ellememoir
the deepest
love Stifling, tempestous,
What comes to mind when you think
of your mother? There’s the instant
answer: unconditional love. There’s the
Hallmark-sanctioned apple crumble
and the tending of scraped knees. But
it’s not all as sunlit as that. There’s
something darker.
When I asked my friends, their answers
fell into two groups. One set responded
with accounts of the physical comforts
and sensations they associated with their
mothers: lemon meringue pie, an armful
of jangling bracelets, a low voice like an
Ella Fitzgerald number, roast dinners,
YSL Rive Gauche perfume. A child’s-
eye view. The second talked in more
abstract terms: of disappointment, fear,
embarrassment, loss. A lot of people
comforting, complex.
of all Your relationship with
your mother can take
many forms, sometimes
all at once. Emma
expressed guilt. Some just laughed, said
Beddington recalls the
they couldn’t reduce it to a few words. bond with her mother –
But no matter how it is defined, your
mother – present, absent – leaves the and, after her death, the
biggest footprint on your life. She inhabits
you, she defines you. influence it still has
I tried to answer the question for myself.
It was mainly that first lot of sensory
triggers that came to mind – the smell of
Chanel 19, a spotted silk scarf, the softness
of her cheeks with the dusty violet scent of
Guerlain Météorites when I kissed her,
the opening chords of Joni Mitchell’s ➤
elle 183

Mitchell’s Carey. Perching on the end of
her bed on Saturday mornings, or sitting
on her knee when I was 15, miserable
about something and taller then she was,
dwarfing her, all legs and elbows, a big
sulky Cure fan, still needing that animal
comfort. Can you remember what it feels
like to really hug your mother? I can. I can
feel it in my bones, feel the softness of her.
She’s been dead for eight years now and
she still seems like the safest place in the
world to me.
It is the big love, a mother’s love.
I remember my mother saying once how
she understood that instinct some animals
have, under threat, to eat their young; that
confused impulse to put them back in
the safest place they know. It seemed
outlandish, gross to me then. Now, with
two small boys of my own, I can entirely
see what she meant. The need to protect
your children from pain and unhappiness
surprises you with its ferocity – the burn
of anger when someone hurts them, the
speed at which you find yourself running
to pick them up when they take a fall.
Learning the limitations of what you
can do for your children is one of the
hardest lessons of motherhood. Letting
go, allowing them to stumble and fall and
learn to pick themselves up. Mothers
aren’t good at this, as a rule; they find it
desperately hard to see their children hurt,
or fail. That’s why they slip you the
rent money, do your laundry and let you
move into the spare room when you’re
heartbroken, even if you’ve far outgrown
that kind of treatment.
It means that your mother won’t give up
on you; she can’t. I had an eating
disorder in my early twenties. I had
been ill and depressed; stopping eating
was a way of reasserting some control
over my life. As I got thinner and sicker,
I was ashamed, guilty and terribly
secretive. My mother, for all the pain
and worry I know it caused her, was
endlessly patient. She didn’t shake me
by the shoulders and shout. She listened,
encouraged me to go for massages and
manicures to feel better about my body,
and when I finally conceded I did need
ellememoir
help, found a great therapist and
supported me through my treatment.
Years later, after my first child was born,
when I was desolate and panicky, she
came to stay for long stretches, called
sometimes five or six times on a bad day,
sat patiently on the other end of the phone
as I cried in despair. She reassured me,
again and again, that I could do it,
that I was, and
would be, a good
mother. She also
reminded me to
‘I can feel it in my bones, feel the
enjoy my new baby,
his absurd animal
softness of her. She still seems like the
snufflings, his silky
head, his tightly
safest place in the world to me’
clenched fist around
my little finger. She made me realise my
own capabilities. I wish she could have
seen me with my second child, born four
months after she died, how completely
and easily I enjoyed him; how I sang him
Fred Astaire’s Dancing Cheek to Cheek as
I held his peach-fuzz head against mine,
waltzing round the flat as she had told me
she used to do with me.
Your mother knows what makes you
tick; the little or big things that make you
happy. She knows more than anyone else.
Sometimes she knows you better than you
know yourself. My mother once rang on
a Saturday morning. I would have been
about 22, a student.
‘Have you seen the paper today?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Well there’s a blouse on page 42 that
you have to have. I’m sending you
a cheque for £100 today because you
must have it. It’s absolutely you.’
I looked. It was a flowered silk crêpe, far
bolder than my usual style, but exquisite.
A hundred pounds was a vast amount for
me, but I didn’t argue. I remember going,
apprehensively, to the Sloane Street store,
the thick carpets and the polite, but slightly
surprised, assistants, as I showed them my
newspaper cutting. I tried it on, and
bought it, her utter certainty ringing in my
head. It wasn’t my birthday; there was no
particular occasion. She had simply seen
something her daughter – her awkward,
elle 185
prickly daughter – would love and wanted
her to have it. Nearly 15 years later, I still
love, and wear, that blouse, wash it
carefully by hand. I want it to last.
My father, from a poor family in rural
Gloucestershire, went off to the London
School of Economics in the late 1960s
without a backward glance, relieved to
escape. The next spring, he received
a large cardboard box from his own
mother. When he opened it, peeling back
several careful layers of dampened cotton
wool, he found she had filled the box
with bluebells from the forest near their
house. He still gets misty-eyed when
he retells this story, as he remembers the
scent of home flooding out.
But it is not all nurture and solicitous
care. She also holds you to account.
