Not Quite Mine, But Sharing Nonetheless <3
Aug 9, 2010 16:17:24 GMT -5
Post by Mads ♥ on Aug 9, 2010 16:17:24 GMT -5
This is not mine. This is something my mother wrote. As she knows this is a writing forum, she wanted me to share this first little piece of it with you guys. My mom is an incredible woman, an amazing writer, and one of my best friends. She doesn't think it's any good, or anyone would want to read it, or find it interesting. I think that's bull. (Sorry, Mama.)
She's also the reason I like to carry around my little writing inferiority complex. When I have this kind of talent in my life, well... it's hard not to look at my own writing and compare. She told me the other week that talents runs in the family, and to claim I can't write means to bash her stuff. (Which, and I know I'm being childish here, is totally unfair. xD)
So check it out, if you'd like to. ^_^
~
Ask anyone to define the sixties, and the odds are that the first two words out of his or her mouth will be ‘free love’ – but it wasn’t that way at the start of the decade. At the very beginning discipline ruled hearth and home with a heavy hand, sometimes literally. Courtesy was a creed to live by and all your neighbours had to be addressed as Mr-and-Mrs Something-or-other. Single parent families were an unknown or unacknowledged phenomenon which would have been deemed shocking or scandalous. Row upon row of rigid brick structures with starched net curtains demanded propriety and respectability in all things suburban. This was not a time to have secrets, and yet our family had two monsters to conceal.
We were an ordinary family – or at least I thought we were. It is strange how many of the beliefs I had as a young child later proved to be quite wrong. I was told that my father was away at sea much of the time in the Royal Navy; in fact, I often had problems remembering the last time he had come home. My mother was a stay-at-home mother, which was absolutely normal for the era. Her time was entirely occupied with cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and taking care of the four of us children. All this was accomplished without any of the modern conveniences such as a washing machine or microwave oven.
However, my mother was a high-functioning woman. She took pride in setting herself personal challenges to keep her mind alert while performing the daily drudgery of duties. One of these tasks was learning the poem “The Lady of Shallot” while washing the sheets at the kitchen sink. Another of these was to see how many days she could continue preparing dinner without repeating the same dessert.
All of this would have been quite remarkable, given that four children was a relatively large family. It was made all the more remarkable by the fact that she did this alone, essentially from the time just after I was born. The fact that one child had severe behavioural problems makes it beyond belief, especially as Asperger’s Syndrome was not a diagnostic possibility at the time, and therefore that behaviour was neither possible to understand nor put in context. Of necessity, it had to be concealed.
She's also the reason I like to carry around my little writing inferiority complex. When I have this kind of talent in my life, well... it's hard not to look at my own writing and compare. She told me the other week that talents runs in the family, and to claim I can't write means to bash her stuff. (Which, and I know I'm being childish here, is totally unfair. xD)
So check it out, if you'd like to. ^_^
~
Ask anyone to define the sixties, and the odds are that the first two words out of his or her mouth will be ‘free love’ – but it wasn’t that way at the start of the decade. At the very beginning discipline ruled hearth and home with a heavy hand, sometimes literally. Courtesy was a creed to live by and all your neighbours had to be addressed as Mr-and-Mrs Something-or-other. Single parent families were an unknown or unacknowledged phenomenon which would have been deemed shocking or scandalous. Row upon row of rigid brick structures with starched net curtains demanded propriety and respectability in all things suburban. This was not a time to have secrets, and yet our family had two monsters to conceal.
We were an ordinary family – or at least I thought we were. It is strange how many of the beliefs I had as a young child later proved to be quite wrong. I was told that my father was away at sea much of the time in the Royal Navy; in fact, I often had problems remembering the last time he had come home. My mother was a stay-at-home mother, which was absolutely normal for the era. Her time was entirely occupied with cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and taking care of the four of us children. All this was accomplished without any of the modern conveniences such as a washing machine or microwave oven.
However, my mother was a high-functioning woman. She took pride in setting herself personal challenges to keep her mind alert while performing the daily drudgery of duties. One of these tasks was learning the poem “The Lady of Shallot” while washing the sheets at the kitchen sink. Another of these was to see how many days she could continue preparing dinner without repeating the same dessert.
All of this would have been quite remarkable, given that four children was a relatively large family. It was made all the more remarkable by the fact that she did this alone, essentially from the time just after I was born. The fact that one child had severe behavioural problems makes it beyond belief, especially as Asperger’s Syndrome was not a diagnostic possibility at the time, and therefore that behaviour was neither possible to understand nor put in context. Of necessity, it had to be concealed.
