The card that doesn't come

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It was my birthday this week. And yes, it was lovely and, yes indeed, I was totally spoilt. But the truth is that birthdays do change over time. They are bittersweet. And I know I’m an old bugger, because I care less about what I’m going to get and more about what I already have. And I still kind of sulk a bit that my parents don’t send me a card. I know they have their reasons, but still…

It was December 2^nd, 2008, and I was at LAX waiting to board a flight to the UK.

We’d moved to the States just six weeks earlier, and I’d planned that the next time we went back to the UK, it would be for a holiday or to go back and stay. This was neither.

Just so you know, in my opinion, as airports go LAX sucks. It’s busy and full of noise, unpredictable, and it always seems to have some area under reconstruction. In fact, it’s so often under reconstruction, you’d think they’d have constructed something wonderful by now, but it’s not so.

I’ve turned up early for my flight. I didn’t want to get stuck at security, but then when I got to security, there was no queue, and I headed through to my gate, which was in an area of the airport that was a homage to construction. It was bleak. Like the place, Feng Shui had come to die. Just rows of plastic chairs surrounded by walls of plastic sheeting.

It was so early in the morning that it could almost be categorized as the middle of the night. So there were no swanky little coffee shops selling overpriced beverages. No little snack stores selling flight pillows and extortionate nik-naks.

There was nothing to do but sit and wait. On the plastic sheeting, some random optimist had placed a printed “Happy Holidays” sign. It didn’t make me feel particularly festive.

It had been a crazy year. I’d started the year living in London. Then, I’d been over in LA for work in mid-September, after which I was offered a job starting in late October. It meant I’d have six weeks to pack up one house, find another to live in, find a school for Fergus, and deal with the fact that Mark’s visa meant that he wouldn’t be able to work and so everything would financially fall on my shoulders, and this new job. Even for a sane person, that’s pretty daunting.

My mother called me from her sick bed.

“6 weeks is plenty of time. Stop worrying. Life is for living.”

I accepted the job. We had arrived in America with 8 suitcases and nothing much else. Six-year-old Fergus was still wearing his school uniform, as we’d picked him up straight from school.

We picked up the keys to our house that we’d only ever seen on the internet. It had been advertised as part-furnished. When we arrived, we discovered that in this particular instance, “part-furnished” meant it had a cooker and a refrigerator.

There’s something weird about walking into a house you’ve never been in before – especially an empty house – but you know you’re going to live in. I felt strangely unprepared. Like there should have been some ceremony. Almost immediately, I felt like I would be intensely sad there. I told myself it was because there was no furniture.

If it had been tough on my mother to see her grandchildren move so far away, she didn’t say. Instead, she wanted to know how they were settling in: how Fergus had dealt with his first day at elementary school, Lachlan had been shoplifting pacifiers from Target again and hiding them in his stroller.

In the first few weeks, I called her every day.

Whenever I asked how she was doing, she’d mention the weather, and then she’d ask about what was happening with me.

She laughed when I told her Fergus had an American accent after a week. And guffawed when I said that Mark and I had just had the biggest argument of our marriage over whether to buy something called a ‘loveseat’.

Even when I told her I had this weird feeling that I was going to be sad in this house, sadder than I’d ever been, she said. “Everything’s just as it’s meant to be.”

On November 30th, 2008, from my partly furnished house in North Hollywood, I called my mother to tell her just how much I loved her, and on December 1st, she went to sleep and didn’t wake up again.

And so it was December 2^nd and I was sitting at the airport on my own.

Both Mark and I wanted to go back, but our sons were so young. Too young to make the journey and too young to face a funeral. I was 43, and I felt too young. I was the child, and I was also the mother, and there were 5000 miles to be crossed, and I didn’t want to leave them behind.

When you’re desperate, you look for a sign in everything. If the sun goes behind a cloud, that means we’ll all fly back for the funeral. If the first coin I pick out of my purse is a quarter, I should go on my own. Stupid, but some decisions seem so impossible, you look for help from anywhere.

“Happy Holidays,” said the fucking sign on the plastic sheeting.

I was the adult now. Of course, I should go on my own.

My mobile rang, and I answered it without really thinking, figuring it would be Mark, or maybe Fergus calling me in his pajamas as he was getting ready for school. It wasn’t. I had a message.

“Hi honey,” came my mother’s voice. “I don’t know how it was I missed you. Either I was too early or you were too late. Anyway, send my love to everyone.”

And there in the middle of the shittiest part of the shittiest airport at the shitiest time of the morning, I laughed and cried and kind of sneezed as my body tried to work out how to respond to the cacophony of feelings I had.

Clearly, there are loads of different reasons why that happened. Clearly, it could have been some technical glitch that meant it was an earlier message that I should have picked up and didn’t. And clearly, if you knew my mother, who had never knowingly not had an opinion about anything, you’d conclude she’d found a way to send one last goodbye.

The first birthday after she died, I was annoyed that she didn’t send a card. Unreasonable, yes, I know. But since when has reason ever had any dictate over feelings? I expected it because it had always been there, then it somehow should. That was when I decided that she and my dad were on some cruise ship somewhere, and the postal service is terrible. I had to lower my expectations. They’d send a message if they could, but they’re enjoying themselves, so they can’t.

They’ve been joined now by my big bestie, Ashley, and my comedy buddy Stu, and my pal Maryanne, who, laughing, decorated my house for my fiftieth party, but couldn’t see me on my birthday this year, because she’s hanging out with them too.

But I still had a lovely time. I guess that’s how I know I am an old buggar. Because each year on my birthday, I think about what is still, and what once was, so beautiful, And about how completely, magnificently bittersweet life is. And that nothing need ever be taken for granted.

We are all, every hour of every day, traveling. And as hard as it sometimes is to accept, it has to be much better than being stuck at LAX.

xo

PS: Every time you click on the wee heart emoji on this post to like it, somebody somewhere has a birthday wish come true. That’s a complete and total lie obviously, but it doesn’t half perk up my algorithm.

P. P. S: If you’re feeling the world is a bit dodgy and you’re out of whack with it, come a and join me and Mr Tweddle this Thursday at…

Click Here

And because I am totally showing off - look, I have a book for sale. Written when I had two fully functioning arms - though no better grasp of punctuation.

Volume 2 is available now: US, UK, Can, Aus

Audiobook link https://amzn.to/3Dh0MVP

If you do buy a copy, please leave a review on the site as it helps people know that I write in proper sentences… ahem sometimes xo

The card that doesn't come - Audio