Monday, March 15, 2010

Mothers

So, on Saturday afternoon I was to be found sitting in a coffee shop, nursing a large black Americano and reading two great short stories by my lovely friend Helen in the latest issue of Woman's Weekly Fiction Special. Then I started to draw a spider diagram of some of my rough ideas for novel two and a few new developments emerged, which was pleasing.

That led me on to thinking about Mother's Day (which was yesterday in the UK) and whether either of our mothers, who both now have some level of dementia, would appreciate the cards we'd sent. Actually they both did...one has already rung twice to thank us and the other also remembered to say thank you after a prompt about what day it was yesterday.

Then I moved on to thinking about mother-daughter relationships and how important they are in creating self-esteem and helping girls learn to function as women. Sadly, in our generation, there isn't a healthy mother-daughter relationship on either side of the family and it's something I'd always hoped to remedy if I had a daughter. But I don't. So that led to lots of 'what ifs' and...well, that's what writers do, isn't it?

4 comments:

Jenny Beattie said...

Ah, the what ifs...

I consider myself lucky indeed to have one child of each gender; I like seeing the differences and challenges each (not just gender of course but personality too) brings me. Of course, sometimes I don't much like the challenges too!

I hope you had a lovely day yesterday. We've adopted the Thai mother's day.

Jenny Beattie said...

Eeek, I meant Of course, sometimes I don't much like the challenges. Full stop. Agggh.

Cathy said...

JJ, I'm quite happy with my two boys ( and expected to have boys as girls are rare in Hubby's family) but it would have been interesting to parent a girl too, just to have the opportunity to do things differently to my mother. There are also 'what ifs' around the gender distribution of autism but that is a whole different story...

When's the Thai mother's day?

Anonymous said...

I don't know any different! I sometimes wonder what a mother-son relationship would be like but Amy is enough!

CJ xx