Mam

My mother and I.

Mam.....a word commonly used in the North East of England for Mother...much like 'Mom' is used in North America. To me my mother will always be Mam.

Today, April 25th marks twelve years since the day she died and I miss her still. She died suffering from stomach cancer, a disease she had survived twice before, breast cancer in 1980, then stomach cancer in 1992, but it came back with a vengence and she lost her battle in 1997.

She was born Irene Kennedy in 1918 in Wallsend, Northumberland, England. She left school at age 14 and began working in a local rope making factory and for the first nine months of her working life she was the only immediate family member working at all! It was the height of the great depression of the 1930's and my Grandfather had been laid off work. He had become a widower just a few months earlier when my Grandmother died at age 40. His eldest daughter, Nancy, just 18months my mother's senior had given up her job as a maid to stay home and care for the family after the death of their mother. So it was that Mam went to work at age 14. She was to stay in that job untill she gave birth to me in 1944 and then she returned to the same job when I was three years old.

By then she was married to my Father, Andrew Smith, who was in the Royal Navy and often away at sea for months at a time. When I was six years old they divorced after nine years of marriage.

Mam's life was not an easy one, but she made the best of what she had. She was a hard worker. For a few years she had two jobs as well as looking after me. Worked full time in the factory and at night did the accounting books for a friend of her's who ran her own hairdressing business. The two friends also began to sell clothing for some local warehouses. My mother would take in some of the goods to work and sell them to workmates. Meanwhile her hairdressing friend also sold from her beauty shop!

All this work did not stop Mam from enjoying herself though! She had many friends and a good family backup support system. At least two or three nights a week we had friends stopping by for tea (or sometimes something a little stronger) and often the children of those friends were also my friends and they would come too. Mam also had a long relationship with the factory manager! His name was George....and I called him Uncle George. He was also divorced. They were very discreet, but everyone knew that they were an 'item'. Saturday nights were the only one night of the week that they would go out together, often with friends and my mother's younger sister, Ellie.

Although we were not well off, and probably very poor if measured by today's standards, it never really felt as if we were poor, probably because we lived in a working class neighbourhood and no one was really that well off! Mam was determinded to give me as much as she could afford including a holiday every Summer and a birthday party every year....something even some of my friends from families with two working parents never had! Mam was very careful with money all her life. She was good with maths and budgeting......oh how I wish I had inherited that gene! Nothing was bought unless it was the best quality she could afford, from clothes to furniture. She baked cakes and pies every Sunday so we never had to have store bought and food was carefully measured. No waste. She didn't believe in credit. Never had a credit card till she was in her 50's and even then hardly used it.

I could go on and on about Mam's life. How she had to endure two years worrying and fretting while her only child was in hospital for two years, and trying to understand why she refused to marry George when he finally proposed, and how she achieved a long held dream of having her own store but then the disapointment of it not succeeding. Her move to Canada eventually and into a job she loved, only to move back to England a few years later. However this would then turn into a book when all I wanted to do was aknowledge this date.......a sad date. She is missed. She was loved. I miss her laugh, her gentle touch, her love of music and dance, her love of debate, interest in all things political, and her enourmous love for me. Even to this day I find myself thinking....what would Mam say, or do, under certain circumstances and I feel her watching over me. Rest in peace my darling Mam.