Shop 4/ 1 Dawson St Strathalbyn SA 5255 0438847329 tbkstrathalbyn@gmail.com Tuesdays to Saturdays 10am to 4pm

Tag: Mothers and daughters

The Umbrella

The Book Keeper5 Comments on The Umbrella

There is a young girl sitting cross legged in the corner with an umbrella rising up and over one shoulder, the curved handle announcing exactly her small neck.

There is her mother with a rucksack over one shoulder, standing nearby and looking at book after book in Health.

There is silence in here, but outside raining like mad loudly and cars swishing past then stillness and people running across the road trying to be fast because of the rain but they all do the rain dance. This is a highstep dodging the traffic jump sideways kinds of dance where you end up next to a caravan that’s not yours and rain everywhere anyway.

There’s mud all over the footpath;  every time the door opens I can see it. And wet paper bags and a coffee cup blown across from the bakery.

It’s getting darker and darker even though it’s the middle of the day. A couple look in and she says, ‘Want to have a look, Neil?’, and he says, ‘God no, can get them for half the price online.’ He keeps on peering in, looks right at me. She looks at him. They move away.

The mother and daughter are both kneeling next to the shelves. The umbrella has been laid aside. I can still see its curved handle, a perfect expression, holding its ground and not available online.

A car has to brake suddenly right out there next to my shop. The sound of brakes makes me look up. All the occupants have been jerked forward. I can see mouths moving, heads turning all about.

Mother and Daughter are shoulder to shoulder looking out of the window, and the umbrella is still on the floor in the corner, looking warm and useful.

When I look up a little later, the girl is in the chair. Her mother is kneeling next to the umbrella. It looks after her knee. The rain is coming down. The windows are cold dotted with it.

A couple cross the road come towards me. They break into a sprint for three steps, then calm it into a fast walk, avoiding the water in the air but ending up soaked anyway. They don’t come in. They go to the bakery.

The mother and daughter come to the counter. They look happy. The umbrella is hooked over the girl’s arm.

There’s no time

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Two ladies came in, mother and daughter. It’s cold. They are wearing bright jumpers, black scarves, fingerless gloves and they carry umbrellas. They are anxious because back in the bakery, they noticed three ambulances going past.

Why are there that many?

Is this normal for Strathalbyn?

But I didn’t know. I had noticed the sirens, though.

They stayed for a long time but didn’t choose any books. The mother was enthusiastic for Liane Moriarty. She went through the plot of two of her novels for me. Not the third one, because that one didn’t hold her. At the third chapter of that book, she just put it down. No thanks! No more for me! I’m a busy person and can’t just use my time on a book like that.

Her daughter was holding the door open, wanting to leave. But mum kept talking, even though the cold swept in and wrapped us all in fresh wool.

Mum, we’re going. It’s time.

Her mother gave me a dark look, indicating what she had to put up with. At the door, she turned the wrong way, and her daughter took her arm firmly and turned her back toward the car.

The mother was saying she thought they needed some eggs.

But there was no time.

 

Linda and Monique

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Charlie Devoli 2

Linda and Monique are mother and child. Today they are here at the shop, it is so cold, it is grey and dark but inside is warm and the coloured lights are at their best. Linda sits and reads, she is a still pool, just sitting and reading.

Monique, though, moves from shelf to shelf, from book to book, she examines pages and covers and the last page of everything. She is wearing thongs, not feeling the cold, she circles the table with the blue lights around the lantern and she gently touches this string of sapphire light. Then she puts the Redwall volumes back in order. Now she has The Clockwork Prince and she reads standing up. Linda reads on.

Other customers move quietly around them, the mother, a still pool, but busy, I don’t know what she is reading. The daughter darting again from treasure to treasure, examining the top shelves, the bottom stacks, the fallen books, the crooked books and ones that have ended up under the table. She reads the picture books, carefully and thoughtfully. Linda reads on, a still pool.

Monique reads standing on one foot, her head bent slightly to one side, a smaller pool, but already becoming a bigger one. Now she sits cross legged amongst science fiction and is she looking at Ursula Le Guin.

Linda reads on, a still pool.

Photography by Charlie Devoli

I have a Mother

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I have a mother who shielded me from the blows of her own childhood. She must have had to kneel most of her adult life, arms outspread and shoulders fatigued, in order to stave off the poverty and sadness of her past so that none of it reached us. Nonetheless, some got through. This is because her past is part of her; some things must get through, the things she needed, like air.

Just enough for me, when I was young, to seize it with relief and lay the blame.

I have a mother who took the blame quietly.

I have a mother who still surrounds the kitchen and criticises my lack of scones. Whose years are numbered but can still allow hours of minutes on mending one torn seam or a labelling the jam or listening without judgement to an announcement of divorce.

I have a mother who gave me the stubborns.

I have a mother, the loss of whom will break granite, easily.

I always positioned myself in the alert; cautiously, to break tradition, and ensure superiority (I will do a better job etc).

No need. This is what she wanted anyway. And after all the hard work, I didn’t do a better job.

Now I must watch my own daughters circle intelligently, alert and compassionate,  impressed by Nanna, but rarely of me. They intend to do a better job than me.

I have a mother who worked tremendously hard and rarely had time to tell me that I was valuable. So then, later I could say triumphantly that I was not valuable.

She told us stories of the past, sorting the lovely from the ugly, shielding us from bad memory as beneath a poor and sagging umbrella.

She carried the milk home from the dairy in a billy can, once she spilt the milk all over the road.

Her father, Ben, was a fabulous gardener.

They were very poor. One day, her mother went to the dentist and had every tooth pulled out. Then she came home and made dinner.

She can remember the first time she tried chewing gum. She always loved reading. I have always carried a memory of early summer, the morning and a pile of red books. There was also an almond tree and warm sand, these things all go together.

She had a baby sister that died.

She was afraid of her father.

She remembers in detail when I was born.

Artwork by Keith Negley