Mum's Words 1

Mums Words.

They say that growing up, everyone has an Idol, a perfect kind of ideal that changes from person to person as they age. I had one, and she’d always been someone I’d looked up too.  She was someone who, in her own strange form of consistency was always there. I grew up first knowing she was all mine to idolise, then as I got older, watching her go around a fix everyone around us.

It’s a cliché isn’t it? I remember the first time I discovered there were right and wrong answers to questions. I was six, still so young in the scheme of things, but thrilled at having reached the age I had. Finally a ‘big kid’ allowed to go to school, allowed to reach into a world I’d enviously watched my cousins enter into. It was in that first class, sitting nervously at the front of the class I waited, my back pulled into an uncomfortably straight position, keen to prove to the new friends and teacher just how extraordinary I was going to be.

The poor girls around me must have been in a state of shock, in the same manner I would have collected up my dolls to start a new game; I’d ran up to them, all standing quietly for children our age, and grouped them into a circle around me. I’d not made many friends outside my family before, and I dealt with these new intrusions into my life the sameway I dealt with everything back then. Loudly and decisively. Mum had said school was fun, to my naive logic; games were fun so school must be a game. If it were a game then I had to get a team together quickly and the other girls in my grade were quickly rifled through and grouped together.

Its almost funny looking back, for a girl who would later struggle to even say hello to a new person, I made my first transition into my peer group easily. Sitting there, with my new ‘gang’ giggling around me, I was as in control of my life as I’d always been. Miss Bronwyn, the new teacher, was young, pretty and everything I’d expected. My voice sung out loudly with an enthusiastic ‘present’ when my name was called, completely uncaring that the general consensus called for a simple here. I was here, but I was here on my terms, and I was doing it my way. 

Miss B asked the question straight away, mixing it into the other questions that made up our getting to know you lesson.  “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I was stricken, my perfect world shaken too slightly to be noticed, but enough that everything was off kilter. I didn’t understand it, I want to be myself, still, I had to answer straight away if I wanted to make the impression I wanted. My hand shot up quickly almost aggressively. “Yes Michelle?”

“I want to be me still, but I want lots of friends and I wanna laugh lots and lots.”  With the eyes of the whole class burning into my skin with what I imagined was adoration; I stared directly at Miss B. The corners of her mouth twitched up in amusement.

“That’s a good answer, but that’s not what I mean. What do you want to be, what job?” A giggle ran through the class, I was furious. How dare she say my answer was wrong, she didn’t know what I wanted to be and I’d told her the truth? My mind was racing, if the last answer had been important then the next one would be even more so. I thought back, my Barbie dolls had jobs, they were princesses. My mother burst into my mind with inspiration, her exasperated voice raised over the little game I was playing with my sister. “Princesses, why are they princesses? Can’t they be rubbish truck drivers?” I looked up at the teacher, a triumphant smile growing quickly across my face. “Twuck driver” I announced happily, my concentration on wrapping my mouth around the letter R forgotten in my excitement. Her chest heaved slightly, shaking as she raised a hand to her mouth, bemused by the little girl who’d chosen the uniform’s skirt rather than the shorts, who’s hair was pinned up in curly pigtails with ribbons, insistently declaring that she would grow up to be a truck driver. The class was quiet, intent on the conversation.

“And who do you want to be like when you grow up?” The teacher asked, her voice leaping up above the growing silence. My smile broadened, I may have got the last one wrong but this one as easy.

“My Mum.” Twisting around I pointed enthusiastically to the back of the room where the parents were one by one gradually walking out, assured that their children had settled in happily, even the kids that had screamed and cried in the role call. Mum turned around right as she got to the door, a small embarrassed yet proud look on her face as she flashed me a reassuring smile.  My smile broadened; Mum had even gotten to see how smart I was. Perfect. People’s eyes darted quickly from me to my mother, her loose tie-dye pants and black t-shirt alone setting her apart from the other parents. She was almost ten younger than them too, her skin still smooth accepting the deep laugh lines that had gathered around her eyes.

“That’s nice” She turned to the girl next to me as mum turned and walked out the door. “Rebecca, what about you?”  Rebecca, one of the new members of my possie, gave me an almost apologetic smile.

“I want to be a princess, and I want to be like on Sally on Playschool.” Miss B smiled indulgently and moved on to the next girl. My world had officially been shaken for the first time. My answer had been wrong. I’d been wrong before, but I’d always been given a chance to explain my answer, or at least have the correct one explained to me.

Listening to my classmates all give their various glamorous jobs and famous role models I realised that there had been something socially wrong with my answer, for my classmates at least. It would be almost ten years before it would again be socially acceptable to have my mother and her idea’s as Idols, but even if it wasn’t expressed publically again, for me the answer wouldn’t change. My parents and their ideals made sense, and were, for the most part, accepted instantly.

There wasn’t a time in my life where I didn’t want to grow up to be like my Mum.