Mum and the Persian Rug.

By R.M. Hamilton

I had an idyllic childhood. E Nesbit couldn’t have drafted up a happier childhood if she’d tried. Compared to my childhood, the Bastables led a grim, Dickensian existence.

That’s not to say I enjoyed every day of it. A day I most certainly did not enjoy, was the day Mum found the giant Persian rug.

I’m not entirely sure it was Persian.

 But it was absolutely giant.

The day started happily enough. Mum, unable to stomach another day of officially homeschooling us, (she’d tried one of those days recently and we had rewarded her with intellectual fruits of such idiocy that she had cried herself to sleep), declared a library day.

Library days were the best days.

We’d amble slowly down to the small library in the township of Whangarei.  It was housed in an Art Deco building and there was a blackboard out the front that the librarians updated regularly with pithy little sayings. The most recent quote had read, The Greatest Day is the Day You Were Born. The Second Greatest Day is when you find out why.

After Mum dumped us at the library she would disappear for about an hour. I still don’t know where she went, and I still don’t care.  

We’d go straight to the children’s section, collect our favourite books, and vanish into the pages. I was particularly keen on Through the Looking Glass.

Its appeal was enhanced by the fact Mum couldn’t stand it. She hadn’t outright forbidden it, but she had called it ‘dumb’ and hinted darkly that it might contain drug references.

I didn’t know anything about drug references, but I poured over The Jabberwocky in hopes of finding some.

After a bit, Mum would return, collect us and we would walk across town to a bakery where she let us pick out a cake or an iced bun. Then we’d walk to The Rose Gardens and eat our picnic.

It was always a predictably perfect day.

Until this day.

Because on this day, just before we got to the library we passed a junk shop. We’d passed it before many times, but today, lying on the pavement in front of the junk shop was something very large, long, and brown. It didn’t appeal to me at all.

I wouldn’t have paid it any attention whatsoever, but Mum came to an abrupt stop in front of the nasty thing.

She bent down and gave it an exploratory prod. Her eyes brightened. “Heavy!” she muttered. A gleam came into her eye. She flicked the edge of the long, brown log open. A riotous pattern of burnt orange, dull green and dark brown was revealed.

I thought it was hideous.

Mum didn’t share my opinion, apparently.

Mumbling something about ‘quality’, she lunged into the shop with her eyes gleaming. Halfway down the little path in the shop that wound through chaotic piles of dust covered junk, she adjusted her body language. She deliberately slumped, dragged her feet, and deleted the gleam from her eye.    

By the time she reached the desk at the back of the shop she was a study of indifference. “There’s a rug out the front of your shop,” Mum informed the proprietor. She delivered this statement in a bored, factual manner. Her whole demeaner seemed to declare, ‘I merely pass on this dull and uninteresting information as one concerned citizen to another’.

The proprietor, Mr Todd, sat up very straight in his ancient, cobweb bedecked wingback chair. He smiled slyly. “Oh yes, it just came in, I haven’t moved it into the shop yet.”

He looked at Mum in a calculating sort of manner. “It’s nice, isn’t it, Wendy?”

“It needs a good wash!” retorted Mum, with spirit.

“It’s a genuinely old Persian rug,” said Mr Todd, coldly.

“I don’t think its genuine,” said Mum sternly. “I think it’s a knock off.”

“Well, it might be,” conceded Mr Todd. “But it’s a very good sort of knock off.”

Mum looked at the ceiling. “How much?”

“$70?”

“It’s got a stain in the corner that might never come out.”

“That adds character.”

“I’m not paying $70.”

Mr Todd sighed. “What about 60?”

“I’d do 50,” said Mum.

Mr Todd groaned loudly. “If Bill hears about this, he’ll fire me.”

Mum received this startling announcement with perfect calm. Mr Todd was always lamenting that Bill would fire him and Bill Sanders was always claiming that Mr Todd was looking for an excuse to evict him.

 Wailing about impending reprisal at the hand of the absent partner was a good sign.

“Done,” moaned Mr Todd. “Probably Aladdin’s authentic flying carpet and you get it all for fifty dollars.”

Hastily, before he could change his mind, Mum fished out the money. Mr Todd hit the side of an ornate antique cash register and the draw flew open.

“I love that register,” said Mum, eyeing it hopefully.

“It’s not for sale,” said Mr Todd tartly, slamming the draw shut and noting down the sale in a book with a bit of pencil. “And it doesn’t work anyway. It’s just a glorified money tin, really.”

