We love and admire our mother, she is after all our first role model. The symbiotic relationship so often associated with mother/daughter relationships last until such time until the apron strings are detached and we become women in our own right.
We can all no doubt associate with the paradoxes of our own mother, the loving mother, the typical Caribbean disciplinarian mother, to the sometimes witty mother we failed to recognise as children. But the realisation as daughters we have become our mother comes to us all. The day we find ourselves exhibiting one or more of her traits, verbatim quoting her phrases or finally seeing her in our features we either denied or failed to recognise earlier in our life.
As an adult, I was able to appreciate my mother’s inimitable way of comforting, encouraging, educating, philosophising and loving me and my three siblings. I have many wonderful and poignant memories, it is difficult to actually pick which to tell. A victim of physical punishment (the Caribbean disciplinarian model), she promised herself to do better with her own children, which she did, her scolding was always verbal. A staunch advocate of education, I was strongly reprimanded one day when my diction was distinctly cockney, stating she was sending me to school to get an education and to articulate properly.
Whilst still living at home and working, I had a new manager at work whom I disliked and suspected the feeling was mutual. A job I enjoyed had become intolerable and one day on two occasions she caught me deep in thought. I was in fact actually thinking out my strategy for leaving. Reprimanded like a naughty child, I was Infuriated and walked away to calm down. Once calm I had a flashing moment of clarity, whilst she was in a meeting I wrote out my resignation and walked out of the job. The relief immense as I walked out into the sunny afternoon. I window shopped, had a long lunch and wanted to go home at three o’clock. In all honesty, I thought I would be taken to task by my mother (oh! how regardless of age, we sometimes become infantile), but to my utter surprise she suggested we have a cup of tea and cakes, as she told me many stories of her working life. I had never loved her more, as we thoroughly enjoyed our afternoon tea, laughing and chatting.
My siblings and I knew we had to hurry up when my mother shouted up at us, “what are you doing up there, spinning around like turkey?” Her tone disguising her impatience and annoyance. Fast forward umpteen years later, getting ready to go out to dinner one evening. Not wanting to be late, in my mother’s same intonation shouting up to my husband the very same statement.
Having no say in our choice of meals growing up, if we didn’t like it, tough! But one day was actually asked what we would like. Astounded and looking at each other, no doubt wondering whether it was a trick question, answered ‘we didn’t know’. At which my mother’s retort was ‘we are living too damn happy’. Telling my husband this story, he too would use the phrase in particular scenarios he felt I was very fortunate to have a choice and would both end up in peals of laughter, my mother’s memory very much alive.
She also had many sayings, pearls of wisdom I have espoused, some you may well know. ‘Every disappointment is a blessing’; ‘Life is what you make it’; ‘It’s not what you earn, it’s what you save’; ‘Plan long term’; ‘Have a Plan A. and a Plan B’, should Plan A. fail, this hinders a panic response’ and ‘Nothing before its time’.
With our recognition we are our mothers, her indomitable spirit is kept alive as she lives on in us, the cycle continuing and the succession carried on when we have a daughter(s) of our own.
