When you’ve spent the last thirty years working as a stay-at-home mother of five children, what time do you have to make friends? ‘And what is a friend, anyway?’ she asks. ‘How does anyone find real friends?’ She says this to draw attention to how fortunate I am – You have many real friends, Benjamin, and you are lucky by comparison – but it usually does nothing but depress the hell out of me. Most of the Christmas cards Mum receives nowadays aren’t from friends, but businesses: dentists and chiropractors posting out inkjet print-outs en masse, with impersonal, fill-in-the-blank TOs and FROMs, followed by a reminder to make an appointment in the new year. Still, every year without fail, Mum receives one Christmas card from an old friend in Ipoh, the regional Malaysian town where both women spent their childhoods. The two have corresponded for nearly fifty years, annual greetings sent across oceans, one for every year since they left primary school. The cards from Mum’s Malaysian friend, Aunty Clara, have always been warm and affectionate, almost long-form letters in their loving attention to detail.
