Peter Calder: Travels with My Mother

Peter Calder, well known to Herald readers over nearly 20 years as feature writer and film reviewer, has written a book, his first, published today.

Travels with My Mother (Tandem, $27.95) is a memoir of a trip to England last year with his 82-year-old mother.

It is introduced by Herald books editor MARGIE THOMSON.


From the first sighting of the cover on which, it has to be said, is a most unflattering photo of Calder himself looking shockingly Antipodean and older than his 50 years, one realises that this exploration of his relationship with his mother, and his recounting of their attempt to unravel the mystery of their cultural identity (English or Kiwi?) will include little personal gloss or glamour.

As he smokes, drinks rather much duty-free gin, shows off and is shown up by his mother ("Looks like Kitchener to me," his mother says, looking at an unmarked statue of Kitchener. "Don't be silly," Calder hisses through clenched teeth) and becomes increasingly irritated by her, he reveals himself as, well, simply human.

He emerges as a recognisable "every child", despite his unsettling realisation that, in practical terms, the roles have been reversed and now he must look after his rather infirm mother.

His plans are movingly filial: I would lead her through the hard bits, just as she once led me through the hard bits, holding her steady to stop her falling as she walked through a dangerous world, just as she once did for me.

And this is what he does, with a few Christian Pilgrim-type stumbles along the way into some very recognisable Sloughs of Despond. Nevertheless: I quite enjoyed being the adult, Calder says. I felt very protective of her.

Shepherding an octogenarian through London's busy streets had its stresses and many funny moments. In the end Calder feels sad that at the end of a long life of self-sacrifice his mother cannot hop into a taxi without thinking twice about the cost. Her "there's no need for such extravagance" could be the catch-cry of her generation.

As he explains in the book, the trip wasn't a visit "home" in the usual sense: Calder's mother was born in New Zealand and had never been further than Australia.

Yet Calder and his brothers were brought up to be "little Englishmen abroad", schooled privately and occasionally viciously, fed roast dinners on Sundays, and given cultural references - Wordsworth, Gilbert and Sullivan - that were quite at odds with the context in which they lived: in the belly of Tainui, Boundary Rd in Hamilton, the showgrounds, the hydatids dosing strip, bright sunlight, Kornies.

His mother had always felt more English than New Zealander, dimly regarding England as her true home. In fact, during the 12 days mother and son spent in each other's company (the most time, Calder says, they had spent together in 30 years), while Calder wanted to see important things such as the Greenwich Observatory, his mother just wanted to see a thatched house, or a little market down a lane. These were the things that gave her a lot of pleasure.

The trip was inspired when Mrs Calder's brother died, leaving her $15,000 and the instruction that she spend it on a trip to England.

It was some time before Calder realised she was dithering because she was afraid and that he would have to go too.

Despite the humorous, sometimes gut-wrenching illustrations of exasperation that he provides in the book, usually brought on by his disappointment at his mother's perceived resolve to be unimpressed by the largeness of the world (his ill-tempered snapping of eat your peas is a particularly low moment, not least because of the acute sense of his own shame that accompanies his telling of it), Calder strongly feels that the trip was important.

Not just for the broader reasons of personal identity (both he and his mother feel far more at home with themselves as New Zealanders after their experiences), but for the good it did their relationship.

His mother, he says, is more at peace with herself, it's almost like a ghost has been laid to rest.

The general question the book raises in the mind of the reader is: what drives a writer to reveal so much of himself, and so much that is unflattering and I'm not speaking here solely of those white legs, bad shirt and balding head.

Calder jumps on the word confessional and, on reflection, this seems remarkably apt. Through confession, people seek absolution and gain confirmation of their worth.

Calder admits this is so: "The writing I respond to the most is where the writer allows us to see their humanity rather than ... self-aggrandising. And yes, there's a confessional aspect. It's almost like wanting to put it out there and have people say it's all right."

Of course, Calder's book is utterly engaging, with humour and his own vulnerability employed to engage our empathy. His honesty endears him to us.

Who would not weep in shared shame at his outright nastiness? Who among us does not wrestle at some point with this matter of the inversion of child and adult roles, with our impatience at our parents' demise?

In this sense he's written not just a travelogue, or a tract about identity, but something that is both these things and more: a profound, mundane, cathartic book that, in its effect of shared frailty, offers a redemptive branch to the rest of us.

He says that writing this book was incredibly hard, speaks of the neurosis of writing, of perpetual dissatisfaction. But also, there's his infinite capacity for praise.

One feels this book, while his first, will not be his last.