Mothers Day

My mother and I were never especially close.

I always considered my Grandmother more my mother, because for all sorts of odd family reasons I was raised by her until it was time to go to school. As I grew to adult hood and married we grew even more distant. Where I made different choices to those she made or might have made she took it as a criticism of herself. Sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn't but it certainly didn't help matters. Mothers Day's came and went and I observed them politely, no more than that.

Dad and I were always close but my mother, well. We never really seemed to be on the same wavelength.

Then Dad died eight months ago, just after my sister had emigrated.

And Mum and I found ourselves thrown together.

It has been a curious thing to come to know my mother, now in her seventies when I am in my fifties. To forge the first tentative strands of friendship. To put aside a lifetime of grudges and anger and hurt. To discover that we share a similar taste in movies and that the things that make us laugh are the same, that both of us sleep with a nightlight, that we both love the fragrance of gardenia's. Small things often, unimportant perhaps, but of such things can new beginnings be made.

I am fortunate, I think, to get a second chance.

And today she and I have had a lovely laughter filled lunch.