Lucky me - Reflections

 Today is the anniversary of my mother's death 12 years ago and Saturday is her birthday - I can't believe that were she still alive she'd be 99 on that day!!  I wrote my tribute to her before here so I won't do it again now.

I am currently reading Martin Sixsmith's book The lost child of Philomena Lee and as it is about a mother's love for her child it seems appropriate reading material for today.

I am finding it really hard to believe that what happens to Philomena, a young pregnant teenager who is sent to a convent to be looked after as a "fallen woman" who is kept a virtual prisoner working at the convent and whose child at the age of 3 was whisked away to be "sold" to America for adoption, happened not hundreds of years ago but in the 1950s when I would have been about 8 years old myself.  Reading the book reminds me how lucky I am that my mother wasn't an Irish Catholic or who knows where I might have ended up (although it's true my mother was not a teenager but in her late 20s when she became pregnant).  Life for my mother was hard but at least she knew her baby was safe!!

According to the book it was believed that children born out of wedlock were fated "to become rebels and to suffer from complexes analogous to those of certain invalids....Such offspring are destined for suffering and often for failure".  The mothers were "grave sinners with severe moral problems.... unfit to have custody of their own children". 

Lucky, lucky me then that I was born to a Methodist Englishwoman whose family were supportive and helped her every way they could.  I couldn't have had a better mother and as far as I could tell she was never a grave sinner with moral problems but simply a young woman who loved too well and paid the price.  Nor have I have ever been a rebel nor suffered from complexes or failure or at least no more than anyone else!  It is a sad thought provoking book though and if Judi Dench is in the film I am sure that too will be worth seeing when it is released.

I have noticed today that there seem to be dozens of ladybirds about on the window sills, in the conservatory and everywhere.  I dare say they are looking for somewhere to hibernate but in France ladybirds are thought of as lucky - so as I said LUCKY ME!

Photos taken at Forde Abbey some while ago