MAMA TIME
My iPhone screen save of my own tribe when little x
Do you find the notion of Mother’s Day positive or not… you’re close, you’re not, you’ve lost yours, never been one? I get so many emails reminding me (I lost my mother a few years back), then a few that apologise ‘just in case’… relationships are complex: especially Mamas.
You see, my own mother loathed Mother’s Day. “Just an excuse for marketing and guilt,” she used to say. She never wanted any of us, her four children, to make a fuss. Or that’s what she said (she loved contentious feelings).
Little did I relate it to her own story however. Some of it, as she passed away 20 years ago, is still quite vague as she didn’t discuss it much. But the bare bones are:
She left home, Cork in Ireland, when she was only 19/20,
Catholic upbringing, ran away to England, met my father
Never went back.
One sister, our Auntie Elma, we saw when I was still only about 5 years old (my eldest sister about 13),
There was a row,
After that, as a family, we never heard or saw any of my mother’s family again.
The sadness is the reality: she died, a few years after my father passed away, still never seeing her own mother (or sisters) again, throughout the rest of her adult life.
Strong, independent, feminist in character, my mother Patricia, created a home for herself with us in England, and she was utterly fabulous as a mother herself. She was playful, humorous, sought out my company (would sneak me off school for occasional shopping trips), defended me to my father when I decided to give up ideas of Law and study Art instead. She taught me to trust my instincts, stand up for myself, ‘appear strong’ at times of injustice, be bold, and be proud to be a woman. I was the last person to speak to her before she died from the flu, urging her to see a doctor.
Did I tell her SHE was fab? Did I realise it enough - so consumed with my everyday life? Would she have believed it? I wish I could tell her: there is so much I would choose to say now, that I never took enough time to say. If you have yours with you still, don’t hesitate.
It’s about being present, not presents
Mother’s Day for me has often been a reminder of “my loss” in losing her, resulting in “my guilt as a daughter”.
My guilt is that I never reached her quickly enough: she died from the winter flu in 2000, the Friday morning after New Year, I got there in the evening, six hours too late. I own this Mama guilt. No-one else. Not ‘being there when she needed me’.
It also made me realise how immense her own ‘Mother guilt’ must have been, having shrouded secrets of her own family over the many years that she never shared her story with us, her children. And we were pretty close as families go.
So there have been lessons learned in my own journey. While I try to be a good mama to my darling trio - now young adults of 25, 23 and 19 - I will use this contemplative lockdown Mother’s Day, not for unnecessary gifts, but to remind myself to share, talk, laugh, adore, be thankful, honest, and remind myself that it’s a day to celebrate all mothers, mothering, motherhood in every capacity, past and present… because we’ve all had one.
And if they’re missing … celebrate all the more because it’s a long journey, filled with laughter AND tears: but the very best journey when you communicate with one another.
My ‘babes’
Last Minute Mother’s Day Gift Guide thanks to FABRIC?
A huge thank you to Fabric magazine: who did a fabulous Mother’s Day gift round up this week, and featured one of our candles GOJO, as their go-to candle gift of choice! We’re very proud - thank you to Becky Pomfret … it’s a fab line up of gifts, check it out here.
Candle Gift of Joy for Mother’s Day according to Fabric magazine