Mum, a Panda and Puppets

The panda is a symbol of the WWF ( World Wildlife Federation.    

The giant panda is the rarest member of the bear family and among the world’s most threatened animals.

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Location: Southwest China – to the east of the Tibetan plateau

Habitat: Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forests

image WWF

Wild population: Less than 1,600 mature in the wild

Mum and Dad took on a whole new project when they retired in the 70’s. It combined Mums love of education, creativity and children with dads passion for engineering, DIY and travel. They became travelling puppeteers and called themselves the Puppet People. Their mission was to share ideas about saving the planet and conservation with young people all over the world. Over the years they made many friends and travelled to far off places from Russia to Assisi, the school next door to the Highlands of Scotland.

I have to say it sort of drove me mad at the time! Luckily by this point I had left home and was living my own life nevertheless turning up to shows periodically became a strange sort of family torture much like the slide shows of earlier childhood!

In clearing Mums house we have sorted boxes and boxes of puppet related ‘stuff’. Some, including many puppets,has gone to the museum in Glasgow run by one of their closest friends John Blundall ( the maker of Parker from Thunderbirds!) Take a look at this here I have a pile of puppetry books put aside for a friend who is just starting out with his own puppetry / performance career and some the boys have kept as memories.

This week Mum has been up and down, sometimes clear sometimes not. We were chatting about my bracelet that she and Mrs T got me for my birthday. It is a Lovelinks one where you can attach charms and glass beads and I love it. I wanted to get something from Mum as a sort of special Mum reminder. Daft I know. Its not like I really need that but it had sort of got into my head and I loved the idea. So we talked about the different beads and I mentioned one I liked was the panda and baby one. I said it reminded me of the WWf and she got it straight away, “O that’s about who we were” she said. I like another one too with “mum” on one side and “I love you” on the other it goes both ways. Anyway my panda arrived yesterday and is on my bracelet. it will always mean something special that we both knew what it was about.

 

 

Mothers and Daughters

 

Mothers and Daughters –Valse Frontenac
Mothers and daughters
Were daughters and mothers
Not so long ago.
We give and take
And take and give
Along time’s endless row.

Love is passed
And love received
To be passed on again:
A precious heirloom
Twice, twice blessed,
A spiritual cardigan.
I’ll put it on
And treasure it,
The me I have received,
And when the roles
Reverse again,
I’ll have what I most need. So may our love
Go on and on,
A hundred thousand years;
Mothers and daughters,
Daughters and mothers,
Through joys and other tears.

This is all I can say today. There are no regrets. It may be time soon to say Goodbye.

 

How did you get your given name?

Mother and baby

On British TV there is a series running at the moment on a Thursday night called Long Lost Families. It has me glued to the set and following with tears and smiles the stories of children and parents, brothers and sisters who have been separated through adoption.

I was born in a mother and baby home in the late 1950’s. My mother had made the hard decision to have me adopted after I was born and in those days the advice was usually to not see or hold your baby. I was taken to the nursery and looked after by the nurses there. Two days later my grandmother, who I have never met since, came to see my mother and insisted on seeing me and of holding me too. My mother told me that my grandmother held me and gazed into my eyes and said ; “You must call her Julia”, and so I was named.    

In those days mothers kept their babies for 6 weeks before they went for adoption. I don’t know much about that part of the story, I think it is too hard to talk about. But after being in a foster home for 3 months I went to live with the people who were to become my parents, my Mum and Dad. I was very much-loved and wanted and my adoption was a happy one.

When my adoption went through they changed my name and I grew up being called something else. Through the years I wondered about my name, I never felt quite at home with it. And the name ‘Julia” called to me although I never conciously knew that was my birth name. Years later, after having my own children the need to know where I came from led me on the journey to find my birth mother. And part of that was seeing my original birth certificate for the first time. I will never forget the goose bumps that came up and the shiver of recognition at ‘my’ name.

Over the years I have been lucky to have a relationship with my birth mother, and my half-sisters and their families. We recognise each other in a way that only families can. There is something deep, primal and magical in the connection. And I changed my name back to the one I was born with, the one that fits me, the one that says this is who I am.

Feminine form of the Latin Julius, an old Roman family name thought to be derived from Iulus (the first down on the chin, downy-bearded). Because a person just beginning to develop facial hair is young, the definition of this name and its related forms has evolved to “youth.”

This weekend the USA celebrates Mother’s Day. I am very blessed to have two in my life, and to have been given a name that through the years my cells remembered.

Mothers day

This Sunday is Mothers Day in the UK and most of Europe.

Mothering Sunday is a Christian festival celebrated throughout Europe and it falls on the 4th Sunday in Lent. Secularly it became a celebration of motherhood.^[1] It is increasingly being called Mother’s Day, although in countries other than the UK and Ireland that holiday has other origins.^[1] In the UK it is considered synonymous with Mother’s Day as celebrated in other countries. ( Wikipedia)

I have lots of things to say about mothers, mothering, parenting, kids, families. I am a daughter ( twice!), a mum ( 4 times). But for now I just want to say a Happy Mothers Day to all the mums out there. Mothers, Step-Mums,Birth and Adoptive mothers, foster carers, Aunties, Grannies and Nanas, 2 mum families , Mums with Dads and without. Mum friends who keep mums sane, nursery, playgroup and youth club workers, residential care and social workers. We all get bound together by our love for these kids.

Heres a few light-hearted moments to make you smile:

God could not be everywhere
and therefore he made mothers.

Jewish proverb

If you have a mom, there is nowhere you are likely to go where a prayer has not already been.  ~Robert Brault,

Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.  ~Oprah Winfrey

Sweater, n.:  garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.  ~Ambrose Bierce

Making the decision to have a child is momentous.  It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.  ~Elizabeth Stone

Sing out loud in the car even, or especially, if it embarrasses your children.  ~Marilyn Penland

You can’t scare me, I have children – Fridge Magnet in my kitchen

This page is dedicated to two great Mum’s, Mary and Margaret and their grandchildren, my kids,Toby, Jon, Ben and Joe. For Teresa who shares my life, mums, kids and all. For Nick and Marie, Lou and Edd.