Page 61 - Demo

THE REVIEW
JANUARY’19-JUNE’19 61
My Mother, Aunty Joyce
A son’s tribute to a lady who loved life... loved people... and loved people who had been written off, a little more!
Thank goodness my mother didn’t belong to the era of social media and facebook. She was too sociable and too much of
a people’s person to have fitted into an age of online ‘likes’ and dislikes. She preferred expressing her likes (of which there were many), and dislikes (far fewer in number), in person
and straight up; and for her, ‘face’ and ‘book’ were two words. (I remember her once telling one of her daughters-in-law, very sweetly, not to “bury your face in a book while your husband is playing a table-tennis final”. The poor girl never picked up a book in a public place again!)
For Joyce O’Brien, the moment she was in and the people she was with, mattered more than anything else - at that moment! She felt special in their company and made people feel special in hers – except of course if she was giving them ‘a talking to’, most often a sugar- coated one that was in complete sync with her sweetness yet a bitter pill to swallow.
And she spared no one – not even Neil O’Brien! When they got home after a meeting or an event, she would set it up in the car itself, pick up speed at the dining table and cross the finish line in their cramped-cosy
bedroom in Jamir Lane. (Very often, the Leader of the House would actually fall asleep while the Opposition
Leader was still summing up. And what a sleep it was – sound and long – having been reassured yet again that the
person who cared for
him the most expressed
her love through critical
appreciation, genuine
concern and dollops of
common sense).
If it was education and knowledge
that gave her husband a tremendous
sense of security and confidence, it was
plain and simple common sense that gave her hers. It was a sense so real, so effective, so strong. It was her sixth sense - maybe more
– seventh, eighth! A sense you didn’t need a college degree for; a sense that could help you hold your own with those more knowledgeable and qualified than you; a sense that could make you wiser than they could ever be.
All of this she spontaneously developed as
a life skill, right through her life – one of ten children in a railway family on a roller coaster ride of good and bad days that left her with criss-crossed memories of a grandfather who wore a tie at the dining table for every single meal, to the hard days of sharing bananas with her siblings since there weren’t enough to go around; from fun tom-boy times spent climbing guava trees on lazy afternoons in the railway
colonies of Shahdol or Sini, to being really angry with her father for being too strict with his daughters when it came to who they couldn’t fall in love with.
And yet...she, much more than my father, pushed us to finish our homework, chased us around the house with a ruler – and once, down the street ...yes, imagine that, an Anglo-Indian mum in her flowery Anglo-Indian ‘house-dress’ chasing her three naughty boys around the Bengali locality they grew up in!
FPM was on the agenda every day at our TV- less modest home. At the Family Post Mortem every night, we spoke about our day, who scored a goal, who lost the match, what piece we had selected for the elocution contest, who hurt himself at the club...anything...anything except when the next examination was...that would only be brought up for discussion by the once simple up-country girl, not the erudite, learned former professor. She wanted her sons to take after their dad – study hard and be empowered with a good education; he wanted his sons to take after their mum – do things
beyond the classroom and be empowered with a vibrant personality.
I think their three sons got a little from each and
not everything of each. Perhaps, that’s what
their parents desired and so it turned out. It
also gave their children space and encouraged
them to live the lives they wanted to live
and be the people they wanted to be.
That brings me to another Joyce O’Brien dictum – always
stand by your spouse! Back then it meant ‘stand by your husband’. She
realised right away that it was her O’B who would be the bread winner and the public figure, not her. So she decided, happily and voluntarily, to play a supporting role; but she ended up playing the entire supporting cast and being the entire production team. She scrubbed and she cleaned, she cooked and she shopped, she drove and she dropped, she counselled and she cared....and later, much later, when
the boys had grown up, as he stepped out into public life, she too stepped out, humble enough to walk a step behind, attractive enough to walk beside, and, when needed, courageous enough to walk a little ahead to weather the storm.
And when she stepped out with him, heads turned. Not only because she was a stunner in her day and beautiful till the end, but also because you couldn’t not notice the striking
chemistry between a man and woman so different, so poles apart.
She joined him on every adventure, journeying through teaching, publishing, quizzing, writing, singing, acting, clubbing, and, most importantly, reaching out. It was here that she upped her game the most. Outpacing and outreaching even him. And here’s the twist...for him!
When he served three terms as MLA, his professional commitments made it imperative for someone to take the greater load and spend more time with the people. She stepped in.
And how! When he was elected to lead the community, she went the distance with him. And how! When he took the chair of public service and educational bodies, she protected him from the corrupt and the cunning. And how!
If she did have a weakness, it was a weakness for young people. Every young person – even a middle aged person actually – was beta! She wrote the book on oral history and never tired of talking to them about love’n life, family’n friends. But her best times were spent with her grandchildren. She loved them unconditionally, confided in them unabashedly, and advised them unequivocally. Incredibly, they did the same to her!
As the years rolled on, she rose to the occasion and made her own significant contribution
to the community and Association that she loved so dearly. But it was as a social worker and ‘Aunty Joyce’ that she has left for us her greatest legacy. She had the time – the time to listen, the time to counsel, the time to love!
She had time for everybody; but far more time for the boy who was being expelled because he was caught red-handed scaling the school wall; more time for the former cabaret artiste who was in prison for plunging a knife into
her alcoholic partner when he tried to rape
her yet again; more time for the weary, the beaten, the lost. Not just to provide a shoulder to cry on or slip her hand into her bag for
some material comfort, she had the time to empathise completely. To feel your pain...and live through it, for you, with you. And none of this had anything to do with being somebody or somebody’s wife or mother, or a position or responsibility...no...it had everything to do with being human.
Being Aunty Joyce!
Heaven’s a more fun place to be since the 12th of January 2019. I can hear a whistle from up there. Loud and sharp!
It must be my Mother!
Barry O’Brien