I am lying in bed, and I am trying to sleep. I can't. I am aware of some discomfort, but can't locate it. I lie there, still, with my body straight and my hands tucked behind the small of my back. I lie there for a long time. I listen to the sounds of the house, my husband, my daughter, sleeping. I stare at the dark. I start to feel pain. I realise, suddenly, that I am digging my nails into the palms of my hands. I don't know how long I have been doing it. I get up.

In the bathroom light I see I have drawn blood.

My mother had a favourite brooch. It is rose gold. It is a circle, with a five petaled flower and beautiful Victorian swirls inside it. I think she said that once there had been seed pearls in it too, but they fell out. I do not remember where she got it, but I know she would have told me, because I know I would have asked. She wore it all the time when I was little; I would sit on her knee, as she read a book and had a cup of coffee next to her, her idly stroking my hair and me, idly, circling the brooch with my finger.

One Mothers' Day, we went to a fete. Mum gave me three pounds to spend. I saw a small porcelain decorative plate, in a brass stand, with a poem about mothers on it. I bought it, and some biscuits shaped like hedgehogs that I did not know were biscuits. I kept them, for years, as ornaments. The poem on the plate was awful. Mum laughed, and I wasn't sure if that meant she liked it or she didn't. The next day, I saw it on her bedside table. It stayed on her bedside table for twenty nine more years.

In the drawer of her bedside table, these twenty nine year later, underneath the drawer full of tissues and medication, I found every mothers' day card, ever letter, ever postcard, every birthday card I had ever sent her. A lifetime of written love.  I took them away with me. I have them here, with her brooch, on the table. Letters, cards, photographs, a brooch, a tissue full of blood.


I had coveted that brooch. 'You'll get it when I die!' she would joke. I look at it and feel I have stolen it. I know what having it means. So I put it away, because I do not want it to be mine.

I hold her small wooden box in my hand. It still has buttons in it. If I squint my mind, I can pretend that I am five, and I am playing with the buttons, organizing them into rows of size and shade, with the sounds of the radio and Mum laughing behind me.

Happy Mothers' Day.