When Mum Said the Word

The journey from Mike and Tricia's unfolded through conversation that made the kilometres disappear. Mother and daughter settling into the particular rhythm of road trip dialogue, topics flowing from memory to observation to comfortable silence and back again. The highway cooperated beautifully, its bypasses eliminating the stop-start frustration of town centres, creating smooth passage northward through landscapes that shifted gradually from Central Coast to Mid North Coast.

Mum's local knowledge surfaced as they approached Newcastle's outskirts. A pie shop she remembered, famous enough to warrant deviation, promising decent coffee alongside its pastry offerings. The detour felt worthwhile for more than just food. During the stop, both women reached for their phones with the synchronised instinct of those temporarily separated from their partners. Mum dialled Dad while Sal connected with Anth, parallel conversations sharing parallel journeys, the invisible threads of partnership stretching across whatever distances circumstance created.

Coffs Harbour announced itself as the day's end approached, and Sal felt the accumulated weight of hours behind the wheel settling into her shoulders and lower back. These past two days represented the longest stretches she'd driven the bus, her muscles reminding her that stamina required building. The Big 4 offered no-frills sanctuary for a single night, its facilities adequate for their simple needs: a place to park, a place to sleep, nothing more.

They did almost nothing that evening, the particular exhaustion of extended driving demanding early surrender to rest. Sleep came quickly and deeply, bodies grateful for horizontal stillness after hours of vibration and concentration.

The 7am departure felt almost luxurious compared to some of their earlier starts. First priority: coffee. The servo that presented itself seemed promising until they walked inside. No barista stood behind gleaming machinery. No coffee menu offered choices. Just a self-serve machine, its digital screen awaiting selections from whoever was brave or desperate enough to trust it.

A truckie stood at the machine, his weathered hands navigating the touchscreen with practiced efficiency. His selections indicated someone who'd made peace with roadside caffeine long ago: extra large, extra shot.

"Any good?" Sal asked, nodding toward the machine.

He turned, his face carrying the particular character of someone who'd logged thousands of highway kilometres. "Dunno," he muttered in an accent as authentically Australian as red dust and eucalyptus. "But I get a long black so I can't fuck it up too much."

The words hung in the servo's fluorescent air for a moment before Sal processed what she'd witnessed. She glanced at Mum, whose expression had frozen somewhere between shock and disbelief. Mum's generation, her upbringing, her entire relationship with language had not prepared her for such casual profanity from a stranger at seven in the morning.

After the truckie departed with his unfuckupable long black, Mum turned to Sal with an expression that would fuel family stories for years. Then, carefully, almost experimentally, she repeated his exact words. Every. Single. One. Including the one she'd never, in Sal's fifty years of existence, ever heard cross her mother's lips.

The moment dissolved into laughter so consuming they nearly forgot about their own coffee. In half a century of daughter-mother relationship, through childhood scoldings and teenage rebellions, through weddings and grandchildren and every conceivable circumstance, Sal had never once heard Mum deploy that particular word. Yet here, in a roadside servo outside Coffs Harbour, a truckie's throwaway comment had achieved what nothing else ever had.

"I can't believe you just said that," Sal managed between giggles.

"Neither can I," Mum admitted, looking both scandalised and slightly thrilled by her own transgression.

The longest leg of their journey stretched ahead, the Pacific Highway unspooling northward through hours of concentrated driving. Multiple stops punctuated the passage: diesel for the bus, food for themselves, stretches for legs that protested their confinement. Each pause provided brief relief before the road reclaimed them, the Sunshine Coast drawing incrementally closer with every kilometre.

Mid-afternoon delivered them to their destination, the familiar landscape of Mum's home territory finally surrounding them. Dad waited with the particular patience of someone who'd been tracking their progress through intermittent phone calls, his greeting carrying relief that the journey had concluded safely.

The mother-daughter road trip had delivered exactly what it promised: shared time, shared stories, and one unforgettable servo encounter that would be retold at family gatherings for decades. Some journeys are measured in destinations reached. Others are measured in moments collected along the way. This one had provided both, plus the unprecedented bonus of hearing Mum say something she'd never said before, courtesy of a truckie who just wanted a coffee he couldn't ruin.Read more