Criticism and disapproval from your
mother cuts more deeply than from
anyone else. ‘Because it’s true,’ said one
friend. ‘Because she knows you.’ Your
mother knows what you’re capable of, at
your best, and wants everyone to see that
version of you. It’s hard to be selfish or
inconsiderate when your mum’s watching.
When my mother criticised me – and it
was rare – it hurt and, more importantly,
it hit home. I remember her telling me
that I needed to treat my little sister better,
let go of my childish resentment that she
had usurped my place as the only child.
She was right. Of course, some mothers
make a vocation of being disappointed in
their children. The variables are infinite,
but the mixture of guilt and defiance that
is the inheritance of the children of these
mothers is always the same.
Mothers are capable of far worse
than disappointment; such a powerful
relationship can go powerfully wrong.
I know people whose mothers were ➤

alcoholics, schizophrenics, physically or
emotionally abusive. Some quite simply
don’t like their children, are not
prepared for, or refuse to engage with, the
demands of motherhood. The acts of
casual cruelty are the hardest to hear.
It’s desperately sad to listen to a friend
relate how her mother simply chose
not to celebrate her 10th birthday,
while showering gifts on a preferred
younger sibling. Thirty years on, the hurt
and sadness are still fresh for a grown
woman, who, when she talks about it,
is once more a bewildered child. To lose,
or never to have, that certainty, the
absolute comfort of knowing you are
loved makes you perceive the world a little
differently. It would be wrong, though, to
paint it as irrevocably damaging; human
beings are resilient. My friend, D, who
had a difficult childhood with an alcoholic
mother says it makes her hold her
own children tighter, smother them with
kisses, tell them she loves them over
and over again. She says she’s slower
to judge people, more inclined to look
at the causes, the origins of their
behaviour. She says that it made her
more compassionate.
Most of us are luckier. But in
adolescence and adulthood, there can be
something intensely oppressive about your
mother’s concern for you. She puts the
‘To lose that certainty, the absolute
comfort of knowing you are loved makes
you perceive the world differently’
brakes on your longed-for freedom, stops
you getting your tongue pierced, or going
to that party. She wants to know when
you’ll be home, where you’re going, who
you’re with. As a teenager, you’re
impatient to shake it off, to get as far away
as you can and not to call. Then, as an
adult, you sometimes long to be free of the
weight of knowing that she’s worrying,
hurt, disappointed by your actions or
more often, omissions. You didn’t call
ellememoir
when you said you would? You’re
not coming home for Christmas?
Suddenly, you’re a shifty 14-year-old
again, blustering excuses.
But when it’s gone, what then? There’s
an element of freedom at times. You can
get away with things she wouldn’t have let
you get away with. When, two years after
my mother died, I crept back down
the dark path of my eating disorder,
one of the things I felt was relief that she
was no longer around. Relieved that
I could escape her unflinching gaze.
It was transgressive, exciting not to
look after myself when there was no
human safety net to stop me. I could do
what I liked: walk home alone at 3am,
smoke, drink until I fell over. I don’t know,
can’t even guess at what she would have
thought about me recently leaving my
partner of 15 years. Would she have
thought I had given up too easily? Possibly,
but I can let myself skirt around those
home truths now. More often, though,
I felt, and still feel, lost, untethered. The
thought that I can do anything I want
without her scrutiny is less liberating
than it is lonely. For years I would pick up
the phone when I was sad or hurt or
sick, and then realise that there was
no one to call, no one who could fill that
very particular hole.
‘Button up your overcoat when the
wind is free, oh,
take good care of
yourself, you belong
to me,’ my mother
used to sing to me.
Not only when
I was four, but
when I was 24. If
she were alive, she’d
still be singing it now. No one will ever care
quite as much about whether you take
your vitamins, whether you get enough
sleep, whether you’re getting too thin.
You’ll take your mother for granted
because she lets you, because you know
she’ll always forgive you. But if you’re
lucky enough to have a good one – and
many of us do – count every single one of
your lucky stars. She’s your history, your
future, she’s got your back. n
elle 186
The White
Ribbon Alliance
for Safe
Motherhood:
Update
This issue marks two years of ELLE’s
support of the White Ribbon Alliance for
Safe Motherhood. A woman dies of
pregnancy-related complications every
minute of every day, claiming over half
a million lives a year. The WRA campaigns
to make childbirth safe for mothers
everywhere. Brigid McConville, the
WRA’s UK director explains: ‘Thanks to the
work of our members, including influential
patrons such as ELLE, Sarah Brown and
Naomi Campbell, the issue of preventing
women dying in childbirth is higher on
the political agenda than ever. The UN
recently pledged a further £25billion to
be directed towards the cause. This
marks a change in thinking and we’ve
achieved it by making noise at every
level. Our coalition of individuals and
organisations, now spanning almost 150
countries, have been fundraising,
marching, hosting events, even climbing
to the top of Mont Blanc in aid of the
cause. And it’s working. Recent statistics
show that the number of women dying
in childbirth has fallen by 34 per cent.
‘But there is still more to be done. The
international target set by the UN in 2000
was to reduce maternal deaths by three
quarters by 2015, and we are still a long
additional words lucy pavia
way from this. So join ELLE and get
involved. On 8 March 2011, the WRA
will celebrate International Women’s
Day and our supporters from around the
world will host parties and events
to continue the campaign.’
For information and to pledge your
support, visit whiteribbonalliance.org