Mum's White Cardigan

This photo popped up as a memory on Facebook yesterday. It shows my mum and my elder brother Peter sitting on the wall of the family home. It took me aback yesterday as if I had been slapped when I saw that picture, and so for our Saturday bike ride this morning, Steve and I rode into Worthing passing all the places where I remembered time spent with my family. We rode slowly down Cranworth Road and I pointed out who had lived in each of the houses when I was a child. My husband added “And the house across the road that got bombed during the war”, pointing to the only house in the road that was less than a hundred years old.

            The White Cardigan 

Whenever a white cardigan before my eyes takes a place

Instantly above it presents an image of my mothers face

Then, even then, the memory can be harsh

She won’t go away then I think, for a little while

And that thought alone in my head makes me smile. 

It was a big thing with her, I remember that well

Ingrained from somewhere in her past, you could tell

That the bright white must be what people saw

You must always have a new white cardigan every year

Even though her clothes were worn thin, they must not sneer. 

She sat knitting by the radio, in the kitchen, of a winter night

A plain one for herself but for me a daintier, prettier sight

Mum’s was nearly always a ‘v’ neck shape and mine

Buttoned to the neck with a wheat sheaf pattern or cable

Worn only for best, maybe to visit Aunt Lot’s, if we were able.  

There I am, cardi on, in all the old photos somewhere

Squatting in the chicken run with frizzy hair

But wrapped in long sleeved white wool

Unkempt blowing around me, my dirty blonde locks

Taken with the handed down family Brownie Box 

Every year as I too quickly for mum’s pocket grew

The old one posted to a younger cousin or a friend I knew

One day she switched me to a new design

A puffed sleeve angora bolero with bobble edge

Climbing like a boy, “Watch your cardi on that jagged ledge”. 

The fluffy bolero years lasted through those childhood ways

They warmed me through my junior school days

Mum glowed with admiration for her neat stitches

Her knitting looked like shop bought but for less cost

A slap round the head I got when my best one was lost.  

The hug-me-tight was forced into my young life

Starting ballet class gave mum just one more piece of strife

Wrapped around the front and neatly crossed over

With two long tails that were neatly tied

After slipping them through a little slot on the side. 

White goes with anything mum declared with firm voice

But as far as I was concerned there was not any choice

You would think I had said a really bad word

When I dared ask for a pink one or even green

Wide eyed horror on her face was for a long moment seen. 

So you see now why as the brochure page I turn

That the white one pictured is not what I yearn

Mum’s white cardi on a model there gives pause

There she is again, to myself I softly say

Once more her face will not for a while go away. 

She still wore them well into her old age where

Nothing had changed bar the colour of her hair

Then her silky white permanently waved tresses

As she lay, small and still on her death bed

“A perfect match to my cardi”, she would have said.