Heat

Lectures, Love and Lightning

Dedicated to my own much loved and much missed mother and all the mum's out there (it's mother's day in Australia and the US).

Apparently you are never ever too old to be lectured by your mother.

Kay Thompson is a remarkable, resilient and resourceful woman and faced with the demise of the relationships of her two youngest children she is being amazingly supportive.

"So your father isn't the only idiot in this family then?"  she says as we tell her that Stuart and Tom have left the area to give our family a "little space".

What? What the hell?

"Your father runs off and crashes a tractor and this whole family goes to pot!" she says.

"Why didn't you stop them? You both need them now what ever you think. It's time to be together not be gallivanting all over the countryside!"  

"Um, no mum -  it's just the guys thought they'd just make matters worse, attract more press – well Tom did, Stuart didn't want to complicate things for me," Scott says putting an arm around me. I'm trying not to look at her. I don't want to admit to her that this is more than that. She's a mother she always knows when I lie – she has some sort of built in detector.

"What aren't you telling me?" she asks eyeing the pair of us suspiciously and then............ Then I see the lightbulb go off in her head. I literally see her reach a conclusion – and she looks straight at me. She's not talking to Scott any more.  

"You two know about the note?" she breathes.

I nod.

And my mother's attitude turns on a dime and she starts to sob. We are all a maelstrom of emotion at the moment and it seems my mother is as unpredictable as me while we deal with something none of us are built to deal with. Who would be?

"Tom? That poor boy, that poor poor boy," she starts to cry.

"I'm going to kill your father when he gets better."

She turns to me and I go from Scott's arms to hers and we stand there in full embrace.

"Oh Megan I'm so sorry – I love your dad but sometimes he's a bloody idiot," she says half sobbing in my ears.

"That poor boy – he must feel awful, bloody man. This has nothing to do with Tom sweetie – this is all about a scared old man not that beautiful boy. "

I sob loudly and it suddenly hits home that as much as I love him, my dad is human, very much so and what he did, he did selfishly and even more selfishly he justified it by blaming someone else. He didn't think and now we're left with the consequences. And I've fucked up too.

"I made it worse, I blamed him too, I drove him away, mum, I drove Tom away," I sob.

"Oh sweetie it's okay, it's okay – you've had so much to deal with – it's all been a horrible shock. Give yourselves time to take it all in," she says hugging me tighter.

"What if he never comes back?" I squeak.

She takes a step back and grabs both my hands in hers.

"You are a strong independent and beautiful young women and you're tough and resilient and you'll bounce back my darling, it doesn't feel like it now but we'll all get through this the way we always do - together," she says. I sigh and smile but it's not a smile that reaches my eyes or my heart – I said much the same thing about her – maybe we are more similar than I thought. I don't feel like any of the things she has called me and I tell her as much.