Take A Bow

I was born back in the sixties, when my Mam was 28.

I was wrapped up warm and nurtured, spoon fed from a tiny plate.

She sang songs and read me stories pushed me miles in my new pram. She taught me right from wrong, for she was such a clever mam. Then just a one or two years later, as the sixties took their bow. So many things I did not know, my mother showed me how.

She taught me how to cross the road, have manners, be polite.

She always used to blow my nose, and tucked me up each night. Then came the superb seventies, my Mam now 35.

She gave me freedom, wings to fly, a grand time in my life.

She’d scrub grass stains from my jeans, and cleaned my Welly boots. Mam made me feel safe and secure, my grounding had deep roots. Then when the Eighties came along, My Mam was 42.

Our nest then was still well feathered, that safe place I’d always knew. I would work hard in the house, do dishes, vacuum, make my bed. This instilled in me work ethics, for the years that lay ahead. And by the middle of the Eighties, when I was no more a boy.

I’d come back home at crazy times, and she’d never get annoyed. My Mam taught me all the pitfalls, of the darker side of debt.

A lesson we’ve passed to our kids, you can’t afford?, don’t get! Entering the 1990s now, my Mam was 51.

By then I’d changed from boy to man, my teenage years were gone. But Mam had no need to worry, as I was street wise and strong.

I’d set up home just down the road, in the town we all belonged.

By the middle of the nineties Mam was then aged 54.

We worked side by side in business, I could not have wished for more. She dealt with well-heeled customers, such service they’d demand.

In no time at all, she had them, almost eating from her hand. Then entering the new millennium, my Mam was then 61.

She retired in then nick of time her strength was all but gone. But she still has all her cough drops, more than anyone I’ve met.

A few have tried to prove her wrong, but none have managed yet.

Her wisdom to this day’s intact, it has served our family well.

It’s being passed on to my children, hope they’ll listen, who can tell? And one thing my Mother told me, that’s so true beyond all doubt.

“If you want to keep your friends son,

“You just tell them you’ve got nowt!” Now Mam’s heading for her Eighties, and I love her to her core.

How I’ve loved the years we’ve shared, oh how I long for many more. Mam’s my guiding light, my beacon, through this old life’s highs and lows It’s now time for her to take a bow she has earned one, Heaven knows. JAMES BRIDGEWOOD