What if I told you

Inspired by Correct the Record, can we? by Adam Faulkner

She liked her Sauvignon Blanc, well not just that, but any white wine. She found getting older difficult, her family had all grown up and her husband was busy reinventing himself. We had a tumultuous relationship when I was younger and she was getting older - full of love and frustration. We coudn’t figure each other out – she was a highland refugee, ran away at an early age to come to the big city. She looked like Elizabeth Taylor. Men flocked to her, she was a glam queen, the prize on my dad’s arm. I loved her. But as I grew up, wild, individual, rebellious to all that she yielded good and proper, we fought and cried, she called me horrible names. And I fled to London and the world and found my tribe. We still wrote and phoned. But we were on different planets.

Thatcher’s London in the 80’s was where I thrived;, miners’ strikes, Greenham Common, Pride marches- demos on the streets of London and partying in dim night clubs to Annie Lennox and Chaka Khan. Glory days of solidarity and belonging. She was brave, she came to London to see me in my world, tried to scrub off the fungus growing on the walls of my squat. I put her through her paces. And we fought and cried.

And despite all that, she never disowned me, she never turned away from me, she never stopped loving me.

What if I told you that she left me a note after her last visit to London saying, ‘I have prayed that you would change, I now see that I need to pray that I may change’.

That was my mum.

By Angie Fee