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I love being a mummy
I have to confess that I took my mum for granted. Don’t we all?
And then she went and died. Would that we could turn back the clock.
If we could, then today I would be in full-on craft mode. I would be fashioning my mother some kind of elaborate, daffodil-laden, cardboard-and-sticky-back-plastic creation for Easter.
Inside it, I would write messages of love and appreciation for her softness, warmth and humour.
I would wake her on Sunday with a dive on her bed (let’s, for the sake of argument, assume I have retained my child-like form so as not to crush the poor woman) and a wet kiss. We would eat bacon sandwiches together and I would bring her tea on a tray with a flower from the garden.
So why the heck didn’t I do this 30 years ago before it was too late?
The irony of youth = the irony of motherhood. It’s not technically a mathematical equation, but consider this. When you are a child, you have no real interest in anything but yourself, in the here and now, and so you do not stop to savour the things which are transient and will be lost. When you are a mother, the times you treasure the most and long for are these same days, when your child is small and has absolutely no appreciation of what you actually do for them, or the depth of the love which you feel for them. A cruel fate, methinks.
My mother, thank God, was a bit of a family hoarder. Like me, she selectively retained samples of the school work I brought home as an infant, the certificates I won for music, ballet and even Spring Bulb planting (like the one below from 1976)! I was blissfully unaware that she had kept these (and since I was far too busy being a snotty teenager, frankly didn’t care), until I reached some level of adult maturity and developed a sense of my own mortality. At this point, they became items to cherish and preserve. They are priceless to me.
As time progressed and I became a mother myself, I found myself wishing that my mother’s mother had done the same thing. I longed to hold in my hand an artefact which my mum had created, some piece of herself to treasure. It’s simple enough to keep a child’s painting, but a painting is so much more than the paint. It is a slice of social history, a piece of our family’s jigsaw puzzle, and a memento so profound when that person is no longer here.
Whilst a child’s Monday morning ‘what I did at the weekend’ story will invariably never fail to contain the timeless “I got up, I had a wash, I brushed my teeth and I went downstairs” as an opening paragraph, consider the difference in the content thereafter between my mother’s school days in 1940s wartime Britain, versus my own flaire-filled, shoulder-padded growth through the 70s and 80s. Then compare this with my son’s X-Box generation. You will find no Pop Tarts or iPads in my school books, my friend. Latin conjugations maybe, and footless tights aplenty, but no air-raids or ration books.
This is my impeccable work from around 1974 at a guess. Whilst Black Beauty may no longer grace our screens, my mother apparently made her views about it clear. There were only 3 channels on TV back then – if that was rubbish, who knows what she’d have made of our 700 channels now?!
And so I look at Mother’s Day, Easter and every family holiday with fresh eyes these days. I have two children of my own and two step-children now, growing quickly, and I try to breathe them in every day. We laugh and hug a lot. These are the memories of softness and warmth I want them to recall when I am gone.
And just in case they are one day interested, I track their day to day adventures, I scan their artwork and I digitise all their school reports on our lifelines with SaveEveryStep.
It’s a sort of family digital scrapbook. We each have our own timeline, and the boys’ growth, development and antics are all recorded in full colour, words alongside picture, in chronological order for them to appreciate at a later date – the gift of their lifetime on a timeline!
There are some things which I throw away – old bills, clothes which the boys have grown out of, old birthday cards etc. But there is one thing I always keep, and always will. My hand made presents from my little men.
Cherish every moment with your clan and save them at www.SaveEveryStep.com, for free.
About the Author
Founder of family life-stories website www.SaveEveryStep.com; mum of two and step-mum of two more; passionate about family nostalgia and the preservation of our memories for future generations
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