High Peak Liberal Democrats

Family

This is the next of a series of postcards which Anita Day, Parliamentary Spokesperson for Grantham and Stamford has written to members and supporters

My mother died nearly 14 years ago. Yet yesterday evening in Sainsbury's in Grantham, standing surrounded by dishwasher tablets, I cried for her.

I come from an immigrant family. My parents came over from Kolkata in the late 1950s and I and my younger sister were born and then raised in rural Worcestershire, in a village so far from metropolitan life that we were literally the only non-white family for about 20 miles (in those days, there weren't even any Indian GPs around!) ;-) This meant that, in those early days, I didn't really realise we were 'different' from anyone else. All our friends, neighbours, teachers, my father's work colleagues were all white, and had probably never met an Indian before, but they offered us only kindness and friendship - the casual racism did eventually come, but much later, after I started going to school in the nearby city.

But although I say that I never realised we were different, that's not entirely true. There was one time of the year when it became painfully obvious… Christmas. Not for any religious reasons, but because everything about the season hammered home the fact that 'we were alone'. We had no family, apart from ourselves, that we knew or loved or could meet regularly, and for a culture based around the family, that was hard. Our parents did their best to make up for this, by throwing themselves into every possible Christmas tradition of their adopted country… madly decorating the Christmas tree (I suspect my OCD-ness re: the baubles was inherited from my father), buying us more presents than they should have done, encouraging us to leave a shot of whisky with a mince pie for Father Christmas (I think that was my father's favourite bit!), gorging ourselves on the turkey and all the trimmings, and inviting neighbours and friends over whenever they could. But, however hard they tried, they couldn't make us feel less isolated than we were. And I know they felt it too.

Of course, the plus side of the situation was that the four of us were incredibly close… because we had to be!

But at this time of the year… as we approach the celebration I will always associate as much with them & my childhood as with my own husband & children; as I find myself in a rather depressing supermarket late one evening containing more staff dressed in Santa hats & silly jumpers than they have customers; as I hear 'Merry Christmas, Everybody' for the 10^th time (and it's only the 13^th December); as the day looms that is the 14^th anniversary of the last time I heard my mother's voice…….

And the relevance of the dishwasher tablets? Well, right up until shortly before her death, my mother and I had a habit of calling each other when one of us was in a supermarket to say things like "Finish dishwasher tablets are on special offer… 2 for £6… do you want me to pick some up for you?" Last night it hit me …that I would never have that conversation again.

Take care, and speak soon

Anita

07753 904676

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