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This morning’s outing to Bennington provided little in the way of subjects, the atmosphere being a bland grey haze, but I always have a few previously un-shared images .
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We’d actually started out to Greenwich but just down the road, Grant mentioned a different grocery store that we wanted to check out and we decided there was no time like the present.
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Just as well we weren’t counting on it to fill all our needs or we would have been disappointed but there is a Hannaford’s nearby, so it was fine.
Why should shopping in unfamiliar grocery shops feel so uncomfortable?
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How much difference can there possibly be between different brands of the same item?
Humans are creatures of habit. We find comfort in the familiar and dislike being deprived.
Presumably.
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It’s all very well to explore different places while on holiday, but when we’re home, things should be just so!
Yet it is possible to adapt to all sorts of situations simply by changing our expectations.
What yesterday we took for granted becomes today’s luxury, or rarely, the reverse.
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My mother adored orchids which, even if they had been obtainable, would have been unaffordable in England in the 1950’s. When we lived in Vietnam, she was able to purchase them by the armful.
Mum lived through two world wars. She was in London throughout WW2, coping with nightly bombings and shortages of every kind.
When we went to live in SE Asia, she was once more faced with huge adjustments as so few of the items she needed were readily available.
Yet she took everything in stride with a serene smile.
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At least, that is how it appeared.
There were a couple of times when I saw her slightly ruffled. Once, in Phnom Penh, she got up in the night for a glass of water and we were awakened by her scream as a bat flew into her in the kitchen.
The other time she witnessed a fatal accident in the road beneath our flat. Perhaps it evoked a memory of the war. She had to be revived with a shot of my father’s cognac.
Everything else Mum handled with cool efficiency from plumbing to soft furnishing to cuisine.
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It cannot have been easy for my mother to purchase her shopping in the market with no common language in which to communicate. I always went along and learned the value of a friendly smile and hand signals.
Somehow we always came home with the wherewithal to create a meal, curtains, clothes and so on.
Periodically, she put together a cocktail party or a dinner and she seemed to excel as a hostess.
My father was not enthusiastic about entertaining although he did enjoy a small group of friends. I inherited his inclinations and none of my mother’s considerable talents.
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Mum knocked more than a few gardens into shape.
Very typical of her generation – the ever-present cigarette. She smoked unfiltered Senior Service that came in cans of 50.
This photograph reminded me of the one thing I did inherit from her which was her really bad feet.
She could never find shoes that fit. It was easy enough to have a pair custom made, yet her feet always blistered.
Not that sore feet held her back, either. She once walked for six weeks on a painful ankle before learning that it was in fact broken.
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Nights in Phnom Penh were warm and often dark.
Here, Mum read by candlelight.
Anytime I feel discomfited with life, I remind myself of my mother and what she endured.
Then I take a deep breath and carry on.
Thank you, Carolyn, for the beautiful and moving tribute to your talented mother. I think, perhaps, you are far too modest, thinking that you don’t have her talents, although they might be of a slightly different type. For instance, your garden is beautiful, as indeed is your house. She would be proud of you, there is no doubt about it.
Joanna
Remembering how our parents’ generation coped with things that we would regard as insurmountable today is always good to do. You go out a lot. I tend to only leave Beetley twice a week, but I agree about familiar supermarkets. Julie always wants to check out new shops when they open, but I have been going to the same huge supermarket for the main shop since 2012, and I like the familiarity and routine.
Best wishes, Pete.
I like to shop for our groceries in the same store because I know exactly where everything is on the shelves. Then I spend less time in the store (because shopping is not one of my favourite things to do). Yes, I think our parents’ struggles are a good reminder of what hardship really means.