Remembering my Mother

It's 'Mother's Day' and, while I don't like the whole commercial hype, I can't help thinking about my own mother - particularly as it's quite close to her birthday.  She was such a wonderful person - one of the generation who lost their chances because of the second world war.  Without it she would have become a teacher, or librarian.  But instead she became a 'landgirl' in the Land Army and afterwards married a young man she met on one of the farms.


The beautiful, part Italian girl, born and brought up in a city, became a farmer's wife.




She had a hard life, losing her first love in the war, to become a war widow at the age of 21.  Later, she discovered she had an inherited heart condition which meant there was a great deal she couldn't do and she was often in hospital.  One of my last memories of her was dashing over to a Newcastle hospital in the middle of the night to find her sitting on the bed in A & E, her heart describing horrific loops on the screen, but she was still smiling at me.  I knew, all my life, that whatever I did, she would still love me.
One of mum's last photographs - still smiling!
Mum was a book addict and I still have her 60 year record of the books she read, scribbled into little notebooks. She passed on her love of books to me.  Thank you Mum!!



Comments

  1. My mum was a reader too, and passed on her love of books. Both me and my sister are writers now....
    She was just a little younger than your mum and got to go to teachers college.
    For men things were a little different. Here in Oz veteran's scholarships to university gave a lot of young men opportunities they might never have had otherwise.

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