Mum and I were quite similar in many ways. Our love of literature and of art; our shyness; our fondness for a silly joke; our care for each other.
We kept each other company throughout our lives. As a child, I would take her morning cup of tea up to her in bed and have a quick chat before going for the school bus. After school I would join her in the kitchen and chat about my day while she cooked the dinner, baked something or did one of her other chores. Together we would try different kinds of food that the others wouldn’t touch – liver in gravy! pasta! curry! That helped form my taste for exotic food, though I do regret once trying pig’s ears.
She used to read to us as children and I would find myself in later life watching, say, an unfamiliar Shakespeare play but hearing a familiar line. When I would ask about it, she would say, ‘Oh yes, I read that to you from Palgrave’s Golden Treasury’ or some such book.
She bought me books my whole life, from the Septimus ecclesiastical mystery novels right up to this last Christmas when she gave me a book about sheep. We used to discuss books and swap them, praise them and damn them. She was an endless resource of literary knowledge.
In later years there were tough times, but we would have a lot of fun too when I went to stay with her and Richard. One Boxing Day when the roads were closed with snow, we sat in the Black Bull in Boroughbridge while one fella sang folk songs and Terry the landlord crooned some of his favourite tunes – for the price of a donation in the charity box. Another Christmas when we drove down a long, rough track to Ivan and Jean’s remote house in the Yorkshire countryside. It was a house full of characters. There was Ivan with his vats of homemade wine, and a bloke called Ghandi. I ended the evening eating cheese and drinking whisky with a blind waterskiing champion. One day, one of their friends in Boroughbridge, Paddy – whose real name was Naomi but she was Irish – came round and seemed to get drunk without drinking anything. She proceeded to act out various scenes from the Full Monty before I escorted her home. As a thank you, she gave me a marrow from the fruit and veg shop below her flat. It tasted rather bland. I will miss reminiscing about those times and laughing at the memories.
Mum was always a great supporter of mine, praising me for the photos I took on my walks or for the writing I produced. I will miss her support; I will miss sharing pictures of Herdwick sheep that I always made sure to take in the Lake District; I will miss her being there for me to turn to but I will always be grateful for what she gave to me, what she did for me.
In her papers, we found she had kept all sorts of things of ours: letters, postcards, Mother’s Day cards. Paper effigies, Philip Larkin might say, ‘that prove our almost-instinct almost true, what survives of us is love’.
One Mother’s Day card contained a poem I had written as a present some 25 years ago I guess. If you’ll pardon the self-indulgence, I’ll read it now.
Folding Sheets
Folding washed sheets with my mother
Was something I often did.
It was to do with being left-handed,
A complementary partnership.
The sheet would billow out between us,
A corner in each hand.
We would step back and fold it
Lengthways once.
Then, like mirror images,
We would drop a reflected arm
To grasp and shake the crease,
Not twisting the sheet around
As a right-hander would,
Before moving together,
Handing the bundle over.
Picking from the basket,
We would work through the pile,
In the kitchen or the garden, if fine.
And then, when we had finished
Following our steps,
Perhaps I should have bowed,
And thanked her for the dance.
