of laughter poured out.  Trying desperately to keep quiet we collapsed into smothered gales.  She pulled the bag by its ribbon around her head this way and that, getting it caught in her green scarf, her diamonds flashing in the cold blue light. The laughter became a tide and  I sunk to the floor of the little changing room and covered my face with her new untried trousers, screaming with laughter into the brand new fabric. She sat there with her head against the wall, this mad white net over her face, for all the world looking like she was ready for the hangman, her hands dropped helplessly into her lap  and we laughed until we could not breathe. Tears pouring down our faces, noses running. Choking and snorting. She clutched her belly where the latest  operation had been and then clutched where they had cut off both of her breasts and with no voice at all because she had lost most of  her vocal chords in a car accident years ago, she raised her hands back to her cheeks.  And silently heaved with laughter.

In the midst of all this misery, this dreadful march towards cancer’s finish line we let go of our unthinkable agenda and cried out against it, we laughed out loud into the yawning mouth of death, like two old witches – we shrieked. Our heads back and eyes tightly closed, me on the floor with my hand on my mother’s stockinged ankle like a drowning person and then she with her hand clutching my shoulder, help, help, it hurts to laugh.  We laughed.  And laughed and laughed.

My mother was a very dignified woman, she went to Mass at least twice a week, she wore a scarf on her hair for goodness sake, a small gold perfect ladies watch and a simple gold wedding band followed by two diamond rings. She would never serve milk in a bottle or butter out of a packet. Sugar was in a special little sugar bowl. At best Mum would smile tightly at our silly jokes. Yet here she was on the last shopping trip of her life.  Choking and gasping with hysteria.  The tears ran down both our faces,   we clasped our legs together tight, completely gone, all the misery of the years of her dying just bursting out in this storm of  laughter. We were not ourselves.  Sometimes mothers just don’t behave like mothers.

Soon we could not breathe, our laughter slowly being contained in guffawing sobs,  I  was still sat on the floor and she was still jammed into her little triangle  seat, breathless now trying desperately to calm down, wiping our faces, her dragging the net up,  gulping at the air.

Then the sales girl called through the door did we need a bigger size, how was everything going and excuse me but is this your baby, he has crawled out from under the door. Mum hands froze holding the net bag,  green eyes widening in pretend terror, and we were away again.

Mothers are many people. Mary thought Mother’s Day was too commercial and would only ever accept a wild flower or maybe a handmade card.

I know the ones amongst The Fellowship who share with me the motherless Mothers Day.  I will name you all in my mind tomorrow. To you I wish a special wish. And for those of you with mothers still stomping about in their kitchens. Have a wonderful day with your good and sometimes naughty mothers. Wonderful. And give them a kiss from us.

Anyway, Mother’s day is coming. I will be quiet that day so see you Monday.

your friend, celi