A Tribute to a Single Mom
Before Her Time

by Kate Forbes

Isn’t it strange how the most mundane memories from our childhoods have the strongest pull on our hearts? The sweet, heady smell of the earth on a hot summer’s day as you run the hose over it; the melting butter flavour of fairy cakes; the melody of a favourite song. So it is with me: Bryan Ferry’s "Jealous Guy" instantly evokes many an evening sitting behind the banisters watching my mother cry helplessly when she thought I was safely sleeping.

As I grew up my single-parent family was an embarrassment; a taboo I wore as willingly as a facial boil. Coming from white middle-England in the 1980s, I alternately denied my life in any way fell short of the suburban norm, or blamed it for every misfortune which came my way. It is only now at the age of thirty three, happily married, and with two small children myself, that I can begin to connect to my mother’s life at my age. At the sound of that song I find myself instantly back in 1981 and the melancholy of her young world.

Pre-birth control, my mother’s mother had unwillingly produced four children in almost as many years. My mother, the second unwanted girl, had seemingly found little love at home and had consequently jumped into an ill-judged marriage at just eighteen. Ten years later my father left us to set up home with a young work colleague, leaving his uneducated, shy young wife with the responsibility of a mortgage, myself, and my three year old brother. The years which followed, seemingly always a dark winter’s afternoon in my memory, have shaped my life ever since.

Shunned by all other than the kindest of our neighbours, I prayed nightly that Daddy would return. Birthdays, Christmases, school concerts, graduation, and eventually even my wedding were oddly empty events. My mother was forced to work full-time, so I was a latch-key child, literally returning to a dark home, later watching evenings over my brother sleeping while my Mum worked overtime at the local university library. For years my ideal of a perfect childhood would be to walk through the door to an already lit house.

When I became pregnant with my first child I swore his childhood would owe nothing to my own. Determined to eradicate any negative memory, and even ashamed of my past, I turned my back on anything I felt my mother stood for, and sought to create a new, better, untarnished, even unpoisoned way. Yet, the more I progressed on my maternal journey, the more I realised that the positive choices I was making were, more often than not, what my own mother had endeavoured to provide. Gradually the bitter memories have become bitter-sweet.

Now, icing my son’s pirate birthday cake I remember my mother working all night to create a beautiful, pristine-white, marshmallow snowman cake for me; a cowboy fort made from chocolate fingers for my brother. As I lean over my son’s wobbly signature at the bottom of his thank you letters, I feel my mother in turn watching over me, determined single-parenthood should not mean loss of courtesy. Every time I stand on my soapbox and launch my diatribe on healthy, sensible eating, I hear her telling me “A little of what you fancy, Kate!”

Most of all her unwavering faith that kindness to others will ultimately reap its own rewards; that there is little point in bitterness, and we have to trust in the path given to us. She had far fewer resources at her disposal than I, pampered 21st century mummy that I am, and she could not achieve the impossible. Yet she managed to form the foundation of the (I hope) reasonable mother I am today. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to flesh out the bones, but the skeleton - the values on which I’ve created my own family - I’ve come to realise is almost entirely my mother’s. I cry with sadness for my mother’s lost youth as I write this, and regret every unkind thing I’ve ever said to her.

Mum, forgive me. Now I wish I could reach out my hand, pull you close, and be a friend to you as I was unable to at the time. Her husband - my father - never returned. I used to wonder why some prayers are answered, and not others, but now I believe I know. For us this hardship has meant that although we are far from perfect, we are better able to reach out to others, with a depth of understanding and warmth I believe can only be achieved through pain. Perhaps I am also better placed to appreciate the simple pleasures of life; being able to give my children a home already full of light. It continually inspires me that somehow ordinary lives have the ability to create so many extraordinary women....

Kate is 33 and mum to Toby (aged 5) and Maia (21 months). Originally from southern England, she now lives and work in Toulouse, with her husband Mark. She is one of the leaders of MOPS Toulouse (the first group in France!)

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