All My Mothers

by Joanna Glen

(I think that sounds mean, but take it from me that a fragile mother is a scary thing for a child – it feels like your whole life is made of paper.)

I stayed as close as I could to Bridget’s mother because I was feeling wobbly from the car crash, and she stilled and steadied me, simply by existing, which is what happens with the right sort of mother.

I wanted to say that you don’t grieve in the same way for love you’ve never had, but it still feels like a punch in the stomach. I wanted to say that you don’t get any sympathy cards for the love you’ve never had, however much it hurts.

I’d try to forget that when Peter Pan flew home to his mother, he found the window barred, and instead I remembered Wendy saying that a mother would always leave a window open for her children to fly back through.

She was loving me in the only way she knew. A buying-things and bossing-me-about kind of way. Which is what love can be, I suppose, for lots of people. Keeping people on a string, like a puppeteer. But love is supposed to be a watering hole, where you come and go by choice, and leave refreshed. That’s what I’m aiming for, anyhow.

She’d given so much of herself to find her children’s potential and, along the way, she’d lost her own.

He was meant to be mine, whatever the obstacles, that’s the feeling I had – a feeling that should never be trusted. We can convince ourselves about absolutely anything – this is our intrinsic weakness as human beings.

I trusted God had someone precious lined up for her on the other side of death, the way there’s always a mother waiting on the other side of birth.

But no matter how many days you have, it’s never enough. Life is never enough for us. That’s the great tragedy of being human.’