Tag: mother

Mother’s Day 2024

lindastudley2 Comments

I am a mother, a grandmother, and a great grandmother. But on Mother’s Day this year I think back to my own mother. A child of the twenties (great depression), a young girl through the thirties (dirty thirties), and a young woman during the forties ( World War 2 – the battle of Britain), she did not have everything handed to her on a silver platter. She was brave, smart, resourceful, and had a strong, and sometimes quirky, sense of humour. Adventurous, she left England as a War Bride to follow her Canadian husband to a whole new world.

She was loving and instilled a strong sense of right and wrong in her children. She also sang with them and laughed with them and made them feel treasured.

I was one of the lucky ones. Although my family in Canada was small, it was incredibly loving and close. My grandmother lived with us until she passed away when I was about 14. Although sterner, there was never any doubt that she adored her grandchildren without reservation. And she made the best chocolate cake ever.

Once, as a young teen, I remember some friends talking about going away to summer camp and I asked my mum and dad why I never went to summer camp.  They seemed a bit mystified by my question and then Mum said “Why would we send you away? We want to spend the summer with you.”  And we did, camping, gardening, swimming, fishing, eating chocolate cake.

I am sorry for people who did not have a childhood like mine. I wish they could have had more love and kindness in their formative years. If I could I’d share my good familial fortune with them all. But all I can do is try to pass on the kindness, compassion, and strength of my mother’s example.

Happy Mother’s Day. If you don’t have one, you can share mine. She would have been 100 this year.

My Mother’s Garden

lindastudleyLeave a comment

Sometimes, in dreams, I wander
half remembered woods.
Sunlight casts flickering shadows of light
over the forest floor.

I am searching for the flowers;
the wild flowers and the tame flowers.
Flowers from every garden she ever grew,
blooming together in unlikely harmony.
I stoop, I pick, I fill my arms with the fat, fragrant blossoms.

Especially the blue ones.
She loved the blue ones.
I am picking this bouquet for her.
My life is a procession of flowers and memories.
A patchwork of the things she taught me
as we worked in her garden
Weeding, culling, training the vines
in the way they should go.
Training me
in the way I should go.

And I know she’s gone
but still I wander half forgotten woods,
content in the cognitive dissonance of dreams
that one day I’ll hand her that bouquet and
she’ll smile and say
“Well done.”

Dreams

lindastudley2 Comments

That’s when the chickadee landed on my shoulder
and I handed my camera to my mother
to take a picture and realized
that my mother had been dead for years,
but she took the picture anyway.
I would have liked to see how that picture turned out.

 

#254

Mother’s Day

lindastudley3 Comments

She was a real person.
She would not have been happy on a pedestal.

She took chances.
“What have you got to lose?” she’d say.

She enjoyed every moment
and knew the time to laugh and sing was now.

She not only smelled the roses
she planted, grew, and tended them lovingly.

Every day in my life I loved my mother.
Every day in my life I always will.

 

#140

My Mother’s Quilt

lindastudleyLeave a comment

My mother’s quilt hangs on the wall.
Sometimes I touch it lightly as I walk by
Its softness reminds me of her skin and
the colours remind me of her gardens.
She loved her gardens.

I remember her rose trees,
tall as me and covered with blood red roses.
Come fall she’d loosen the soil around their roots,
lay them in a trench, and bury them.
Spring would bring the resurrection.
The stark, dirty sticks would waken,
leaf out, and bloom again.
A botanist would tell you it was a technique,
a method of wintering roses.
But I think they came back each year
because they loved my mother.

I touch the quilt again.

 

#136