Le Chateau de Ma Mere

Our mother is a blogger. It is the best occupation for her because she is a dreamer. We can confirm that. She is either living her dreams, talking about them or plain dreaming.

We spend a considerable time with our mother. Most of our time is with her, outside of school. She wakes us up in the morning and tucks us in at night. All the while, our mother is a modern mom. She gives her exercise and reading as much importance as she does ours. She seems to be developing with us, growing daily.

We listen to music together, we enjoy the immediacy of the parks and the beach with her. She drives us everywhere, all the while talking, sometimes screaming, sometimes exasperated.

We leave the house like a pendulum, back and forth, back and forth, all day, at all times. When we are home, there is rush hour timings, when we hurry to get ready to leave, or when we get home to settle. Our rate is paced on hers and it is rapid.

We are trying to demystify our mother in this blog, so she doesn't appear like a 1950s model of domesticity, nor like the romanticized version of Chateau de Ma Mere by Marcel Pagnol. Our mother abandons us easily for art events, for film festivals and especially for bikram yoga. The youngest of us strongly believes that she may "sleep over" at yoga because he only sees her the next day upon her morning kiss.

And sometimes, as this anecdote relates, she just blows a fuse.

Our sister, the fiesty girl in our house, was invited to a swim/play date at her friend's home. Our mom came to pick her up. It was september, two Ramadans ago. The sun was at its zenith and it was hot. She asked her daughter to get out of the pool. The little girl refused. She floated in the middle of the pool, where her mom couldn't reach out for her.

The maternal anger rose. She folded her jeans and walked into the pool to the dismay of all, especially her daughter. She pulled her out, dressed her and left everyone incredulous as she walked to the car with soaked jeans.