Remembering My Mother

10 years ago today - the anniversary of my mother's passing.

This photo is on the front of the short memoir she wrote before she died.  She is sitting on her father's knee with her mother and sister at Chipembi, the mission station and School for  Girls in Zambia where they lived, taken  about 1925 or 1926.

Today  we remember her with English roses and daisies and calendula cut from my sister's garden.

Our brother and sister are with us in spirit ....and all the rest of the family.

It's as hot as Africa where she was born.

Afterwards we walk down from St Michael's church to the Boston Tea Party cafe in Honiton for a memorial cup of mint tea and a Portuguese custard tart. I like this tradition we have made over the years to mark their anniversaries, to honour and thank them for giving us life.

These young calves watch us form the field bordering the graveyard...such recent new life come into the world.

When I wake up this morning I feel much more in control...not so burdened and overwhelmed by anxiety and all the endless stuff to do about the house. Not sure why - I just decide that it's OK to have what I want without worrying about what other people think...I can't really get it too seriously wrong.

And I also have a new perspective  - I'll have forgotten about all this stress in a few years time -when I've made the old house I'm  buying into a new home. But more than that - I don't know how long I have left to live -  realistically it could be 20 years or fewer which doesn't sound very long .....I don't really want to soldier on into very old age.  Even now I struggle to find the point of getting up in the morning. 

So I might as well choose to have more good times than bad and worrying myself to death is just silly. 

This is an extract from my mothers' memoir ...I love to think of her as a child  in Africa, eating watermelon on the cool verandah with her sister, in their bare feet. ....like I did this evening... except my feet were bare on my laminate kitchen floor, the curtains drawn against the open doors of  a hot English evening. And there were no black seeds in my slice of water melon.

" We went everywhere barefoot, indoors and out.I remember returning to the house in the evenings after playing outside, sitting on the cool cement verandah steps, eating supper with Margaret. Sometimes it was huge slices of pink watermelon with glistening black seeds still clinging to the fruit,but our favourite was bananas - homegrown - and cream from our own cows. Every day milk was brought to the house and Jim, our cook, divided it keeping some for drinking, cooking and tea and the rest went into the separator for spinning until it turned into cream and butter. 

The remaining buttermilk, whey with lumps of cream in it, was a favourite drink of my father but we disliked it. On special occasions Mummy made butter pats, rolling them between ridged paddles."

 From In and Out of Africa 

1920 - 1946 by Audrey Temple