Mam

MAM is how we call our mother in Wales.     She was about 4'10", weighed 100 lbs. once when she was carrying my brother, and was born in 1899.     This photograph was taken when she was about 17 or 18.    

She died in 1983, and I received the news via a phone call from Louise.     We were back in Illinois visiting with friends and attending Debbie's wedding.

This photo is my mother on her 80th birthday party, which I went back to Wales to attend.

I cannot say that my mother and I were very close.    She was not an affectionate woman, had wanted only sons, so had a tendency to not pay much attention to her daughters.     She was a good mother in taking care of us, tending to our needs, and I can remember growing up knowing that she was always there.     On bitterly cold damp days, when my feet would freeze walking home from school, my mother was always there with her hands warmed by the fire, to take off my shoes and rub my feet until the feelings came back into them.    She worked incredibly hard during the summer running a boarding house for tourists to our Victorian summer resort town, and saved the money she earned those short months to pay what we called the 'rates' (i.e. the local real estate taxes), and to buy our one new outfit every year, which became our 'Sunday best'.

But I went to work in London when still not 17 and at 20 migrated to Canada, and subsequently to the US.     I would go home about three times a year when in London, but after leaving Britain, did not return for nine years and saw my parents only once during that time when they visited me and my ex-husband in Canada.

After that I saw my mother either every year, and occasionally every two years, until she died, but the visits were short and usually filled with other activities or other people with me.     The net result is that we never had an opportunity to become friends as adults, or to really share one-on-one moments.

I have to also acknowledge that my mother's alcoholism and rather strange detachment from her daughters had bred resentments over the years, even though not acknowledged consciously, and it wasn't until five years into my sobriety, after the death of my mother, that I came to terms with the whole situation.     It was hard to process and work through, but what it gave me was the freedom to really SEE this little lady as a person, and realize that in her way she did love me, she was very strong, her toughness and resilience rubbed off on me and she gave me a set of values that I live with today, mostly from her little phrases, like "don't cry over spilled milk",  "there are none so blind as those who will not see", and more than I can recall now, even though I find myself saying them over and over.     

I have found myself somewhat envious at times, when I see the closeness and friendship a lot of daughters have with their mothers, but I also know that from the Women's AA Meetings, one of the main topics shared is the struggle these women have with their mothers!

God Bless you Mam.