Grace under pressure

Press, 6 December 1989, Page 19

Grace under pressure

This week-end my mother will be “mumble” years old. Her three children are delighted, but enormously surprised, that she has made it this far without succumbing to killing us, killing our father, or contracting a heart condition as a result of the two aforementioned factors.

Born in Dunedin, and a product of Otago Girls’ High, my mother has faced up to living with an eccentric and three children of dubious qualities ..very well. " When my sister (at the tender age of three) ran away with the milkman (by hitching a lift on his milk truck) she took it in her stride. She was just as calm when my brother (at around the same age) “posted” our cat’s kittens through the holes in the foundations of our house. I, naturally, was a model child, and gave her very little trouble. « The slight sniffle that resulted in my having a lung whipped out was just one of those childhood illnesses, I tell her. The ringworm which followed was not my fault either. That I caught it while trying to make a pet out of the hedgehog which lived in the bottom of the garden was incidental. Nor was my sister entirely to blame when she /set fire to an early model ►-“Minerva.” The car, which was minding its own business in the garage, was the victim of some unexplained spontaneous combustion.

I like to think we gave her some happy moments in Marion Street, South Dunedin. Like the time

my sister and I collected money from all the children in the neighbourhood with the promise of delivery of a pony the next day. Perhaps it was this sort of early entrepreneurial activity which prompted our move to Christchurch shortly afterward. Christchurch meant a change of house, a change of fortunes, and our mother’s greatest challenge of all ... guiding us through our teenage years.

I maintain to this day that my sister was no less trouble than I during these heady days, she simply got caught less often.

Our mother, being a sensible chap, was content to lose a few battles while winning the war. In this way she saved her sanity while still managing to instil a tad of personal responsibility in her offspring. Possessing a logical and orderly mind, she is hard to argue with. Facts, figures, and pertinent information are at her fingertips. If it happened, and was ever recorded or preserved as a piece of history, she has the answer. When Trivial Pursuit was the going thing, everyone wanted our

mother on their side. This ability to grasp and retain facts and figures has not gone to her head however. She still does her crosswords in pencil. If it’s in writing, she files it. If it carries a suitcase she puts it up for the night. If it arrives anywhere within two hours of a respectable dining time she feeds it. All these responsibilities, however, pale in comparison with her major role in life. “Taking Care of Father.” "Taking Care of Father" involves relieving

him of anything whicn smacks of domestic trivia. Thus, when they journey overseas, she does everything bar have his innoculations and stand in for his passport photo. This may seem a strange role for a liberated woman to take on, but, as she so rightly points out, far better to do the groundwork than spend hours in Heathrow Airport looking for father’s travellers cheques, passport, glasses, or fishing tackle. It can’t be easy for her

to board international flights with a grown man who carries his favourite pillow from country to country, but she does it with aplomb and good grace. As her children we hope we have given her a few things to smile at over the years, but we feel her real joy comes from her grandchildren. Not only does she love them for their own sake, but she gets a great deal of pleasure out of watching us try and instil socially acceptable behaviour into three preschoolers.