My new hashtag 'ReloveHerFashion'

 Before You Were Mine – Carol Ann Duffy

I’m ten years away from the corner you laugh on
with your pals, Maggie McGeeney and Jean Duff.
The three of you bend from the waist, holding
each other, or your knees, and shriek at the pavement.
Your polka-dot dress blows round your legs. Marilyn.

I’m not here yet. The thought of me doesn’t occur
in the ballroom with the thousand eyes, the fizzy, movie tomorrows
the right walk home could bring. I knew you would dance
like that. Before you were mine, your Ma stands at the close
with a hiding for the late one. You reckon it’s worth it.

The decade ahead of my loud, possessive yell was the best one, eh?
I remember my hands in those high-heeled red shoes, relics,
and now your ghost clatters toward me over George Square
till I see you, clear as scent, under the tree,
with its lights, and whose small bites on your neck, sweetheart?

Cha cha cha! You’d teach me the steps on the way home from Mass,
stamping stars from the wrong pavement. Even then
I wanted the bold girl winking in Portobello, somewhere
in Scotland, before I was born. That glamorous love lasts
where you sparkle and waltz and laugh before you were mine.

When I look at old photos of my mother this poem often comes to mind. To imagine her life before me and my brothers and sisters is an indulgent daydream; what made her laugh back then? Who did she have a crush on? What did she hope to be when she ‘grew up’? Did it ever occur to her that she would have 5 children, and raise them in England, never to settle again in her native Northern Ireland?

I look at the grainy images and recall some of the stories she told us. Like the one where her teacher gave her the cane for eating sweets in class. The one about her brother drowning unwanted kittens on their family farm. How she was always her father’s favourite, and how he cried for days every time she went back to England after visiting the remote village she grew up in. How her mother used to let the local girls on their way to the dance, stop in to put on their makeup because their daddys would never let them out of the house in lipstick and rouge. And, my favourite story of all, how she said yes to going out with my dad because she was bored and “There was nothing on TV that night” He was smitten and proposed to her within a fortnight of their first date, a folk music night at their college bar, and she said yes.

My mother was everything to all of us. We orbited her. Life was simple and straightforward because she had everything-including all 5 of us kids-completely under control. She was always there when we left for school, and opened the door for us when we got home. Our friends loved to come to our house to sit round the old kitchen table, eating hot buttered toast while she asked us about our days.

When I was 16 my mother died of secondary breast cancer. To say it rocked my world would be an understatement. In fact, to try and articulate how I felt back then is impossible-I’m not even going to try. It was a time where I buried feelings and didn’t always talk about it. It sounds silly but I remember being almost embarrassed-like I knew people felt sad for me so I didn’t want to talk about it and bring everyone down. So I did the things teenagers do when they want to mask the feelings that they couldn’t explain. It’s been 20 years and I am pleased to say I am much better now than I was then; it is true that time is a great healer but I still feel her loss every single day.

Photographs of her are a comfort. I like to study them to see if I have inherited any of her features. I look for the faces of my children in her too. I tell them about her-I don’t want them to not have her in their lives even though she isn’t physically present.

I also love to look at the clothes that she wore. She was beautiful. I know everyone says that but it was true about my mother. She was tall and thin and had long brown hair when she first met my dad in the late 60s. She made many of her own clothes-ours too, and like most women of her era, was also a fan of Laura Ashley! We didn’t keep many of her clothes. I don’t think we really knew what to do about them when she died. It is a massive regret now.

BUT we have these photographs to remember them by. And that is why I wanted to launch the hashtag ReloveHerFashion, to celebrate the styles and outfits of the women we love dearly. So dig out those pictures of your mum, nan, aunty, from the 80s, 70s, 60s and share them with us. Perhaps you still have the dress she is wearing in the photograph? Why not take a picture of you in it and share it with the hashtag? Go on! Let’s relove her fashion!