I’d often find her in her new kitchen preparing food, wearing her favourite pinny, vegetables ready to boil for the lodgers, and a cake tin on the counter. So, when I was 16 and she was 60, her identity in a spiral and her situation not helped by a narcissistic personality, she did the only thing she felt she could: she walked away.ĭiane (pictured, age 17) said her mother loved to be the centre of attention and never acknowledged or accepted her wrongdoing And, worse, she felt Dad didn’t appreciate her. She loved to work - it gave her a sense of fulfilment and interaction with other people. The words ‘depressed’ and ‘menopause’ weren’t bandied about the way they are now, so no one understood her mood swings. I remember a lot of ‘God help me’ and ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph’. Railing against the constraints of her second marriage, she frequently lashed out. And she again found that same strength to unapologetically leave her first husband in the 1950s, against the beliefs of her Catholic Church. Her courage had given her the strength to leave Ireland in the 1930s, when she was just 16, to start a new life in England alone. They hastily married and got on with bringing me up.ĭiane said because her mother left her own childhood home when she was 16, to her mind she was a grown woman at that age. This fiercely independent woman didn’t want to be tied down by yet another child, but it was 1959 and there was no other solution. When the doctor told her she was expecting, she assumed it was some mischievous prank cooked up by Lou and the GP, a pal of his.Ī recently divorced Catholic woman, she already had two children from her first marriage, then 18 and 14, while he was the widowed father of a 14-year-old. Mum, whose name was Mary, was 44 and dating my dad, Lou, who was then 60, when she became pregnant. My parents’ marriage had been one of convenience or, rather, inconvenience, when I came along by accident. But then, decades later, when my own daughter turned 16, I found myself standing in my mother’s shoes - and I realised there were worrying parallels. That day, I solemnly vowed never to do to my future children what my mother had done to me. Wasn’t a mother supposed to take her child if she left?ĭiane (pictured) said her mother had been a fiercely independent woman who didn't want to be tied down by yet another child, when her parents hastily married and got on with bringing her up I’m leaving you with your dad.’ This distressed me. She added: ‘I’m not asking you to choose. You’re big and ugly enough to take care of yourself.’ When I asked her what was happening, she sighed and said: ‘Diane, I’ve given you and your father 16 years of my life and I’m done. Mum opened her door formally, as if she were expecting the Queen over for tea - no affection, no expression, and absolutely no guilt. I felt scared and alone as I rang the bell. I stood outside both houses for a moment, looking back and forth between them. That afternoon, I plucked up the courage to walk from our home, No 49, with its white stucco walls and baby-blue door, to No 47, which was cream-coloured and had a green door. Diane Danvers Simmons had celebrated her 16th birthday just a week before her 60-year-old mother walked away.
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