Mother in her day

Yes, on what is popularly known as Mother's (or Mothers') Day, my own mother, in her day. Her graduation photo, in fact, in which she may even still have been only 19, for she went to Glasgow University at 16 after only a couple of weeks of Sixth year at school. She was bored with school. She looks the kind of young woman who would act on such boredom, I think. 

She was a woman of formidable intelligence and learning. Even in her old age she could reel off the bits of Browning's poetry that she especially loved, and I was never stuck for spelling or the finer points of English grammar when she was at the other end of a phone. (We're pre-Google here, though as I said when I spoke at her funeral, my mother lived long enough to know what Google was.) She played the piano beautifully (those long graceful fingers, even when she was ninety) and she sang alto, just as I do.

She was also wise. And now that I am a grandmother I recall that wisdom, and ask myself in delicate situations "What would Mother do?" So if you're around right now, Mum, here's to you. I'm still trying.