My Mother....

My mother is a dear, sweet lady; at lease she is somewhere deep down beneath her spoilt, haughty very British exterior. She'll turn 67 on Easter Sunday, she's stricken with Parkinson's disease which in the past year (since the loss of my sweet step father Graham) has really taken it's toll on her and made her little body so frail and weak. She's hardly recognizable these days as the feisty blond broad she used to be. Her mind however is still very sharp and she's not one to be messed with. I have always turned to her for the answer to anything and everything, she's very, very intelligent and very intuitive at the same time. You can ask her about anything from literature to history to modern politics and she knows all about it. How in the world does a woman who raised four kids retain all that stuff. She knows stuff that I am sure no one in the world other than her knows, outlandish facts that are so off the wall they sound like total B.S. However on the occasions, and there have been many, that I have dared to try and prove her wrong, yep you guessed it she's completely and utterly right!!!!! It's awesome, even my lovely hubby has second guessed her at times and been shocked that once again the crazy mother in law knew what the hell she was talking about. She predicted the demise of Princess Diana, before even her and Charles we married, something about him marrying a commoner and her being from the House of Spencer??? Who knows, but I remember her spouting doom and despair on the day they were married while we were in awe of the fairy tale wedding.
Anyway, my point is that she is, in fact, a very interesting and loving woman, I rely on her a lot for guidance in everything from parenting to style to cooking. Cooking is the big one, you see she had her own catering business and can make a ham sandwich look like a seven course feast. She never did anything by measurements either, a pinch of this and a good bit of that. I would always call her for tips and ask "Mum, the recipe calls for this ingredient, I am half way through and I don't have it, can I use this instead?" and she'd instantly know what to substitute. Always weird things too but they'd work out somehow. These days it's harder to do this because the cruel disease has affected her voice and so it's hard to understand her on the phone a lot of the time. Its very frustrating for me because I can't have an intimate conversation with her when her speech is so limited and I can't understand what she's saying. So BEHOLD THE POWER OF TEXTING!!!! She mastered this a couple of weeks ago and it was like a bright shiny light had lit up my world... yeah... at last communication of a sort with the old bag. It takes her a long time to send a message and they're not perfect but I get the point. I love it!!!! So she merrily texts me stuff about the people who take care of her and I send little things back. Who would have thought that something like a cell phone could bridge such a gap? It's amazing how technology marches on; sometimes I wish it wouldn't and we could all go back to the old days, but when I need to know what to do with my left over thingymajig I can just push a few buttons, wait and wait for her to reply and bingo there's the answer from my Mum. I just hope I can be this wonderful fountain of knowledge to my kids when I grow up. Maybe I'll retain some of it and the girls will be in awe of me one day!!!!