My lovely mum

From this lovely lady I inherited:

• a love of singing around the house
• a talent for story telling
  
• a real sense of fun
• the essential use of hands when talking!

(I recognize my Dad in some of these traits too)

From this lady I learned:

• how to read
• how to knit
  
• the power of family
• the courage to get through
• the way to say Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch and a few other words which are part of my Welsh heritage
• When is St David's Day (1st March)

My mother was nearly forty when I was born, so I didn't know her when she looked like this:

But I love this photo of her as a 17 year old. I reckon she would have been a real sweetie.

When I was in my late teens Mum was in her late 50s and she loved to tell me stories of how things were when she was young, working in a grocer's shop where the butter was cut from a block and shaped with butter pats, sugar was weighed and packed in brown paper with string, and cheese was cut from a large wheel.

She told me about being in the ATS during the war, and the adventures she had starting work as a typist for an officer in Chester, when she couldn't type! How she was once on the city wall when the air raid siren sounded, and she was caught out in the open with no shelter in sight.

She married my dad during the war. He basically wooed her with letters! I cannot imagine how they felt as he went off again each time after a period of leave.

They brought up six of us, scrimping and getting by, until they emigrated to Perth Western Australia, and our lives started to look up.

On Mother's Day these are the things I remember with gratitude and lots of affection. She is gone now, but she is in my heart.