Thank You, Mum

Two writers explain why they’re so thankful for the resilience and courage of their mothers…

- Catherine Isaac & Nikki Spencer Main

As a child, I rarely thought about the fact that my mum Jean was in a wheelchair.

This might sound odd but the car crash that caused her disability had happened two years before I was born. Soher ability to do all the things my friends’ parents could had been limited for as long as I could remember. But, while she couldn’t line up for the mums’ race on sports day, or run alongside me on my first attempts to ride a bike, I never felt I was missing out. Quite the contrary.

I had a rich and idyllic childhood. My parents’ home was always open to friends and neighbours for barbecues, dinners and lavish children’s parties. During the week, Mum would spend hours reading with me, sparking a lifelong passion for books that would ultimately lead me to make my living as a novelist.

This amounted to the happiest existence I could imagine, so the fact that Mum’s legs didn’t work felt like an irrelevance.

The crash happened one afternoon in mid-November 1972 when she was 25 years old and 37 weeks pregnant with her first baby. My parents were on their way to visit friends – Dad at the wheel of their Mini – when they stopped at a red light on a dual carriageway. He remembers every detail of what happened next. The car travelling towards them on the opposite side of the road. The screech of tyres as it swerved, smashing into the central reservation. The bolt of shock when he realized it was airborne, hurtling towards them. It landed on their bonnet, crushing everything in its way. The driver said afterwards that a dog had run out into the road. He escaped unhurt, but my parents, sadly, weren’t as lucky.