They moved to the front of the shop where the rug lay. “I’ll bring it around for you tonight,” said Mr Todd, helpfully.

But Mum, having acquired her objective, dispatched her slothful expression. A new gleam shone in her eye and this gleam was not for Mr Todd.

“Oh no,” said Mum. “That’s very kind of you, but I won’t need that.”

Mr Todd, who, when he wasn’t being cunning was really a very nice man, looked alarmed.   

“It’s pretty heavy, Wendy!”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” said Mum blithely. “What do you think I had all these children for?”

My head jerked up and I stared at her. Around me, Rachel and the boys bristled.

Mum ignored our hostility. “Line up you lot. It’s heavy so we’re going to carry it on our heads.”

“Through TOWN?” I spluttered. “All the way home?”

“Yes,” said Mum, maddeningly calm.

“But people will look!”

“No, no,” said Mum heartlessly. “They won’t. Now, keep the rug in the centre of your heads and let’s go.”

Mum was wrong.

People did look.

Who wouldn’t look at a carpet centipede?

At least the people in the street had the decency to restrict themselves to slight, quivering smiles. But the people in the cars showed no humanity whatsoever.

“MUM, THEY’RE LAUGHING AT US!”

“Well, let them laugh,” said the head of the horrible brown centipede as we wiggled up the path towards the court. “It doesn’t do you any harm for them to laugh.”

What an awful day.

 No library, no Jabberwocky and now, (the town clock striking twelve drove salt into this particular wound), no cake.

We were passing the court. The lawyers were coming out for lunch. It seemed that the lawyers possessed even less humanity than the people in the cars.

“HA HA HA!” said the lawyers, pointing in our direction.

Beneath my communal carpet hat, I withered. Some of the lawyers were quite nice looking. One of the lawyers was very nice looking. He was tall and dark, and he wasn’t laughing.

And what was this?  Oh, horrible day! He was coming towards us!

He stopped in front of Mum. “Have you considered it might be easier to go home and get the car?” he asked politely.

I brightened. What a piece of luck! An actual lawyer coming to our defence! I decided he was even better looking than I had noticed. Surely Mum would have to listen to him, I thought!

But I thought wrong.

“No, no,” said the head of our carpet centipede cheerfully. “What do you think I had all these children for?”

“Well,” said the nice-looking lawyer, concerned, “it just seems so heavy.”

“Not when we lift together,” said Mum breezily.

The lawyer decided to tackle the subject more directly. ‘People are laughing at you and your children. That can’t be nice.”

Suddenly Mum grew solemn. “Look,” she said quietly. “Life is a long walk. I don’t know what my kids will have to carry as they go through it, but I do know if they can’t carry a carpet home today because a few people are laughing, they won’t be able to carry much of anything when it counts.”

“Oh,” said the lawyer softly. “I see.” And he turned and walked away slowly.

I watched him go with disgust.  I thought lawyers were supposed to be good at persuading people. It seemed to me that the only person who got persuaded was the lawyer. And I couldn’t see how. What a dumb thing for Mum to say! Did she really think we were going to spend our lives carrying heavy, embarrassing things around while other people laughed at us?

Ha! Not likely!

 He wasn’t so nice looking after all. In fact, he was ugly.

We continued on our way and people continued to laugh at us.

Worst day ever, I decided, as I savagely bit into a boring jam sandwich under the tree in our back garden. Mum had got her beastly rug out of it, but what had I got?

❤️❤️❤️

More than twenty years later I think I know what I got out of that day.

If the first greatest day of your life is the day you are born and the second greatest day is the day you find out why, then maybe the third greatest day is the day you decide you’re going to do what you were born to do, regardless of how many other people point and sneer.

Somehow Mum’s lesson of the Persian rug doesn’t seem quite so stupid, these days.

Maybe she wasn’t talking about random junk found in thrift stores when she went on about ‘not knowing what we’ll need to carry’.

Maybe she was driving at something deeper.

Maybe.

But that’s enough philosophising for today.

If you want me, I’ll be eating cake and trying for the thousandth time to understand The Jabberwocky.

Toodle-pip, Ruthie

The writing belongs to R.M. Hamilton. Please ask if you want to use it. The Persian Carpet in the thumbnail is, according to Wikipedia, is a ‘Persian animal carpet, Safavid period, 16th century, housed at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg’. The photo of the carpet is in the public domain. The painting of the man on the flying carpet is called Riding a Flying Carpet by the Russian painter Viktor Vasnetsov. The work was painted in 1888. Oil on canvas. It is in the public domain.