Memories of heartfelt mothering

By Julie Myerson, FT.com site

Published: Aug 25, 2007 

My mother-in-law's home is a large, airy groundfloor apartment at Vauxhall in London, overlooking the Thames. Look to the left and you see the vast, faceless M16 building, eyes shut to the world; to the right all the slick new developments at Nine Elms. On summer nights, boats slide up and down this water, pumping out disco music - snatches of boogie that fade as fast as they arrive, dissolving into the blue-black darkness. This used to be the damp, dirty heart of London. A century and a half ago, there were impoverished cottages on these mud-flats, children with sore eyes and runny noses, babies wrapped in rags. The river's stench grew unbearable each summer.

Now the only smells are of the well-watered lawns that stretch from the neat, paved terrace down to the river walkway below, blowsy roses, lavender and the occasional whiff of salt or fuel. My mother-in-law - then 60ish, elegant, a dead-ringer for Lauren Bacall - moved here 20 years ago, knowing it would be ideal when old age came. But now old age has come and, immobilised with back pain for which she's awaiting an operation, she finds even the river provides little distraction.

I'm in her kitchen, making her a cup of tea, which makes me sound like a better daughter-in-law than I am because I'm conscious that I've given her less time than I should have recently. Consumed with work and worry and difficult teenage children, I've thought of her but not quite enough, felt guilty but never quite guilty enough.

I'm in the kitchen, this small white kitchen, a place I too have known for 20 years. She'd just moved in when I met her son. The flat is so immaculately neat and white that you can be here for hours and somehow leave no trace. Antique furniture gleams; there is a red glass bowl, a flowerless vase, a silent grand piano. The sun pours in but bodies leave no shadows. If an object is moved, it's quickly replaced.

But pieces of me are scattered everywhere. Here I've been a girlfriend, daughter-in-law, mother, wife, even a writer, coming here every day one dark winter when she was in Australia, escaping my babies so I could concentrate on the novel I couldn't write at home. It was a novel about the river and the mudflats, 150 years ago. I'd lift my head from the computer to stare out of these windows and see mud, ghosts, a stinking world.

"Is this the right cup? " I go down the corridor to show her because I know that just now the wrong cup might just be one disaster too far.

"No, " she says from the bed, pleased to be consulted, "not that one. The pink one with the gold on it. There's a pink one and a red one but I think the red one's in the dishwasher. "

"And where are the tea bags? " I ask because she likes to tell me where things are.

"In the little blue lidded pot on the counter. "

For 20 years, she's been my friend and ally, jumping to support me, even (or especially) against her son. When we had our first child, she gave endless hours of patient childcare, precious time off when I was sometimes tearful with exhaustion.

She walked our Jake up and down this corridor on her shoulder as he screamed and screamed. As we had Chloë and then Raphael, she'd have all three for days and nights, feeding them nutritious meals cooked in this small white kitchen. When I came to collect them, they'd be calm and content, crayoning happily at the table. I'm not sure what life as the mother of three small children would have been like without this help.

"Did you find the cup? " she calls from her bedroom.

"Yes, " I shout back.

"Ju-lie? "

I go back down the corridor. "Yes? "

"I might have a little bit of that bun loaf that's on the counter. Just one slice with a bit of butter. "

I go back. I can't find the bun loaf.

"Where did you say it was? " I call.

"On the counter. "

It isn't. It's in the fridge. I cut her a cold slice, return down the corridor with tea and loaf.

In this corridor, Jake took his first steps, pushing a brightly-coloured baby walker, hiccupping ecstatically. The other day I bought my mother-in-law a wheeled Zimmer frame, so she could pass along here more easily. "Thank you, " she says, sipping her tea. "This is so good of you. I've got such a good daughter-in-law. "

No it isn't. No you haven't. I haven't done half as much for her lately as her own son and daughter but one cup of Darjeeling and my status is miraculously restored.

I glance out of the window and get a flash of the hot August morning almost 18 years ago when we came to collect her to go and see her brand new grandchild (our niece) born a few hours earlier. We arrived to the drone and yak of helicopters hovering over the river. The Marchioness pleasure boat had capsized in the night, drowning most of the people on board.

And then I think of all the suppers we've eaten here, years and years of them, sitting and laughing and yawning on her terrace while the children fell noisily asleep in the spare room and the river smells and sounds drifted up to us and we felt there was no urgency, no need to think or act because the night, this life, those times might just go on forever.