For She Is

What masterpiece shall I doodle around with today?

So it's Sunday and my mum is still in hospital, has been since Thursday. Still no clear solution as of yet, but we're hopefully getting closer.

With all the scribbles and etchings I make and soul-searching and reflection about my father, the most faithful, kindest person in my life is often overlooked, and not with any real reason.

It's not that she's undeserving of celebrations and praise for all she did and still does.

For

She

Is.

From my inception to the present day she has always been there, no questions asked, and even when they are, she still is there.

We may not always see eye to eye, as offspring and parent rarely do in this world.

But not once have I never felt her never-ending love for me, and by extension, for my family, my little addition to our heritage, our tree.

When I slipped off the scent and disappeared southwards she must have been sad, maybe mad, and definitely confused.

But she never disowned me or caused too much fuss, just let me figure it out. What it was and why it was necessary.

I'll always appreciate that and always feel sad about how I approached things, but really I saw no other way round it at the time.

Hindsight

is poisoned.

Showing us

what could have been,

but never

could be.

For

She

Is.

I guess, as I never stop thinking about death and mortality and the crooked hand of this life we are all born into, I wonder why we wait till the heart stops and they pass to tell them how much they mean to us.

Ridiculous, truly, when I can spend hours poring over the missed opportunities with Dad and other relatives that have slipped away but don't take the time to offer a glass, a salute, to the woman who raised me and nurtured me in my youth.

If my father taught me a love for music and, in his own way, the importance of family, then my mother did more tenfold. She taught me to love and to care, that hatred was wrong, especially with good reason or, worse yet, really bad nonsensical reasons like skin colour or faith or sexual preference.

Even growing up in the cultural badlands of Glasgow in the 80s, a period of change and confusion, I knew deep down that not understanding another's choice was not a gateway to hate or inflict misery and suffering upon anyone.

I was taught the importance of family, even if I found it difficult as I shrunk into myself. Looking back I have so many warm memories of family and love because of my mother and her mother, his father, her sisters and brothers.

Appreciation for reading and books comes from her, so the poet, the wannabe Booker Prize-winning author, is all down to her.

The saboteur of the old and the dusty and the disrupter of prosaic, poesy form and rules is all down to her.

As is the creation of a thousand unreliable narrators, ambiguous endings and downbeat conclusions where there are no easy answers or get-outs, where the winners are harder to find than the evil that lurks in the shadows of the layered and hard-to-define villains.

It all relates back to her.

Her influence,

in some way

or another.

Schmaltz and brain-dead fucking cheesiness is often given to praise bestowed upon parents and God, and partners and children when taking stock of achievements, but fuck it, it doesn't mean it's not true.

I love her

for all that she did

and does

and more.

She welcomed the older woman I ran away with into her family with open arms and never once questioned or fretted. I remember after the day they first met that she said, with a hug and her blessing, she knew she didn't need to give it, that "Ruth's great," and I knew then she was the best mother I personally could have hoped for.

Even with a daughter in tow that wasn't my own, my mother treats her as one of her own, and it extends to everyone that tags and symbiotically integrates into the Cafolla clan.

My children, her grandchildren, she is so proud of and loves them even when they've been challenges to her patience and last fucking nerve.

She loved my father as hard and as much as she could.

He was broken.

She struggled.

But she did so with love

and did her utmost

for her children.

Enough isn't said, especially by me, when analysing the darker years, what it was like for her.

Now, looking back as a middle-aged man with a wife he adores but also lets down because of similar demons and clouds, I marvel at Mum with newfound appreciation for just how incredible her undertaking must have been.

Divorce is never the easiest path and when you add Catholic guilt and societal expectations and three children into the mix, an alcoholic and distant husband is not as cut-and-dry easy to just up and leave.

She expects but never rejects when things don't go quite her way, and I know I've let her down in so many ways but she sees past it all. I mean, of course she does. It's what I'd hope to do and what we all do, is it not?

Don't condone the bad anyone does, especially when part of you runs through their veins.

Don't condone, but never condemn without forgiveness and understanding that imperfect flesh and imperfect hearts and minds and blood, bones and sinew will err and fall several times.

It's the getting up that's important.

And being there

when they do.

That's

what she does.

Does she aggravate me at times? Of course she does. As parents it comes with the territory, like it or not. As fellow human beings on the same wide-berth journey it's going to happen at one time or another.

At times I've questioned my naming of Paul but, past the midway point of my forties towards my fifties, there's no person or name I could really be.

Paul Stewart

is who

I ought to be.

She did so much for her mother to the end. Her and her brothers and sisters deserve commendation and respect and from me they'll always have it.

Same with my uncles. When they passed she was there for the wives and children left behind.

From very early in my life when she lost her sister, Filomena, I have often seen her, through the last 46 years of my complete existence, as a glue for the others. Though I know her and her siblings have all worked hard to maintain support and sustain, I'll always admire and be thankful for that example.

Maybe it's ironic that the one I spend time writing about is the one who was distant before he died...

Or perhaps

the real irony

is that,

at a surface level,

it feels

I write

so little

about my mother,

when really

her presence

is there

in everything

I write.

I want to take a moment to suggest it's a travesty that sons are made fun of for being mother's boys and that it is some kind of psychological failing that men often marry women like their mothers.

Why

the stigma?

I understand it.

But I don't agree with it.

For why shouldn't I want a wife as kind and caring as my mother?

So it's Sunday.

She's had one of her scans but, at the time of writing, I'm still waiting to see what tomorrow holds in store and onwards, forwards.

But tomorrow

is never

the point.

The point

is these scribbles.

These pages.

These etchings.

These half-thoughts.

These completed musings.

This love

that is rarely spoken

directly of.

Is

for her.

For

She

Is.

And perhaps

always

has been.

The quiet author—

or collaborator,

alongside my wife—

of every page

I thought

I wrote

alone.

For

She

Is.