I’ll always be her little boy
Lucas Hollweg was inspired by his mum to become a food writer
There’s a photo of my mum from the early 1970s, looking what today would probably be called boho chic: young and tanned, long dark hair, big sunglasses, svelte in her T-shirt, flared jeans and espadrilles. The picture was taken on a family holiday in the south of France. My sister, Rebecca, sits smiling, dark and pretty, while I cling shyly to my mum, a mousey blond little boy with a slightly dazed expression that has remained my physiognomic default in photographs ever since.
Forty years on, my mum still looks incredibly young for her age. I was walking along the street with her recently when someone I knew drove past. “I would have stopped,” they said later, “but I could see you were chatting with your friend.” That wasn’t a friend, I said, it was my mother.
Of course, she is a friend, in that way that possibly only your mum can be. A friend without reservation. At those times when I’ve felt there is nobody else to turn to, when relationships have faltered or life has taken a downward turn, my mum has been there at the end of the phone with a sympathetic ear and a consoling word. “Oh, darling, I’m so sorry,” she’ll say, and although it doesn’t change anything, somehow it helps to make things better, just as it always did when I was the mousey little boy and she was the glamorous young mother in the big shades.
My mum is a silversmith and enameller and makes wonderful, painterly jewellery. She studied at the Ruskin school of art in Oxford and worked as a scene painter at the Royal Shakespeare Company. She is a great cook, and one of the reasons I now do what I do. She knows how to deliver lambs and milk goats and herd wayward geese, and the same year that she collected her pension, she decided to take up sea rowing on the Bristol Channel. She has achieved far more than she will ever give herself credit for, not least raising two children who, I like to think, are generally happy and well balanced. Together with my dad, she has given us a model for what it is to care and to love.
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I think that, at least in part, sons always remain for their mothers the little boy that they once were. When I head off for a winter walk at my parents’ home in the countryside, my mum will still automatically tell me to wear a scarf or put on a pair of wellies rather than spoil my “best shoes”. She has no idea what my best shoes are — I’m not sure I do, or even that I have any — but she still says it. It’s part of the ritual of being mother and son. And the truth is, though I’m loath to admit it in print, the walk is invariably colder and muddier than I thought. Like mothers everywhere, she has a knack of always being right.
She’s a different person now
Toby Wiseman has seen his mum recover from a brain tumour
I met my new mother on a Tuesday evening a little less than two years ago. The setting was a recovery room in the neurosurgery unit at the Royal London Hospital. She was wired up to a battalion of machines, with a stapled lesion stretching across her frontal lobe like some corrugated Alice band. I remember thinking that she didn’t have much to say for herself.
She was evidently steeped in drugs and barely cognizant; nonetheless, her reticence struck me as odd. The old mum had barely drawn breath between utterances, yet here was a woman settling for three words where 30 would have sufficed. And besides, it was me. Her son. Where was the fire in her eyes? It had been a serious operation, they said — a tumour the size of a golf ball, we were told — so it was to be expected. Only I didn’t have a clue what to expect: all I knew was that the mother who had cosseted me for 33 years had taken leave.
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During those years, I was not aware of a stronger woman on earth. Mum’s love and passion for those she held dear could only be matched by her ferocity towards those who stood in her way. An abiding memory is of a gig she came to watch me play when I was a teenager, in a rough, east London pub. When a few cross words between precocious kids and drunken locals saw the evening turn sour, I watched as my mother switched from doting fan to unflinching aggressor, dodging broken glass, chaperoning kids out of harm’s way and issuing threats to anyone who dared challenge her authority. It was a moment that typified her character: brave, kind, obstinate and devoted.
For the old mum, opinions were not to be forged through debate, but hardened and safeguarded in the face of opposition. Reactionary in so many ways, her mind could also be extraordinarily open. I could always talk to her about sex, drugs, lost loves or deep fears, all without fear of reproach. As I contemplate it now, I can’t think of a more steadfast, immutable force in my life.
These days, the tenderness remains, but the unremitting doggedness has gone. My mother is recovered and well, yet a different, more quiescent person is here in her stead. Thankfully, the words have come back in their droves (and then some). So, too, has her irritating tendency to pass comment on the appearance of others with all the subtlety of a flying brick. Nevertheless, she upsets people less and laughs more. Most important, she is happy in herself. I am at my closest to Mum when in the company of my young son and daughter — Edie was born only five days before her operation. Though not as hands-on as she might once have been, Mum’s unconditional love for her grandchildren burns like a beacon. At times like this, I look on at her in awe of her strength. I have had two mums, and it has been a privilege to know both.
She already knew I was gay
Joel Jamieson eventually came out, aged 25, to his mum
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The other day, somebody asked me: “If you could go back in time, what would you tell yourself?”
“Not to worry,” I said. All I ever did was worry, worry about my mum having no spare cash, worry about what the teachers thought of me, worry about what they’d think when I finally got round to telling them about you know what — the sleepless nights I had as a kid. “I’m not, I’m not, I’m not,” I used to whisper to my pillow every night in bed.
When I hear of religious groups arguing against the “normalisation” of homosexuality, I rail. What about the gay kids, I think. This is not a choice, it’s genetic. I’ve never understood why they don’t just ask gay people why they’re gay? We’re born like it, you cretins. And a wonderful gift it is, too.
“Mum,” I said one Boxing Day afternoon — I must have been 25 at the time — when she was busying herself with postlunch pots and pans. “You know James, the fella I share the flat with in London?” She looked up from the sink and nodded her head. “Well, we’re not just living together — we’re, you know, living together.”
I copped out on this one, couldn’t actually bring myself to say, “I’m gay”, but she knew what I meant. All those years and tears and worries were like real things, solid and in front of me, in my hands, and I showed her and she could see them. This is me, I thought, finally. “I’m not bloody daft, son,” she said.
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Clang! It was as if somebody had dropped a tray of dessert bowls at a party. After years of worry and self-torment, it didn’t even matter. But it should matter, I thought. Why doesn’t it matter? I wanted tears and outrage and soothing chats over cups of tea — it didn’t happen like this on telly. Then, and quite what I meant by this I still don’t know, I said: “I don’t wear women’s frocks.”
“Well, if you do wear women’s frocks,” she countered, wiping some mashed potato off the hob, “just make sure they’re a size 16, then I can wear them as well.” And that was that.
My mum, my lovely mum, who never wore the right things for parents’ evening and smoked too much, who cleaned pubs to pay her way and feed her kids, didn’t give a damn. My mum, who always told me to treat everybody the same way despite their background or upbringing. My mum, who hit me over the head with a big serving spoon when I refused to eat my carrots. My mum, who asked the teachers not about my ability in maths or English, but if I was happy. My mum, who rammed a bar of soap down my throat when she caught me swearing on our street. My mum, who will thank me for calling when I pick up the telephone once a week. My mum, who, while I’m writing this, has brought tears to my eyes, because I know one day I’ll lose her.
My mum, who said I was hers and she was mine, and that’s all there was to it. My lovely mum.