A Complicated Relationship
Today, my mum would have been ninety-five. She passed away twelve years ago.
(Mum in about 1947-8)
Mum and I had a complicated relationship, but to most people, she was well-loved, and a pillar of the community. At her funeral, which the local mayor came to, the church overflowed. I think most of the village and half the town came.
She had been a guide leader, a member of the Women's Institute and supported the amateur dramatics group making costumes. She was also a keen beekeeper, honey judge and Duke of Edinburgh advocate/examiner. She was an incredibly busy woman. There is more about her achievements here.
Mum grew up during the war. The make-do and mend attitude stayed with her throughout her life. We either had hand-me-down, homemade or clothes from jumble sales the majority of the time. I grew up wearing a lot of my brother's old clothes.
Around the time the picture above was taken, Mum went to train in London as a secretary, she had wanted to be a PE teacher, but the war had taken those opportunities away, they were given to the returning soldiers. Before that, she had been brought up on a farm. She and her two older sisters were sent to a boarding school as young girls. She started somewhere between when she was six to eight as her older sisters were there. (Mum is on the left in the picture below)
She was a fiercely independent woman who met my dad at work. When they got engaged she had to leave work. But she kept herself very busy with all of the things I have already mentioned, plus about a year after they were married, Mum inherited some money and bought a house, a huge house with a garden, orchard and tennis court. It was her house and hers alone, until the day she died and my dad inherited it. It remained in her name until then.
Growing up in the house, I was always under the impression we didn't have much money. All our clothes were second-hand, we only had homemade food (it was the seventies, all my friends were eating Findus pancakes!) and we didn't have central heating. Our house was cold.
Dad paid the bills. Dad paid for the holidays. Dad paid for everything except Mum's car, which she paid for and replaced every few years. Dad also gave Mum housekeeping money every week. (Me & Mum below)
As I got older, Mum and I clashed over many things. Politics, religion, my choice of boyfriends, my lifestyle, what I chose to do in Uni. It was only when I decided to go to university that I realised who really held the purse strings. I was allowed to go but only if I had a backup subject. I wasn't allowed to do drama on its own. Now, knowing what I know, a degree is a degree is a degree, it doesn't really matter what subject it's in unless it's super specific and a first. So, I did a joint degree, which I did poorly in. The second subject which I didn't want to do brought my grades down. But, I digress. Mum and I mostly argued about money. She believed I spent too much on frivolous things.
I was encouraged to work and had my first job when I was about fourteen or fifteen, I would travel through the night with older men to go to fairs where I would work in burger vans and then I would travel back with the same older men through the night. The shifts were over twenty-four hours, I was touched up and was lucky nothing worse happened. I got twenty pounds cash in hand. After that, I worked at the Wimpy. I also did house cleaning. All before I set off to Uni. When I was there, on some weeks I was working cleaning yuppies' houses and at a pub to make ends meet. I still struggled to stretch my grant. There is one week in my diary where I calculated that including attending college and going to work I had done a seventy-two-hour week before I had started on any homework. My point is, I was not afraid of hard work. Did I spend some of that money on frivolous things? Yes. After living in a world where new never happened, I only wanted new. I wanted new clothes, new furniture, new ornaments. Yes, I wanted new.
Looking back at the debt I had at college and then after when I worked at the college, it was tiny. My mum was horrified.
What I didn't know is Mum had money, had always had money.
She had never had a mortgage. She had never paid the bills. What she did have was a large investment portfolio. Whose interest paid for those new cars. I had no idea.
I had no idea she had au pairs come and look after myself and my brother in the summer holidays so she could carry on with her busy life helping everyone else. I thought my mum and dad were being altruistic having these people from all over the world come and stay. I found this out when I was at my dad's funeral in 2018 - how naive am I?
And yet there are other things. I don't remember learning to cook, sew, knit, swim. I have always known how to do those things so must assume my mum taught me. My mum also taught me to drive. I had an instructor but it was her that I spent the most time with learning to drive. Some of my favourite memories of her were driving to uni interviews and visiting the places where those universities were. One time when we were in York, I saw a cute teddy bear in a shop. I continued shopping but unbeknownst to me my mum bought it and gave it to me the following Christmas. She could be incredibly kind.
