Mothers and Daughters

My mother has been staying (hence the self-imposed internet purdah). At 74, widowed by the premature death of my father ten years ago, my mother is deaf and walks slowly with a stick. None of this, however, is enough to put her off her first ever trip to Asia. (Correction: to Hong Kong. She was born in Ceylon, but that's another story...)

Her flight is delayed by five hours on the runway at Heathrow. We watch the HK airport website all day for news. I get to the airport at the rescheduled hour and spot my mother parked to one side in her BA wheelchair thumbing through her diary in search of my number. Which she hasn’t thought to bring. Presumably because she was expecting her reliable daughter to be there to meet her. I am consumed by guilt.

Because I am late and the wheelchair assistant has had to leave for his next assignment, we face a logistical problem. She has with her two suitcases and two pieces of hand luggage, none of it particularly large or heavy but I am going to need two hands for either the wheelchair or the luggage. The car is a distance away and I do not feel able to leave either luggage or mother unaccompanied for any further length of time.

Load me up, she says cheerfully. My mother is frail and slender and, unhappy with the idea of burying her under a pile of bags, I look around for other options. I spot a lone luggage trolley. Do you think you can push? I ask.

Leaning forward in her wheelchair, head down and arms outstretched, she can just reach the bar of the luggage trolley. Steering is erratic but from behind I can at least provide the power. Concentrating hard, our stately progress is impeded when the wheelchair’s footrests catch unavoidably on the trolley’s back wheels bringing our bizarre little caravan repeatedly to a sudden halt. Stopping and starting we weave our way towards the car park. We have covered the whole terminal building before a thoughtful Indian acknowledges our need and helps us into the lift.

After years of sleeping lightly in anticipation of a needy child I am woken in the night. My mother is moving about on the floor below. I hear something hard fall to the parquet floor. Concerned that she has dropped her stick and might need it to reach the bathroom I go and investigate. As I descend the stairs I see her inching her way to the bathroom, eyes glued to the floor in search of obstacles. Cocooned by her deafness she is unaware of me until I am beside her. She looks up.

Hallo Darling. How lovely to see you! She beams as if she has just bumped into me unexpectedly outside Waitrose. Without her hearing aids she has no idea how loudly she speaks.

Shhh! You’ll wake the boys, I mouth. She changes tack and starts back towards her room. I follow her in.

I thought you were off to the loo, I say.

I thought we could have a lovely chat in here, she replies. It is 2.30 in the morning and chatting is the last thing on my mind. Wide awake and remarkably chipper given the ordeal of the previous day, she has drawn the curtains, unpacked her luggage, selected an outfit for the morning and is raring to go. I explain that she may be suffering from jetlag and that I’ll look forward to chatting in the morning before wishing her a good night and returning to bed.

In anticipation of her visit I have hired a wheelchair. By some extraordinary stroke of luck it just fits into the Flying Sofa behind the front seats. Even more extraordinary is the fact that with Granny in the front and the Domestic God at the wheel, all four children and I can still fit into the car. I praise the Flying Sofa and retract all rude comments I may have made in the past about its lack of style, street cred or speed. It is now officially The Best Car in Hong Kong. Apart from our neighbour’s new Masarati, that is, which I surprise myself by coveting every day. Not that you’d get a Granny, two parents, four children and a wheelchair in that. Thus we set out to discover Hong Kong. We are mobile and I am elated.

On her fourth morning my mother falls in the bathroom and hits her head on its unforgiving marble floor. I am horrified by the egg-sized lump that appears on her head. I administer ice, arnica, Rescue Cream – all the remedies I have for the children but it is an adult-size bump. That day we stay in. Over the next days and weeks from my position as chief wheelchair operator I watch the bruising on the crown of her head turn yellow and purple and spread down her neck where it sits stubbornly for the duration of her stay. There are other startling reminders of her fall on her arm, her hand and her back. She admits, only when pressed, that her ribs are quite painful. How could I have allowed this to happen?

