I’ve been spending more time with my mum recently. Since she retired we hang out more, and I’ve been making regular trips down to Doncaster to see her. We’re like mates, now; mates who have a shared interest in nice restaurants and wandering around English Heritage sites (she’s a member – I have to pay).
It’s been nice, and I feel like I’m finally getting to know her. She’s actually quite a laugh, and we playfully bicker about politics, the way I parent, the way I dress (“like a toddler, Howard!”), and the fact that I want to start charging her technical support: conversations between us don’t start with, “Hello love. How are you?” but rather, “Right, this phone. When I swipe up, it goes wrong…”
Jobs for the boy
But regardless of the fun as I’ve had with my mum, and all the great food we’ve noshed, there’s always a job for me to do when returning home. Last weekend it was to venture into the attic to clear out some space and fix a broken light.
The task itself was relatively easy. Unlike the attic I’d possessed in my own house these past few years, my mum’s wasn’t filled with mould and ‘dead things’. Instead I found several neatly ordered and stacked boxes, several of them marked ‘Howard’.
“There,” she said, poking her head above the trapdoor. “That stuff. I want all that stuff shifted.”
“My stuff?” I asked.
“Yes. All that crap.”
And so began a rummage through my childhood. For it seems, unbeknownst to the rest of the family, my late father was one hell of a hoarder. He had kept everything. All the toys and old books that I had wanted to throw away, he had boxed up and stored in the attic.
I found broken He-Man action figures from 1984, broken Thundercats action figures from 1988, and broken Ghostbusters 2 action figures from 1990. Several boxes were dedicated entirely to my long-lived, and horrendously expensive interest in The Games Workshop. Jesus, those guys know how to scam nerds.
The path by the pond
I could write several columns about what exactly I found in those boxes, and the insight into my childhood they offered, but not today. This month I want to focus on The Painting.
While sifting through all the memory-soaked gems up there, I came across several wrapped pictures. Also saved by my dad, these once adorned the walls of the house before my parents – with the help of my older sister – developed taste. Hulking great portraits of strange woman washing clothes, tapestries picked up on their travels around the world, and one sickeningly ornate gold-framed landscape depicting a lane running by a pond.
“Aw!” I called from above. “I remember this! The painting from the fireplace! This was on the wall from me being born until the mid-nineties, wasn’t it?”
“Mmm,” replied mum. “Sling it.”
Keeping it from the ‘to sling’ pile, I looked at the oil painting I’d not seen in over 20 years. It was painfully familiar, like seeing an old friend after years apart. It had hung above the mantelpiece in the living room for the entirety of my childhood and I remembered how I’d stare up at it and image where that path led.
I climbed out of the attic, bringing it and a pretty pristine Stay Puft Marshmallow Man toy I’m thinking about putting on eBay.
Oh the irony
I asked if I could keep it, to put in my new flat. The excuse I gave was one of millennial irony, saying an old and garish thing like that will ‘look cool’ amongst all my smart tech and plain white walls. “A conversation piece,” I explained. “For when I have sexy ladies round.” (I have even less of a filter around my mum).
The truth is, I just wanted it. It was something from my past, from the house in which I grew up, that I wanted to inherit. I don’t have ‘old things’, like photos of family from decades past, or furniture past down from generation to generation, because I’m not really a fan of owning stuff. But this painting, which is as familiar and comforting to me as those old photos might be to you, I wanted.
So there it now hangs, behind my desk, above an intentionally colour-matching plant. Skype me and you’ll see it.
However… one thing the attic clear-out brought to mind was that my mum isn’t going to be around forever. I’m glad I’m spending more time with her, but I wondered if the next time I was up clearing out her attic would be because she’d passed away.
Then I thought: awesome, the job is half done. So I’m quids in.
Add a comment