I'd say my mother made more of a difference to me than anyone else did. I know that's a conventional and perhaps mundane answer, but my family was blown apart at the start of World War II.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Seeing my mother become very strong and very independent had a huge impact on me.
My mom had a job, and she also took care of us, and she also took care of Dad - I always saw her pulling triple duty, doing more than I ever felt like she needed to. I made a promise to myself that it would be more of a team effort in my family someday. And because of that, I became more independent.
My own mother, my sister and nearly all the women in my family had full-time jobs as mothers. They were wonderful at it. They drove their children back and forth to soccer, skating lessons, piano lessons, private schools, but I sensed, even in my own mother, a kind of distant dissatisfaction.
My parents had three kids right after the Second World War, and we were all sort of sickly. Then I had a fourth sibling, with very serious asthma. The medical bills... So my parents always struggled.
I either had to concentrate on fighting, or I had to help my family. I chose my family. I love my mom; I love my family.
I barely saw my mother, and the mom I saw was often angry and unhappy. The mother I grew up with is not the mother I know now. It's not the mother she became after my father died, and that's been the greatest prize of my life.
My position in the family turned out to be a lucky one; I bore neither the brunt of my mother's newness to parenthood nor the force of her middle-aged traumas, as my younger sister, Ruth, did.
My mother was a product of World War II. My grandfather was on leave in Edinburgh when he met my grandmother.
War tore my family apart.
My mother was a wonderful, wonderful woman with a lovely voice who hated housework, hated cooking even more and loved her children. She was always arranging church activities such as a bazaar.
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