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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460855" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>0427 We'd never have guessed..</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460855" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There’s so much <br>we never know, <br>would never have guessed, <br>never asked, <br>and now regret that<br>we never asked, <br>about what it was like for ‘them’<br>before we were born…</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460855" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I can’t remember exactly<br>how old I was – eight? - when I knew<br>that Mum couldn’t possibly<br>have been my mother.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460855" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">She was so innocent, so simple, yet<br>so quietly organised, <br>so sensible, so unlike me<br>- who was unlike Dad anyway, didn’t he remind me -<br>that she could never<br>have had.. sex? .. with Dad..</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460855" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It must have been my ‘naughty’ aunt, who had me, <br>‘father unknown’ but conveniently<br>adopted by my ‘parents’ -<br>the one who had an eye for the boys<br>and boy did the boys have eyes for her, <br>who asked every evening if she could<br>go out and play with them, while<br>Dorothy did her homework, <br>learned double-entry book-keeping by post, <br>did part-time secretarial work, <br>became the first female bank-clerk in the town, and still<br>made the cakes and scones to sell<br>in the terrace front-window shop<br>before she went to morning school or work, <br>while Grandad wheezed in the armchair, sick from the cotton mill..</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460855" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It was only when my mother, in her sixties, took me<br>on her annual holiday once to see my<br>aunt (?) Mary, and the two played one-up<br>all the time, that I realised the truth of this<br>familiar family play of life: </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460855" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Two daughters, fighting for their father’s love, <br>picking each their role: the one, <br>doing all the right things to win his love; <br>the other, forever testing his love<br>with naughtiness; (she never married, just<br>played the Magdalene) : <br>he died, and yet<br>they carried on their fight; Grandma was<br>some bystander, I guess. And of course, <br>Grandad loved his ‘scamp’ so much – <br>she, the same twinkle in his eye<br>that he had when he courted Grandma..<br>Who won, in the end? Neither? Both? </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460855" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">After I saw that, it didn’t seem to matter so much<br>which of them was really my mother. It would<br>have been fair if they could, somehow, <br>have shared me; and maybe, I them.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Michael+Shepherd">Michael Shepherd</a></strong></div>