I am at war with my mother. It is a war of words, but it is a very quiet war, because we don’t speak. She may not know she is at war, like many dominant nations with unhappy opposing militias.

I say it is a war of words, but really it is a war over words.

Mother is, or was, a writer. She was a writer before I was born. She has staked a claim on language. English, which should be my mother tongue, is instead my mother’s tongue. I must reclaim ownership bit by bit.

Some words are easy. All the small words, the every day words, belong to everyone. I can use these words, the small words.

Other words I have earned. I studied Latin, so all the words with Latin roots are now mine, and Spanish too, though that doesn’t add much to Latin. I also studied French, but she studied it first, so it’s disputed territory. She studied German, so I suppose the German words are hers, but because I didn’t study it, I don’t always know which these are. But I know I can’t write about Zeitgeist, or Schadenfreude, without taking damage.

Beyond the small words, the everyday words, are all the interesting, writerly words. There are words I reject because she gave them to me explicityly. “I challenge you to use the word ‘crenellations’ in your thesis”, she said. So I did. That was before I realised I was living under a dictatorship and chose to succede, and now must fight for all my own words, and slip through at night to take back syllables, prefixes, proper nouns.

In my profession, I am safe. I am a scientist. Her familiarity with science is limited. Therefore, the scientific words are mine.

There are also words neither of us want, the words of marketing and business administration. Utilisation, learnings, etc., anyone is welcome to them, but noone wants them.

I am writing this down so I can remember it later. So I don’t forget. So I can regain this position of equilibrium if I lose it.

It is just over a year since I last engaged with my mother. It was Mother’s Day. In the year since then, I have had weekly counselling sessions to come to terms with my need to not have my mother in my life.

I think I have now done that.

My mother was not emotionally or psychologically equipped for motherhood. I don’t know whether this was because of her own upbringing, or her own brain chemistry. It doesn’t really matter: whatever it was, it wasn’t her fault.

It was also not her fault that she didn’t know she wasn’t equipped for motherhood. Who would tell her? How would she know, at 19, newly married, that she wasn’t going to be good at this? Or maybe she did know, but thought she’d manage. Regardless: I am not responsible for her decision to become a mother, and I owe her no debt for making it.

With this realisation, I can feel sympathy for her for having got things wrong and done things wrong. It is safe to feel this sympathy, because feeling sympathy does not mean I have to have her in my life: I can not, and should not, have her in my life, because it is not good for me. I can and must protect myself by not having her in my life. She is dangerous to me and my wellbeing in a way that she may not be dangerous to other people, because she is my mother and the relationship between mother and child is inherently different to other relationships.

It is this latter part that it will be important to remember: having her in my life would be dangerous to my mental wellbeing.

This may all sound sad, but for me it is freeing. It means I can move on without ill-will, with sympathy for her and care for myself – my own self, whole, safe and protected.

Oh, Trigger warning. All the triggers.

So, I’ve learnt over the years that not everyone had a shit childhood, and when I describe mine I get looks of horror.

Also, Mothers’ Day has just been. Mothers’ Day is probably my most loathed day of the year. Currently I am thinking maybe I just won’t do it any more. There is no rule that says I have to. And I think I’ve earnt the right to not have to, to be honest.

I recall my very early childhood as happy. The first of my mother’s partners that I remember was very sweet to me. I don’t remember him much. I remember his saying it might be best if I didn’t call him Daddy because my real Daddy might be upset. I remember thinking some three-year-old version of “‘real’ Daddy? Who’s that?” and an emotion that I now interpret as “why don’t I get to decide who my ‘real’ Daddy is?”.

Anyway, that relationship ended probably when I was about five. Mum had some relationships after that, including a brief fling with the unit who later molested me, and then my main stepfather turned up.

I don’t know if things would have been shit even if he wasn’t there. Quite possibly.

The Shit:

Overloading and unrealistic expectations.

I was expected to do too many chores for my age. I couldn’t do them all. There was no point in trying, so I mostly didn’t try. So even now, when there are too many things to do I feel overwhelmed and give up.

