In Honor of the Mother Line

My mother is in the middle with her mother and two sisters

April 17, today is the annivesary of my mothers death , Doreen Marais, and I dedicate this blog to her and honor the mother line of my family and all mothers everywhere. What I know and love to remember about my mother was her strength and her peace making. A school teacher for some of her time on this earth, I know she loved to guide the kids in creative projects. As a young woman she was a strong runner something I inherited from her for a time. One story she told was when she jumped her first hurdle, she was running from a cobra who was chasing her! She kept our family together when it must have been a struggle to settle in a brand new alien land (London) from South Africa. She had an adventurous spirit and a wonder lust for travel. Every year she saved enough money from my father's low salary as a teacher, to travel all over Europe. She loved having family around her at all times infact she lived for those moments when we were all together.

I loved Easter as a little girl! My mother would curl my hair in ringlets with her finger, and dress me in a party dress, white socks and shoes and take me to Battersea funfair. She told me to never go to bed with a partner on an argument and if she were gay she would like to be with Ingrid Bergman! At Christmas when all our relatives gathered and at times there were as many as 25 she would insist that no matter where we were we had to come home in time for midnight on Christmas Eve and it was ok to bring all our friends with us. My mother carried the spirit of Ubuntu and the South African hospitality that she knew, it was extended to ALL who came across her path. She was a rock, a solid being. Her door was always open to any family member or stranger that happened to knock on the blue door with the black knocker. She was raised by the hand on occasion and in our family she tended to be the one to give out the punishment. If she hit us she would go and cry in her bedroom as it hurt her to do that.

She died of lung cancer 10 years ago today. I believe the deep grief she carried was for the loss of her life partner, lover and friend my father who died in his early fifties and the fact that as the years went on we all went our ways and the family nucleus that she loved so, became disconnected. My mother though was a pretty progressive woman, with a sardonic but sharp sense of humor and she loved to lose her self in the cinema, often leaving us all to sneak into a movie by herself. It was her way of finding some peace and solace, far from the "maddening crowd" which I know we could all be at times.

I don't remember her controlling us, her own love of adventure only served as a mirror for us to draw from and I certainly inherit that from her. Nieces and nephews often went to her to seek her counsel arond love, relationships and their own mothers. She counseled with love and compassion often teaching about the importance of forgiveness and tolerance her wisdom born out of many years of a curious match with my father, an introverted man of integrity and substance.

After she passed she left me a little money and I was able to return to the USA which I had visited the year before for the first time. It allowed me a years sabbatical and I returned to live, this has changed the course of my life, my soul work time and time again and for that I am deeply grateful. I stayed with a friend in Laguna Beach in a house overlooking the Ocean. One hot summers day I dozed off on the deck and was dreaming of her, she came to tell me she was alright. I awoke with a start to find a huge bird sitting quietly watching me, I believe it was her messenger.

Her mother, grandma Elizabeth was quite something else. A white skinned colored woman that sometimes laid the sharp end of the heel of her high heeled shoes on our unsuspecting buttocks. Her expression of rage was I believe due to the indiginty she suffered of having to leave her homeland because she refused to be treated inhumanely. She was always dressed immaculately and sometimes sat at the dinner table wearing a hat. Her head was cocked high with dignity. (see picture on right) She often used to tell me to hold my head up high. Aparantly I heard from a friend in South Africa who knew her, that, that generation were devoted to Queen Elizabeth, they wanted to copy her! Royalists and Queen groupies who dressed like her! I carry a second name of Elizabeth. These women were powerful in their way. I am honored that they now stand behind me in line as ancestors. I feel their strength, I carry their strength as do all my beautiful neices, their grandaughters, great grandaughters. They say when the mother dies your soul work begins -and so it was. I love and miss you.