My mother, my self

mother and daughter

-- sometimes it is one

that chafes, more

often it is one that nurtures into adulthood

and beyond. In a moving extract from a book

due out next month, Sophie Parkin relives

dark days with mum Mollie, while Anvar Khan

hears three testaments of tenderness

MY MOTHER always recounts the tale that the day I was born and she

first looked into my face, her second daughter and last child, I seemed

to have an aged wisdom beyond hers, had lived on this earth many times

before, and that I was much, much older than she was. Perhaps this first

impression explains many things about the way our relationship

developed.

She handed over the responsibility of the home to me and my sister

when I was six, my sister barely nine. Perhaps she saw we were capable

and ready for it. Whatever the reason, we were there more than she was,

and we knew what we wanted to eat, which was just as well because she

was either never present or was on a simple diet of slimming pills.

It was the 1960s and she says bringing us up in this manner was the

way of the times, but I knew my classmates had different relationships

with their parents, and their mothers were neither working nor divorced.

Mum was working on Nova magazine as fashion editor and lived the

extraordinary elite life of the successful in-crowd that came to

epitomise London's Swinging Sixties.

She was regaining her youth after she divorced my father when I was

three. We had au pair girls who lived in, some nice, some nasty, who

looked after us. My mother seemed always to be working, unavailably busy

during the week, so we had our front door keys on red ribbons around our

necks and came and went just as we pleased from our house just off the

Kings Road. That street of fashionable hippy decadence was our

playground.

My mother was always there before putting us to bed, as she bathed and

made herself up to go out, and at weekends. She never worried about

household chores; she paid others to do those and I can't remember her

ever nagging us about them. When she was there, when she was with us, it

seemed that her role of ''Mother'' was more as the provider of fun.

Friends always loved coming over to our house because '''You can do

whatever you like'''. There were no strictures or rules.

We were her true friends, confidantes. The men in her life were always

there on the perimeters, sneaking out of back doors so we wouldn't see

them (that didn't fool us -- they were passing and fleeting. She might

have given them her time and bed space, but the love was with us, her

children, and it was made clear to me that they never really stood a

chance).

AS A child, when you have had a sense of happiness, no matter how

often or how rarely it appears, even if there have been other nasty bits

-- from warring parents, drunken irrational behaviour, to school

pressures -- you imagine it will always be like this. The clouds are

fleeting in front of a constant sun.

One day my mother fell in love with my stepfather and I suppose her

priorities changed. It happens. I was now to be her ally with her for

him, against him, to cushion him, mother him, respect and revere him.

With that unquestioning mother-love I tried to befriend and love him, to

do as he asked and not to answer back. That was what she wanted, and

what he expected.

The whole thing perplexed and confused me. Although I was quite happy

to get along with whoever was put before me, the problem was with my

understanding of the word love. Love is . . . what?

My mother loved me and never hit me.

My father loved me and never hit me.

Yet my mother loved, she said, and was utterly devoted to, this man

who regularly punched her teeth out, blacked her eyes, and threw her

about. She didn't complain, always had him back.

I felt that turning the other cheek had gone too far, many times. I

hated him hitting her. It wrenched my insides out in a flood of fury

listening late at night to the screams, the abuse, later the crying

submissions. I couldn't respect him. Though I understand now that she

often taunted him to do it, he wasn't man enough to restrain himself,

and I hated him for that.

I hated pretending the next morning that nothing had happened, that it

had all been a silly misunderstanding to be forgotten about quickly. The

honesty of previous years seemed to dissipate while the drinking

escalated.

By the time I hit teenagehood the inevitable revolt had entered my

orbit. I became over-critical of my mother and her ideas on love,

cynical of her lifestyle and relationships, sarcastic in conversation

and probably impossible, with my cyclamen-pink hair and punk rant, to

live with.

Yet I still went to her for consolation, advice, wisdom, and

permission about boyfriends, contraception, and whether to have my nose

pierced.

