“It’s true what they say, isn’t it? You can’t beat sunshine”
I remove all incriminating teenage paraphernalia and dropped undergarments from spare room, rig up bedside lamp, put fresh linen on bed and flowers from the garden in a jug.
Bedroom primed, and my children primed to unstinting charm, good manners and selfless thought for others — which my mother likes but fortunately, does not expect — I pick her up from the airport. She’s just flown in from a visit to my brother in Geneva, which she says, was “very relaxed”. The general ambience of the trip — created by blue skies, 28 degrees, and three young, biddable grandchildren — was wonderful.
Walking towards the airport exit, she says “it was so hot we all swam in Lake Geneva — you know — the massive lake with the Jet D’Eau?”
She continues, “It’s true what they say, isn’t it? You can’t beat a bit of sunshine.” Visiting her six children’s families, mum says, is “like getting little camera snapshots of family life, you know, with its ups and downs and ins and outs. Yes,” she concludes, “that’s exactly what it’s like.”
I’m not sure I like mum’s snapshot analogy, not when applied to family life. A camera, I feel, is a capricious and unreliable device. And the thing about the snapshot, is that it can just as easily catch an unflattering angle as a good one.
We run to the car, coats over our heads. We get in and sit, gasping. “I can smell petrol fumes,” mum says. These emanate from a jerry can, which spilled half its contents two days ago in the boot, but opening a window is absolutely out of the question, since summer has now been recalled completely: vindictive rain pounds the bonnet like bullets. “Good god, what’s that terrible squeak?” asks mum as I start the engine. “It’s the windscreen wiper. It’s lost its rubber,” I say. She seems unaccountably happy with this snapshot of my life, however. “It’s lovely to see you, darling,” she smiles.
Hammering rain. Instead of sitting outside in the sun with the bumble bees rolling around in roses, mum and I are talking my eldest daughter out of an existential crisis in her bed, where she wants to stay: “Sunshine is actually the meaning of life, mum,” she says with a straight face. “I’m going to jack in my job and go to Portugal.” This is followed by a heated discussion about who needs the car most this morning: is itA. Me — because I need to use it in altruistic service of others? Or B. My eldest daughter — because she wants to drive to her boyfriend’s house, in order to discuss the logistics of fleeing to Portugal?
Mum and I are sitting on the sofa in my daughters’ identical dressing gowns — navy with white spots.
Defeated by a day driving here and there in unremitting downpour, we’re clutching hot water bottles. “Like two spotted horrors,” mum says. I’m not quite as pleased with this description as she is.
We’re watching Call the Midwife. The uplifting nature of the programme is offset by my daughter’s continuing existential despair: last minute flights to Portugal are not cheap.
Rain is still rocketing down outside. I’m trying to file my column online. There’s something wrong with my computer. It’s punctuating any sentence I type, with h’s and g’s.
Two expletive-filled hours, and many “trouble-shooting windows” later, I’m resting my head on my laptop, trying not to scream. It’s still raining. I forget that’s it’s nice to be nice and good to be good, and bite my husband’s head off when he comes home from work. Mum witnesses all with great good humour.
Driving back from the airport, after dropping mum off in the rain.
The sun comes out, ambushing me suddenly like a gigantic, brilliant spotlight.
Arriving home, I find my daughter’s existential despair has disappeared entirely. My husband’s reading the newspaper outside. The bees are rolling around in the roses. The distant sea glitters. “Snapshots,” I think, “so bloody hit and miss.”
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