Tag: love

One life, One Love

On By bumblebee3londonIn Everything!!!, WhimsyLeave a comment

My mother never fell out of love with my father. He is her only love, the man she left their hometown with, both of them filled with the optimism of the young. He had a high-flying career in many foreign countries whilst she kept the home fires burning. Life had not been that easy or ideal for her, but she always smiled her big, beaming smile that made us all feel loved and important. We have always known that we were very important to her. Though she was a shining star before she fell in love with him, she shone only for him from the moment they met, and not the world. To the rest of the world, she was just an extension of him, the appendage, the stay-at-home wife.

Many modern women would scorn her – she could have been so much more – but she is my inspiration. If I am 1/100th the woman my mother is, I would be honoured. I have always wanted to love only one man, to bear his children (pieces of him), to put all my emotional investment in the family we build together and to grow old with the one I started my journey with. My mother has taught me over many decades that the only true love is one that is tempered by the years and forged in selfless love, and that being in love means waking up with the same person, looking forward to the new day together. My mother taught me too that excitement is seeing the world through the eyes of my children, not through exciting idealised love that does not exist nor last. My mother, my role-model, I believe her.

The Journey Home

On By bumblebee3londonIn Everything!!!, Love, light, blessings2 Comments

My parents do not come up to London anymore, though it is  less than 90 minutes from where they live. They used to have a vibrant life here. My mother would always be there on the first day of the Chelsea Flower Show with her big hat on, and went to museums, galleries and operas. We had a big party at the Serpentine Gallery for my children’s christenings. We did so much here, once upon a time. Now, my parents rarely venture out of the sleepy little Hampshire town that they call home. I think the bustle and the fast-paced city life became too much for them.

I couldn’t lure them up to London, I had to go home.

Home is Portsmouth, where I spent some of the happiest years of my life. I have such a huge emotional investment in this town, yet most my life is in London. There always seem to be 101 things I had to do that are London-based, such as buy a hat, go to the Passport office, meet up with a friend, medical check-up, family business. It does seem like a chore, an obligation, to make the trek home.

It shouldn’t be. It should never be.

When the train pulled into Portsmouth Harbour, my parents were standing there on the platform. They stood there side by side, married for 52 years against the odds, radiant smiles on their faces. It hit me with a sudden pang that they have aged in the last few years: my father still carries his proud bearing but his ramrod-straight back is now stooped and my mother is visibly slower on her feet. But it didn’t seem that long ago that my mother was taking my many children to the town square, indulging them, running after them energetically.

And it didn’t seem all that long ago, too, that she drove all the way to Chichester to fetch my younger brother and I home at some ungodly hour of the morning, after we had too much to drink. That night, as we hovered on the cusp of alcoholic poisoning, my mother sat up with us, patiently urging us to drink water all night long, holding our heads up when we vomited into the washing up bowl that she unflinchingly held. Oh Mummy, how you proved your love that night!

And again in 2001, when I received the shock diagnosis that I had 2nd/3rd stage cervical cancer. My first impulse, which I followed, was to run straight home. I left my children’s father and took my children home to this sleepy little town that I couldn’t wait to leave when I was a restless teen. My children and I moved into a house 100 metres from my parents’ home. Here, my family nursed me back to health, and paradoxically, it was some of the most precious times for us, despite my illness. During that time, my mother nurtured me once more with her imitable devotion. My father and I found time to have deep philosophical discussions, which were the missing pieces in my early life. My brother looked in on me every evening after work. My nephew and niece became my own children, and they rallied round my children. My new best friends were Mrs. Tomlinson and Mrs. Foster, both in their eighties then, who provided the warm, gentle company I so badly needed then. I opted out of ‘real’ life in London to come back here, only for me to question myself, what is real life? A glittering existence in the exciting capital, peopled by folks who make the news, paying exorbitant prices for a pint of milk, or this sweet and unchanging life in this hamlet, my hometown, where my parents still live? Where will I choose to be, as the years close in on me? Would I wish to spend my final years at dinner parties with friends, or would I go for long walks along the seafront, remembering the days when I was still young, when my parents were still here?

