Mum's Birthday

As I posted here before, my mum had one of those 'large' birthdays last month. You know the ones that end with a very rounded digit? The ones that you see hurtling towards you at an increasingly rapid rate of knots once you hit around 28?

The question was, what would I 'do' to mark the occasion? When she had a big birthday 20 years ago, we had a party. I organised the whole thing, managing to find her best friend from school days who attended, along with various other friends and family from over the years. We had a DJ, and one of mum's friends (a teacher with a gift for stand up comedy) did a 'turn'. It was a very successful evening.

The big birthday 10 years ago was marked by a super dooper holiday in Cyprus for her and Dad. I was pregnant with No.2 at that time, and so busy puking all over the place that I couldn't have organised a big 'do' if I'd wanted to. (I stopped being quite as sick at around 8 months). I'm so glad she and Dad had that fabulous holiday because what we didn't know then was that he would develop a brain tumour and be gone within 4 months of that birthday.

I asked her if she wanted a party this time around, but she was pretty sure she didn't. I asked her if there was something else she'd like and she said she'd like a family holiday. A real bucket and spade job with me and the kids, and my brother too. So that's what we booked. But I wanted to do something else too - something other than the obligatory flowers.

I decided I wanted to make her a book. A memory book. A book of pictures of the people that had played a big part in her life. So that's what I did.

When she was away in Portugal with her sister last autumn, I went to her house, went up into the loft and got absolutely filthy moving boxes around until I found the one which contained old photos. I brought down the box and sorted through it, finding photos I felt were appropriate for the book. It was quite a difficult thing to do in that there were so many reminders of Dad - of course.

Anyway, after sorting lots of photos, I brought them home and scanned them all into the computer - this process alone took ages, but I had to get it done whilst she was still in Portugal, so I could put them back in the box and put the loft back as I'd found it. After having done that, I then started editing the pictures I wanted to use. Many of them were quite badly damaged, and I'm very thankful that one of my lovely friends has helped me learn so much about Photoshop that I could pretty much repair them - digitally at least.

The front cover of the book had a picture of Mum at 16. It opened with the details of her birth and contained pictures of her as a baby, her with her parents, and then with her sisters. It carried on with a chapter of images of her with Dad, from their engagement to their wedding, to various shots of them through the 41 years they spent together as man and wife.

The plump child on this page of the book might be me

The next chapter had shots of my brother and me from our christenings to now. The next chapter was of mum's friends from her school chums to her 'grown-up' friends, some of whom are no longer alive, and some of whom are. I had to go round to her friend Julia's and borrow some images of her and another friend as I hadn't been able to find nice pictures of them. Julia loved the idea of the book and was happy to lend me some images to scan.

The next chapter was of mum's grandchildren - from birth to now (and I made sure the most recent ones were very recent indeed). The last chapter was of the various pets we've had over the years, as a book without them just wouldn't be right. They have provided our family with much entertainment, love and company.

I finished the book just a few weeks before her birthday. I ordered it from Blurb and had my fingers firmly crossed that it would arrive in time. In actual fact it arrived 3 days before Mum went on the cruise with her sisters, during which she would celebrate the 'actual' big day. I rang, then met up with my auntie and fixed up for her to hide the wrapped book in her luggage. She and their other sister had been plotting too - they assembled a whole array of brilliant presents, including some yarn plaits. When they were kids, their mum wouldn't let them have long hair, but she did make them yarn hair and put it on a headband for them. So my two lovely aunties had sat and made yarn plaits on a headband, and they all sat and had a champagne supper wearing their wool plaits on the evening of Mum's birthday (in their cabin).

My auntie gave the book to mum for me over breakfast on mum's big day and I had a lovely text a few hours later which let me know she'd been very surprised and thrilled to have it.

Since she's been back, she's shown it to all the friends who are in it, and has it (in bubble wrap!) on the side ready to show anyone else who might come round to visit. It was several months of hard work, but I'm so glad I did it.

© Author