Feest Isolation Days – 11 May
The Prime Minister’s announcement last night of what the immediate lockdown future will look like is in every newspaper and on every commentator’s lips. The discussions and disagreements about the approach will continue for a long time. There isn’t an easy straight forward answer, decisions have to be taken and now they have been. We will be here for a long while yet. For the record, I think the message is wrong and unclear. “Stay Home” is much more effective as a concept than “Stay Alert”. The coronavirus is not something that you can swerve around like one of the many pot-holes in our streets. We await the details of what appears to be a confusing and mixed message.
Like the recommendations about our movements, the weather too has changed. Those recent balmy summer days are now a thing of the past and the wind coming from the Arctic is keeping the heat on and our doors closed.
In some parts of the world it was Mother’s Day yesterday. Britain celebrates this event in March, but as my own Mother was an American, a pause to remember her seemed in order.
My Mother died thirty nine years ago when I was pregnant with my son. She had cancer and at the age of fifty-three it carried her away. Mother was two different people for many years of her life. She was the woman she wanted to be out in the business world, and the woman she needed to be at home. In the nineteen fifties when most women were exclusively home makers, my mother went out to work. She lived in the world of stocks and bonds and numbers and money. In an age when these things didn’t often happen to women, she was head hunted to work in a Savings and Loan company – the equivalent of a British Building Society. Her intelligence and hard work meant that within a few years she became a Vice President and Secretary of the company. Her name was embossed on all the checks drawn at the bank. Impressive indeed!
As she began her married life one wouldn’t have guessed what she might achieve. It wasn’t until about ten years ago that my siblings and I discovered a family secret. Mother was pregnant with my brother at the age of eighteen and she and my father married against the wishes of my mother’s family in a quiet ceremony somewhere out of State. When my Aunt told me this piece of family history she asked if we had never wondered why there were no wedding photographs around. I hadn’t. I was the youngest of three children, and checked with my brother and sister. They didn’t know about this either. It explained a lot to all of us! Our house was filled with a great deal of tension and not so many happy photographs.
Mom became the President of the Business and Professional Women’s group in her later years, and her drive and interest outside of our home was always a success. My father couldn’t quite totally accept the dynamic businesswoman he had married, and there were many domestic rows when we grew up. She was a trail blazer and a woman who taught us by example to follow our hearts and do what we needed to do. There were lots of hugs and warmth and kindness aimed in my direction. I hung onto them when my parents decided that their job was finished when I graduated from high school, and left me to fend for myself. When my sister’s first child was born I was able to see the sort of affection Mom had given to her own young children. She adored her granddaughter and showered her with the sort of easy love that one can when the past has settled into the distance and the here and now is happier. Rest in Peace Dolores, you didn’t do a bad job if I do say so myself!
With love
Kathy x