Replaying richly coloured memories of his mother Helen leaves the Tasmanian Booker Prize-winner overcome by regret, grief and gratitude.
When I grew up, it took me some time to understand what people meant when they talked about women’s hands being beautiful when the hands about which they talked seemed unformed, so slight and unmarked as to appear as if they had never lived. My mother’s hands were not like that. They revelled in life. If her tongue was vivid, her hands were eloquent.
When we made it home to Hobart in the island’s south where the soil was miserable grey clay, she would empty the bags over a patch of the backyard that was henceforth decreed the potato patch, her hands picking up the greasy lumps and crumbling them. Once – but once only – I saw another side. In her 70s she came to visit me – no doubt she brought some food, she never arrived empty-handed – and when she was leaving we somehow – I don’t remember how – ended up sitting in her car and she spoke of how difficult our father was, how since his retirement he would sort out her cupboards and drawers, expressing dissatisfaction with the way she kept them. Her cupboards and her drawers, her smallest of dominions and one of the few allowed her.
Her hands were capable of other things – they could, when she was angry, which was not infrequently for she was fiery and impetuous, deliver what was called a whack – a resounding blow from the open hand, or slamming the flat of a kitchen knife hard across the back of a hand or, in a wild flailing, hitting one or another of us with a wooden jam spoon , which she sometimes broke on us.
One day, as an old woman, she broke down in her kitchen while talking with me. “I am so sorry,” she kept saying; I had no idea what she meant. I took her hand, once so strong and sometimes so frightening, now arthritic and affectionate. As you learn that you are written upon you learn to read people. My hearing difficulties took me away from the spoken word, where to this day I stumble and mispronounce and cover and panic and suffer, in consequence, attacks of shyness, and took me into the world of the written word, where I found ease and joy. I found myself on the page, not as one but as many.
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Author Richard Flanagan on his mum – and one ‘vast achievement’ he’d overlookedReplaying richly coloured memories of his mother Helen leaves the Tasmanian Booker Prize-winner overcome by regret, grief and gratitude.
Read more »
Women frontline soldiers deserve better recognition, says author Sarah PercyFor centuries, women have been part of battlefields, including on the frontline. So why do we seem to have so much trouble acknowledging and commemorating them?
Read more »
Voice referendum: Richard Marles, how did voters ‘get it right’?Referendum: questionable response, other voices, Tesla drivers, voting trend; RBA independence; Trump’s generosity; Mid-East anger; the politics of renewables.
Read more »
Richard Roundtree: how Shaft’s ‘first Black action hero’ changed culture for everWith his smarts, swagger and unapologetic sexuality, Rowntree – who died on Tuesday aged 81 – spearheaded a new type of Black masculinity in mainstream cinema
Read more »
Exclusive subscriber offer: Richard Glover in conversationJoin Sydney Morning Herald columnist Richard Glover as he celebrates the release of his new book Best Wishes at a special Q&A event.
Read more »
This author crossed paths with Princess Diana three times. It inspired a novelWendy Holden’s encounters with the beloved royal prompted her to write a fictionalised retelling of her young life.
Read more »