My Mam's b-d 18 11 8 (15) 25 2 1

18 11 5

This morning I posted a message to someone who rejected an article I wrote in which I had sung my mother's praises and for that matter sung my father's praises too because he died a war hero and following his death in 1945 she continued the fight to have this last fact suitably recognised. The message I posted was one of the most conciliatory messages I was able to muster because I endeavoured to get the person to reconsider the worthiness of my theme for the article with a view to the person changing their minds, or more precisely to give me the opportunity to write another article on the same theme but from a different perspective in the hope it would then be accepted for publication. Hence the need to be somewhat coy concerning the specific details lest it be discovered and thereby prejudice my undertaking.

Of course this week was always a big week in our family because it wasn't only my mother's b-d we used to celebrate but her younger sister Ada's as well. And if that wasn't enough Ada's b-d fell on the 11th November which for British peoples it is also Remembrance Day, or Poppy Day when we remember the fallen in 2 world wars...

This year's Remembrance Day is special too in that it marks the centenary of the ending of the First World War 

Although I have lived in Finland more than 30 years I was fortunate to have a job which took me to England at this time of year for 20 of those years because I also had a job which took me to Brussels twice a year for meetings in March and November so that by each time taking a swing through UK instead of flying directly down one day midweek and flying back the following day midweek, by staying away over a weekend I was able to save the company travelling expenses despite the extra flights to and from Brussels and Manchester.

But as I grow older though with still a long way to catch up to my mother in the Longevity stakes I hardly need her b-d to pop up for me to remember her, because we had this special kind of bond you don't get to share with everyone, for it's this innate thing that is either there or not, and I believe I was to share it with the most important person in the world when I started out as an infant... 

Now it a coincidence that this particular blog follows quickly on the heels of an earlier one I penned a few days ago on a related subject which removes the need to repeat myself for much information already appearing only 2 or 3 blogs earlier for anyone so interested...

But whenever I talk to my brother J and sister M which I do every week or so, much of what we are talking about is uppermost in my mind: sibling differences, rivalry, etc., and as we all three of us approach old age together, it is possibly more interesting today because if anything these differences become more pronounced with age. 

Like my sister in a couple of our recent telephone calls telling me how our elder brother was always concerned as a child that there was never enough food on the table, whereas I have no such knowledge about the validity of this statement. She went on to say how fortune he was in his choice of bride because she was by profession a Catering Officer with the responsibility for many years of putting nutritious school meals together for one of the bigger counties in England and Wales.

An aside from this to round off this little blog was how when I used to visit my Mum around this time of year she would remark: "I see more of you…" You see my brother’s wife ensured she or they wouldn’t see so much of his Mum as I did because her need was the greater, to have him to herself, whereas in my case there was no such impediment, for if he moved counties away from home in his marriage, I moved countries though with no intention of not remaining close, whilst this in any case was never a priority for my brother! Happy birthday Ma!!