Lydia Dean Tell A Friend About Us:

S ometime during the year 2004 we took a trip home to the States from Provence where we were living and I went on my annual pilgrimage to Barnes and Nobles Bookstore. It was there that I would spend hours upon hours running my hands through books, flop in their comfy leather couches surrounded by the warmth and smell of roasting coffee-- basically die in book lover’s heaven. That year my Dad had given me a chunk of money for my birthday, a very out of the ordinary gift that I was hesitant in taking. I have never allowed myself to spend money selfishly, nor am I accustomed to taking large gifts from anybody. I had recently passed through a very painful and tumultuous period with my father and it was a difficult time to receive a gift from him. I had not planned on accepting his love at that moment. But fortunately I did and amazingly from that point on our relationship blossomed into something precious from the past, where a daughter simply loves to be in the presence of her father, and a father simply loves to see her happy.

The blessing of having accepted that gift had only just begun. I could have spent every last penny of it effortlessly within those four walls. But I was going to savor the extravagance and vowed to buy only what I could manageably put in the small red basket. One of the books I placed in the basket that day was, “A Cup of Comfort for Mothers and Daughters,” edited by Colleen Sella, a compilation of essays written by various writers describing their personal relationships with their mother or daughters and what makes that particular bond so special. Some months later, curled up on my couch in Provence during an endless day of cold wet rain in early spring, I read the book and was struck with emotion from several sides. I felt how fortunate I was to have a daughter and with whom I have a wonderfully rich relationship. I was reminded as I read the book what an honorable, significant and exceptional role it is to be a mother. And for those of us who are lucky enough to have or have had great mothers, how fortunate we are to be their daughters. Sandwiched somewhere between my daughter Emma and my dear Mum, I realized the very power and sweetness of womanhood, of kinship and family. It made me think about the relationship my mother might have had with her mother, and what my daughter might be like as a mother herself. I thought of my sister Helene and her daughter Caroline, of Helene and our Mother. A few days later, I was overcome by an urgent desire to gather my own thoughts and memories of my Mum.

I am sitting on her bare legs and it’s prickly where she has shaved and the hair is coming in on her upper thighs. I have no idea how old I am. She is stroking and patting my back as she speaks to someone else, a girlfriend maybe. She tips her head back and laughs easily, then chuckles. They are poking fun at someone, but only kindly. She loves a good laugh. I am playing with the rings on her long strong fingers, marveling at how they can be spun around with such ease yet completely impossible to get over her knuckles. I imagined that those rings would stay on forever. Time would tell they wouldn’t. I play with her thick nails, hard as rock, perfectly rounded at the tips. I love her hands, because they are my Mum’s and I know every bump, crease and mark on them. They are strong and gentle, feminine, capable. On her lap I am safe and happy and I could stay there forever. I think we are on our wooden deck in Canada. She is wearing a crisp white cotton skirt and her legs are a deep golden brown. I loved to stare at her face as she lay in the sun, her skin shiny and slippery from tanning oil. Her hair pulled back in a scarf or towel, her eyes would close and I would lose her to some peaceful faraway world.

I remember grilled cheese lunches with real cheddar cheese on wheat bread, tomato soup and magic bars which we named goo. Sunday dinners with roast beef, Yorkshire pudding which she most always burned on the bottom, and treacle tart. She would take the time in the early evenings to prepare hot water bottles for our beds so that our feet would be warm during those bitter Northern nights. I could tell how much she loved me simply from the way she wrapped me in a towel after a bath. It may have been a bit hurried, but she always did it with care and a kiss on the forehead. I remember lying to my teacher at school about being sick so I could come home and be with her in the afternoons. I could then curl up on the fuzzy green couch that smelled slightly musty and doze while she sipped tea, knitted and watched soap operas or Phil Donahue. It was the only time of the day she ever sat down. To have come home from school in the mornings would not have been near as relaxing, yet I might have the chance of watching her dance to Abba or Neil Diamond, on the record player as she vacuumed. After she had cleaned and baked a little something, it was only then that she would enjoy a proper sit and “a cup-a.” And there was nothing better than to be snuggled up on that green couch with her in a time of my life where stress or responsibility had not yet been born. There was just comfort and time, and my mother.

When I was sick and the fever felt as though it was eating me up as we sat and waited for the doctor with the very hair on my arms hurting, her reassuring hand on my knee would make everything feel better. It was as if she herself felt my pain and by touching me she took some of it on herself. She always made everything feel better, the pain of sickness, hurt feelings. She was the kind of Mum who was aware of everything. Aware when we were feeling down or aware when we were up to something naughty. As we strayed from that which we ought to do, she never held us to the fire or made us feel bad about it. Like the time I lied about having been caught showing “my parts” at age five to the next door neighbor’s son. When I started smoking cigarettes by the side of the house after school, she knew but never let on. Some things she would just let go, just like that. Maybe it was that she trusted us to right our own wrongs. Or perhaps it was because she knew that stepping a bit out of line was part of life, and that it was ok to not be perfect.

While her life with my father was not always happy and finances often tight, I don’t remember her ever yelling at us. I felt she was at peace when she was with us – her girls. I remember sensing her excitement as we prepared for the long journeys back to her home and family in England, how she would dress us up in our prettiest dresses and our shiny black patent leather shoes for the flight. We got to wear our silver bracelets with our names engraved on them. I can only imagine her need to see her own mother, father and sister, to be nestled and comforted by them and the smells of England and the freshness of the green manicured gardens. I wonder if she felt the same warmth and safety with her mother as I still do with her. I know she felt something very deep for her Mum, because I could see the pain on her face as she started to receive letters from her mother with handwriting less legible and thoughts not so concise.

Perhaps it was because my childhood felt like a carefully wrapped piece of cake in a napkin, that the shock and crumble of my family hurt so badly. My mother and father finally divorced after a not so tidy breakup that left us all lost and devastated. Later she left to create a new life with a new man. When I saw her she was in a world I didn’t know and her words entangled in what must have been her own grief over the loss of our family and the guilt for needing to leave. I swallowed much of my pain and put on a good face for her. I wanted her to know I was capable too, and thankful for all the afternoons on the green couch with her. I wanted her to know that I was strong enough to let her go, to let her focus on herself and her own happiness. While I struggled during this time alone, it made me realize all that she had given me, all that she had done for me, because they were all the things that were no longer there. Had they not been taken from me I might not ever have known their value. I cried a lot, normally sitting at the foot of the stairs in my father’s house, staring at the dust balls wedged between the wall and the ugly carpet. I was broken, but it was also there that I learned to pick myself up, dust myself off and move on. It was there that I took my first steps as a woman, felt my own strength as a woman, and it was she who had helped me prepare over the years to do so.

At the birth of my sweet babies she dropped everything in her life to fly from Canada to Orlando to be by my side. Magically she created a much needed calm and balance in a household shocked by new life as my husband and I tried to comprehend what had just landed in our laps. Those competent loving hands helped me to give them their first baths, amazingly supporting both me and the fragile neck of my newborn. She is never far from my mind as I stumble through the stages of motherhood wondering whether I am doing things as she had.

My thanks are too great to convey to her yet I believe that she is gratified as she sees me with my own daughter, trying my very best to nurture that unyielding mother-daughter bond with Emma that she created with me. And, I hope that in doing so my daughter will inherit the same luxury. I hope that in time she learns what a precious gift it is to be both a daughter and a mother.

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