My Mother Down Under

She came back the next day. Borrowed the fixings for sandwiches, and money for stout and put on the lunch and the show. The pattern was repeated, the performance perfected, with each of our Baptisms, First Holy Communions, and Confirmations, but she got a job as a waitress so she could pay her own way.

Looking at my First Holy Communion picture now I see that she had forgotten to take the protective plastic off the gold velvet armchair, so I looked like a brand new Barbie doll in my plastic wrapper, shifting uncomfortably in layers of lace and itchy tulle. I can just barely make out the hint of gold where my newly pierced ears burned proudly beneath my starched veil and gold ringlets. I couldn’t wait to fling back my hair and show Mary Nugent that my mother had let me get my ears pierced.

The photographer waved a tatty bear, forcing not-so-funny faces to get me to smile. If he’d turned the camera over his shoulder, he would have seen my father decked out in his slim fitting navy suit and fat knotted tie, swaying ever so slightly and with a little too much twinkle in his eye for that time of the morning. My grandmother stood to the right of the photographer exclaiming over my lace gloves and matching bag in an effort to break the tension and get me to break a gap-toothed smile for posterity. We could then send my picture of innocence to relatives in America and Australia to prove that all was roses with Geraldine and her family. My mother stood in the corner, next to the glass cabinet, the back of her highlighted Rod Stewart hair reflected in the mirror behind the good china cups. She smiled at me, like there was no spilled tea on the carpet, no whingeing little toddler dragging on her stockings, no arguing sons, no husband talking too loudly to my grandfather, no mother faking appearances, no frustrated photographer. She smiled from beneath her frosted blue eyelids, and I smiled too. So everything was grand.

She’ll be a citizen of Australia in a few months. She’s already made a dent in Bunbury’s kangaroo population and fixed a few in her big truck, and when she calls, she says “g’day” instead of “how’s it goin’,” so the ceremony and piece of paper will only confirm her induction. I’m not sure how long she’ll hang out there once officially an Aussie. She’s suggested an India trip, which might mean she’s buying a house there. I’m hunting for a single and kind man with a winery in Napa to sway her in the event that she feels another itch in her feet.

I’d fully supported her move down under. She needed to go. She was single and lost in Ireland, where fifty-year olds are smug and settled. She was running a B&B business and running herself ragged, cracked from past betrayals and frequent family dramas. The pressure of keeping up the self-imposed act was making her hard and so she ran away. She ran as far away as she could, like there was no aging mother she loved dearly begging her to stay, no friends questioning her sanity, no sisters and brothers crying at the airport, no kids and grandkids for whom she was home, no day-and-a-half flight from those she loved. She ran, though she’d never run before, and we all cheered from the sidelines. So everything was grand.