Mother's Day. Mother's story.

A post a day in May 8/31

Long before our mothers take on that most central of roles in our lives, they have had the starring role in their own lives. Hard as it can be to think about Mum or Ma or Mother (or however you name her) as a person in her own right, with her own life before we existed (!), every mother has that. And, if we’re lucky, she shares stories of that ‘before time’ with us — either around the kitchen table or maybe the campfire or, as is the case in my family, in the form of written memoir.

This spring, my mother, Anne, participated in the Spark Your Writing course I co-facilitated, and she was, indeed, sparked to continue with her memoir writing. Over the four weeks, she produced more than three thousand words, well on her way to telling the story I have long been begging for: How did you meet Dad? My siblings and I grew up knowing his version of the love-at-first-sight-in-the-university-cafeteria story, but Mum’s version is not yet fixed in family lore. And, while that is still not written, Mum is getting there.

On this year’s Mother’s Day, I share an excerpt of her work in progress, with gratitude for her words, her love, and her shining example of how to mother in this challenging world of ours.

Excerpt, adapted from Mum’s memoir-in-progress. It opens here when Mum is working as a secretary in London, England, in the Typewriting Department in the House of Commons:

There, at the bottom of the wide stone stairs, behind a solid oak door labelled in modest brass letters Typewriting Department, they would find Miss McBride presiding over a staff of four — one a freshly minted beginner (that was me) and three other women of varying ages, all far more secretarially experienced than I was.

It was the variety that made working there so interesting … One of my regular clients was Thomas Dugdale. Scion of a Yorkshire County family, he represented a rural Yorkshire constituency. A genuinely nice man, straightforward and kind, he was truly concerned about the housing problems so many of his constituents wrote to him about. But expressing that concern helpfully in words on a page was not one of his skills. Fortunately it was one of mine. So his replies to constituents became models of clarity, brevity and helpfulness — or so I liked to think. Mr D. would spend an hour or so in my office ‘dictating’ replies, then come back the next day to sign the letters. Because he was a regular client, a section of the filing cabinet was reserved for his correspondence. When he came back for a signing session, he would often go first to the filing cabinet, extract the copy of ‘his’ unusually long and particularly clear reply some weeks earlier to a complicated problem and re-read it, nodding approvingly all the time. ‘Very good letter,’ he would say, putting it back with a satisfied nod … That was part of the fun of the job for me …

Something I hadn’t reckoned with was that when the House of Commons wasn’t sitting, the Typewriting Department was closed, too. So, during the long Summer recess, I registered as a Temp with the friendly manager of a nearby employment agency. A ‘temp’ was a qualified secretary, available for short assignments only. Temp assignments were great — you kept director’s hours, 10 to 4, and you were paid almost twice what I was currently getting. That was a good summer. I worked in advertising agencies, publishing houses, newspaper offices and more, earning enough to afford several weekend visits to Cambridge to stay with my older sister Mary, piggyback on her social life, and acquire my first boyfriend.

I also spent weekends with my friend Mary Whittington at her family home in West Byfleet, a huge house with a pleasantly rambling garden. It was a wonderfully relaxed household, and I went down that summer many times and enjoyed restorative weekends of delicious meals, lots of talk, and lots of time to read or lie in the sun and do nothing in particular.

Except for one memorable Saturday when Mary’s younger sister Gillian, coming down early for breakfast, went into the kitchen and found George, not much liked by the family but the admirer of Lily, the family’s housekeeper, wrestling with her on the kitchen floor. Not shocked, merely outraged at this uncouth public display, Gillian grabbed the nearest kitchen chair and slammed it down furiously, narrowly missing George’s head, screaming Stop it! Stop it! Just STOP!

That brought everyone running. George could hardly get away fast enough, while Lily, when she’d composed herself enough to talk, turned to Gillian and tried and tried to make amends by saying, ‘I want you to know I had my knickers on’. Which only enraged Gillian more. ‘I don’t care what you had on!’ she yelled back. ‘DON’T! Just JUST DON’T!’

Mum writing on her iPad

To be continued, as Dad has not yet entered the picture...

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.