Being A Mum
Happy Mother’s Day!
On May 9, 2015 by Speranza
I can’t remember my mother’s voice or even her face sometimes. On some sensory level I can still feel the softness of her skin as it encased the bone when I would trace my hand back and forth across the planes of her cheek and brow but it’s been nearly forty years now. I dream of her sometimes and all of the normal things I would have liked to have done with her and never did, like treating her to some highlights at the hair salon, imagining her squealing delight at my sons – especially as babies – or having an English tea out somewhere a bit fancy.
My mother was truly beautiful inside and out and possessed great vats of personal charm. In the hospital she received flowers from every tradesperson we had ever hired – and the milkman too, all of whom had received “a bit of cake” and a cup of tea when they were working at our house.
In now vintage photos with her hair falling in a shining rope (“I don’t know, I s’pose you just wound it round your finger, really” she answered unsatisfactorily when I pressed her as to how this was achieved) she looked exactly like Lauren Bacall, a childish pronouncement that pleased her immensely. I once asked her sister (my aunt obviously) if she thought I bore any resemblance to my mother and she looked at me and said “Weeeell, not to be rotten but your mother was a very good looking woman you know.”
Nice.
Being A Girl . Being A Mum . Introspection . Uncategorized
Sometimes I’d Like the Cream
On March 24, 2015 by Speranza
I’ve been paying more attention lately to my female co-workers, friends and families and the way they talk and deal with the men in their lives and it is completely fascinating to me how men are still being revered and pacified (I use this word intentionally) so automatically and unconsciously. It’s been absorbed into our psyche and our culture to keep them on the content side of things.
(Or maybe it’s just anything for a quiet life since so many men are renowned for their tiny sense of tolerance and their quickness to unnecessary anger.)
Which has obviously worked for them during their tiny childhoods.
Anxiety . Being A Mum . Christmas . Nostalgia
Merry Christmas and no, I don’t know where the effing scissors are!
On December 29, 2014 by Speranza
Please excuse the tardiness of this festive post.
It’s Christmas Eve – I had to work today and I have also been up late every night this week just trying to get the absolute minimum done to cobble a decent Christmas together: groceries bought, a real tree purchased and decorated and yes, alright, assemble the super-high maintenance stockings that my older boys will still delight at, anticipating an equal balance of the usual and the unexpected; marzipan from the German store (traditional) but then perhaps a gift certificate for a high end restaurant tucked in deeper still . Like most people, there are a few “must have” traditions that I like to get done in order to feel calmer but honestly, I am not a crazy person about all this. No one here has been carving roses from butter for the table or stringing dried cranberries around the cat basket. I merely try to strike a good balance and still do fun things for myself and the people around me.
Despite that – I somehow ended up weeping yesterday.
Being A Mum . Frasier and Niles . Teenagers
The Good, the Bad and The Laundry
On October 21, 2014 by SperanzaI remember being shocked when I asked a friend how she was feeling about her eldest child moving out. She smiled and confided wearily: “It’s time. For all of us.” At that stage in my own life, both of my boys were still young enough to insist on curling around me as we all watched a movie together like a small tribe of monkeys. I literally could not envision them leaving home without welling up and feeling physically empty and panic stricken. I would feel as though I had swallowed a stone. But I now know that nature has a way of clearing that up quite nicely. And it looks like this: