That part of me, though, as I say – my life then and all the rest of it – is not who I am, I like to think. Years have gone by and you’ve put it away so you won’t think about it, maybe, but even so. Little kids and pretty shaky alright, so Mam’s routines and her way of saying things. We were young, I suppose, and not that tough. “Come here, you”, she’d be saying, after cooking or washing up or whatever, and we kids would come right back at her that we didn’t want to go and sit on her knee for a bit of quiet time and a chat but of course we did want to. There’d be six or seven of us living with her but she had the time for each of us in turn, as though we really were the only one. “Come here, me old shakies” she’d call out and we’d answer back, “Ah no, get off! Get out!”, but still we wanted to be close and she knew we did. She gave us the look, you know: You’re my darling only, and had this word for us, that we were her shakies, all ship mates on some adventure or other. All of us thought she was pretty special. You let yourself forget.īut Mam was a bit crazy and not trying to act like she wanted you to need her - is what made her different I guess. Is what I’m getting at, and remember good and proper. She seemed more than the rest of them to be like a real mother. The going from one place to another, trying this thing, the next - but then, oh look, there was this one house, wasn’t there? And the woman in it. The whole mess of it – institutions, foster homes. Remembering all at once the past you thought was put behind you, being a kid and frightened half the time. Some scene or other rises up like the crack of a rifle and there’s the rabbit killed. You’re just living, one day, another day and then – Bang. You’re not thinking about them, or about that part of your life at all. "We were just all of us on the raft of the table": of mothers and childrenįunny how things leap out. ReadingRoom Short story: Mam’s tables, by Kirsty Gunn
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