Confessions of a bad son

CAPE TIMES, 9 MAY 2003

I AM A BAD SON. No, I am. I am not proud of it, but I must face facts. Not once, in all my years of having a mother – which is most of them – have I given a good Mother’s Day present. I have tried, but I am just no good at it.

It all began with a double-album of Olivia Newton-John’s Greatest Hits, Volume Two, and it hasn’t improved. I was maybe 10, and all day I roamed the shopping centre, jingling the money in my pocket, looking for a suitable present. I forget where the money came from – almost certainly my mother – but I remember standing staring at the rows of perfume bottles in the cosmetics section of the department store, wondering how anyone could tell them apart, too shy to ask the big ladies with the very red lips at the counter. Finally one of the ladies spritzed me with perfume and they all laughed and I ran away and bought Olivia Newton-John’s Greatest Hits, Volume Two.

My mother had never given any indication that she was a fan of Olivia Newton-John. We did not, for instance, have Olivia Newton-John’s Greatest Hits, Volume One. I can’t honestly say that I had ever heard an Olivia Newton-John song, although I knew she had been in a movie called Grease, which a lot of older kids had seen and my father hated because it had John Travolta in it. “John Revolter,” he used to say, and chuckle. Still, I thought Olivia Newton-John looked pretty on the cover, it came with a poster, so if she didn’t like the songs, she would at least have something to pin on the wall.

My mother accepted her double gift of Olivia Newton-John with great excitement and gratitude, and I think she may even have played it once, because I remember my father saying, “What’s all that yowling?” and my mother saying, “Shhh, it’s my present.”

The next year I was determined to buy perfume, like good sons buy their mothers. I went to the perfume counter and studied the bottles. I still couldn’t tell them apart by smelling them, but I bought the one with the most exciting name. “That’s very popular,” said the lady with the bright red lips, wrapping my perfume.

So I gave it to my mother, and it was received with great excitement and gratitude, but afterwards my Aunt Rosemary took me aside and said: “Darrel, you’re 11 now. You are old enough to know some things. And one of those things is that you must never, never, never again buy a woman You’re the Fire perfume.”

There have been other attempts: the gold chain that turned her neck green; the T-shirt that announced “World’s Best Mom”; the fluffy Garfield with suction pads on his paws to attach to the back window of the car. If you were to pile up all the gifts I gave when I was a child, it would look like the props wardrobe for Jerry Springer’s American show. Adult efforts haven’t been much better: the complete collection of potted cactuses of the world; the tickets on a so-called pleasure cruise that turned out to feature Margaret and Ferdinand from Big Brother as special celebrity hosts. Through it all she has reacted with great excitement and gratitude – except, obviously, the cruise that turned out to have Margaret and Ferdinand as special celebrity hosts. After that she said: “Really, dear, all I want is a telephone call. Please.”

If you are a mom, bless you. Sons are not always good at thank-yous. But thank you. Happy Mother’s Day.