Word: mumming
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...elder Booth "was a natural-born bully," writes his ever-upbeat son. "On the other hand, I did grow up mixing a mean cocktail." The heroine is his mother - spunky, intelligent and curious about all things Chinese. Dad, a civilian employee of the navy, wants to go home; Mum wants to stay. As the family heads for the ship that will return them to England, she impulsively grabs Martin and leaps from the car. Gweilo is artfully shy of detail about what comes next, and sadly there will be no sequel. So this sunny, luminous account of a very special...
...mum insists that I call her regularly whenever I go traveling, and prior to my trip to the West Coast, I obliged as usual. I didn’t mind when I was a kid and felt a sense of achievement when I dialed what seemed like an endless stream of digits to reach home. But as I grew older and filled half my passport with visas and stamps, my mum’s litany of questions became all too familiar: “Are you eating well?” “Did you bring everything you need...
...start life in a retirement village. I felt I called much too often to say the exact same things again and again. I really did not need reminding to drink bottled water or to put on a warm jacket as the weather gets cold. So when my mum asked that I call her every night while I was traveling on the West Coast, I thought it was mildly excessive. After all, I am in New Zealand, where people drive on the left, and things are so clean you have to struggle to get sick. But I agreed nonetheless?...
Then at once the road reappeared. Beep…beep! My phone lit up. It has found a faint signal—just one bar, but enough to call home. As I parked to talk with my mum, I kept the engine running and left the headlights on. I told her about the people I met that day and the glaciers I would visit tomorrow. She asked me all the usual questions, to which I gave all my usual answers. But this time it was different—I carefully considered each question before replying. Through the encompassing darkness...
Despite my anxieties, my car never broke down and I arrived home safely to Christchurch a week later. My mum didn’t really rescue me that night, and I still hate even to contemplate the possibility that her constant reminding has in some ways changed how I behaved or increased my chances of survival in this world. But while I make my “check-in” calls, and answer mum’s same questions with the same replies, something fundamental has changed. One thing is for sure, I will know...