Bring out the bath-cubes, it's Mother's Day
Life used to be much less stressful when I only had one mother to look after.
When I was five, our local chemist did a roaring trade in cheap and nasty
bath-cubes. They came in two fragrances, lavender and rose, but it did not
matter which one you bought because I suspect they both smelt the same.
"Oh, just what I always wanted," mothers all around the neighbourhood would
tell their little darlings. "I’ll save this for a special occasion."
That was soooo long time ago (I was born in 1958; you work it out) and my
mother has accumulated more bath-cubes than she will ever need.
But that’s not my problem.
My concern is that I find myself having to pay homage to my wife Katherine,
who isn't even my mother, because our son Jack, not yet two, is too young
to know what Mother’s Day is all about.
Worse still, last year I found myself at a Mother’s Day function at a
Chinese restaurant with heaven knows how many other mums and screaming kids.
The day had started quite well.
I got Jack up about 7am, dressed him, gave him his milk, cooked poached
eggs and mushrooms for Katherine and delivered it to her in bed. I let Jack
carry the Mother’s Day cards upstairs and I carried the bath cubes.
"Oh, just what I always wanted," Katherine said, smiling at Jack (but not
at me). "I’ll save them for a special occasion."
Our lunch partners had two children, a toddler and a new baby, plus a baby
on the way. That’s why we chose the Chinese restaurant: to satisfy the
mother-to-be’s cravings for steamed pork bun and dim sims.
We could not have chosen a worse restaurant though.
First we had to carry the baby in his pram up 106 steps, then we had to
queue, then we discovered the restaurant had messed up our booking, then we
discovered that the baby had lost a sock and a shoe in the throng of people
and then we were sandwiched into a table that obviously was not normally
there, in the middle of a major shipping, er, yum-cha trolley lane.
We were in an enormous room, almost shoulder to shoulder with several hundred other noisy diners.
It took 20 minutes just to get our drinks and I am still baffled about what
happened to the rest of the chicken I ordered.
All they brought me was the feet.
The two toddlers were happy enough. There is a lot of joy to be had by
stuffing pieces of wanton into little toy cars.
But the baby let everyone know he was not content.
The louder he howled, the more his self-conscious pregnant mother stressed
out and the louder, crankier and more dummy-spitting the baby became. At
one stage I had to retrieve his dummy from underneath an adjacent table of
diners.
A woman nearby complained quite loudly about the racket and ended up
storming out. One wonders how anyone but a moron could really expect to get
a peaceful meal at a downmarket Chinese restaurant at lunchtime on Mother’s
Day.
Anyway, she was lucky.
She could leave.
I am stuck with Mother’s Day forever.
I need a relaxing bath. I wonder if Katherine will lend me a bath-cube?
©May, 1998 John Martin. All Rights Reserved
NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it
