Despite her having little pain, I am saddened for how your Mum died.

At many points in my life, I was considered weird (in a pejorative way) by my mother. My mother wasn't the only one. I remember one day, 20 years ago, when I was making something to eat and my ex-girlfriend told me I was weird because of the combination of condiments I was using. She later told me that I was boring because I had bland tastes.

Another day, when she told me something about the mining company her father worked for, and I asked her if he had ever met the CEO, whose name I knew. And she replied, "You're so full of boring facts."

Okay, she wasn't the right woman for me.

I remember, when I was 19, the girlfriend of a guy who worked for my father stayed for dinner and I was talking about something I was really interested in and my mother said that she wished she could have reached to kick me under the table as she could see that the guy's girlfriend wasn't interested, but I couldn't see it.

Okay, when I find something interesting, I read all I can about it and talk about it. Sometimes, I might say more than I should, but that's just me.

I remember, when I was 16, my mother really did something to me that shook me to the core. The day before, my brother and my father went to play golf and they wanted me to go along to pull their buggies. The man whose 50th Birthday Party I had to attend, where I sat with a grown woman (see Two Days, Two Signs) had four sisters, and one of them and her husband, had a golf course. His sisters were as different as they could come, and one sister was a refined woman, even though she was married to a crass boorish man who believed he was superior, and Dad introduced me. Now, I had seen men and women shake hands on TV, and my mother told me, quite sharply, the next morning, that you don't shake hands with the ladies. Then, that weekend, my brother had brought a friend over, and that friend and I shook hands and my mother also told me that you don't shake hands with anyone but older men.

If I'd had a mother like yours, I would have had a happier childhood. My maternal grandmother was understanding, but she died when I was six. (My maternal grandmother didn't want to be 70, but I would have said to her, today, "You don't have to be 70, if someone asks how old you are, just say you stopped counting at 20 and you don't know how long ago that was." She didn't want to be a veteran in bowls, but I have said to my mother that if Kelsey Cotterrell, (an Australian who represented this country at the Olympics for bowls) had walked in, age six, and wanted to play, she would have said, "Okay, Kelsey, I'll just finish my lemon squash and I'll have a game with you." The newsletter might have had a picture captioned with, "It's close, Elma." And had written, "Elma Symons, veteran class, and Kelsey Cotterrell, age 6, play. Elma says that age doesn't matter, it's more about having a good time. Kelsey says, "No, it's fine." My paternal grandmother was understanding, too.