I’m so surprised that it was February when I last posted. I meant to post more often. I wanted to be on a journey of self discovery with my stuff. Nothing happened. This is because I am a mother first and foremost. I am still an artist but not one who is yet earning some kind of living from it, by the I mean selling my own stuff. Hell, better get on with it I’m nearly 57. I do get paid to be an artist in my job with Pyramid of Arts, Leeds. Check out their web site. You may spot me dancing about, having a great time and getting paid for it. Part of my role as artist with the music group was to provide props and back drops to make our musicals more immersive. I mean, how can you sing about being at the seaside if there’s no donkey or full size cardboard ice cream van?
My husband has an interesting take on what I do….or actually in his mind, don’t do. He told me he’d waited 30 years for me to do something. A comment I found patronising and insulting and I told him so. He obviously hasn’t been listening to my discussions about how liberating it is to paint a role of paper as a cafe and a fish shop, or how making a shadow puppet show has freed up some deep corners of neat and tidiness that needed to be liberated. He just sees that I’m not selling anything I’ve made.
So why is that? Back to the mother thing. Well, the mother thing and all the other roles I fulfil on a daily basis. Carer for my husband, daughter to my mum who will be 84 this year and that may turn into carer. Sister and listener. Many many roles on daily basis. Yet the one that is all consuming is the mother role. Girl went inter railing recently. She’s back now, older and wiser and more grown up. Today, my dad’s birthday, we had a family argument. I was probably a bit stressed due to his passing last year. I lit a candle for him in a church in Berchtesgarden, and couldn’t stop sobbing. I miss him so much. And I felt that the child I have nurtured for 18 and a half years is leaving me. She no longer needs the mothering, the reminder to look for conditioner in a German supermarket, or to tell her to buy that necklace she keeps going back to and fondling. Because I know that she really likes it and wants to own it. Or that it’s OK to buy some advocat and we’ll get some lemonade and drink it, even though it’s Summer. She has an air about her that I feel is saying “look mum I was on my own for 2 whole weeks and I managed. Leave me alone”.
If that’s the case then, why was it me that had to shoo the wasps away from her food? She didn’t even realise she was doing it. It was just a thing that mothers do, saving their child from hungry wasps. One day she’ll hopefully realise the true value of a wasp beating mother.
