Young Writers Society

A pretty young woman smiles at me from the glossy paper. She is carefree with no maternal strings restraining her. Her pose is relaxed, the arm of the future father draped around her shoulders. The thought of me is ten years away.

Her eyes shine with giddy happiness. Her neat brown hair frames her face – a masterpiece.

I feel overwhelmed with curiosity. Who was she? What did she do? My heart sinks. I don’t want to be her daughter. I want to be in the photograph with her. I want to be her friend, to know her secrets. I lust after her memories. I wish they were mine as opposed to imagination.

I feel like this photograph is a time capsule, a portal to a time more magical than the present, when technology was premature and imaginations thrived.

The next photograph portrays a young girl no older than myself, with ruddy cheeks and long hair. She looks so different from my mum, probably because, at the time, she wasn’t. She was nobody’s mother. She had no responsibilities because she was one herself. She’s definitely different, but at the same time, exactly the same. I pick out her features – that freckle on her nose, the mark on her arm, her smile.

I feel the guilt of my own teenage mistakes lift temporarily, as I realize she probably made her own. Our experiences are what shape us, after all. I want to somehow learn from her mistakes, instead of making my own.

The photographs take me on a journey through her life. I feel like a ghost, a mere observer. These are so personal and tied to her, and yet, so simultaneously revealing to me about the woman she was.

That phrase surprises me, ‘the woman’. It is like something exotic that I haven’t tasted before. I say it aloud, rolling it around in my mouth.

To think that anyone considers her to be anything other than my mother is laughable. I put this strange expression away, perhaps for another time.

The photograph of her bottle feeding me as a baby makes me wonder what I am missing out on, if motherhood has really changed her at all. Was the best of her greedily snatched away before my existence, by old school friends, colleagues and boyfriends, or was it born with me?

What I can be sure of is that with me came a kind of loving ownership of my mother, in a similar way to which a husband might feel protective of his wife. The difference is that our bond cannot be broken by divorce or forged apart by interference. What doesn’t break us makes us stronger. I do not believe that it is possible to wrong your mother in quite the same was as you might a partner. A mother’s love is tolerant of mistakes and wrong doings at all ages because she is a kind of teacher.

I feel that my lack of interest in her hobbies, like D.I.Y. and gardening might disappoint her, but I feel that I can make her proud of me using my own skills. I think that we fit together like pieces of a puzzle – she is very hands on and practical whereas I am more pencils, books and paper.

The contrast of the next photograph strikes me. This is not a woman I see before me anymore, nor a fallen woman. This is a woman pushed to the edge, a woman mentally exhausted and emotionally drained. A marriage gone sour.

I begin to move away from the photographs and gravitate towards the images scarring my mind. I try to see myself, a gawky little girl, huddled in the same squashy leather seat my mother was draped over in the picture, terrified of the screams coming from the bedroom.

The path ahead frightens me, so I double back to the happier times - feeding the ducks at the dam with mum, at the woodland park, with mum, baking crispy cakes with mum.

Suddenly, the lack of my father’s presence astounds me. I think his absence tipped the scaled in a way. He missed out on us in favour of more important things.

As I tuck the pile of pictures back into their packet. I take a moment to feel for my father and for everybody who has lost contact with my mum, my friend.