Ten thousand a year…

          In the immortal words of Jane Austen’s Mrs Bennet,

               …”Three Daughters Married”…

                    … “Ten thousand a year “…

          It seems such a short time ago that I was a young bride myself, followed at a respectable interval by the patter of tiny feet and in no time at all I was a mother duck with three little ducklings following wherever I led.

          I seem to have stayed in the land of nursery rhymes and fairytales while time moved on around me and all of a sudden I have three grown-up,  married daughters…  And three Son-in-laws.

          I wonder, what sort of Mother-in-law am I?

          I was never what you could call a conventional mother, determined that times and events which shaped me as a child would not have the same effect on my girls.  I turned my fears into games “The Woosh” being one of my more successful ones.  I was terrified of being pulled into the void left behind a big lorry on a busy road. Talking to Youngest Daughter about the game a while ago, she can’t actually remember playing it, but the gust of wind which follows a lorry always makes her happy.

          I was never happier than when the house was full of children, at Christmas the other mothers thought I was completely mad when I would fill the house with very often over thirty children.  I would put together a huge buffet of party food and leave the guest lists to the girls.  Each Daughter invited their own group of friends and provided their own entertainment.  You would think that that amount of children in a house would be chaos, but no, it seemed to work surprisingly well, three different age groups,  three different parties and each group was far to busy to bother the other. I flitted from one group to another, not really being a parent, just being more of a presence and so as with life in general at home, I became less of a mother, and more of a friend…  We looked after each other.

          Every mother has their own way of bringing up their children,  their own Mother/Daughter relationship and indeed, Mother/Son relationships too.  I guess my ways seem strange to our newest family members, in all fairness my girls have had the last twenty to thirty years to get used to them and the three boys have been thrown in at the deep end.

          I don’t see any traditional Mother-in-law / Son-in-law relationships on the horizon, I am however,  pretty hopeful that we can all become friends.