I knew Mum was different, but I barely noticed she was in a wheelchair
A writer’s poignant tribute to the brave disabled mother who ensured her childhood was lived ‘in glorious technicolor’
IAM not alone in wishing I could give my mum a big hug tomorrow for Mother’s Day. One that says, I love you, I’ve missed you; thanks for all the lifts, birthday parties, help with homework... and sorry about that phase when I was a teenager. But I have more reason than most to be grateful for all my mother Jean did when I was growing up.
One of my most vivid memories from early childhood was sitting on her knee while my dad pushed her wheelchair and we all shouted, “Wheee!”. It was the best ride outside Alton Towers and absolutely typical of her attitude to the severe disability she’d been left with after a car accident a few years earlier, in November 1972.
She was 25 at the time and 37 weeks pregnant with a baby that she and my dad Phil, a bank clerk, had longed for. They’d met aged 17 and married six years later. They were on their way to visit friends on the outskirts of Liverpool when my father stopped their Mini at a red light on a dual carriageway.
He remembers every detail of what happened in the next few seconds. The car travelling towards them on the opposite side of the road. The screech of tyres as it swerved, smashed into the central reservation and became airborne.
He recalls looking up through the windscreen at the underside of the vehicle, hurtling towards them. It landed on their bonnet, crushing everything in its way.
The driver escaped unhurt, but my parents weren’t as lucky. While firefighters spent 30 minutes trying to release them from the wreckage, Mum went into labour. They were transferred to hospital, where she had a caesarean section, but the baby died half an hour after taking his first breath.
Dad had a broken ankle, a compressed cheekbone and other lacerations, but my mum’s injuries were so extensive there isn’t space to list them here. Her legs were shattered from the pelvis down. Three days of surgery and five months in hospital were the start of what would become decades of attempts to improve her mobility and relieve her pain.
A consultant told her she would be permanently disabled, writing in her notes: “The patient is never going to be able to dance. She is not going to be able to play games and is therefore going to be very much handicapped with her child should she have another one.”
‘Dad recalls looking up at the underside of the vehicle. It landed on the bonnet crushing everything in its way’
ALL of this proved to be true but, nearly 50 years on, it is by no means the whole story. A year after the accident, she became pregnant again, this time with me. My parents were astonished and overjoyed.
“If ever I’d had any doubts about the fact that I just needed to get on with it, they disappeared when I found out I was having another baby,” she says.
After I was born, my parents were determined to find a solution to every potential problem, even after Dad returned to work (this was well before the days of paternity leave).
They bought a carry cot fitted with wheels, enabling her to move me around at home and, although we were effectively house-bound when I was a toddler, I barely noticed because she was never short of interesting ways to occupy our time.
Mum had worked in a bakery before the accident and now we’d make cakes nearly every day – coconut macaroons or apple pies.
She would while away hours reading stories with me and, as a result, I could read at the age of three, developed a life-long passion for books and it’s probably no coincidence that I now make my living as a novelist.
By the time I started school, she’d become pregnant again with my brother Stephen and, despite her anxiety about travelling in cars after the accident, she forced herself to take driving lessons. She couldn’t manage a manual vehicle due to the pain and loss of mobility in her left leg, where the injuries had been most severe, so my parents bought an automatic and she was soon pottering about town and doing the school run.
Mum had always loved throwing a party and her disability didn’t change that. I remember her staying up until the early hours to put the finishing touches on all manner of cakes – buttercream hedgehogs dotted with chocolate buttons and sponge baskets full of sugar-craft daisies.
I was aware from a young age that she was different from other mothers at school, but I never felt anything but lucky to have the mum I had. She might not have been able to line up for the mums’ race on sports day, or run along
side me as I made my first, wobbly attempts to ride a bike. But in the scheme of things what did that matter?
By this stage, osteoarthritis had set in as a result of her injuries. As time went on, this would become worse, despite regular physiotherapy and further attempts at surgery, until eventually the only treatment possible was pain management.
So it’s perhaps even more remarkable that, as a very little girl, I rarely – if ever – thought about the fact that my mum was disabled. Children have few preconceptions about people who are different and I don’t recall her ever complaining or saying that we couldn’t do something because of her disability. Most of the time, she made her wheelchair seem like an irrelevance.
Of course, as I grew up, I became more conscious of the challenges she faced. In the 1980s, there was far less awareness of the need for accessibility in public places, so we often found ourselves unable to get into shops or theatres.
Travelling abroad could be particularly difficult and I recall one gruelling attempt at a holiday in Spain that involved obstacle after obstacle.
Nevertheless, life hadn’t just carried on since her accident, it had done so in ‘glorious technicolor’. There was always some gathering at our house at the weekend: dinner parties for the grown-ups, children’s parties for my brother and me, dozens of barbecues.
I had a rich, immensely happy childhood that felt entirely unaffected by the fact Mum’s legs didn’t work. So it’s perhaps to be expected that as an author, I’ve found myself interested in writing about characters who find the strength to face adversity head on.
My latest novel, The World At My Feet, features a mother and daughter and explores difficult topics but is a resolutely optimistic and uplifting read – inspired by my mum.
Her outlook on life and motherhood has remained steadfastly positive, despite everything she’s faced.
These days, she is in her seventies and my parents’ warmth and hospitality has never diminished. I live in Liverpool, not far from them, and Mum is every bit as devoted a grandparent as she was a mother.
Before my children started school, “Grandma Days” – when she and Dad would look after my boys while I went to work – were their favourite time of the week. A day for baking, reading and snuggling up in front of Dr Dolittle.
Even now they’re older the support continues. During lockdown, as my husband and I have struggled to juggle home schooling with our full-time work, she helped by making packed lunches for the boys, which Dad dropped off on his bike.
All these years after her accident, it strikes me that her medical notes were right in a way – she never did dance.Yet it was another doctor’s words, a year after the crash, that summed her up best: “I was most impressed with this patient’s morale. This poor girl not only has had these severe injuries but also has lost her first baby.
“But if anyone could make a successful outcome of her severe injuries she will.”
And she absolutely did.
●●The World At My Feet by Catherine Isaac (Simon & Schuster, £8.99) is out now. To order your copy, call Express Bookshop on 01872 562310 or order via www. expressbookshop.co.uk Postage and packing charge is £2.95