I know my practical nature is all her. If there is ever a crisis, I am calm, I sort it out. I can panic after. She gave me that.
(Mum and Dad at a Ladies Night run by the Masons)
As I said at the beginning of this, my mum and I had a complicated relationship. I sometimes wonder if this is because I am adopted. I have given this much thought and considered what it must have been like for her. She and Dad couldn't have children, and it was several years into the marriage before they got me. I admire that, but I think Mum struggled, particularly as I became more independent. Maybe, she saw a naive woman who had no idea of the struggles ahead and found that frustrating. Or was jealous of the future I might have that she was denied - a career, birth children? She never spoke about it. Now I am a mother with older daughters, I can understand some of her feelings, perhaps. I am just careful not to speak to my daughters in the way she did to me.
The last big argument we had was about money. I was older, working and moving in with my now husband and we were planning a life together. My parents had always said if I was in trouble financially to speak to them first.
I had a series of terrible cars, and I was throwing good money after bad, so I started looking around for something better. I also knew that my soon-to-be husband and I were planning to have kids pretty sharpish as I was no longer a spring chicken and so I wanted a car that would be more reliable. We were moving house and money was tight. I had found a second-hand Fiesta which was nearly new, in good condition but five thousand pounds. We couldn't afford it, so I spoke to my mum asking for a loan, that we would pay back incrementally. She said so many cruel things. My soon-to-be husband hadn't seen that side of her but overheard the conversation and still remembers it now. It was awful. An hour or so later, my dad phoned and said he would pay for it. But the damage was done, all the little cruelties I had grown up with flooded back. My skin was sallow, I was fat. I was lazy. I was immoral. I was a spendthrift. I swore I would never ask them for money again and never did.
(Mum and I at graduation - she had started an Open University Degree the year I started secondary school - she completed it ten years later the same year I got my degree in 1989)
Mum never apologised to me and life just carried on as normal as if the argument had never happened, because we were very British like that. We didn't talk about stuff, we repressed it deep down.
When I had my first child I saw a whole different side to Mum.
(Mum with my eldest daughter a few hours after she was born. Apologies for the quality, my husband took the picture on his phone, in 2002.)
She became soft, sweet, loving. I didn't know who this person was. It confused the life out of me, but at the same time, it was lovely. This continued until she passed away, her love of her grandchildren, both my children and my brother's was huge. That is an undeniable fact.
By this time, I was the principal earner in our family with quite a prestigious job. Mum never asked about it. She asked about my husband's job, never mine. I always felt like I had disappointed her, I wasn't sure how but somehow I knew I had.
(Dad, my eldest and Mum)
I am a different type of mother to my mother, but some of the things she taught me as a parent I still use. I was spoken to, on the whole, with respect and not treated like a child. I was given my own space which was only occasionally invaded. I was taught to always let them know where I was even if it was somewhere they wouldn't want me to be.
When my mum got ill, I was with her for her first scan and throughout her illness. Cancer is a brutal and cruel disease, it took Mum quickly. Probably because she was ignoring it and tending to everyone else (my dad was getting over a heart attack).
(Mum with my youngest daughter the Christmas before she died)
At her last Christmas, she still wouldn't let me help her cook, even though she couldn't eat hardly anything herself.
The truth is, Mum was a complicated woman, an incredibly intelligent woman with a massive sense of family and community who struggled to understand my difference. And my difference wasn't really anything I did. The world had changed, women were having careers and babies and that was OK. Which I know, in principle she was for and yet when I first got pregnant she expected me to give up work. When I tried to explain that we couldn't afford to, it just went back to me being bad with money. She couldn't accept that most couples had to work because the cost of having a mortgage and living was too much for one person's income.
(The last photo I took of my mum)
The truth is, like all of us, Mum was a mountain of contradictions. She laughed easily and loudly. Nothing made her happier than having all the family around the dinner table. She liked heated discussions about politics and life and struggled to back down (same as I do). She could be cruel but she could be hugely generous. The last cheque she made out was a donation to the church. She did vast amounts of charity work and helped loads of young people through guides and the Duke of Edinburgh award. Was she a brilliant mother? Sometimes.