Exuberant, blunt, creative mam who showed, in being ordinary, that she was extraordinary
Motherhood, the Welsh identity and feminism are all explored by Dr Mari Wiliam in this poignant and personal look back at her mother’s ‘ordinary life’
FOR most of my life, the number 25 held quite happy connotations for me: December 25, of course, for being Christmas Day, and February 25 is my birthday. However, my perception of the number changed utterly on May 25, 2009, as that was the day my mother died.
She seemed to have foreshadowed her own death the previous Christmas as we prepared the dinner, when in frustration at the balance problems that had plagued her since a stroke in 2006, she snapped: “This will be my last Christmas.”
However, since she could walk (albeit with a walking stick), could drive and sustained a social life well in advance of mine, I did not take much notice, and forgot about this comment until a fatal brain haemorrhage struck on that bank holiday Monday in May.
As historians we are pumped full of notions we should be objective and unbiased. So, the (pretentious) historian in me shudders that I’m writing about a life where I have so much personal involvement.
However, one of the most influential developments in historiography since the 1950s has been “history from below”, with its emphasis on the experiences and cultures of “ordinary” people. But, even though oral history – with its mission of providing a “voice to the voiceless” – has made a pivotal contribution to documenting the “ordinary” lives of women, it never crossed my mind to “interview” Mam.
Indeed, although the thought of my literate and very voluble mother being “voiceless” would be quite humorous to those who knew her, I’m also acutely aware that as time passes her presence ebbs away.
From my lament that I had no “proper” recorded or chronicled version of Mam’s life, I realised that I could piece together fragments of her history: she had left an “archive”, although not a traditional one groaning with the introspection of diaries and letters. Foremost, there is a living memory of her, both in my own mind and in testimony gathered from those who knew her.
Additionally, her life left some written trace, in the form of school reports and magazines, job references, lesson plans, recipes and condolence cards. I also had a visual and material remnant in photographs, toys, jewellery and even patchwork quilts.
“Welcome to my world”: Upbringing
Arriving on November 18, 1946, Rhiannon Morris Edwards was among the first batch of “baby-boomers”, although I never heard her characterising herself as such. With a strong Welsh name that evoked the tales of the Mabinogi (and being almost 30 years ahead of Fleetwood Mac’s song Rhiannon, which was probably a bit more her style) it would be a source of consternation to my more ardently “Welsh-only” father, named Edgar, that he, instead, was associated with a 10th century Anglo-Saxon king.
According to her birth certificate, she was, unremarkably for the time, born at home, in St Asaph, Flintshire. Her father was listed as a “farm bailiff”, with no requirement to identify any occupation for her mother, apart from her name.
However, Mam and her sister Gaenor, born a year earlier, were not brought up with the notion of the male as breadwinner, since he was killed in a farm accident in 1950. After this, her mother went out to work as a school cook, with the family living on a council estate overlooking what was then St Asaph Grammar School. One childhood relic Mam held onto was Mousey, a fabric mouse that had been patched up time and again by her mother: partly due to it being a favourite toy, but also because the family could not afford to throw it away and to buy a replacement. So, although these were arguably the halcyon days of the welfare state and the “affluent” society of the 1950s, luxuries were rare and material possessions valued for their longevity.
She happened to be born in a Welsh-speaking home in a border county where the language was edging towards a precipice: only around a fifth of Flintshire’s population spoke Welsh in 1951. To tackle fears about its future, the director of education, Dr B Haydn Williams, and his team, were pioneering developments in Welsh medium education, to such an extent that the Rhyl Leader accused them in 1957 of possessing
WHO IS MARI WILLIAM
“fanatical feelings of nationalism”.
In 1958, having passed the 11+ exam from Ysgol Hiraddug in Dyserth, Mam entered the grammar stream at Ysgol Glan Clwyd in Rhyl: this was the first Welsh medium secondary school established in Wales, and it had only opened its doors in 1956. As such, she was part of the experimental years of a school that was to inspire the mushrooming of Welsh language education beyond the primary sector.
Most of her lessons were held in Welsh, and she was equipped with an effortless bilingualism that enabled her to flit lucidly between English and Welsh.
Perhaps this was a bit too fluently, though, for the school’s taste. On one school report when Mam was 14, the then headmaster, Haydn Thomas, interjected by writing: “I would like it if she spoke Welsh sometimes. It is not helpful at all to the school that she speaks English incessantly.”
But, even though she wasn’t too keen on speaking Welsh within school walls, she was very willing to engage in “traditional” cultural activities. The school magazine Ymlaen brims with examples of Mam performing with the school