Memories and mothers

Jean's Journal with Jean Farrell

I visited a friend lately, whom I’m glad to say reads my articles every week. She had this lovely book all ready to show me. Her daughter bought it for her last Christmas.

“You’re always saying that we should record our memories,” she said, “Well, look at this.”

I loved it. It was divided into chapters. ‘The Beginning,’ ‘My Family Tree,’ ‘Early Memories,’ ‘My Primary School Days,’ ‘My Favourite Things,’ ‘Holidays’ and much more. She told me that these headings help her recall events and happenings.

With her permission, I flicked through it. There was space in each chapter for photographs and I enjoying looking through it very much. We have shared a lot in life together, so it brought back great memories. We laughed at some of the old photos.

I loved the next bit. This friend minds her twin granddaughters, aged 8, after school. She told me that the little girls think this book is great and encourage her to write in it when they are there. “Of course, they get tired of it after a short while,” she said. “But they can name my grandparents now, as well as lots of the people and places in the photographs.”

Watch out for such a book and DO record your memories, for they are priceless.

Here are some famous people’s memories of their mothers.

Meave Binchy truly believed that her deceased mother was looking down at her all the time. “I can almost see her throwing her eyes to Heaven about the many things I do - like stapling up a hem because I can't sew. My mother was so proud of us that she would stop strangers in the street to tell them how well we did in our exams. On the night I was going to my first dance, she told me I would take the sight out of their eyes. It wasn't anywhere approaching the truth nor was it borne out at the dance - where I stood like a wallflower, all night long!”

Darina Allen wrote, “I now know that my mother felt utterly overwhelmed when she was widowed, at just 36, from my father whom she adored. She was left with nine children under 14 years of age. One was born a month after my father's death. Yet, she picked up the pieces and learnt how to run the family business. When, at just 20 years of age, I wanted to marry Tim Allen, a Cork Quaker, she gave us her full support, in spite of her deep religious convictions.

Bill Cullen wrote that he was born into “a poverty stricken intercity tenement in Dublin. One of 14 children, our family was raised in one large room, in a building housing more than a hundred people, with no water or electricity”. As well as rearing her 14 children, his mother sold turf from a wheelbarrow in Henry Street. At the time of writing he stated that he is chairman of a 250 million euro business and it is his mother “Who was the wind beneath my wings.” He ended his piece by writing, “I know my mother is sitting out there somewhere, perched on the edge of a star, with a glass of Guinness in her hand.”

Hugh Leonard was adopted by a woman who had a drink problem. He makes a very good point when he added that, “In terms of misery the problem was not hers, but ours, my father and mine.” When she came to see his first play, her tight-lipped, four word verdict was, “Too much ‘oul talk!”

Senator David Norris had a wonderful mother who wanted written on her headstone, “Don't mourn for me now, don’t mourn for me never. I'm going to do nothing forever and ever.”

Philip Tracy, he who makes hats for royalty, wrote that his mother kept geese and loved them. “When I was 18, I made my first hat from lots of goose feathers that she gave me. A Dublin woman bought it for the races. My mother derived great pleasure, not from my first business success, but from knowing that one of her geese had been to Royal Ascot.”

Neil McCafferty made a very interesting point. She wrote, “I am glad and privileged to have been the daughter of the last of the full-time mothers.” Many of us could say the same.

Looking at the history of married women, we were actually born at a good time.

As little children we had our mothers at home, looking after us. Many mothers, from this era, believed that education was the only way out of a life of drudgery and disadvantage. A lot of them, in the 1960s, insisted that their daughters receive second level education.

In the early 1970s, The Women’s Liberation Movement was founded, by these educated daughters.

Their main aim was that married women would have a choice in how they lived their lives. They could stay at home and mind their children, or they could go out to work. The marriage ban was lifted under pressure from such groups. So was the law banning the sale of contraceptives (eventually!)

My friends and I married in the mid-70s. We could make a choice. I choose to work. Some of my friends choose to stay at home.

However, sadly women do not have a choice anymore. Most married women must work outside the home now, for financial reasons.

These days, many married women are making the choice not to have any children, at all. This would have been unheard of in our mothers’ time.

End of history lesson!!