Motherly Meals

It is one hour away from midnight and only half an hour since I had a considerably late dinner. Sixty-nine pence frozen lasagne that only required six fully powered minutes in the microwave only half filling me up and staining the corners of my lips further soaking onto my cheeks like a pathetic Italian joker. The roof of my mouth is pretty burnt from being too eager to eat. I don’t have any ice-cream, nor do I trust if I bought any and saved some for later consumption that it wouldn’t fall into the hands of my illegal HMO Landlord.

For my pudding, I’m smoking a joint on the doorstep. Wearing nothing but my boxers and a dressing gown, I’m sat at the back doorstep chuffing away, enjoying the dirty stone slabs on the base of my aching feet. I could have spent my money on a more sustainable meal that would’ve lasted three nights but the prospect of three and a half grams of bud that would last half a day longer seemed entirely more alluring and financially beneficial.

I am still hungry, but this thought is third in line behind the thought that I still haven’t procured anywhere to live as the knots in my stomach also tell me my eviction date approaches fast. The first thought above that is my intention on getting high in order to ignore the second and third thoughts.

One of my first nights living in Peter’s home, I wanted to feel like I could establish myself as a long-term household member, and there was no better way to do so than by exploiting my culinary skills. I purchased bolognaise sauce along with mushrooms, tomatoes, onions and carrots and of course, beef mince. It’s a brainless skill to chop up your ingredients and boil them with meat, but to Peter, I could’ve adopted him as parent for simply cooking in his presence.

Little did Peter know that this ulterior motive was not to nullify him with food but more so to retain my own sake of normality. Cooking a meal from scratch felt more responsible, more healthy, more appreciated in my mother’s eyes, and though she could not see me, I felt as if a servicing of gratitude was being displayed.

I made up the meal within an hour as I had nothing else to do at the time and wanted to prolong the task. When ready, I served up a portion into a plain white mug that invoked too much mystery into its origin; I shuddered when grasping its handle. As a gesture of good-will, I told Peter he was allowed to help himself. To me, that phrase meant he was supposed to leave me some. To Peter, this meant lick the saucepan dry. I never cooked a homemade meal at Peter’s again.

In what I should definitely appreciate as the last couple of days at Peter’s, I have reduced myself to eating junk. Instant noodles nightly and whatever chocolate needed to be consumed in my fridge upstairs after a smoke. I don’t mind eating cheap easy food as I hope that it will give me some mass; I’m the only person who has worked at McDonald’s over the last two years to have lost weight since joining the team.

Ordinarily, McDonald’s was something of an annual treat where my mother was concerned. Only at Christmas time whenever we’d finished last minute shopping would she give in as a festive act of laziness to not cook. I was rather shocked when she told me to eat at McDonald’s while waiting for my interview as it would imply to them that I enjoy the food, somehow warranting an extra reason as to why they should hire me. I took the same approach when the opportunity to work as a postman for Royal Mail came my way by bringing in letters and opening them with glee in the waiting room. I didn’t get that job.

Anyway, I eat at McDonald’s every day on my break and consume cheap noodles when returning home. I never realised how important the appropriate diet was until I found myself having to supplement my own hunger without the guidance or unlimited source of responsible parents on tap.

My mother had a dirty habit of cooking a couple of contrasting meals at one time and freezing them all for later consumption. Each meal would be concocted to be divided into plastic containers salvaged from Chinese takeaway tubs, which were crudely labelled by the contents within and what date they were made up. All would be banished to the freezer.

Like all pre-made meals, each dinner by Mrs. Joyce ended up resembling stacks of unidentifiable blocks of brown, orange and red slop, a morgue of frozen nutrition.

I think about why my mother would subject herself to making up dinners ahead of time as opposed to making them on the nights we ate, which unfortunately for her occurred on a nightly basis. While I find it hard to make any sense of this habit, I find it equally harder to come up with an alternative activity to occupy her evenings with instead and concluded early on that something wasn’t quite right.

In terms of entertainment, my mother killed two birds with one stone by watching the collection of movies and series that no one else enjoyed while she cooked. There would nothing else desirable to watch after. Seven-year-old fletch could never fathom why she hated a show as perfect as The Simpsons.

Mum would finish cooking for the next few months every day, apparently. I personally have no idea what the Star Trek theme would sound like if it were isolated away from the ambience of pots and pans clanking accompanied by the many sizzles and steam noises from the hobs.

I can only assume that she engaged with this routine in order to feel maybe organised in her mind, but I know respectively from passive cupboard slamming and breathy bouts of swearing that cooking was something of an obligation not only for herself but also her children and I guess I’m too ignorant to assume she’d rather be doing something else entirely.

As a young boy, I often thought about what my mother did for entertainment for herself during the evenings. Our stepdad at the time lived predominantly in his own abode, meaning my mum would have no adult conversation unless she wanted to rack up a landline bill.

I assumed that in adulthood, your only occupation once having kids were to adhere to them, whether it be through support or telling them off. I didn’t understand jobs, I believed they were schools for adults and that money was as a frequent endless source as unwanted local pizza leaflets.

Once we had gone to bed; I had no clue what she did with herself and that worried my nine-year-old brain. One summer in particular, I remember feeling like I was sent to bed far earlier than I should have due to the sun still illuminating the neighbourhood at the time I was meant to be conked out. Naturally, sleep was out of the question I would result to doodling while occasionally checking the outside street in case some cruel joke was being played on me.

Around eleven, the evening pallet had cooled yet the air remained muggy, and I was completely breaking the law by staying up so late. That’s why they called it “legs eleven”. It was tempting, nice and symmetrical, mentally explicit, however my digital Batman clock read 23:00 and I had no grasp of twenty-four clocks.

I returned to my curtains again to see what the world had to offer at this unknown time and to my utter shock my mother was sat on the front step at our back door. Her bare feet rested on the concrete and the cat printed PJ bottoms rode half a quarter up her shins revealing a love heart tattoo present on the ankle that her dad would’ve deemed disgusting to have on her skin. It was clear my mum was either in her element or at the end of her rope.

I watched her like it was illegal. Just sitting there. No cigarette in hand, no phone call was taking place, just the comfort of knowing her own two hands will securely be supporting her chin that rested in her palms.

I wondered what she was thinking about, what had led her to wind up on the step to contemplate whatever it was that prevented a reasonable bedtime? Was she in trouble? Was she happy? Would this train of thought continue its journey into how tomorrow may flow? Maybe I was overthinking the various weights that bared down on my mother’s shoulders, and she was just consulting the night air for inspiration for her many meals? This worried me more than my previous thoughts.

I always dread to think what would happen if at given point there would be no more frozen meals to eat. Would my mother cease to exist? Then it hit me; frozen meals are what immortalizes my mother. By making an endless number of icy meat cocktails for an endless number of days would replenish her existence with each effort made.

Whatever her effort were, I know deep down that it is something I could never attain myself. All I can do, is sit out in this garden and hope that by imitating her actions that bewildered me as a child, I can hopefully make out some sort of comfort of my own. I’m past the point of putting her down for how I turned out, as her motherly meals could not fuel me into the adult, I would rot over time to be. Her compassionate maternal instincts would determine the choices I would make, the friends I would land myself with and the habit I cling onto more than her.

I allow excess smoke to singe my nostrils in replacement of the smell of guilt. the cliché man-child I am.

I look up and conjure the appearance of a dark dank stain steaming into the air of which I have no idea how to explain. My time here is growing shorter by own hand.

I should really call my mum.