Introducing...... my mother!

May 26, 2010
Today is my mother's birthday and it struck me as a good time to introduce her to you all -- and to explore that extraordinary relationship that exists between mothers and daughters everywhere.

My mother, nee Vera Bonvicini, was born in Venice, Italy, in 1923 (she would kill me for letting that out -- but she doesn't do computers!!). I have a feeling she was a bit of a rebel, though she conveniently claims to have forgotten her youth so her past is shrouded in mystery! What I do know is that she met my father during World War II when his British regiment was stationed in Venice, having fought its way up the Italian peninsula. Against her parents' wishes, she booked a train to London and set off on her first overseas adventure, aged 23, to marry a man she hardly knew and whose language she didn't speak. That took some guts.

My two brothers and I grew up bilingual, which was perhaps the greatest gift my mother could give us, but it also set us apart from our peers. When we spent our summers in Italy, we were the 'inglesini', the little English kids. When we got back home to London, the pale English kids wanted to know why our skin had gone brown. But the memory that solidified my difference to my schoolmates was the time I threw up my lunch in the pick-up line, and the entire class crowded round to look at the undigested bow-tie pasta on the floor. "What is it?", they all cried. Even the teacher had no idea.

They say the apple never falls far from the tree, so guess what? I was a pretty rebellious teen, left home for university and never went back. During that period my parents divorced, so there wasn't anywhere to go back to anyway, but those were the days, at least in England, when young people shipped out and made their own lives. I think my mother had a tough time with my uber-independence (sorry, can figure out how to do the umlaut..) and we drifted apart. I lived in Italy for a few years and then moved to the USA and letter-writing was never my forte.

Now that I'm a mother of four fabulous kids who are about the age I was when I left home for good, I wonder how much pain I caused my mother by upping and leaving. I would be devastated if my children disappeared from my life. Just the thought makes my toes curl.

As often happens in mother/daughter scenarios, my mother came back into my life when I had my own children. For some reason, the relationship seemed a lot easier. My mother was thrilled to be involved with her grandbabies and she was there for every birth. In 1993, she decided to be an immigrant again, and she moved to the USA so that she could be closer to us all. She's an interesting character, fiercely independent and still fascinated by the world and what is going on around her. For the last 25 years, she has spent her winters in India, undertaking the long journey for the pleasure of walking barefoot along the beaches of Goa with a bunch of total nutters from Italy who meet there every year. I hope I have her energy when I'm her age!!

I'm quite surprised at how well my mother is dealing with my cancer. She looks at my bald head and smiles. "Sei bella come sempre". I remind her of what I looked like when I was a baby!! Here's a shot of me with my dad, aged 4 months. Fewer wrinkles, but I guess I look pretty much the same?