averilburystedmunds: Birthday Blog: Fabulous Sisters

A typical Quentin Blake, sent to me
by Heather in 2019

In counting my blessings [see recent blog] I naturally think of the past too and the reason for the immodest title of this blog is that my 89^th birthday approacheth. This will be the second birthday which I have had to celebrate solo, as it were. For most of my life, it was Our Birthday as both my sisters conveniently arrived on My Birthday towards the end of July; Esme, two years after me, and Heather, six years later. As The Birthday came into view, our Mother used to borrow a long table [from where I never knew or cared] and our friends, ‘on The Day’, used to sit with us round the table to celebrate with, always, egg sandwiches and some sort of paste sandwiches too, plus individual trifles in squat drinking glasses with layers of cake, fruit, custard and differently-coloured jellies. Astonishing how strong that memory is! The annual event hardly varied though

Birthday photo.
July 1941.
Heather, 1; Esme 5; Averil 7
Mum 39

boys from ‘my gang’ were later added. Each year, the local rag, The Chad, aka The Mansfield Chronicle Advertiser, sent a reporter to check the facts about our ages so that a tiny paragraph recording our coincidental births, would appear. We were quietly proud of that, feeling slightly clever at having stumbled into a once-in-a-million happenstance without any effort at all! Mum assured us that our ‘on-the-same-day’ birthdays made us special! I should mention that this important occasion was Always Marked by having our fine, eternally straight, hair sculpted into rags the night before so that we each had curls for our parties, to wear with our ‘best dresses’, all remembered fondly, even decades later, as Golden Days.

Definitely a birthday photo as curled hair shows.
Probably 1944
We were 10,8,4.

With mature consideration, I marvel that my mother, this down-trodden, impoverished woman whose own life was lived in a state of almost perpetual anxiety, had particularly fine, natural mothering instincts ,which she used, in her quiet, modest way, to considerable effect. She had had the good fortune to grow up in a loving, contented family, best friends with her two brothers, experiencing and learning instinctively the value of familial harmony. I do not recall my father ever having been present at our annual bean-feasts, a real plus for us and our mother, in itself! Life was always carefree and spontaneous in his absence as we relaxed happily with no need for the anxious checking of his reactions or the urgent need to control our behaviour and Not Catch His Eye, so that we didn’t unwittingly overstep some arbitrary parental line and invite disaster! We didn’t realise for many years, how lucky we had been; we lived our lives, unknowing that the unconditional, unwavering, kind and patient love of one parent, is enough. Two, better perhaps; one, more than sufficient.

Mum [right, middle row] with her
nursing colleagues. 1950s. She undoubtably
experienced emotional support from them.

Looking back, which I seem to do rather more of these days, is not to wish to go back to those childhood days; not at all. One secret of successful ageing, is to accept the inevitable losses, the difficulties, the deprivations, acknowledge the present decline with good humour and move on. Optimism is the best quality and you are lucky if that comes naturally. The answer is 'Carpe diem', to ‘seize the day’ and savour the people and activities you still have left, enjoying the fewer ‘Hellos’ and letting go philosophically, of the more frequent ‘Goodbyes’! There was an unstudied joy and exhilaration in these remembered birthday parties with our curled hair and our best dresses, our happy, busy mother and our friends, which exemplified the best of our childhood and are to be cherished. And now, remembering, there is also the poignancy of loss and regret within the reminiscences. Mum died in 1986; Esme in 2017; Heather in 2021. And I remain, slightly dazed to be the last woman standing. But I do remember. I see Summer’s end; watch the Autumn leaves fall and occasionally catch Spring back there while picturing three little girls, good friends, secure in the warmth of their mother's love and enjoying life when they could.