Little women

"Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim." 

(Nora Ephron)

(All photos: Gigi, album)

Mum before she married.

I was quite distressed today when my sister told me my Mother's Day card for Mum hadn't arrived in Hampshire. This will be our third Mothering Sunday without her. It may seem silly to send a card to be placed at your Mum's grave, but I've always sent her one; don't think I ever missed a year. Like her, I'm big on cards, giving as well as receiving. You can often write out what sticks in the throat and crushes the heart and the written word is a memorable testament to a feeling. Hopefully, my card will arrive on Monday.
I've been thinking I should post a little testament to my Mum as the beautiful, funny, vibrant woman that she was. Mum had a strong femininity that wrapped itself around her motherhood like a Harris Tweed cloak; reassuringly abrasive, irrefutably warm and seemingly indestructible. The photos here span most of Mum's adult life as a wife, mother and early widow, but she herself never stopped being her mother's daughter. 

I never knew Granny Barbara, but Mum talked about her a lot. Like Mum, she was a petite and coquettish woman who loved things with bows and trims, in spite of her harsh and sparse upbringing. A Glaswegian Presbyterian by birth, she left her clan to marry my grandfather; by all accounts a surly Norn Irish Catholic widower, a farmer with no land of his own. 

Barbara was initially ostracised by the other Catholic women in their part of rural Antrim. They threw eggs at her front door and refused to sit with her in church: very Christian. She won them over with a gentle nature that belied her resilience; and with her gift for "knowing": they would come to her to reveal their fortunes apparently; also, not strictly Christian! She must have said something right because the egg throwing stopped and she was embraced by the women and the parish.

Mum's feistiness seems to have been inherited from her father; her quiet determination from her mother. She often referred to her as "poor Mum", but Granny was rich in the admiration and respect she invoked in her own four daughters. There was a fifth, youngest child, a son called William; also his mother's boy, to the anxiety of his father. My grandfather was a commanding but demanding man. Barbara bore her son when she was fifty, which may seem an unthinkable age, but she was by then very much a Catholic Mother. 

Her health deteriorated after her last pregnancy, although she lived to see her girls bear their own children in England before she eventually succumbed to cancer. She encouraged all her children to fly the nest and make something of themselves, even though at the time this essentially meant leaving Antrim and leaving her on her own with a weary but volatile husband. She eventually came to England in her final illness: my Dad helped to nurse her. Practically disinherited by his own family in Belgium, she became a mum to him too.

My Mum often grieved that my sister and I are childless; for me, it hasn't been a choice and it's my one big regret in life. I like nurturing creatures: it feels empowering rather than compromising.  I often say that I felt orphaned when Mum followed my Dad two and a half years ago, but I will never feel motherless, whichever day my card is delivered.

It's funny how the circles turn: Mum always said that Granny loved the song "Que Sera, Sera" and would sing it while she did the family laundry. Mum loved it too; I look at photos of her before she became my mother and she reminds me of Doris Day, who I find adorable. The song features in the old Hitchcock film "The Man Who Knew Too Much", also starring my Jimmy Stewart. Somewhere I have the film on DVD; I warble this now, sometimes when hoovering. I hope I've inherited much from some strong minded, big hearted little women; I hope I don't waste it. What will be, will be.

When Tony and Josie got married...

Mum with her own mother, my Scots-Irish Granny, and with her first baby; my sister.

With me when I was about eighteen years old. Please ignore floral jacket.

Mum in Paris with me and my sister, the year Princess Diana was killed there. Mum's in her favorite shade of red; my sister appears to be wearing a deceased animal with shoulder pads. I am honestly wearing a skirt, albeit a very short one, and black nail polish; Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Mum went to Australia in her later years, when her health was already failing and she depended on a walking stick; she loved it there, later encouraging me to go and fall in love with the continent too.

My sister and I with Mum on her birthday, nine years ago.

This is one of the last photos taken of Mum, a few months before she died. It was taken on my birthday, almost exactly three years ago. Already very frail and ill here, she died little more than six months later.

