Mum

Mum darning socks in the winter sunshine in 1959. Backyuard of our home in Coolgardie

Mum outside the Tonkin Flats in Norseman in 1949 and wearing my crepe paper daffodil skirt around her head. She made it for me to attend a school concert the night before

Mum as a 13 year old in Perth in 1933

A cheesecake photo of Mum at Scarborough in 1937
This little poem of my Mum was published in the May 2011 Bullytin. Mum was a very difficult woman to write about and one can only write of the way one's childhood and teenage years resulted in the development of the woman, and that goes for myself also.

MUM
What can I say about my Mum?
Can I write the way she come
Across to me? Or should I say
Things that really don't hold sway?

You see, life was pretty tough for Mum,
She really hadn't had the life some
Others took for granted; life like,
Education, guidance, support since a tyke.

The prettiest lass that you ever saw
Brought the beaus to her beach-front door.
But it took a stranger, a traveling man,
To take her cartwheeling from the Scarborough sand.

Dad was smitten, his past life was sunk,
Mum thought he was a bit of a hunk.
Both their lives changed in an instant,
Though their lives through education was distant.

The marriage was short and a war was on.
Dad had roving eyes and liked bon ton,
Mum packed me up and with me went home.
No longer to the east would she roam.

She met another, her old life was over,
A kiwi man, a travelling drover.
Thus followed a life with eight kids;
Two little strangers and six that were his.

Nowhere really settled, WA their home,
Every few months packed up to roam.
Weekends and Fridays for Mum, boozey do’s,
But the new Dad taught me many good truths.

Memories of Mum are sadly, somewhat hazy,
I am inclined to think at times she was lazy.
She just wanted to be the good time girl,
And live a life that was all a-whirl

Mother and daughter, we drifted apart,
Our thinking different right from the start,
Bringing along heartache and many tears,
But we finally drew closer in her last years.
Bye Mum…