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Sport 31: Spring 2003
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The morning you get up early to fly home to Auckland, you come downstairs and find your mother already up, in the kitchen, bottling plums. This is what you see: a steamy yellowed kitchen; a bucket of red plums; your mother in her old blue dress. (You count five fresh bandaids on her arms.)
You want to stamp your foot and say, But you're too old to climb trees picking plums at the crack of dawn. You want to say. Your husband is dead. And your children have all grown up and flown away.
Stop, you want to say, Stop. Please stop.
You sigh. Morning Ma, you say. It is enough. Your mother says, I can't bear the thought of it all going to waste.
You put on the kettle to make yourself a cup of tea while your mother disappears into the storeroom. The storeroom is full of half-tins of paint, old newspapers, jars of nails and things that might come in handy one day. She emerges with a cardboard box marked fragile: handle with care, the orange sticker half peeling off. In this box she puts a layer of newspaper and then a dozen jars of plums that have been cooling by the sink. Your mother folds the flaps of the box, in-out in-out in-out, tucking her children in bed.
These are for you, your mother says. To take back. She holds the box out.
You know you will have to carry this on board the plane, juggle the box with your hand luggage, find a safe place for it during the flight. You take the box from your mother. It is heavier than you thought, and warm.
Thank you, you say.