Happy birthday, Mum

My mother recorded in her family history

On the morning of October 22nd 1923, in Bootle on Merseyside, two little girls were going to school. They were cousins, eight years old and good friends. Their route to school took them down Linacre Lane, across Stanley Road, and on through side streets to St. James' Select Catholic School. It was on one of these side streets, Balfour Road, skipping and playing as they went, that one of them, named Edith, but at this stage of her life known in the family as Girlie, looked behind them and said, 'Look Gracie, isn't that your Dada?'

Grace turned round and saw her father on his bike, head down, pedalling rapidly towards them. Before he reached them however he crossed the road, parked his bicycle and hammered urgently on a house door. Grace and Edith called and waved but he neither saw nor heard them. The door opened and he vanished inside. The two little girls went on their way wondering what it was all about. Grace found out when she went home for dinner. As she went up the entry which  led to the back door of the house she passed her Aunty Sally, Edith's mother, who smiled at her and said, 'Hurry up, there's a real live doll for you at home!' In her mother's bedroom a minute baby sister lay in the cradle, and the midwife, so suddenly and urgently called for had just left. Willie, her younger brother, had been called in from play to see his baby sister but had been more interested in enquiring of Nurse Scott why his mama was in bed in the middle of the day. Five weeks early, a not really wanted fourth child, born nearly five years after the family had, hopefully, been completed, I lay in the cradle and cried lustily. The midwife,calling a few days later when my mother was downstairs again and busy in the kitchen, listened and said with satisfaction and some surprise, 'Well, that's not a premature cry!'

I was small though, and weighed only four pounds when weighed for the first time, fully clothed, at four weeks. My father held me easily in one, admittedly rather large, hand and used to tell me that my head was no bigger than an orange. "No bigger than that!" he would say, picking one out of the fruit bowl to show me. But I thrived, and was showered with love and attention by parents and siblings. My mother had born the other three closely, one after the other, during and just after the first world war. With her husband away at sea and in danger, she, alone and pregnant, must often have been too weary and too worried to enjoy her family. And our father, having missed much of his children's babyhood became a rather strict Victorian style parent on his return. For both of my parents this new 'unwanted' baby was a new shared experience.

Mum thrived indeed, living into her nineties. Happy birthday, Mum. Remembering you.

An autumn wedding

 What a week last week was, when we were in Canada! 

At Monday's thanks giving meal, half way through, daughter's partner announces that there'll be one other at the meal the follwing evening. "Who?" we enquire. "Pastor Brian" and "we're getting married tomorrow".

They gave us less than 23 hours notice! And it was a lovely ceremony with just the six of us: the couple, the pastor, his mother, my DH and me, out on their deck in the fall light. They made their vows, his mother and I signed as witnesses, then sang them "Sunrise, Sunset" from "The Fiddler on the Roof". Glen, who's grown up hearing it, refrained from joining in. They had no cake, or confetti, no speeches, and only a few photos taken. DH happened to have bought a bottle of bubbly from the local shop. The wedding meal was in a private room at a local hotel. 

Other than that excitement, we had coffee from Tim Hortons, and visited a few shops, but didn't buy flowers for the wedding because we didn't know about it. On Monday morning, his mother prepared the thanks giving meal while we drove over to Pinery Provinical Park at Lake Huron, and got bitten by a thousand sand flies. Poor daughter had a bite on her face. Fortunately, it had gone down by the time she donned her wedding dress the next day. She sewed it in six weeks, because they only planned the wedding from when my email arrived stating our dates and flights. In six weeks, they'd organised the pastor, made the dress, ordered wedding rings, and booked the hotel meal.

We arrived home last Friday morning, and jet lag like oversleeping is nearly sorted. Now to distribute some maple syrup to family and hen minder.