I remember (Bill's challenge)

[Sandra Davies]

I remember, having woken in the night and gone downstairs to interrupt an evening meal, the hardness of my mother’s face as she said, in front of my grandparents, my aunt and my father ‘Why should I cuddle you?   You said you didn’t love me anymore.’*

I remember the surprised delight, on our first date, at realising I could be honest, be me, with this eighteen-year-old man.

I remember a sense of having passed through a portal into a world I had previously been ignorant of within minutes of giving birth to my daughter.

I remember the conviction I had that this house was right for us even before stepping inside, merely by standing with my back to it and looking at the long distance view to the front.

I remember after my mother died my father and I looked at each other, said 'We've not been here before' and thereafter had a much closer and more meaningful relationship than hitherto.

I remember so very little of the thirty-eight years of living in this house, of the forty plus years of my daughter, of the sixty plus years of my life … but what I do remember is that I have been extraordinarily lucky in it.

* [In fairness, I much later realised the hurt embarrassment was hers, the situation (unwelcome in her in-laws house) a horrid one.]

[Teresa]

If I had to forget everything but "lucky", that wouldn't be so bad.  Oh, I so love this.  It's feels whole, a little of this low and that high.  Like life.

[Gita]

Your mother was the adult and you the child, and as an adult she is "supposed to" have the self control not to blurt out embarassing or hurtful comments to a child.  How simple it would have been to say, "Let me take you back to bed and tuck you in,"  and done so.  I like that you and your father had that moment of recognition together. It's rare and wonderful when we can connect with a parent in such a genuine way.