I see my mother at the end of the telephone line. Smaller than me, looking up at me with her carefully gazing eyes.
Round, skittish, swathed in old clothes from a second-hand shop; and she’s almost unloved, starved of affection and
it hurts me so much to know that her life has been like this. I come from a family who never hug or kiss, who never
touch one another. A family who will hang on to dear life until the last drop of rain or tea; until life-giving spirit has withered and faded like water on desert rocks waiting, what for? Just for someone to touch them, affectionately hug them, and now she’s old and still it seems impossible to do so as if she were a prisoner, a captive who didn’t belong to me at all; a bird in a cage, watched by a bad-tempered cat that keeps rivals away. That I am seen as a rival for her affection is ironic, seeing that she’s hardly been given any affection, and doesn’t seem to know or care anymore, having accepted that life in our family is like that. It’s ironic too, how starved of affection, her children scattered like the children of Babel and developed different languages of their own. Now all she wishes for is a card, a telephone call or a letter, for these things have replaced the hug, the kiss or the touch of a hand
Tag: Family feuds
Lesley’s Song
Please click on link to see PDF of the song.
Lyrics to Lesley’s Song
Verses
Lesley’s always sitting down Trying to work out why
She don’t come to terms with people No matter how she tries shes always
She’s watching for the signs that hang On the city walls
Outside railway stations and on Foreign city halls
Lesley gets the blues you know she Gets them just like mine she
Tries to find the truth but The truth she’ll never find
The Passers by in Goodall Sstreet Don’t pay her any mind
And the church bells they go spining In the playground of humankind
She’ll sit there very nobly And then begin to quote
How it is that solid living seems to escape her the most
Just so we would see by the Distressed look in her eyes
She won’t give up trying It will be hers in time
She’s looking for the truth (you know) Without wearing her disguise
Not looking for an entrance That she follows in your eyes
For when the crisis came along She had nowhere to run
And her dreams are free floating And her heart seems over run
She’s sitting by the window cill Looking at the rain
And the window pulls a face And whispers someones name
She’s dressed in Victoriana Sometimes maybe sighing
She sits there maybe praying Then she says maybe she’s dieing
Chorus
And why oh why don’t we all break down in tears
After all the trouble Of the past ten thousand years
Tell her why, tell her why She wants to know this time
Now while it seems important And she’s in this frame of mind