MY MOTHER was my friend, my eldest sister, my guardian and ally, but

drink often turned her aggressive, resentful, and competitive, down to

fighting to finish the last bottle. Still, it was a shock around my

eighteenth birthday to be shown the door and given a train ticket to

London as though I were a fully fledged adult, wholly responsible for

myself, when they moved to America. I no longer had a family home. I was

18 after all.

I envied the mothers that other students complained of when they went

home to their old rooms with their empty bellies and dirty washing, to

be mended, cleaned, and fussed over before the start of a new term.

I imagined these women as H E Bates caricature mothers, warm-breasted,

sweet-breathed, cooing, concerned, hugging, soothing machines, a bottle

of TCP in one hand to disinfect your pain and some calamine swiftly

behind to soothe it.No matter that they didn't understand your

boyfriends, music, drug-taking.

MY mother's marriage ended, and she was bad. My granny died and Mum

was devastated. She went through a terrible time, but we were reunited

through it and I stood there for her, a rock of a friend when others

gave up. Her drinking and sexual promiscuity hit new heights or lows,

depending on how you view it.

At last it got to the point where I couldn't bear any longer seeing

this small woman grow to gargantuan heights of awfulness with each fresh

drink, her mind and body unstable and choked with uncontrollable

emotion.

When she said she was intending to marry a man I considered ''a real

alcoholic'' (your mother could never be one, she's just a heavy

drinker), I took the easy way out and escaped on the first job offer

going East, a plane trip at least 12 hours away. I thought that would be

far enough to enable me to leave the misery behind. Unfortunately,

whenever you travel with problems, they have a nasty way of boarding

your plane when you're not looking.

WHEN I finally returned from my travels, I was shocked to see her

diminished state. She seemed to be a mask, just barely standing. I

wanted to look after her, save her, but I knew I wasn't strong enough

and she was the only one who could rescue herself in the end. I let her

go, believing in a happy ending. Somehow she would be all right, I

prayed.

It was time for me to start my own family, have real babies that

needed me, ones that I knew I could help to grow big and strong. I was

four months' pregnant when she rang me to say she was joining an

alcoholics' self-help group.

For two seconds I was shocked. An alcoholic to me was still a person

who woke in the morning to kiss the neck of a whisky bottle. Not my

mother, Mummy, Mum. Staying out for three days and three nights on one

long drinking binge wasn't the same thing, was it? Sometimes she went

for weeks without drinking.

I was prepared to be wrong. I hid my feelings from her. So I said,

brave and strong as the daughter I thought she wanted me to be: ''I

think that's a good idea if you think you have a problem there. They

might be able to help.''

They helped and I thank them from the bottom of my heart for giving my

mother the strength to live a different way. To regain her spiritual and

moral values that had been lost for so long. For giving her a new

understanding of her purpose in life. For letting her be Molly again and

my mother.

Later she told me that the final spur to make her seek help was the

thought that I wouldn't have trusted her to be alone with the baby, her

first grandchild, Paris. She was right, as always; the trust had gone,

she could read my unease.

Four years into her sobriety, I left my partner and, with my two

children, descended upon her. She provided a home for us all as a loving

mother and granny. She even got a rocking chair, kept toffees in her

pocket, and was always ready to babysit. Our friendship was cemented by

the year in that house which she had chosen for the fairytale garden and

its proximity to the best school for my children. It gave her the chance

to become a mother again and me a child to be looked after when I badly

needed it.

I SEE my mother, sometimes complete as granny, Granny Moll. Loved and

adored by my children whom she listens to and learns from as much as

they do. Both of them consider her ''mad as a parrot. It's all that

camomile tea you drink -- you've got to stop,'' they counsel her with

their child's wisdom.

Or, ''Granny, I'm worried about these new clothes you're wearing, I

don't think you can wear them on TV because you might get the sack.

People want to see you in your bright clothes, not looking like a mug of

Horlicks.''

All cosy in her pale, pure, layered bundles, all the better to

encompass my children upon her lap, in her arms, on her new matching

sofa.

''Now you look like a snowflake upon the snow,' said Paris, my son.

I feel total love, trust, warmth, and joy between us. The serenity she

has now found after the turbulent life she'd led for so long is only

what she deserves. It benefits us all.

