Being Indispensible

Vocabulary in our vicarage is limited. If a bishop strays by, we may muster dialog on theological ethics and we are capable of whole sentences on Haagen Dazs ice cream flavours. But mostly the family gets by on a catch-all three-letter word: mom.
It serves as an expletive: 'M@!*M!! (You made me drop my iPod!)
As an SOS: 'Muuumm! (There's a ghost under my mattress...)
As an imperative: 'MUMMM!' (Come and get Barbie's hair out of the plug hole)
As a warning: 'Mu-um!' (Don't dare wear that corduroy to school)
As a prevarication: 'Ask Mum...' (...why you should iron your nightie on a wedding night)
It is a privilege to be indispensible. But privileges can be wearing. The word is a prefix to almost every communication. And it is a prefix I am obliged, laboriously, to acknowledge before these communications can proceed, even if I am alone in the room with the speaker.
'Mum?'
'Yes?'
'I've changed my sneeze. Do you like it?'
'Mum?'
'Yes?'
'Are you a mum?'
Lately, I've made attempts to ban this most irritating of words. 'Just say what you want to say!' I bark as it cuts across my efforts to conquer the oven timer. In retaliation the children have upped the ante.
'Mum?'
'Yes?'
'Nothing!!'
'I say, Mum...'
'What?'
'Nothing!!'
When they are dispatched on a four-day holiday camp, that wretched sound is silenced. I indulge in leisurely pursuit of my deadlines, my assistance unsought and my approval uncalled for. I am briefly expendable and the novelty is beguiling.
Then: 'Mum!!' shrill two voices across the school hall as I arrive at the end to collect them. I realize that the three-letter word has a meaning that I'd missed and the sound of it suddenly enchants me. Those childless days were revitalising, but I've missed being indispensible.
On the drive home I resolve to be unstintingly maternal and to deserve that cherished sobriquet. Then the 10-year-old fears she has forgotten her stuffed elephant. I glance in the rear view mirror and brace myself for the onslaught. When it comes, it conveys rage, grief and recrimination in a single slaying syllable:
'MUM!'