I think of the sunny kitchen in my mum’s house, where I used to sit at the table doing my homework whilst she cooked with a big smile always on her face. How much she loved us, and food was her way of showing her love. I know she would have been cooking all morning, anticipating my return.

As my train slowly trundled past the stations on the way home, I felt a strong sense of homecoming. All my early life, my roots, came back to me, most notably, taking the train to school everyday with my younger brother.

“Darling,” my father said formally, but there is such a wealth of love in that one word.

“Oh, look at you!” My mum enthused, enveloping me into her arms, the only place I have ever felt truly safe in. “You don’t look a day older than when you were a schoolgirl!”

I have not been home for four months, and that is four months too long. So please join me in my intention to spend more time with parents. They won’t be here forever.home

 

My Much-Loved Mother-in-Law

On By bumblebee3londonIn Everything!!!, Love, light, blessings2 Comments

I had one last thing to do in London before going home to my parents in Hampshire, and that one thing is to visit my mother-in-law. My MiL is in the grips of Alzheimer’s disease. She does not recognise me. She lives in a world where her parents are still very much alive, where she still goes to work. I no longer exist in her world.

Oh, Mum! I don’t have a husband but I have a much-loved MiL. Mum brought me up, because I joined her family when I was a spoilt, screwed-up teenager. She wasn’t going to put up with my nonsense, the way my family had. Her son and I used to sneak into bed in the afternoons, and she would knock hard on the door. “Get up, the pair of you,” she would holler. “Why are you in bed? You are not sick!”

We fought. Because I was lazy and spoilt and did not know the value of money that she had to work so hard for, firstly as a cleaner and then as an office clerk for London Electricity Board. She scrimped and saved all her life, whilst I did the opposite. My parents’ pleasure principle did not sit well with her.

She showed me how to clean the shower cubicle. With a toothbrush. And told me that I have to clean behind refrigerators. “Mrs. Lumkin does that at home,” I told her haughtily. “Surely you can get someone in to do this?”

We fought over sausages. I refused to let my children eat the cheap ones she bought from the local butcher. “Mum, 99p for six! What rubbish goes in there!” I would exclaim. ‘No way will I feed my kids that!”

“Nothing wrong with my kids,” she would retort heatedly. “And they were brought up on these sausages.”

“We’ll bring our own food for the kids when we visit your parents,” I said firmly to the poor man caught in the middle between his warring mother and the mother of his children.

“How do those poor children of yours ever survive?” my MiL would say, half in disgust.

There were always faults she could find with my parenting. Babies being breastfed on demand, no set mealtimes, clothes smelling of mildew, late potty training, kids jumping on the bed, parents sneaking off to bed in the afternoon, oh you name it, and you can bet your last penny that I had transgressed.

I was the daughter-in-law from hell, but Mum never gave up on me. She taught me to sew and knit with varying degree of success. She taught me to cook and clean, of course. In the process, she learned how to love me. We grew especially close despite the tempestuous nature of our relationship when we had to move in with the in-laws whilst saving up for the deposit for our first house.

“Oh, Jack, you didn’t have to go through all this trouble for me!” she would exclaim each time I brought her fresh flowers or a little cake that I had baked. She never wanted to trouble anyone. She was a carer for her mother who went blind when she was 11. Her father died when she was still in her teens. Mum never had anyone looking after her. She never had any frivolities. I loved treating her and see the light in her eyes  miraculously switching on.

“Oh, you didn’t have to!” she would exclaim each time, with my every little gesture.

Over the years, as the children grew, she could see that my extravagances and strange values had not marred her grandchildren at all. My children are still ‘salt of the earth’, equally happy in a rough working class neighbourhood as they were in Knightsbridge or the country. My second son especially did them proud. This boy had always been close to his father’s roots: during his school summer holidays, he would come home to this working class neighbourhood and worked as a furniture removals man. I know that through this son of mine, his father’s race continues. And through my youngest child Georgina, who fights in the same fight club in Woolwich that her grandfather had all those years ago.

My MiL used to come and watch G fight. She would take the front row seat. I could see the dreaminess in her eyes, as she reminisced about her late husband fighting in this same club.

