Me Mam and Dad

Continued from Nostalgia for an Age Yet to Come

The Future Never Happened III: Me Mam and Dad

Three.

I was a geeky kid. When all of the other kids were playing football and
brawling in the street, I was sat at home watching videos and reading
books and comics. I don't know whether it was seeing the first shuttle
launch, that tiny white ship on top of that gigantic tower of smoke,
roaring from telly screens all over the world, or being just able to
talk when Star Wars was first released on video, but space and the
future was what made me excited. When everyone else had posters of
footballers and cars, I used to go to sleep gazing at a poster of the
solar system. It had pride of place on the wall opposite my bed and I
would lull myself to sleep at night, gazing at the ellipses of the
planets orbits and at the planets themselves, reciting a litany of
their names as my eyes slowly dimmed.

Even then I knew the difference between looking to the future and
simple make believe. These were things that could happen, things that
could happen. Robots were real, space ships were real. I suppose it's
like the kid who chooses dinosaurs over dragons because dinosaurs are
REAL. It wasn't like believing in fairies or monsters, because the
future could happen, it was already happening. Even as a little kid I
was hoping for this world to be better, not making up another
one.

I loved robots, sitting enraptured, cross legged in front of the
television during 'Tomorrow's World', as footage of assembly line
production robots sent golden sparks from car bodies. I loved the jerky
inhumanity of them, like giant metal insects, endlessly rotating and
pecking with their welding torches. I loved the view from space, Earth
a pale blue circle surrounded by a halo of light. I loved futuristic
cars, shaped like metal teardrops. I loved future wars, with zippy
laser beams the colour of cheap sweets and gigantic explosions. The
future seemed so clean and simple, to me there was nothing messy in the
future. The more complicated the objects were, the simple they made
things.

My Dad used to upset me all the time. When something I liked was on the
telly, or when I was reading a comic, he would just shake his
head.

"It's just for bairns all that stuff man."

Sitting in his chair surrounded by cigarette smoke he would start to
explain why all 'this future stuff' was rubbish. As soon as he started
my mother would jump in, trying to stop him.

"Ah man Jimmy, leave the bairn alairn. Cannit y' see that he really
likes this stuff. He's not deein' anyone any harm."

"Nah, lissen. Ah divvn't want him fillin' his heed with all this crap.
Nen of this stuff is any good, look at him fillin' his heed up with all
this stuff aboot how the future's gannin' tu be better, how
everything's gannin' to be great."

"But Jimmy, he's ownly a bairn, aren't you, pet?"

My am would pat me on the head or stroke my face. Sometimes this would
stop my Dad, other times he would just keep going.

"Why divvn't y' watch summit aboot the real world 'stead of al' these
robots and gadgets and stuff. It's just for kids man, just stupid
bairns stuff."

The older I got the more this happened. He would attack all of the
things that I liked, stripping them down, pulling them apart, making me
feel sort of ashamed and embarrassed for liking them in the first
place, all hot and cold at the same time and wanting to cry.

Looking back on it now I can see exactly what he was doing and why, but
then, I used to just hate him for it. It felt like a slap when I would
show him something I had just bought with my pocket money or tell him
about something I had just read, and he would just laugh or tell me not
to be so soft. I would go to my Mam and she would tell me 'it's just y'
Da's way, he doesn't mean to make you feel bad'. Even if that was the
case, I couldn't have given to shits if he'd fallen in the road. His
favourite answer when I told him about one of the technological marvels
we could soon expect, would be to turn and look at me, head inclined to
the side, lips pressed together, and say;

"Aye, an' what goods that ganna dee anyone? Y' really think that's
ganna make things betta, d'y? That's not ganna make jobs, is it?"

I used to hate it. My Dad just seemed to cancel me out. Everything I
wanted and dreamed of, my Dad, sitting in his chair, would erase. It
never even crossed my mind that my Dad had hopes and dreams too. To me
he seemed as much part of the present landscape as the flat roofs that
leaked on some of the estates houses and the concrete bollards the
council had put in to stop the joyriders. He seemed so dull, so shabby,
so used, so stuck in the present. It seemed to me that he was so
concerned with the little, unimportant things around him, that he
couldn't be bothered to look up and see how things could be better. He
seemed only to exist to sit in his chair, surrounded with smoke,
complaining about every single thing in the world.

When he was gone, despite the fact that my mother was upset, me and my
Mam were pretty happy. A few times before my father went she had sat,
eyes misty, looking at something I couldn't see, and talked about
herself.

