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On being a mother

May 16, 2024   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

Sitting in a rocking chair, nursing my baby, and singing Gypsy Rover to her, was a marvel for me. During my pregnancy, the idea of growing a person inside me was incredible and a note to self to think about what being her mother would mean to my child as she grew into her teens and adulthood. I had already given these matters a lot of thought for a number of years before taking action to become pregnant.

Assuming optimistically that love would be the centre of her life, what would be the pillars to offer her as guides? Reading in a writer’s life, I regarded as natural as breathing. The moral standards we mostly embrace of sticking to the law (“If you don’t break the law, you can’t get caught,” my father used to say), basic good manners as one understands them within the culture in which one finds oneself; the knowledge that it is more or less a moral duty to help where we can, leaving room for a philosophical approach to life.

Hmmm – stepping to one side, I decided that music, horses and travel (hence, an acquaintance or better with languages in addition to English) would endow my child with knowledge, compassion, curiosity and, to a reasonable extent, an understanding of her wider world. A lust to learn, both empirically and formally. 

Let me say that my decision to have a child did not include marriage plans. The independence as a single mother of sufficient means to raise the child, living in the UK, suited my appreciation of having been on my own for a number of years. There was some debate between myself and my friend, John Higgs, on the rights of a child to know their father in the face of a floating look at artificial insemination – in short – landed him the job.

As it were. We were friends; we were lovers and it was easy enough to agree not to live together. When he asked me what the child should call him, I suggested, “Daddy.”

By and large, they were happy times. Pregnancy was a terrific adventure and she and I did her delivery really well.

Miss Witt came into our home as my daughter Patricia’s nanny for 18 months or so. She had never been anything else and had raised and nurtured a family of children for their busy parents until they had outgrown her and the family let her go. She taught me, an only child with no family babies for practice, a great deal. About food, about playing, about babies crying and how best to feed them early on.

My horse, Patrick (after whom many people at the barn where he was boarded speculated I had named my daughter) was a fact of my life some years before Patricia’s birth. I waited a whole two weeks before I took her to the stables to meet him. Patrick loved babies and he nestled his face into her blanket, checked her out and fell in love. Once she was more or less old enough, I brought her up onto his saddle with me and he was careful and very caring how we proceeded to the ice cream bar around the corner in the park where we rode. There she hung out with her dad while Patrick and I went for an hour’s tour.

Of course, she was an inspiration and together with colleagues in our publishing business, I imagined and we created Kids’ Own World, a monthly digest for youngsters from about six on up. There are still plenty around. Let me know if you want any…..

My mother’s brother, Uncle Dennis and Aunt Ursel lived in Germany; dear Italian friends lived in Rome, and we travelled to see them and they to us, in our little house in the centre of Chelsea, in London. We flew to Canada once a year to visit family and friends until it happened that I decided to return to Canada.

We brought Patrick and our dog, Zen, with us. John’s home was in London. There are trips back and forth and all those handy telephone conveniences for keeping in touch all the time.

In time, we bought Patricia a lovely Welsh/Arab pony she called Windsor. Such a smart, compassionate beauty that pony was. We rode to picnics with others or through the conservation areas here in Hockley Valley and we thanked our lucky stars for those times, those perfect rides, on board the best of equine pals.

Being Patricia’s mother has been wonderful. Don’t be silly, of course, there were hard times but she co-composed the music for Robert F. Hall’s rock music production of Macbeth, which they took to the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto and to a Thespian Festival in Nebraska, where they won medals and commendations. 

Shallow and Superficial is the name Patricia gave to the high school’s newspaper she produced, in which she invited her fellow students to write, to speak their minds frankly.

She was a teenager and there were tears over boys but no drugs and such drinking as there was stayed home.

All these years later, we find ourselves once again bunked in together with ambitions and travel plans. She has ideas about making a difference where it matters.

It was Mother’s Day last Sunday. Patricia had planned champagne and strawberries dipped in chocolate.

Later in the day, I assure you – that’s exactly what we shared.

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