Dear Mummy (I mean Mum) An open letter

Dear Mummy (I mean Mum)

I know – it’s Mum, not mummy. Why did you never want me to call you that? As far back as I can remember it always had to be ‘Mum’, with the capital letter even when I spoke it.

When I started school, the teacher quickly noticed that I seemed to have a hearing problem. She came over to me at the back of the class.

‘What is your mummy’s name?’ must have seemed such a simple question to ask a young child. My delay in a response caused her to try again, much louder this time.

‘What is your Mummy’s name? Mummy has a name, it’s not Mummy is it? She has a name like you and me’.

I had heard her the first time, but I was working out how you are supposed to correct the teacher. But I’m not allowed to call her mummy. She doesn’t like it when I say Mummy. I have to call her Mum.

‘It’s Margaret’ I replied. Of course I knew your name, I just wondered why all the other children had mummy’s and I had a mum. I wanted a mummy too.

I was 4 when I first started school, so that would have made you 28.

Do you remember when I used to get some words mixed up? I can think back to playing in the street or in the garden with my brother and sister, and getting injured as all kids do. I would come into the ‘back room’ where you spent a lot of your time. You liked to read a lot, always had a book open. It felt like I was interrupting you, when you eventually stopped reading and looked at me.

One time I would say ‘Mum, I really hurt my ankle’ as I was holding my wrist gently with my other hand.

‘It’s not your ankle, it’s your wrist’.

Or another time I would enter limping on one foot, saying ‘Mum, I think I broke my wrist’.

‘That’s your ankle not your wrist’.

No attempt to stop the tears, to give me a hug, to put on a pretend plaster or apply some magic cream. Mummy’s make you feel loved, and special, they come into the huge world that revolves around that very little child who feels like they have the only big problem in the universe. That’s what mummy’s do.

But you were a mum. You did what you had to for me in your own chaotic world. So you would carry on reading as your means of escape; and I would leave you to it in the knowledge that you seemed to much prefer that to being with me. To being a mummy.

How old was I, 5? That would have made you 29.

Do you remember the time I coloured in a picture for you? I’m sure I didn’t do many: I knew quite early on in life you were not really impressed by that kind of thing.

I wrote ‘To Mummy’ on the top, and at the bottom ‘Love form Ellen’. More words that I used to get mixed up.

I vividly recall your response to my attempt at interaction. ‘Oh you put Mummy, instead of Mum. And just rub out the O and the R then you can spell ‘from’ properly, you put ‘love form Ellen’!

Well of course you were right, I had called you the wrong thing, and I had included a spelling mistake too. I always got From and Form mixed up. I handed back the picture after I had made the necessary corrections.

The colouring of that picture and it’s message came from my love for you. As a child to her mummy. I handed it back to you feeling stupid for being vulnerable and being rejected.

I was how old, 6? That would have made you 30.

During the next 15 years of my life, you were never a mummy. Many times barely a mum. It was difficult coming from a broken home that to everyone on the outside looked as if it was whole. And it was broken Mum wasn’t it? It’s just that the inhabitants from that broken home still lived there. Together. But only in as much as they shared the same surname.

You had a husband who never worked, so you took on his role as Father figure, the Breadwinner, and dropped the role of mum in the process. Get up, get dressed, get out of the house and off to work. No contact with me except to shout me up out of bed for school. I was late every day. You were never there long enough to see if I actually got up. No breakfast, or freshly ironed uniform, no coat in the winter. And when you got home? Dinner, TV and as early to bed as was reasonable to read a book.

Keeping me at a distance all those years was easier for you I think. If you had been a mummy you could not have done that.

I do understand why you chose to work when financially it had very little benefit. More escapism, from a difficult marriage. That I do understand. I repeated the same behaviour myself, it was a distraction. But it seems you were escaping more than just a marriage. Motherhood too? The maternal instincts of being a mummy? Even a Mum?

In 5 days time Mum, I will be 45. The age you were when the marriage to your husband of 25 years, my father, ended. That makes you 69 soon.

During my adulthood, we have had very little to do with each other. Well why would we I suppose, when we had minimal contact with each other as I was growing up?

When my own marriage ended, you said the lack of contact was because you were never made welcome by my ex. True, he didn’t like my family. Or his own. But would that really have stopped a mummy seeing her child?

And when 18 months ago, I nervously told you I had met someone else and started dating, that he was  a black man of a different faith, that I had serious doubts about the religious beliefs I had conformed to, you did exactly what what you have always done when I displease you; You stare at me in disbelief that I dare defy you. You demand that I conform, and you try to change my views. You want to correct me. Rub out the letters and do it properly. Take back the words I got mixed up with.

That you have cut off the remaining fine threads of relationship we still had has shocked even me. And for what Mum? A religion, a disappointment in my life choices, the colour of a person’s skin?

Children are immensely loyal to their parents, even when treated badly by those whose very job it is to love them unconditionally.

Your treatment of me throughout my lifetime to date proves that you have never been, and are still not, a mummy to me.

But you will always be my Mum. And I will continue to love you. Unconditionally.

---