It took me a moment to realise the significance of last Sunday, but when it dawned on me that this was the first Mother’s Day we hadn’t been able to celebrate with Mum, I followed the lead of many others on social media and posted a photo. The image I chose was one of Mum at age 17, in 1943 – still in the thick of World War 2 but looking so excited and upbeat.
When I posted it on Facebook, my cousin Anthony commented that my Uncle Michael (my dad’s younger brother) remembered Mum this way, and it brought a smile to his face. That was lovely enough, but then Anthony shared a photo of an ink drawing my uncle did of my dad when he was studying at the other end of the Glick family’s kitchen table, back in 1945. None of us had seen this before.
It spoke to me in a different way than an old photograph. Michael’s sketch captured his brother Bill deep in concentration. Bill clearly didn’t want to be disturbed – and the drawing must have kept Michael quietly occupied for some time.
In a way I felt as if I was eavesdropping on an intimate sibling moment, but it gave me a different perspective on my dad as a studious 19-year-old.
I remembered that this young man, having left school at 15, then went on to study at evening classes (after his day job) until he qualified as a metallurgist – in itself a considerable feat. Seeing him in the drawing, crouched over his papers, curly black hair dripping over his forehead, gave me a glimpse of my dad during a period of his life I know little about.
And then I realised that I think of Mum much more than Dad these days (she died last year, he passed away 20 years ago) – yet here he was, rushing back into my consciousness via a drawing his brother made more than 75 years ago.
I love finding hidden treasures like this. It made me feel grateful all over again for the fact that Dad studied so hard that, after my parents got married in Swansea in 1949, he secured himself a job in London. And if they hadn’t moved to London, I would never have had the opportunity to become a music journalist… and my life would have turned out very differently.
We are, after all, the result of a series of choices our parents made (and their parents before them).
So now that I was thinking more about my dad, something magical happened: I stumbled upon two even older photographs of him that I’d totally forgotten about.
One is a photo of him at the age of about 3 or 4, with my grandmother (Nana) and her mother. He has a cute and luscious fringe, which he grew because of a nasty accident when he was a baby – he crawled into an unguarded fire and badly burned his forehead. In the other photo, he is a little older, at the seaside with his parents (he’s holding a bucket and spade). My grandfather looks stern yet protective – which is how I remember him. The wind is blowing Dad’s hair up and you can almost see the scar on his forehead. It was visible throughout his life.
I’ve no idea how long it took for my dad to recover from this horrible burn, but it must have scarred him psychologically as well as physically. It became a talking point rather than a mere blemish. If anyone pointed it out – and it was hard to miss – he would take the opportunity to tell the story of the scar.
The exciting part about all of this is that new stories about my parents keep emerging even after they have passed away. These stories and images will live on – I’ll make sure of that.
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