Chain-smoking, cafeterias and cakes

That shy-bold smile, wide-eyed innocence combined with eagerness to embrace life is what defined my mother in her teenage years. As the pampered, youngest (and prettiest) daughter in a family of three girls and a younger brother, she was accustomed to attention of a positive kind. 

They lived in the suburbs in comfortable middle class style, with books everywhere, a tiger-skin rug spreadeagled on the floor, a trophy stag's head adorning the hallway and an orchard groaning with fruit. Her mother kept house and home together and her father was in the military.

Lacking the fierce intelligence of her elder sister or the softness of her middle one, Joyce had a native shrewdness and worldly-wise attitude all her own. She was ambitious to succeed, particularly gifted in catering skills, (famed for her cakes especially) and ran her own cafeteria/restaurant with her first husband, serving soldiers based at the South East coast during the Second World War.They had a son they doted on. When his father died prematurely it plunged them into a season of grief and a precarious situation financially.

Therein stepped my own father.. as a customer-turned-future-husband. Only... he was a relatively poor man, a simple delivery driver who had fled a violent, abusive father by running away from home at a very young age, turning his back on his beloved mother, family, and further educational opportunities. 

Yet, as an unfailingly kind, sensitive man, her senior by several years, he must have represented escape from her widowhood, plus stability, security and love in some measure, because they became a couple and married anyway.

Very soon after, we (my twin sister and I) appeared on the scene. Two bawling, scrawny, premature infants who brought days and nights of adjustment for everybody.

Sadly, my memories of my mother are not as positive as I would like them to be. She was unhappy in the marriage, withdrawing into her shell self-protectively, throwing herself into her career with a vengeance. 

We were looked after partly by our teenage half-brother and partly by our seven half-sisters from our father's first marriage. Yes, he had walked out on seven girls/young women and their mother (his childhood sweetheart) to marry our mother. And lived to regret it bitterly. 

They were not suited to one another at all, having mainly a love of cigarettes, alcohol, good food and entertainment to glue them together. She became terribly unhappy as I see it now. 

But back then I just thought her cold, indifferent and unloving. Her voice scolding, her arms shut tight, her eyes flinty navy coals. We weren't welcome in her kitchen, nor anywhere else most of the time.

My sister and I with our mother 

I didn't realise the pain she must have felt at being trapped in a loveless marriage. I just thought she was rejecting me. It certainly felt like it.

As I was closest to my father, he was my confidant and he also confided intimate things to me about their marriage, things a young girl's ears shouldn't hear. And they influenced me against her tremendously.

So, today I want to address those feelings in a new light. In revisiting the past we can often gain insight for the present.

Here's what she taught me or gave me, albeit as I absorbed it unconsciously by osmosis:

• A voracious love of books ~ reading at the table, fag ash falling onto the pages as she devoured the current favourite before her, oblivious to our chatter or her surroundings.
• A woman takes care of her skin, uses make-up to enhance her assets, removes it scrupulously and never forgets to use moisturiser ('Oil of Ulay' as it was then).
• Perfume/eau de cologne is not to be saved for high days and holidays but applied on a daily basis, and a 'signature scent' is a good thing ~ hers was 'Tweed' by Lentheric, mine's usually 'Aromatics Elixir' by Clinique and 'Yria' by Yves Rocher.
• No matter how 'unmade-up' a woman may be, wearing a bright lipstick makes all the difference ~ preferably bright red for her and a softer pink for me.
• Dress as well as your budget allows, remembering that a scarf/necklace can make or break an outfit ~ Yes, I love them too.
• Undergarments matter, especially as you age ~ hmm.. we differ a little there in that she needed corsets and slips whereas I love pretty lacy things.
• Education matters. Follow your heart's desire if you can and get a career you enjoy.
• It's possible to have a job and raise a family. You have to decide where you can afford to cut corners and get all the support you can.
• You may have to count the pennies but you can always eat well.
• There's not much that a hot bath, good book, cup of tea/coffee and a cigarette can't put right ~ Maybe.. not so sure about the latter as I don't smoke.
• Marry for love, not convenience.

*******

And, Joyce/mum, I have kept faithfully to your received wisdom, almost without realising it. Drawn it into my soul as a part of you.

Now, I feel sadder still in this season of celebrating motherhood that I didn't really know or appreciate you as I could have done. And I fear you didn't really know or understand me either.

I have learnt how to be a mother and grandmother somehow, by default, by an act of grace, by a staunch desire to 'do better' than I was done by. Yet, as the list above reveals, I was in your thoughts and you were in mine, even when it may not have felt like it at all to my needy, hungry, hurting child-heart.

And I know I have looked for you in many people and places since your passing, always coming up empty again. My hands longing to touch and not be pushed aside, my arms desiring to hold and be held as much as I wanted to.

I find myself mirroring some of your gestures.
I look at photos and see more resemblance in our faces, even though my sister got your darker hair and deep blue eyes.

