 Image by Annie Spratt on Unsplash We wait in the driveway for the bus, my daughter crunching woodsmoke-scented leaves to pass the time. I’m an excellent mother, if the definitive parenting sites can be believed. Limited screen time, multiple bedtime stories, junk food only on special occasions, no exposure to unpleasantness, etc. But I’m bored, and leaf-crunching isn’t going to cut it. I teach my preschooler a catchphrase from my favorite decade, although introducing one’s child to snark is probably against the rules. “As if,” she repeats, cocking her head. I know I’ll regret my decision in a day or two when she’s echoed the words ad nauseam, but at this moment she’s perfectly adorable, trying hard (and failing) to get the intonation just right. It’s excellent fodder for the kind of mother who records her child’s every move and sets up a highly lucrative YouTube channel. Which I am not. Seriously, though, this show is payment worthy. “As if, as if, as if,” my offspring shrieks, running back and forth from the garage door to the curb, leaving golden baby tornadoes in her wake. As if she doesn’t have a care in the world, other than ensuring adequate time in the jumping around room. As it should be, my inner voice opines in a self-congratulatory tone. A mango-hued conveyance finally arrives. I hand my mini-me off to the driver with an apologetic smile and a warning that she may be insufferable on the journey. That night, after bath and books, we lie like nesting commas on her turquoise and lavender comforter, her uncategorizable eyes wide shut, her breathing soft and even. Without warning, her right arm claims my neck in an inexorable chokehold. As if I’ve been conned by a four-year-old. As if she’s known forever how quickly she can lose me. As if she’s always been aware of the menace right outside; pervasive, like the scent of woodsmoke.
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 Image by Anders Drange on Unsplash As I watch my mum ascend on an escalator a guy is playing Hans Zimmer's soundtrack to Interstellar on one of those train station pianos and it's impossible not to start crying. He is giving us the soundtrack to an imagined film of our lives, and in this scene, we are parting after a few days on holiday together. She's a rapidly shrinking woman with a huge suitcase and I am in tears because, even after ten years of living in a different country, when we say goodbye, I remember how much she hates that she can't pop over to my house whenever she wants, which might be one of the top three things she ever wanted, and I wonder if all my life decisions have been wrong. I don't know when the music started, but it's the right music. As a child, I lived my private moments as if I were an actor in a film about my own life and everything that happened was from a script, and everything I said was a line. It was a kind of meta life, because I watched a lot of TV and maybe I was weird (or maybe that was normal, I don't know). But having done that for my first twenty-five years, the idea of actually filming myself now and uploading it to social media is unappealing to say the least (I am a smidge over 40). Yet so many of us do it, and I don't judge. It's normal, and to not do something does not always mean to disapprove. If a stranger is likely to find footage of you eating breakfast cereal interesting, knock yourself out. No one is stopping you. In fact, these days it's encouraged. The guy on the piano was, of course, filming himself, but you don't need to find his uploaded footage to enjoy Hans Zimmer's film score for Interstellar. It's available on Instagram so anyone can use it as their personal soundtrack now (search for Cornfield Chase). You would think that all those soaring scales and modulations would have lost their poignance for being so, dare I say it, overused. It makes me feel like an idiot for crying. Plus, what is there to cry about, really? Lost its poignance – because that music, made for a film about our planet becoming unliveable and families being cleaved apart through space and time, and the one hope of survival resting on the last few noble survivors; that film that looks extraordinary but that is about fears that are so ordinary now; that makes you cry because who wouldn't cry at the thought that their daughter had become older than them and that her life had been vital to save humanity which was in peril because there was no food, only weather; that music that closes our tiny vacation, that my mum loved and hated equally because it was because I live in another country, but to her it might as well be another planet; because that music is for Interstellar, which is probably a better version of what will happen to humanity when we miss the moment to do something, like if I miss this moment to run over and tell my mum I'm sorry and I love her and I didn't mean to make it hard, but of course I don't do that and none of us do anything either. Because that music is a soundtrack for cat videos now. And workout videos where plasticised people who seem to hate themselves hulk weights around as punishment, (or maybe they love themselves, or maybe it's not so binary anymore, I don't know). They bend over in Lycra while Hans Zimmer pours his essence into a gargantuan pipe organ and then they call it wellness, and who am I to judge? And I scroll and scroll, and the music crops up again, and I think—how funny that it's the backing track for scrolling through memes and also the soundtrack to that film about the apocalypse. And I don't think, because it's too terrifying, and because crying about my mum is both easier and all about me, that maybe us on phones, staring at our palms, watching strangers sweat in gyms while the weather closes in and kills people is, in fact, the apocalypse.
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