Not a pretty sight - that's me

At birth I was found to have what was described as an 'alternating squint', which made me a pathetic wee thing. One eye went into the corner near my nose and when I covered the bad eye with my hand the other eye went into the middle, hence 'alternating'. So I wasn't a pretty sight, as well as being very tiny.

Mum and dad were devastated, of course, for who wants a child with a visible defect that other kids can ridicule?

So right from being a small child I had regular trips to the hospital for eye tests to see if the squint could be corrected. And at three years old I was prescribed glasses.

The ophthalmologist decided to operate on my eyes at 4 years old, after I had been wearing little NHS round pink specs for a year - they were tied on by having elastic around the back of my head.

So as a small child I was admitted to hospital and one eye was operated on. When I woke up from the surgery I was terrified to discover that both of my arms were heavily bandaged. I was frightened that something bad had happened that they hadn't told me about.

What the bandages were actually for was to stop me lifting my arms and rubbing my eyes and causing damage. What a relief!

Then followed a further four years of wearing glasses, regular hospital visits and an occasional elastoplast on top of the lens covering my good eye, because the other eye had been labelled 'lazy' and needed to work on its own, not just slide into the corner.

To be fair, the condition is hereditary and my auntie (mum's sister) suffered from the same thing - but hers had never been corrected.

At age 8 I was admitted once again to the hospital and this time the surgery was carried out on the other eye, the eye muscles adjusted in length so that now when I looked at anyone my two eyes worked in tandem and neither eye was misbehaving.

Mum and dad were distraught each time I had to stay in hospital and my older brother pined for me while I was away. Nobody to fight with, I thought.

But I was very happy to go home at the end of the week, because I had spent my 8th birthday in hospital, and it was like Christmas, arriving home to hugs and presents.

The result of these operations was near-perfectly straight eyes. I still had to wear glasses to improve my vision but no-one could accuse me of having crooked eyes. And coloured contact lenses are a real bonus for vain people like me.

Forty years later during an eye test I asked the ophthalmologist what they do now for such a disorder. 'Exactly the same,' she said, 'and they couldn't do a better job than they did way back then. It's very good, you have nice straight eyes.'

I was so pleased. And so was mum. I told mum how grateful I was that she got my eyes fixed.

My auntie is now 81 and her eyes still have a squint. Funny that neither she nor her mum never thought to have it corrected.

And good that my mum did it for me.

'Let me put your coat on, pet, and we'll make the beds....'

This cold weather reminds me of winters in the house where I lived after I was born. In the 1950s central heating didn't exist and we lived in a small 2-up, 2-down house. That means two bedrooms upstairs and a living room and kitchen downstairs.

There was a lavatory across the yard outside, and we took a bath in front of the open fire.

The only heating in the house was the open coal fire in the living room, and the living room had a main door onto the street, so that meant much of the heat disappeared out the door.

I was premature and was small and frail when I was born; then I suffered pneumonia in the first year of my life, so I was kept well wrapped up against the cold. Aunts and grandparents knitted cosy cardigans and sweaters for me and my brother and made us lovely woollen hats and gloves to keep us warm.

When my brother had started school and I was three, mum and I would spend time together in the house. We played at being married friends and I would pretend I had a husband and children and we would swap stories about our children being ill and our husbands losing their jobs, and how difficult life was. This was pure fiction, as my dad was always in work and we never had terrible things befall us.

Housework was a major part of mum's day, and keeping the place clean when it was heated by an open coal fire was no mean feat. Keeping it warm in the winter was another challenge.

When it came to making the beds and cleaning upstairs, mum would get my hat and coat, mittens and woolly hat and say 'Come on pet, put your coat on and we'll go upstairs to make the beds.'

Upstairs, where there was no heating, the windows were coated on the inside with a beautiful layer of sparkling ice crystals, and the temperature of the bedrooms was close to freezing point. Our breath formed cold, misty clouds as we breathed out.

As bedtime approached, dad woul light a kerosene heater upstairs so our bedrooms would be warm for us going up to bed clutching our hot water bottles.

We suffered no harm from the cold, but we certainly appreciate central heating now.

'If it's the last thing I do.....'

I wrote a year ago about some lovely Roland Cartier shoes I had bought for mum in a charity shop in Edinburgh. She never had a pair of Roland Cartier shoes in her life as they were expensive and posh.

When I saw these perfect, navy suede with chic gold heel trim shoes in the shop window I couldn't resist them. I couldn't believe either that they were size 3! So I bought them. The shop assistant said I could change them if they didn't fit, which was kind. Seems a bit harsh buying something in a charity shop then demanding a refund when they don't fit, and I couldn't see me carting them all the way back to Edinburgh.

Mum's eyes lit up when she saw them. Slipping her own shoes off quickly, she tried them on. 'Oh, they are beautiful!', she said, and they were.

But they didn't fit. They were too small. I can't remember mum ever trying on shoes that were too small for her tiny feet, but these were. Well, the left one was, because her ankle was always swollen due to her heart condition.

'I'll work on them,' she said. 'I'll get them on if it's the last thing I do.'

I couldn't persuade her that they could be taken back to the charity shop next time I went to Edinburgh and someone else could enjoy them instead. She refused to part with them.

So, on a couple of occasions I visited mum and I could see she was wearing the shoes in the house to try and stretch the left one to fit her. But it wouldn't. It was a whole size too small for her. But it was her project, to get that shoe to fit.

When mum died and we were planning her funeral service I asked the lady who was preparing mum for her final journey to make her look lovely and smart, just as she was throughout her life. I took a nice smiley photo of mum and explained how she liked her hair done. I chose her nicest outfit and a slinky slip to go under it.

She would certainly look her best in the crystal earrings, blue jacket, tartan skirt, freshly coiffed hair, and her usual perfume - 'Timeless' by Avon.

I told the lady about mum's Roland Cartier shoes.

'She said she would get them on if it was the last thing she did,' I told her. 'But if they won't go on now, please can she take them with her anyway?'

The lady was so kind, and when we went to say goodbye to mum for the last time, she whispered gently to me, 'Your mum is wearing her Roland Cartier shoes.'

Christmas without mum

All my life I have thought of my mum at Christmas, everyone does. Most of my life I have spent Christmas with my mum, or visited her shortly afterwards.

But not this year. She has gone.

My husband and I had a lovely Christmas together and as we raised our glass or champagne we toasted mum: 'She was a lovely lady' he said. 'Yes,' I agreed.

Then we realised we were sitting in the same seats at our dining table that we sat in last Christmas and the one next to us was empty, the one where mum had sat last year.

'A toast to absent friends', I said, 'mum and dad'.

Even when I went Christmas shopping this year I found myself looking at things and thinking 'Mum would like that'. It's going to take a while, but I am coming to terms with life without her and seeing references to her everywhere.

I am doing a lot of sewing at the moment as the snow is forcing us to stay indoors, and I am using her bits and pieces - cutting out scissors, coloured threads, unpicker, spare bits of fabric and stiffeners used to make medieval hats.

She is everywhere.

I got into great difficulty making a medieval jacket a couple of weeks ago, but I couldn't ask her advice, which I always did in the past. I have to stand on my own two feet now, but I realise she was a mine of information. I'll have to try Wikipedia now...