She would sip dreamily at her coffee, letting her cigarette burn down
between her fingers, the funnel of ash dropping onto the chair arm
unnoticed while I sat entranced, just listening. She would talk about
her Mam and Dad and the way she left school at fifteen so she could
bring more money home. She would talk about when she was a kid, playing
hide and seek on the building sites where the new houses were being
built. Sometimes she would produce sparkling pictures in my head of her
young and confident, striding the town in some glamorous fashion or
other, drinking and dancing, being pursued by this man or that. She
would tell me about the students she went out with, daring young men
with cameras and guitars and cars who were going to change the world.
There were tales of drinks with man who now made films, or that man who
was a big recording star. She was at the opening of this club, or saw a
gig at that venue. It seemed that she had made the best of being young.
I couldn't imagine my dad ever being young.

Sometimes she would talk about how different things could have been,
how she could have been in London, or in a big house somwhere. There
wasn't ever any bitterness to this, just a quiet acceptance of the way
things had turned out. I remember feeling sad when I listened to all
the things that might have happened to her, but not being able to
decide why. It seemed that her future could have been so much more than
it was, and I think that I felt disappointed for her. What had my Dad
done to make her give up?

When my Dad went, my Mam seemed both upset and excited at the same
time. She started to talk about all the things that me and her could do
together without my Dad, how we could go to the pictures or move house.
She talked about getting a job, getting out more, getting in touch with
people she used to know. By the time he came back, though, she hadn't
done any of that, me and her just talked about it. I remember coming
home early from school to find her puffy eyed and silent, a copy of
'hello!' screwed up in a ball on the carpet in front of her, the
ashtray full. I think I made her a cup of coffee then went upstairs to
play on the computer.

The thing I loved about my mother was that she let me dream, my
enthusiasm for the future didn't seem to be a problem for her. She
would tell me about things we could buy for the house, or the
conservatory that we could have, and I would tell her about the
wonderful world of the future. When my Dad started laying into me, she
would shake her head at him and say "Leave him alairn, Jimmy, let him
dream. Let him be a bairn while he can."

It was my Mam who bought my comic. It was my Mam that talked my Dad
into letting me have a computer. She told me that Christmas Day, while
me and her were making the dinner and my Dad was down the club. She
said that she'd really had to lean on my Dad to buy it.

"I told y' Dad that them computers is the thing of the future and that
if y' didn't have one, you'd be left behind like us auld farts. I said
to him, I said 'Jimmy, the worlds changin', we've got to give him every
chance wuz can to keep up, you'll break his little heart if he gets
left behind his mates'. It took a while, but eventually your Da gave
in, bless him."

When it came down to it, it was my mother that talked to me; it was her
who seemed to understand. It might have been my Dad who started me
reading comics, by getting me 'Commando War Story Picture Library' on a
Sunday when I was very little, but it was my Mam who got me '2000AD'
and gave me my weekly dose of the future. It was her that understood
why I was looking forward. All the way through my life she showed me
that dreaming wasn't a luxury like my Dad said it was.

I used to love my Mam so much that sometimes I would wake up in the
middle of the night, orange light through the gaps in the curtains
making patterns on the wall, and worry she was dead. I can see myself
lying there, breathing as loud as jet engines in the stuffy room, eyes
screwed shut, hoping and hoping that she would be all right, straining
my ears for some sound of her through the wall.

One time I got up, a tiny figure in Spiderman pyjamas, and padded out
and along the landing, the only light there coming out from under my
parent's door. My chest felt tight and my arms and legs felt like they
were filled with cold, black oil as I put my hand to the door knob. I
can still remember the sound of blood thumping in my throat and ears. I
didn't know what I'd do if she was dead, or how I would know, I just
needed to see that she was all right, to know that I wouldn't have to
be alone with my Dad.

I can see my fingers as they wrap around the doorknob and then jerk
back as I hear my mother's voice from inside the room say

"Don't."

I jumped back from the door as if it had stung me, my little body
hurtling back to my bed. I can see myself, body transfixed, breath
tiny, eyes wide open and resting on the Solar System.

It took me years to realise that she hadn't been talking to me.

I suppose I loved my Mam so much because she indulged me, let me be
myself. It was her who bought the things that fuelled my obsession and
stuck up for me, it was her that seemed to know what I needed. My Dad
only made that mistake once.

Continued in The Future Never Happened IV: One Saturday.