Me ~ age 17

Maybe.. maybe I can take some consolation from knowing now how tough life can be as an adult, how hard choices have to be made, how you had to leave us and run into another man's arms. 

I saw you had some years of happiness with him, your smile wide and genuine. You had a space for me and my sister too in those latter years when disability drew us back to care for you as daughters do.

This stage of my life sees me suffering the same arthritis and hyper-mobile joints that pained you so much. I also use a wheelchair at times as I have M.E as well. There are days when I look at my increasingly gnarled hands and muse that I'm turning into my mother. Don't we all, in the end? And you know what? I'm starting to get comfortable with that. Perhaps the best of you is inside of me.

Happy Mothers Day, mum. I miss you more than I expected to and more than you'll ever know. Xxx 

Wishing

Welcome to a time of thoughts and reflections. If you have been reading my blog for a while you will know that I am a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) who tries to be her authentic self in an attempt to stay real and not present a false impression.

First on the agenda today is an apology for the preponderance of negativity that has infiltrated these pages of late. I wish it hadn't been so. In fact, I would give anything for it to have been otherwise.

Recently I have been stuck in a groove where the needle keeps playing on one lone track - a plaintive melody of despondency and discouragement. Before long, I may have found despair and depression trailing me as well. These things tend to hang together.

Part of the problem is our need for continual adjustment to the world around us and the circumstances we may find ourselves in. I have been wrongly overly focused on my pain, weakness, debility (another of those awful 'd' words) and so on. 

The onset of SAD hasn't helped matters much. Light - give me light! And the clocks have gone back an hour in the UK too - and the days get shorter and darker ...etc...groan...you get the picture.

Is it still all right to moan a bit if that's how we feel? It can make us feel ashamed and guilty. Aren't Christians meant to have a joyous, happy, prosperous life after all? Or so they say. But that's only part of the whole story. Life is rarely as we might wish it to be or even anticipate.

Perhaps other women reading this will nod in sympathetic agreement that we tend to think life would be better IF ONLY.... we were - prettier, thinner, sexier, cleverer, healthier, better at all sorts of things ___ fill in the blank.

I spent many of my early years wishing things were different than they actually were. In fact, so isolated and dislocated did I feel from my family at times that I secretly wished I'd been adopted and my Real Parents would come back to get me.. .one day. My twin sister was - and still is - the main person  in my birth family that I felt 'at home' with in any way.

I longed to be accepted, understood, affirmed and appreciated - Just for Being Me. Instead, I felt lost and lonely and soon became my own worst critic.

If others didn't seem to think much of me, then why should I think much of myself?
The poem below (written many years ago when youthful hopes held sway) is an example of how I felt then.

'Wishing'

Sitting here

eyes downcast

on the virgin page,

blind thoughts 

rambling

through my mind.

Wish I could write..

wish I could do

a thousand things.

Tight concentration - 

muzzy head,

no functioning of expectant hand;

eyes stray from the sheet of

Nothingness - 

catching the eyes 

in a magnetic hold

of that Somebody Else...

Wish I could love.

©JoyLenton2012

Even now I can find myself wistfully gazing into someone else's life and wishing mine was like theirs. I read a lot of tweets and blogs because I am genuinely fascinated by people's worlds, words and opinions. Yet it can have a downside if I let it.

The danger lies in making comparisons when we really have little idea at all of what their lives are truly like - beyond what they choose to reveal, of course. I may yearn to look, think, act like, or experience the apparent richness of life which others appear to be having, rather than acknowledge that mine is mainly one of limitation, pain, sickness and challenge and has been that way for many years.

God knew what He was doing though when He purposefully and lovingly created each one of us as unique and special to Him and that's how He makes us feel once we are in relationship with Him.

While I might wish I was able to write more positively, wittily or eloquently and live more freely and fully than I am able, I am learning to accept that this thoughtful, poetic, often serious and reflective person that I am now has grown out of who God deliberately made and intended me to be and is a fruit of all that I have experienced - both good and bad.

So this is me:

• A survivor of childhood abuse and mental heath problems
• Chronically sick - yet active in my mind
• Mostly housebound - but not earthbound
• Living a limited life - with an unlimited appetite for life
• A 'work in progress' - sharing my imperfections
• Devoted to God - and eager to make Him known
• Writing from the heart - with particular empathy for the hurting

For we all have our own individual story to tell and nobody else can tell it quite like we can from our unique perspective.

This is my tiny cross-stitch contribution to life's rich tapestry. If my words resonate with just one person then it will make them worth the telling.

More thoughts on growing as a believer in Christ and developing as God intended are coming up in future posts. Meanwhile, I leave you with this quote:

"You cannot control the length of your life,

but you can control its width and depth.

You can't control the contour of your countenance,

but you can control its expression.

You can't control the other person's opportunities,

but you can grasp your own.....

Why worry about the things you cannot control?

Get busy controlling things that depend on you." ~ Myron J. Taylor