And Now For My Mom's Story

Today is Mothering Sunday in the UK...the equivalent to Mother’s Day, which falls on May 9th this year in most of the rest of the world. I've told you a bit about my dad's early life in my last post, so perhaps today is a fitting time to tell you a bit about my mom.

She was born in a small South African town, just a few days before the outbreak of World War II. My grandfather and most of his six brothers promptly signed up for active service, and while my grandfather never left the shores of South Africa as his welding skills were more valuable to the army on home soil, my mom’s uncles were sent to Egypt, where they claim to have almost single-handedly defeated Rommel’s forces.

Desert warfare

As for most families at that time, the war years were hard on my mom’s parents...they struggled to get by on my grandfather’s army pay, food was scarce and my grandmother was never well and often in hospital, leaving my young mom in the care of a cantankerous hostel owner. A year after the end of the war, my aunt was born....much to the disgust of my mom who longed for a new brother to replace the one she lost to pneumonia in 1941. My grandparents just managed to stop my mom from pushing her unwanted baby sister out of the window of a third floor apartment, otherwise she may have grown up an only child.

When my mom was nine years old, the family emigrated to the then British colony of southern Rhodesia. My grandfather was wary of the National Party that had come to power in South Africa in June 1948, and he believed that the family would have a better life north of the border. And so they packed up their belongings and took the train up to Salisbury (now Harare). I won’t dwell too much on the rest of my mom’s childhood... it was not a particularly happy one. My grandfather battled with alcoholism that made for an insecure home life and that would eventually destroy his health.

Salisbury

Luckily, my mom rose above these challenges and completed her school education aged 16 and entered secretarial college. Six months later she was a highly competent shorthand typist and soon found a job working in the offices of government.....she was working as a secretary there at the time Ian Smith unilaterally declared independence from Britain on 11 November 1965, and it was there in 1962 that she first met my dad, who at that time was working for the Rhodesian Tourist Board. They were engaged within six weeks, married a year later, and lived together moreorless happily ever after... through the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, the hopeful 1980s and the declining 1990s in Zimbabwe, until it became obvious at the start of the new century that they would have to move to safer pastures. The rest, as the saying goes, is history....

'The King' - my mom's first love