Thank you, Mum
Two writers explain why they’re so thankful for the resilience and courage of their mothers…
we celebrate mother’s day with these stories of courage and resilience
As a child, I rarely thought about the fact that my mum Jean was in a wheelchair.
this might sound odd but the car crash that caused her disability had happened two years before I was born. so her ability to do all the things my friends’ parents could had been limited for as long as I could remember. but, while she couldn’t line up for the mums’ race on sports day, or run alongside me on my first attempts to ride a bike, I never felt I was missing out. Quite the contrary.
I had a rich and idyllic childhood. My parents’ home was always open to friends and neighbours for barbecues, dinners and lavish children’s parties. During the week, Mum would spend hours reading with me, sparking a lifelong passion for books that would ultimately lead me to make my living as a novelist.
this amounted to the happiest existence I could imagine, so the fact that Mum’s legs didn’t work felt like an irrelevance.
the crash happened one afternoon in mid-November 1972 when she was 25 years old and 37 weeks pregnant with her first baby. My parents were on their way to visit friends – Dad at the wheel of their Mini – when they stopped at a red light on a dual carriageway. He remembers every detail of what happened next. the car travelling towards them on the opposite side of the road. the screech of tyres as it swerved, smashing into the central reservation. the bolt of shock when he realised it was airborne, hurtling towards them. It landed on their bonnet, crushing everything in its way. the driver said afterwards that a dog had run out into the road. He escaped unhurt, but my parents, sadly, weren’t as lucky.
Mum went into labour and, after being transferred to hospital, a Caesarean section was performed, but the baby died half an hour afterwards. Dad had a broken ankle, compressed cheekbone and other lacerations, but it was Mum who sustained injuries so extensive that there isn’t space to list them here. both legs were shattered. Her three days of surgery and five months in hospital were just the start of decades of attempts to improve her mobility, until ultimately the only course of action left was pain management.
Despite everything, Mum’s positivity, pragmatism and ability to enjoy life was undiminished. she has been there for me in adulthood just as much as she was when I was a child. Mum and I take turns to cook a big family dinner each sunday and she simply loves being around my three boys, who are now 13, 10 and six. and it strikes me that her relationship with my own children has become just three more reasons to appreciate her.
you Me Everything by Catherine Isaac is out now and in movie development by Lionsgate. Her follow-up, Messy,
Wonderful us (Simon & Schuster), will be published on 30 May. >>
‘the fact that Mum’s legs didn’t work felt like an irrelevance’
They say that often you don’t really appreciate your mum until you’re a parent yourself, and that was certainly true for me.
I grew up on a remote farm in Devon with my mum and dad, three brothers, and countless sheep, cows, chickens, dogs and cats, and as soon as I hit my teens, I couldn’t wait to leave.
We tend to take things out on those closest to us, and Mum certainly bore the brunt of my frustration. like most teens I could be hyper critical, and I remember one awful row that ended with her in tears saying, “so the one thing I have done in my life is bring up children, and you’re saying I can’t even do that properly...”
Fast forward to october 1991 and after the birth of my first daughter,
Ella, I remember hugging my mum and crying as it sunk in that “Wow! you did this, and not only once, but four times!”. What’s more, she did it all without any support from her own mum. My grandfather disapproved of his 21-yearold daughter marrying a skint farmer and had banned my grandmother from going to the wedding or having any contact with us for years. I never really thought about how hard this must have been for Mum until I had Ella, and then her sister Flora, four years later. Mum just got on and did her best, while also working with my dad on the farm. she would always dive in to help us – in one case quite literally. I still remember the gasps when she stripped down to her bra and knickers in front of the shocked priest on a church picnic, and jumped into the river to rescue my youngest brother, who had fallen in. things were tough for farmers in the early 70s and late one night mum wrote a letter to The Sunday Times explaining how hard it was to make ends meet. the current affairs tV show, Man Alive, then sent a film crew to the farm to interview my parents. I was only nine at the time so for me it was an exciting glimpse of a whole other world, and after university I got a job working in television in london.
We may not have had much money when I was growing up, but we did have space and Mum always welcomed anyone who needed somewhere to stay. My mum’s younger brother, Rob, lived with us on and off for years, as did Paul, who came to do work experience on the farm aged 16 and became my unofficial fourth brother. once we began to leave home, my parents decided to become foster carers, and during the 80s and 90s, they looked after over a dozen teenagers.
Mum has never been one to pat herself on the back, so it was a very special moment when my foster sister, Caragh, made a speech at Mum’s 80th birthday party explaining how much my parents, and Mum in particular, had enabled her to turn her life around.
Doing whatever you can to help others is something Mum taught me, which I have tried to pass on to my own daughters. I fundraise for Cancer Research uk, and when the girls were at primary school a bunch of us would do the Race for life. Mum had breast cancer while I was at university and it was definitely a wake-up call for me. I have a couple of friends whose mums died in their forties and I am so grateful for all the extra years we have had.
Mum moved to a bungalow on the edge of town in Devon after my dad died five years ago. When I was growing up we’d always do the weekend crossword together and recently we’ve developed a new ritual. Every saturday morning, my mum’s friend, Wendy, goes round to her with a crossword and I phone up and chip in with answers.
after all Mum has done for us, it feels good to be able to help out, even if it’s only to tell her that the sierra nevada is the name of a Californian mountain range, or that antonio banderas was the voice of Puss in boots in Shrek! w&h
Nikki Spencer is a journalist and founder of disco club night haven’t stopped Dancing
yet (haventstoppeddancingyet.co.uk).
‘Mum bore the brunt of my frustration… like most teens I could be hyper critical’ ‘she would dive in to help us – in one case quite literally’