https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
Mothering Sunday is held on the fourth Sunday of Lent; it is exactly three weeks before Easter Sunday and usually falls in the second half of March or early April.
Yes, it is Mother’s Day here in the UK and I am perhaps being self-indulgent by posting a poem that I dedicated to my late mother in the final volume of my Love And Human Remains quartet.
Outwardly, my mother was a very ordinary person. Yet, she was a remarkable woman. She gave freely of herself and received precious little in return. Much loved by friends and family, no one ever quite understood how she longed to be reassured that she was loved, invariably failing to take such reassurance from the selfish, self-centred way in which those same friends and family often treated her. A naturally loving person, her warmth and understanding extended to everyone she met. She could talk to anyone and everyone enjoyed talking to her - not least about his or her own lives and problems. No one has shown me the power of communication more effectively than my mother. She listened. Moreover, she could enter into any point of view, even those with which she disagreed. My mother’s gifts were universal, although, universally, rarely reciprocated.
When I told my mother I am gay, she was very reassuring even though she advised me at the time not to tell my father or brother. She was right, of course; it would have killed off her fantasy that we were a close family unit once and for all. If she had lived, things might have turned out differently in the end, but I doubt it. Although gay relationships have been decriminalised here since 1967, attitudes took many more years to change for the better; in some parts of the country (as in the world at large) homophobia remains very much alive and kicking.
Readers, I am proud to introduce my mother...
ALICE MAUD TABER
(1916-1976)
Always there for me, believing in me
more than I believed in myself, knowing me
better than I knew myself,
loving me more than I loved myself
although I could never give you
what you wanted, be what you wanted,
live or love how you wanted,
subscribe to your fantasy of family unity;
we did our best by each other, assisting
one another through life’s maze of emotional
twists, turns, and dead-ends; me, unable
to grasp for years how conflicting loyalties
were tearing you apart...
Yours, a divided heart never truly made whole;
we whose demands you loved to meet
always failing it. Yet, even now, years on
since a tumour took its toll, you are (still)
one to whom this poet turns, always striving
for some peace of mind, heart, and soul
(imagination’s impossible goal) - learning
to read between lines to which you gave
life and meaning. Only, then I wasn’t listening.
(Youth thinks it knows everything.)
Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2011
[Note: This poem has been slightly revised from the original version that appears in 1st eds. of A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005; revised ed. in e-format in preparation.]
Mothering Sunday is held on the fourth Sunday of Lent; it is exactly three weeks before Easter Sunday and usually falls in the second half of March or early April.
Yes, it is Mother’s Day here in the UK and I am perhaps being self-indulgent by posting a poem that I dedicated to my late mother in the final volume of my Love And Human Remains quartet.
Outwardly, my mother was a very ordinary person. Yet, she was a remarkable woman. She gave freely of herself and received precious little in return. Much loved by friends and family, no one ever quite understood how she longed to be reassured that she was loved, invariably failing to take such reassurance from the selfish, self-centred way in which those same friends and family often treated her. A naturally loving person, her warmth and understanding extended to everyone she met. She could talk to anyone and everyone enjoyed talking to her - not least about his or her own lives and problems. No one has shown me the power of communication more effectively than my mother. She listened. Moreover, she could enter into any point of view, even those with which she disagreed. My mother’s gifts were universal, although, universally, rarely reciprocated.
When I told my mother I am gay, she was very reassuring even though she advised me at the time not to tell my father or brother. She was right, of course; it would have killed off her fantasy that we were a close family unit once and for all. If she had lived, things might have turned out differently in the end, but I doubt it. Although gay relationships have been decriminalised here since 1967, attitudes took many more years to change for the better; in some parts of the country (as in the world at large) homophobia remains very much alive and kicking.
Readers, I am proud to introduce my mother...
ALICE MAUD TABER
(1916-1976)
Always there for me, believing in me
more than I believed in myself, knowing me
better than I knew myself,
loving me more than I loved myself
although I could never give you
what you wanted, be what you wanted,
live or love how you wanted,
subscribe to your fantasy of family unity;
we did our best by each other, assisting
one another through life’s maze of emotional
twists, turns, and dead-ends; me, unable
to grasp for years how conflicting loyalties
were tearing you apart...
Yours, a divided heart never truly made whole;
we whose demands you loved to meet
always failing it. Yet, even now, years on
since a tumour took its toll, you are (still)
one to whom this poet turns, always striving
for some peace of mind, heart, and soul
(imagination’s impossible goal) - learning
to read between lines to which you gave
life and meaning. Only, then I wasn’t listening.
(Youth thinks it knows everything.)
Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2011
[Note: This poem has been slightly revised from the original version that appears in 1st eds. of A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005; revised ed. in e-format in preparation.]
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