My mum was fun. She was bright. She was clever but I don’t mean bright like that. She was sparky.
When I was a little kid and I got picked up from school she was always easy to spot amongst the crowd. In the winter I just looked for her red hat, bobbing amongst all the other heads. A traffic-light red. In the summer it would be her daisy hat. Her toenails and fingernails changed colour at least once a week. She’d ask me, ‘Iguana green or orange?’ Sometimes she would alternate, one toe orange, one lizard green. For special occasions she had nail varnish with glitter in it. My dad had made a cabinet just to hold all her little bottles of varnish. She added the fairy lights.
She had a huge collection of ear-rings, bracelets, necklaces and bangles. None of them were expensive. She picked them up at market stalls, craft fairs and charity shops. She sometimes made her own. Her ear-rings were her favourite. Some of them were daft to be honest. There were massive hoops, bright-pink flowers, yellow suns. She even had a pair of snow-globe ear-rings she wore every Christmas Day. My friends loved her. She was a lot younger than a lot of other mums and it showed. She talked about music and TV and stuff like that to them. Sometimes I had to drag them away.
I will tell the truth. It wasn’t always like that. She would be bright, bright as she ever got and then suddenly there would be a crash and tears. Dad would say, ‘Your mum’s tired, let’s give her a rest, eh?’ There would be no ear-rings and no coloured nails. Lines on her forehead and thinner lips. She would be in bed. Dad wouldn’t be in his workroom as much and we would have Chinese or chips from the takeaway. I wouldn’t really see her. Then after a few days I would come downstairs in the morning and she would be sat at the kitchen table, hugging a cup of tea. Ear-rings, bracelets and bright nails. She would pay me too much attention, grab and tickle me. She was back.