To Mother With Love.

I don't have a memory of my mother at all before the day she walked out of my life as a youngster. I was only five at the time and I remember wrapping myself around her legs begging her not to go while my father cursed her. And for years after I blamed myself, though I'd told him the truth, because he'd asked. That yes, I had seen her kissing someone and yes she'd left us waiting in the car a long time while she and the man went inside. Life isn't always sunshine and roses and sometimes no matter how much we want something to be true, it just isn't. As a youngster, I learned to make up stories about why we were motherless. Mother was an air hostess and traveled a lot was my favorite. But years and experience open your mind and your eyes regardless and somewhere along the way, I understood that my mother had been a child bride to a man twice her age, yet older still from a war on foreign soil he'd lived through. That leaving four children behind was the hardest thing she ever did. And that I wasn't to blame for their marriage breakup. Just life. We eventually made peace a few years before she died of diabetes. She was only fifty six and though ravaged by her sickness and having lost both legs, she still had a fragile beauty that when I think of her, haunts me still. She was never a baking or sewing Mother. She never came to any of my school events or plays and we never talked about boys or played with make-up. She never brushed my hair or called me pretty. She just wasn't there. Yet I catch a glimpse of her every time I look in a mirror. She was vivacious, lovely, could sing sweet enough to break your heart or slap your knee and grin. She was loud, proud and sucked all the air out of a room the minute she walked into it, turning heads and stopping conversation. Yet she was a tiny little thing...and I loved her. Happy Mothers Day Mum, always and ever, bella