My mother, the Queen

My mother was raised an only child in the coal mining district of South Wales. Her father was a butcher and they lived modestly in a row house with an outdoor toilet and potties under the beds. My sister and I spent two weeks every summer with our grandparents while our parents took their summer holidays abroad. I remember fondly the times we picked vegetables from their garden, climbed the surrounding hills in search of whinberries and evenings around the table after dinner, playing cards and board games. As the lights dimmed one of us would race to the front parlor to deposit large copper pennies into the electric meter to keep the lights on for a few more hours.

My mother came from humble beginnings which she promptly forgot when she married my father in 1942. During these war years life was not easy but they prospered through the fifties and sixties and when Dad retired early they travelled extensively. I'm not sure at what point my mother determined that she was royal or pretty darn close. As children we practised our curtsies to be ready for when we would be summoned to Buckingham Palace. Instructions on how to address Her Royal Highness, The Queen and how to do the 'royal wave', elbow elbow, wrist wrist were frequent, and given lightheartedly, or so I thought. My father had a great sense of humor and kept my mother from taking herself too seriously but after his death her sense of entitlement grew expeditiously. Her later years were spent as the "Queen" with her two daughters in the roles of Ladies-in-Waiting. She wore large hats, matching dress and coat outfits and always carried a handbag. Unlike the Queen she did carry money and also cigarettes in her handbag. On her arthritic fingers were diamonds, sapphires and rubies, mostly purchased in some foreign land. Even in her later years she wouldn't leave the house without 'the crown jewels', as she herself referred to them.

She would have made a fine queen. She carried herself with good deportment, never let her real feelings show and was always right. What more could you want? Well, actually, I think I would rather have had the "Queen Mum" for my Mum.