The Why and the Where

Landing

I've been thinking for a while that I need to perk up my Sundays. Here in Tweddley mansions, Sundays generally involve laundry, cleaning up, negotiating feathery politics between the chickens, or periodically persuading my 15-year-old that homework really isn't against the rules of the Geneva Convention.

It wasn't always this way. I used to phone my mother every Sunday. It was one of her ‘suggestions’. And if you ever met my mother, you’d know that when she had a suggestion, you should follow it.

After meeting my mother, Mark named her Don Fergusoni - the family boss who could control everything without even getting up from her chair.

So, from the day I left home at 18 and moved into my first apartment, I’d find time every Sunday to make the call.

Over the years, I've called her from Hong Kong, from Australia, and most of Europe and obviously here in America, navigating a plethora of bloody timezones along the way. As a result, I can translate 2pm in Cumbernauld, Scotland to virtually any other time zone on the planet.

A mother to four children and a schoolteacher, she could have been an interrogator because there was nothing she could not find out. She could smell a lie like a sniffer dog can find cocaine.

But we talked freely. We fought, we argued, we discussed, we laughed, we conspired, we connected. She drove me absolutely fucking crazy, but I still knew I was lucky.

And time passed and we all got older and after a marriage of almost 50 years, my mum was widowed. Her arthritis took firm hold and brought the gateway to other illnesses.

By then I lived 500 miles away, and phoning her on a Sunday became less about stopping her worrying and more about stopping my own.

I was offered a job in LA in 2008 and my mother was determined I should take it. By then she was in hospice care and I didn't want to be 5000 miles away.

“You have one life. Have it.”

So, in October 2008, Mark and I arrived in the country with 8 suitcases and two children under the age of 6.

My mother thought it was thrilling - so exciting in fact, she enjoyed a call once a day on my way to work. And also on a Sunday.

On the 1st of December 2008, less than two months after I arrived in the San Fernando Valley, my mother died.

I was bereft, but life was busy. And I was two other people’s mother. So, I put my head down and set to work.

And so many Sundays passed.

Sometimes I don’t think about it. Other Sundays I find myself pottering about like I've forgotten something. I miss her, obviously, and always always will. But I miss what she showed me - that taking time to reflect on how you see simple things is how to really connect to life.

So I figured that maybe, amongst doing the laundry, navigating dogs, chickens, and teenagers, I could write these “Notes from The Valley” and send them out on a Sunday.

They’re not addressed to my mother, because that frankly would be creepy. Besides, I figure if I just make them truthful, Don Fergusoni would find a way to see them.

{My audio readings will normally require a paid subscription, but this first one will stay free}