Hong Kong proves to be remarkably wheelchair unfriendly. Whole car park floors have no lift. Lifts are approached by stairs and the first two floors of a building are served only by an escalator. We end up in damp corridors and service lifts along with restaurant supplies and shop deliveries. I start to see my surroundings through the eyes of a wheelchair pusher: curb stones become obstacles, the camber of a pavement is an angled balancing act, potholes are man traps and an uneven pavement a bumpy ride. An uphill incline becomes a hard work out and a downhill slope a risky undertaking.

We are assisted by attentive passers by who help lift the wheel chair in and out of taxis, up and down pavements, through doors and up steps. They offer helping hands to my mother and appear fascinated by the spectacle of three generations of a European family: mother, daughter, granddaughter. Granddaughter would like to claim the wheelchair as her own clambering hopefully in each time we get it out of the car before she is lifted out to shrieks of protest. My mother apologises for being a nuisance and says it is a shame that after pushing prams and buggies for ten years I now have to wheel her around. I wonder in what many ways over the years I was a nuisance to her.

My mother bears all with customary good will. Each day she braves the 24 steps to come down for breakfast. When we go out there are 31 more to reach the garage. If she wants to get to the pool there are a further 59 steps. Yet we are not deterred. We take the Star Ferry to Tsim Sha Tsui and enjoy the Harbour View. We ride on the Peak Tram and look down on the skyscrapers from above. We go to Stanley and browse in the market. We spend an afternoon on Shek’O beach where she watches the boys boogie boarding in the surf from the comfort of her deck chair. We drive into the New Territories and watch the 8 year old at his riding lesson. I wheel her through Hong Kong Park where towers of glass and steel crowd in on us while we admire the ornamental carp and watch the terrapins compete for a place in the sun.

She is here for the nursery sports day where our four year old obliges by wining his running race and I stay true to form by losing mine. We visit the school to view the Year 3’s Egyptian project ‘museum’. On a warm afternoon she reclines by the pool and delights in the spectacle of the children at play. We go out to eat and she is startled by the noise and crowds of Hong Kong. She reads to the children, plays board games and in the evenings we watch films together.

On days when we don't go out she sits in the sun and reads or watches the comings and going of a house filled with children. We drink numerous cups of tea and sometimes we chat, reminisce. I ask about her mother, her wartime childhood, fill the gaps in my knowledge of her family’s past. She hears out my dilemmas over schools, my likes and dislikes of my Hong Kong life, my hopes and fears for our time here. She meets my friends and is here for her granddaughter's third birthday. It is a happy time. I am glad to be showing her my life and hope it is a holiday for her. She doesn't need to wash or iron or cook, just be, and climb the stairs.

And yet all the time I feel I am not doing quite enough: what is enough for a mother who pushed me in a pram, washed, ironed and cooked for me for 18 long years, saw me through the ups and downs of school, university and beyond? She talked me off ledges, read me to sleep, counselled me in times of need. The balance sheet remains imbalanced and now that it's payback time I am in demand by my own demanding children .

We spend a day at the shops and she offers an opinion as I try things on. I can’t remember the last time we went shopping together. While I once craved it her damaged legs would not stand it. Shopping was torture to be endured in any shop where no chair was provided for customers. Thus all trendy shops were out of bounds and my girlish wardrobe was distinctly lacking in cool.

And then, the day of departure is upon us. The time has sped by. We spend the morning out and plan a last supper in a restaurant before her night time flight. She is flustered to find she is leaving, has in mind it is not till tomorrow and wonders if she has booked a taxi for the right day. I check the details and with dismay realise I've goofed again. Her flight took off at 1.10am that very morning. I have muddled the dates and feel like a fool.

The Domestic God secures another flight that very evening. It is earlier and the only loss is the dinner out so we eat spag bol at home with the kids and Granny reads the children a last bedtime story. My husband has got me off the hook once more and I love him to bits. I love my mother too but she is looking forward to going home and I’m not sure that either of us was ready for an extended visit.

Do you think you’ll come again? I ask.

If I’m invited, she replies. I have had the most wonderful time.