Where to Begin

This autobiographical blog is something that friends and family have wanted me to write for many years - indeed, some years back, i did start, but due to real life getting in the way, the way it does with working mothers juggling children, work schedules, elderly mothers and a menagerie of animals, it was deleted into cyberspace... Now some of that chaos and circus has left my life, i am going to try, to write snippets of my life with my mother and other animals... To begin, my mother was born in July 1928, the third of eventually 7 children, in Liverpool. Growing up during WW2 was a fanatical, disturbed time for everyone, however, for innocent children growing up in a busy city, it affected my mother and her family deeply. Her father had died in 1936 when she was only 8 years old, and her mother had to manage with six children and no income. Bombs were dropping like rain on the city, schools closed, my mothers school was evacuated and she had just passed the 11+, she was sent to Shropshire with her younger siblings, they the younger ones went to the Bluecoat school which had been evacuated to Anglesey in Wales, and mum was sent back home to look after another of her mothers children - she had remarried whilst the children were away... All of this affected her very deeply... She felt she was being used as a drudge by her mother, indeed, it was a disordered time for many, and she desired a different life for herself. In the absence of feeling love by her mother, she built up a wall of protection which made her appear very sarcastic and hard. She felt she had been dealt a raw deal... firstly by her father who had died and deserted her, then by Hitler preventing her from taking up her scholarship to better her education, then finally, by her mother who simply wanted a babysitter for her new baby son. I am the third and last child of my mother, and first of my father. I was born to her and her third husband - she went on to have five husbands during her lifetime. I have a half sister and half brother, though we all grew up having different childhoods and subsequently, very different lives. Mothers and daughters of all ages appear to be in ever increasingly complex relationships... for mum and me, growing up was a difficult transition and i will try and shed some light onto it in this blog... I ended up in therapy for nearly a year with my weekly sessions... they started off as a work six week course, but by the end of the sixth week and the end of the funding, i realised i had only scratched the surface!!! However, as i grew older, i realised my mum was unable to always verbalise what she wanted to say, perhaps from inbred fear of rejection, and would instead come out with something acerbic to provoke a negative response. Over the years, we have evolved from sparring partners to eventually friends with my opinions of her changing, knowing her better. My mother died last year, and i was lucky enough to have her home with me, so i could look after her and make her last months as happy as they could be. She was there when i came into the world, and i was there when she went out...