Eighty-Fourth Birthday

Adolf Hitler would have been a hundred and nineteen today.

He was, of course, one of the horrifically significant figures of the 20^th century.

That's enough of him. Far more significant to me is someone who – much to her fury – shares his birthday, April 20^th – my mother.

She was born on April 20^th, 1924, which makes her eighty-four today.

My mother was born Joan Bleasdale – no middle name, I don't know why not – in Barrow-in-Furness, now in Cumbria, but then in Lancashire. It's a shipbuilding town and feels a very long way from anywhere, though it's very near to the Lake District.

After attending Barrow Grammar School for Girls my mother won a scholarship and was the first person in the family to go to university. She read English at the University of Leeds during the Second World War, where the three-year course was crammed into two years.

She is very, very sociable and loves any kind of party or social event – she's always found it impossible to understand that, unlike her, I don't blossom in a big group of people. When I was a teenager she would persuade me to go to a party that I didn't want to go to, then arrive to collect me, be invited in and become the life and soul of it whilst I hid in a corner waiting to go home.

At Leeds University she edited the student newspaper, the Gryphon, and held meetings of various student societies in her flat. The Communist, who was then training to be a pharmacist, came to one of these meetings and that's how they met. They married in 1948 or 1949 or 1950 – they don't seem to know which year.

After university my mother worked as a journalist on the News Chronicle in London for a while, and then returned to Leeds and worked for many years as a teacher, firstly at secondary schools and later as a teacher of infants.

I was born when she was thirty-two, and my brother when she was forty-one. She had a lot of problems staying pregnant - six miscarriages before I was born and two more before my brother was born. As a child I used to imagine all these ghost brothers and sisters who never made it to be properly born.

Her parents both excelled in gymnastics: my grandmother was always the little one on top of the pyramid – and my mother's always been very athletic. She was Captain of Leeds University hockey team. Even at eighty-four, she can still swim half a mile without even considering it. She loves dancing of all kinds and is an excellent ballroom dancer. She's always out in the garden and she does all the gardening for both our houses. She's always doing ironing for me, too.

Yes, she's amazing: but, because she's my mother, I take it for granted, though I do try not to.

When she was sixty-eight she had a major stroke and – perhaps because she was so fit – made something approaching a miracle recovery. She lost all speech and movement but rapidly got them back, though had to work very hard at learning to read again, and has mixed up “he” and “she” ever since. Numbers, too, are a bit of a mystery to her.

But it's been her attitude that's been affected by the stroke – her natural bounce and positivity were crushed by it and the lasting legacy is that she's just unable to deal with anything new. Her reaction to anything – no matter how good – tends to be “Oh, no!” and I'd be the first to admit that I find this really difficult to deal with on a daily basis. I find myself thinking “My mother's not like this!”

She's had a really difficult year with the Communist's illness too, and worries about every little thing. It's exhausting, and I don't seem able to stop her.

There was no trace of this worry today. We took her out to lunch and she loved it. She came back to her house and the Communist came to visit in a wheelchair taxi. There were cards, presents, a wonderful surprise cake (thank you so much) and suddenly she felt that it was her favourite thing, a Party! Thanks to everyone who contributed.

She's just been telling me what a lovely time she had. It was like having her old self back with a vengeance. Her mother lived to be ninety-three so I hope she's got a few more good years yet.

Here she is today, with the Communist.

Happy Birthday, Mum.