“Nanny, I have beaten up all the English boys,” G would say proudly, sliding her little hand into her grandmother’s.

Children are indeed a wonder, because they are the source of my MiL’s love for me, and mine for her. I have a lot to be thankful for. My children’s strong Spanish genes, for example, and their physical beauty. The tough love my MiL had given me, that was the making of me. My strong relationship with God. A sense of belonging to the bedrock of England. My love for her grows forevermore.

Today, I hugged her close, glad I made this journey. ‘I had to,” I whispered. “Because you are my Mum.”

I hope somewhere, deep within her Alzheimer’s diminished brain, she knows just how much I needed to make this journey to tell her I love her.

Slow down, my child, and enjoy today

On By bumblebee3londonIn Everything!!!, Love, light, blessings10 Comments

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Dear G, you never listen to us, because you think you have incompetent, irresponsible, bungling beach bums for parents. Crazy people who preach alternative philosophies and live life as if everyday is their last. You are probably right, but hear us out before you rush off to do the ten thousand and one things in your busy life.

Life is not a race but a journey. Don’t be in a rush to get on the superhighway. Because you will lose out on lots of beautiful things that you will never be able to find again, however long and hard you search for them in the future. Things of real value, things of today, that will never come your way in this lifetime again.

Your father had voluntarily left his well-paid job to live on an island in a country he has never lived in before, simply to give you magical and memorable final years of your childhood, and to give you the best opportunities possible of achieving your dream to be England’s football captain. Dreams should be achieved, but never at the expense of the things that really matter in life.

We never saw giving up our careers as a sacrifice for you.  In fact, it is a privilege. You are only lent to us for a very short while. 18 years, to be exact. Or maybe only 16. We intend to use those precious years to give you a long, happy and idyllic childhood so that you have a strong base to build your future successes on.  There is no substituting these strong foundations. They are what that make you strong on the inside. Believe me, I know all about it. I still run home to Portsmouth, to my parents’ home, when the going gets tough. I still call on my brothers. And most of all, I only have to close my eyes to see my young happy self again, walking on the beaches of Southern England, going on the slow train to school with my brother or sitting in my mother’s sunny kitchen. I know I am safe, so long as I have a mind to remember those beautiful memories of that part of my life, a time of innocence, carefreeness and untrammelled faith. Days before the harshness of the adult world took away my kaleidoscope eyes. Days that will never come this way again. It’s not an age thing, but cynicism, a certain weariness, a hardened shell, that prevent those layers ever to be accessed again.

Several years ago, walking with my father on the deserted  Southsea seafront on Christmas night through the closed up fairground, I thought wistfully, “I wish I had not grown up so quickly.” Because my father, with his head full of white hair, arthritic knees, high prostate count and two major heart attacks, will not be here forever.  Just as yours won’t be, G.

Have you noticed why he is so whole-heartedly embracing all the time he has with you, the way he jumps in at the first opportunity, a stalker almost? Because he knows. Because he knows that our time with you is finite.

Like your brothers and sister, you all are the most precious gifts that God and Life gave us.  We often talk in awe (still!) about how and why we had been chosen to parent these beautiful beings. After all, we were just two ordinary people who went to the pub one evening, sat on the beach, and accidentally made a baby. We didn’t have a clue how to be a parent, how to be responsible parents, how to be ‘good’ parents. All we know – and we know that deeply – is that we must give you all a good happy home and a magical childhood, so that you always know that you are safe, and that life is good on the whole, no matter how dark the present is.

So G, this is what we are giving you.  Pieces of ourselves. So that however long you may live, you carry our love with you always, and the deep knowing that there is a happy place in the world for you. You have been to that happy place: it’s called your childhood. This type of transmission cannot be hurried, it is in the life we give you everyday. And so, your father and I would like to say this to you: successes in the outside world can wait, there is a time and place for everything. But something infinitely more important is happening at home right now, in the moments we walk by the sea, in the picnics on the beach, in the evenings we sit at home quietly reading, in our long drives in the car, in the conversations and in the everyday life with your parents who are dedicating their every waking hour to making the last years of your childhood magical. Don’t rush life, slow down, and enjoy today.