Sunday 22nd February 2020

Many times, I have wanted to resume this blog.

Several times a number of you have, very tactfully and gently (without pressure) asked me to.

Thank you.

I have wanted to tell you of encouragements.

Set-backs.

Our holiday in Scotland in October. When Bee rode a horse again. Wow. And loved it.

Bee being home for Christmas.

Beebeing here for my birthday.

Bee asking me to remove her name (if possible) from this blog… because every time she makes a new friend in a pub, and says her name is Bee, they find a blog all about how ill she has been.

(Memo to self: work out how to do this.)

Bee saying she will meet us in the theatre on St Valentine’s Day, to see Jennifer Saunders playing Madame Marcate in Blithe Spirit, booked out for months… and then not turning up… and not even sending a text to tell us.

So much disappointment, over two decades.

(She would have loved it.)

Then Bee ringing the next day, so graciously, to apologise. Two decades of that, too.

So why, suddenly, am I motivated to post now?

Because suddenly, as of about ten days ago, I began to understand that the last seven years, at any rate, have not just been a question of Bee being nuts.

Because suddenly, quite recently, Bee has been telling us, me, what she was put through. And I have been realising that most of it has not been nuts at all.

Because now, suddenly, I am hearing quite how badly she was abused. Physically, sexually, emotionally, psychologically.

And suddenly, she doesn’t seem quite so mad after all.

Traumatised, yes; hurting, yes; furious of course.

But mad? Not, necessarily, at all.

And that does something to a mother. Anger doesn’t begin to express it.

(And the photograph? My mother’s grave. My mother’s birthday is January too.

How often, how very, very often, have I wished I had my own mother to talk to. About all of this.

My mother was the most extraordinary, forgiving, loving saint.

And she was capable of anger too.)