"FINISH THE JOB"
“Finish up, Now”, Mum cried urgently from the balcony.
“Hurry up and come inside, Your dinners getting cold”
Mums whole baked Thai schnapper, her number one speciality, not only piqued my palette, it seriously made me want to finish up. And quickly.
This simple repair job, releasing a frozen brake in the front calliper of a fancy pants carbon racer, had taken up enough of my focus, and time. It was time to down tools, a quick clean up of my grease soaked hands and the assortment of lubricants, rags, spanners and screwdrivers I had employed to get this job released. The owner wanted it yesterday but she was simply going to have to wait. Miracles had not happened.
Mums fish was seriously swimming down my throat and was coming next. As I turned out the bike repair shed lights and headed for the adjoining back deck for mums delicious nightly spread, I caught one final glimpse of the saddle on Ms Lycra's Mount.
Pro Triathlete, “swim, cycle, run” another gold medal to add to the glory box of a decade of torture. I seriously didn’t know how these freaks of nature kept pushing snd pushing and doing the ridiculous distances, just in weekly training. But she paid overs and who was I to refuse a wealthy Active Wear over achiever who dripped sweat and bile in equal proportions.
Anyhow, as I stumbled up the three back stairs and through the tatty back door, I sensed mum was rather pissed off. Was that steam emanating somewhere deep within her, or was it coming from the rather dilated, and by now, drying fish lips? I was soon to find out.
“Harry!” mum bellowed far too loudly, “why didn’t you come when I first called you 20 minutes ago?”
“Now look how your dinner has lost its lustre”.
It sounded more like mum was spruiking salty rollmops and pickled anchovies rather than the still succulent ginger and chilli coated beauty that dad had brought home ocean fresh just this morning.
Mum was always cooking up tasty treats and creating seafood delicacies with dad’s daily pro fishing efforts. How I sometimes wished I had the heart to ask for that T bone, rump or sirloin, but as I was still living largely board free, I thought it wise to nod sagely and not to push any fast disappearing luck. Mum WAS pissed off, but I sensed her anger was not solely directed at my tardiness for dinner.
Mum was a good egg. She was a great cook and a long suffering wife of a hard working hubby who if he wasn’t out on the shelf overnight, he was perched steadfast either on “HIS STOOL” down at the fishos club within walking distance of our home and harbour, or he was glued to the TV, racing guide, phone or silently shining computer screen. Maybe Mum was feeling more and more alone, maybe isolated as she had no close girlfriends that I knew of and her small family had mostly died or moved away. Was she unappreciated by a hard working earnest husband of 30 years, who was still fit, tanned and trim, and by all nocturnal sound accounts, extremely agile in the almost daily horizontal rumba, even at age 50. No wonder mum often limped oddly into breakfast with a satisfied "cat who got the cream" smile on her still ageless and gloriously wrinkle free, morning smiling face.
Maybe that was the secret to their otherwise seemingly loveless life? Lots of hard work and long hours by both of them, no outside company, no trivial talking or long romantic hand holding beach walks, lots of tv, alcohol, nightly 5 star gourmet delights and then hot, seemingly all night, marathon loud sex. Every. Single. Night. Or so the paper thin walls revealed to my pillow covered ears in our two bedroom renovators delight fibro 1950’s fishing shack.
This character filled Shack was the only place I’d ever called home, as had dad’s father and his father before him. Mum had lived across the road and the two love birds attended the tiny local primary school together before becoming a couple in high school, in the Big Smoke, a small country town some 30 miles inland. Apparently the back seat canoodling on the school bus, each way mind you, dads fourth generation fishing genes and mums desire to “shack up, get married and have kids” led to their early departure from the big smoke high school and a permanent return to Shacksville. To do exactly that. Shack up. Fish. Cook. Fuck. And Repeat. For thirty plus years.
And yet I was adopted.
Well that’s the parental pattern I had witnessed since I could not even remember. Please, don’t get me wrong, I too loved my tranquil life beside the South Pacific Ocean, but due to the genetic condition I was born with, it made moving away almost impossible. Or so I was lead to believe. And mum was a stickler for me remaining tightly tethered under the shack's roof. Almost obsessively so.
I don’t know if I was actually imprisoned, or trapped or simply scared. To try something different. To break free. To meet new people. In my mind, I was just the self taught, widely sought, incredibly well paid bike mechanic, an adopted only child who was still single and living in a Seeming Paradise at age 30.
What would I know?
Well, I was soon to find out. Much to Lycra Ladies disgust.
