On my ma, who I always miss
In another life, my mum would've been an actor. A very specific type of actor – the super-dramatic, theatrical type, the ones who used to be guests on talk shows in the 1970s, wearing expensive silk dresses by somewhat obscure but well-regarded British designers with nondescript names. The ones who'd call the chat show hosts by their old-fashioned Christian first names and it would be familiar instead of cringey – Michael, I am telling you! or David, I swear, that director wanted me to strip! and maybe even Oh, stop it, Terry. That's the kind of actor my mum would be.
She'd have a friendly rivalry with Shirley Bassey (privately, they'd chat about the industry and how it ain't shit for black women, together, over cocktails) and because my mother is both black and British, she would've been the type of British actor who was "the first..." a lot. She'd have played Juliet at the RSC at an improbable age because of her unlined face (and wooed the critics, by the way), and because of the way Hollywood works, my mother would be entering an interesting new phase of her career right about now: the phase that yields Oscars and rapturous NYT profiles and long-sleeved red carpet dresses and jewels that sit regally in the smooth and plump cushion of elder stateswoman décolletage.
But my mum is not an actor.
She is a person who cares for, and looks after people. Not just those of us she is bound to by blood, or love, but pretty much everyone – it's her job to look after sick people, people who will die of whatever ails them at the time her services are required. Her 'love language' (whatever the fuck that is) is all of the above: gifts, physical touch, affirmations, acts of service and quality time. And add a few more things to that: food, prayers, fussing, a sharp or tender word to pull you back into (or out of) yourself. My mum's laugh is loud and mischievous; her eyes water when she's trying to tell a story that's just too funny for words. My mum is a gifted mimic, and a cruel one too, like all good mimics should be. She is often the funniest person in the room, even when she is telling a story she's told a hundred times before. My mum loves an audience, and I love being in that audience, encouraging her, enjoying her. She is a star. But her spotlight is generous. She is the most glamorous person I can think of (Diana Ross included).
I have heard so many stories during this last month I've been living at "home". There are a few new ones, but we fall back very easily into the ones we know best: that time i refused to eat anything but baked beans when we arrived in Lagos from London; when my sister would pick out all the onions in the fried eggs to eat on their own; how my cheeks looked when I was little; stories about how Dad makes her laugh, still; what London looked like when she was still a newbie in the city in the '70s; tales of her grandmother, from whom my mother inherited her fine, curly hair (we got my dad's thicker, coarser hair, thank goodness) as well as her wicked sense of humour.
It's been nice to come home but I'm moving out soon. I miss mum already, though. I always miss my mum, even when I don't.