''How lucky we are,'' she said to me on Mother's Day, surrounded by

red, purple, and orange tulips, ''that we've both reached this point so

early on in life.''

''Yes, aren't we,' I said, embracing her. 'Happy Mother's Day, Mum.'

JACKIE BIRD, newsreader, 32, on her mum, Linda Macpherson, 55

* MY mother is selfless, I am selfish. My mother's quiet, but she's no

wimp. She shaped me by giving me my own head, and backing me every step

of the way. I don't think I would have been the person I am today if my

mother had been different. I was never ridiculed or blamed for anything

that went wrong, my mother would always take one good thing from the

experience. She is ultimately supportive.

When I was 16, all my friends went to university. My mother would have

given her right arm for me to have gone to Glasgow, instead I decided to

embark on a career in journalism in Dundee which meant moving out.

Although she told me latterly that it broke her heart, never once did

she show it.

On the surface I am outgoing, domineering, bossy and my mother is the

opposite. She has an inner strength which is far stronger than anything

I have. I admire her motherliness because I don't think I could ever be

as patient as her.

People say that as I get older our voices are becoming similar. One of

things she said that holds true is ''never ever go out to do someone a

disservice because it will always come back on you, never be

deliberately unkind'' and I try not to be.

My mother made the home a haven. I think I've probably lost any chance

of having that because it's a hard old life when you're out there,

trying to claw your way up the career ladder. No matter how hard the

knocks I got were, I could always go back to the haven and be rebuilt to

start again. I want that for my kids too but I don't know if it's

possible, I don't know if it will work because I don't know if I'm the

type.

Sally Magnusson, 39, broadcaster on mother Mamie, 65

* WE'VE always had a wonderful relationship, I have nothing negative

to say about my Mum. We've been friends as long as I can remember. I

love her desperately. I had a blissfully, happy childhood. I hope as

I've got older I've been a source of support to her. But I'm still

conscious of being the wee girl.

There were never any crises. I didn't have a teenage rebellion, but I

resented her taking me to every single party and sitting outside to make

sure I got home safely. I'm impetuous, she's much more laid back,

balanced, sane. She's had five children and I'm expecting my fifth now.

If I had a hundredth of the patience she's displayed I'd be grateful for

it. Not that she didn't lose the rag. She just had greater funds of

reasonableness.

I'm much more volatile. I'm like my father, more prone to extremes of

emotion -- highs and lows and Nordic glooms. I do find myself in later

life using the same phrases such as ''Would the Lord give me strength!''

I'd ask her ''Why are you asking the Lord for strength?'' and she'd say

''You'll find out when you're a mum'' and I have.

She believes in family. She was a reporter and gave up her job when

she began to have children to become a full-time mother. I haven't done

that, but feel the same commitment to family life. When I was 16 I lost

a younger brother. It was a desperately unhappy time for her. I was

conscious then of giving her as much support as I could.

Priti Trivedi,32, secretary of Dundee United FC,on mother Laxmiben,67

I still live with my mum.We are quite close, but we are mother and

daughter rather than buddies.She doesn't get too many details about

boyfriends.Mum get to know as much as she is allowed,it's my sisters

I am close to.

I have five sisters and five brothers and I'm the second youngest.

We arrived in Britain from Uganda in 1972 when Idi Amin took over. I

got the option to have a career,mum didn't. When she came here she

worked and was not just a housewife.You try to better what your mum

has done if not match it. She's kept the family intact,I couldn't do

what she has done.

Mum's more diplomatic. I'm the wilder one.She's well-organised.

She works within the restriction of a budget whereas I've got a free

hand. We are in constant opposition about my spending.I go over

the top with clothes and jewellery.She brings me down to earth ,she

reminds me of who I am.I work and work and fall into my own wee world

but she

lectures me on keeping my life balanced and having something to look

forward to.It's me who has to repay her. Extracted from

Mothers By Daughters, edited by Joanna Goldsworthy, published in

paperback by Virago Press, #8.99, on March 2. [CPYR] Sophie Parkin 1995.