Blog 10 - Tuesday 9th of Janurary - Tribute to Dulcie Baker

I hear Mum rustling in the kitchen like a hedgehog, and when I go in she’s unpacking the dishwasher and looks tired.

“Mum, I can tell you didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Aah, we’re like an old married couple “she says ,reaching for the porridge in the fridge.

We probably are in a way, as each of us has been on our own for 14 years; Dad died in May 2011, and my marriage died in August, just three months later.

Mum is cross this morning because Boydie (her son-in-law) climbed on the roof of their two-storey house and tried to install Starlink when no one was looking—bringing down the entire Wi-Fi system. It’s not the bringing down the Wi-Fi that bothers Mum, but the importance of Boydie remaining well and healthy for the good of us all. I must admit, my sister would handle misfortune more gallantly than I have; in a man’s world without a man.

Mum gets up from the table to get some more milk for her porridge. She has never once, since I’ve been staying, poured enough milk on her porridge the first time.

I glance idly at the front page of the newspaper, with its heart-breaking story of a little boy dying of an inoperable brain tumour while another little boy in North Korea plays with his nuclear toys.

There is yet one more cyclone on its way to the poor Coromandel and Gisborne. Seeing this, Mum announces,

“I will not be putting my awnings out to dry. What do you think this is—the summer holidays?”

I tell mum I’m going to walk to the shops to get our high-fibre white bread from Baker’s Delight.

“Yes, yes,” she says, getting up purposefully, “we mustn’t dawdle,” even though, in truth, the day stretches ahead of us as languorously as Rangitoto.

When I get home, Mum and Gigi are off to look at Gigi’s baby scan. They return with a video of a silhouette of a little girl bouncing off the uterine wall with her feet. She seems so content in her embryonic state of bliss, oblivious to the chaos ahead. Mum seems oddly not amazed, at this extraordinary scientific development that invades the private world of the poor baby. I am as confounded by her considered reactions to everything, as I am by my own unconsidered reactions to everything.

Gigi drives me to return the chilly bins I borrowed on Christmas Eve from Michael, the son of Jack Lum, the greengrocer. As I’m getting the boxes out (Gigi is on the phone), a very old, bent, and frail couple ask,

“Can we help you, dear?”

I realise, with a shock, how the death of my vitality has made me like an overwatered African violet.

I’m wearing a long shirt over a long skirt, a crooked bow in my hair, and red socks with Christmas trees on them. Gigi says I look unusual.

Moo Hefner rings about the tiling in the Sounds, and within two minutes, the monster that the dissolution of my marriage created emerges from the depths of me and spits and hisses at Moo Hefner’s monster. These two dying remnants of a dream that became a nightmare fight feebly, while I shake my head yes and no to the shirts Gigi is trying on.

I go home and collapse, and Moley comes round with ham and a book on how to be a writer. She looks glamorous in a mid-length blue dress with lace on the cuffs, as if she’s about to do the blue beat. I’m lying prostrate in my red Christmas socks. I say, “Doesn’t Moley look nice?” and Mum replies,

“We’re too close to Moley to know if Moley looks nice, “as Moley rolls her feet around to try and cure her plantar fasciitis.

The Russian author of Moley’s book uses a story by Chekhov as an example of how to be a great writer. I use my French book, where there is no plot or character development—just little stories about an ordinary life. I’m not sure about the title of my French book, Only the Sweetest Moments Last, as I think it might be the painful memories that last.

One of my most painful memories is when I was running in the athletic sports at Epsom Girls Grammar. Dad had come to see me run for the first time. As we all raced around, I realised I wasn’t going to win—so I stumbled, rather than not win. Dad must have known I’d fallen on purpose. I never talked to him about this, and now it’s too late. I think he didn’t want to hurt my feelings, but I wish he had, as it’s taken me a lifetime to learn—it’s not about the winning or the losing; it’s about being a good sport that matters.

I tell Mum about my visit to Jack Lum’s and how Michael (Jack Lum’s son) didn’t thank me for some fish I had put in one of the boxes.

“Darling,” she says, “intimacy just leads to confusion. You’re not looking for a love affair when you go to buy your fruit and vegetables, are you? But if you want a good watermelon, Mrs Lum will get her husband, old Jack Lum—who’s hiding out the back—to shake a few until he finds you a particularly juicy one.

She asks if I told Michael there was fish in the box, and I’m not sure I did.

I “tire les stores” (pull the curtains), and the night and the television carry mum and me away from the day, with its never-ceasing demands to be worthwhile human beings.

We watch Julie and Julia, and Julie, the younger cook, holds up her cooking bible.

Alarmingly i hear mum cry “It’s Larousse Gastronomique, I gave that book to Epsom Girl’s Grammar School in memory of Dulcie Baker, the head girl who was so kind to me when I moved from Wellington to Auckland in my final year of school. If someone did something wrong, Dulcie would just try and understand why they chose to do what they did not tell them off. When I heard she had died when we both still so young i was passionate enough to want to honour her memory.

This random clue to the mystery of who my mother is delighted me. Jamie says you die twice: once when you die, and again when someone says your name for the last time. Well, Dulcie lives again because of Mum. She lives on through her kindness.

I have a little session of torturing myself before I go to sleep. I dip into Facebook, and there are pictures of Moo Hefner and his new friends, and there are children (not mine) laughing as they go down a waterslide off the jetty at our family bach. Underneath these photos of strange children, someone has written: “Our happy place.”

I pop a sleeping pill and read my French book about the sweet things in life making it what it is. I’m not sure if I’ve even translated the title correctly. I am exhausted—but I have a very loud fart, which is very comforting, as it means my new bowel will be on duty while I sleep.

Please help me translate.