Some women can feel very left out. Those without children or living mothers or just those with rubbish children who write blogs rather than get round with a card (sorry Mum).
This has been a very difficult year for my mum and she probably deserves a daughter who spoils her instead of one that writes blogs but sorry mum (again) this is what you've got.
When I close my eyes and think about mum there are images and memories that spring to mind. Some of these memories come from pictures and others are probably made up but I'm going to share some because sometimes it is the tiny things that make a mum important.
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| Looking like Jackie O - 1970 Style Icon |
The first set of memories come from before my sister was born. I remember sitting on my mum's lap, while she tried to cut my toe nails. Magic Roundabout was on the TV and my Dad was about to take Tess, our black and white ball of furry energy for a walk. I was terrified of having my nails cut. I would sit, rigid, crying, pulling my feet away. I was also really ticklish and remember the pain of laughing and crying at once. She could have given up. She could have let me grow talons at the end of my feet. She could have got cross with me. But she didn't. I remember times during the day, when the radio was on and I was playing with a glockenspiel or my dolls house with real working lights (having a electrical engineer for a dad was very useful) when mum was pottering around listening to The Archers or singing along to some opera. These are defining moments. What would my life be without The Archers and opera?
Then I remember, after we had moved how kind my mum was to other women that lived near us. There was a woman whose husband left her who lived opposite, who mum would feel sorry for and say nice things about even when everyone else was saying that she'd brought it all on herself and needed to pull herself together. I remember, in the long hot summer of '76 how she was the only one of the local mums who wasn't ironing in her bra. Modesty, compassion and dignity are things I learnt from her.
Without my mum there wouldn't be books. We went to the library every Saturday. The smell of polished banisters, library cards that were little cardboard envelopes to hold the ticket in the front of the book and the Encyclopedia Britannica (this is how you dealt with a 'why' child before the internet) fill my nose as I remember. She taught me how to get lost in a book. We shared the stories. We still do. Later, in my teenage years, I remember standing with her in the new library looking at a display about Hiroshima and feeling her anger. Sometimes it's not enough to be sad. She taught me that.
Mum is a talented artist. She had wanted to study art since she was a child. Her mum didn't understand that desire, thinking that artists were unsavoury women who wore black turtle necks and had long, red painted nails and so she was discouraged until she saw us at school and proved that it's never too late to be creative. She joined art groups, did an A level and eventually a degree. I remember joining her at art groups and sitting in the countryside with her while she painted houses and kestrels.
When my children were born she became the best Nanny. She was there to help when I needed it but stepped back to allow me to find my own way. She took teasing in good grace and when my daughter responded to the question, "What's Nanny like?" by twirling her finger around her temple, she laughed along with everyone else, even though she knew my daughter was making a reference to her curly hair. It's important to be able to laugh at yourself.
Mum's make you who you are. I'm glad I was made by mine.
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