"What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce." 

(Mark Twain)

"Que Sera Sera"  Doris Day

"Taking joy in living is a woman’s best cosmetic." 

(Rosalind Russell) 

"You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation." 

(Brigham Young) 

"I am a woman; my country is the whole world." 

(Virginia Woolf) 

The female of the species

"When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired

And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

And run my stick along the public railings

And make up for the sobriety of my youth."

(From "Warning", Jenny Joseph)

Many thanks to my dear friend Tom for sending the following funny, which I've had to adapt ever so slightly... Rudyard Kipling wrote beautifully about "The Female of the Species being deadlier than the male", but I want to grow into a lively and loved old lady: Jenny Joseph's poem could have been written specifically about the fabulous older girls in this corner of the world.

All women should live so long as to be this kind of lady!
Toward the end of Sunday mass, the priest asked: "How many of you have forgiven your enemies?"
Eighty percent of the congregation raised their hands.
The priest repeated his question. Everyone responded this time, except one small, elderly lady.
"Mrs Neely? Are you not willing to forgive your enemies?"
"I don't have any," she replied, smiling sweetly.
"Mrs Neely, that is very unusual! How old are you?"
"Ninety eight," she replied. The congregation stood up and applauded her.
"Ah, Mrs Neely, would you please come down front and tell us all how a person can live to be ninety eight years and not have an enemy in the world?"
The little sweetheart of a lady tottered down the aisle, faced the congregation, and said:

"I outlived the b******s."

In the oldest burial ground attached to Brighton's oldest surviving church, the original parish church of St Nicholas, there is a listed tombstone dedicated to one Phoebe Hessel. Phoebe had become something of a Brighton celebrity by the time she died in 1821, at the age of 108. She was actually born in Stepney, in East London, where her life is commemorated with plaques and in at least two street names.
Sources have claimed that her father was a soldier who took the infant Phoebe with him on missions. Certainly Phoebe developed a fascination with the army at an early age: her sex prevented her from becoming a soldier herself. As she became a young woman, she disguised herself as a man, to enlist and serve alongside her soldier lover, Samuel Golding. As part of the British Army 5th Foot Regiment, she served in the West Indies and Gibraltar. Her sex remained undetected for an unbelievable seventeen years, until both she and her man were wounded at the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745. Phoebe was by now 32 years of age. Rumbled, the couple were discharged and able to marry.
Samuel and Phoebe settled in Plymouth and had nine children; eight died in infancy. The surviving son would later die at sea. After two decades of marriage, Samuel died. Phoebe refused to submit to the life of an ageing widow. She moved to Brighton and married local fisherman Thomas Hessel. She was 80 when Thomas also passed away. Phoebe was granted three guineas from the parish funds and bought herself a donkey and cart, as you do when you become an octogenarian. To support herself, she took to selling fish and seafood around Brighton. Eventually, she would become well known and loved as a vendor of gingerbread, apples and citrus fruits on a street corner close to the Pavilion. She was forced into the workhouse but again refused to submit to age or circumstance; she discharged herself when she was 93.
The Prince Regent himself was so impressed by her character and longevity that he sustained her remaining years by granting her a pension of half a guinea a week. She would attend his coronation parade in Brighton six months before she finally died of natural causes. Her Grade II listed tombstone has been maintained by the Northumberland Fusiliers, the modern successors to the army regiment that would not officially have enlisted her. In true Brightonian style, a city bus has been named after Phoebe Hessel; possibly, this quirky city's oldest known cross-dresser.

Not quite Phoebe's donkey cart.

 Phoebe Hessel, possibly wearing purple.

"A beautiful woman may be an accident of nature, but a beautiful old woman is a work of art." 

(Louis Nizer)

"Every age can be enchanting provided you can live within it." 

(Brigitte Bardot) 

"Oh Mary Don't You Weep No More" Bruce Springsteen