One day when I was about – six? – five? –  my mother left me at home alone for the day while she went to a neighbouring town. She left me with an extensive list of things I was to do while she was gone: sweep and mop the floor, wash the dishes, collect brush and kindling for the fire, I can’t remember what else. I do know that I worked all day, and for the first and only time did everything on the list. When my mother got home in the evening she said “Great! I should go away more often!”

This made me wish I had not done everything after all.

My grandmother visited some time round then. She later said she saw me as a little Cinderella, with raggedy clothes and endless chores. That’s also about how I saw myself.

Neglect

As well as the “home alone” described above, on some other occasion round that time, my mother fell in lust with a prominent musician who came through the village on tour. She took off with him for a week, leaving me to look after myself. I managed for the first couple of days, but then got lonely and stayed with friends.

Of course, she did ask if it was OK, and I said yes, it was fine. What kind of mother asks a six-year-old if they will be OK to look after themselves for a week so she can go and get her end off?

The undermining

Me: “I got 97% in my maths test.”

Her: “What’s the point of getting 97% in your maths test if you can’t keep your room tidy?”.

Me: “I got the [prominent Maori former principal] academic scholarship to high school!”.

Her: “It should have gone to a Maori girl”.

Me: “I got a major scholarship to a prestigious senior high school.”

Her: “Are you sure you want to go? Don’t you think you’ll suddenly find you’ve moved from being the big fish in a small pond to being a small fish in the big pond?”

Me: “I’m not sure what I want to study.”

Her: “Maybe you shouldn’t go to university. You might find it too hard. Better to go to a polytech and learn something useful.”

On Mothers’ Day, she said she always felt so proud when she heard my name in the media, doing my (currently prominent) academic work. Excuse me while I seethe inside.

Abuse

When I was little I was smacked regularly. Smacked for talking out of turn. Smacked for crying. Hit round the head for whatever. Once, having heard from my friends of the dangers of being hit in the head, after she hit me I cried out “you could have killed me!” She laughed. Hilarious.

She didn’t smack me so much when the stepfather was in the picture. He was Scandinavian and generally didn’t think hitting children was a good idea. But.

When I guess I would have been seven or eight, the stepfather and I had an argument, I forget what about. He said “I’m going to go for a walk” (to cool down). I shouted “Yes, why don’t you, I wish you would”. He pushed me to the ground and kicked me. My mother threw her cup of tea over me.

The incident

When I was thirteen, and my little brother was a baby, she asked me to take him for a walk. I didn’t want to. I said so. She picked him up and started swinging him over the balcony on the back deck, threatening to throw him over if I didn’t agree to take him. I was paralysed, terrified, crying “no, no, no!”. She put him down and said “right, I’m going to ruin all your stuff then.”  She went into my room and pulled out all my drawers and emptied their contents on the floor. She picked up a chair and started bashing it at the television. I tried to stop her and she punched me in the face.

I ran. I ran two suburbs away, to the home of a woman who I knew knew my mother was having problems. Even then I was trying to protect her reputation by not going to other people who I would then have to tell.

I went to school from there. The principal called me to his office. Eventually I had to go home. There was some half-assed attempt at counselling, which basically consisted of me being told that mum was sorry, and therefore I had to go home and suck it up.

I closed myself off from her after that. I knew I wasn’t safe with her.

The truly revolting

Paedophiles are manipulators. Even good parents can be deceived. Although paedophiles pick their victims, and I had been set up to be a prime victim by all the above (except The Incident, which happened after), I can’t really blame my mother for my sexual abuse. That’s on the paedophile.

However, after my mother knew about the abuse, she asked the paedophile for a “loan”. He gave it to her. I don’t know the terms of the loan. I just know that when in later years I reported him and the sexual assaults to the police, he wrote to her asking for the money to be paid back. I told her to pay him back, because I felt like she’d pimped me after the fact. She said that was between him and her. She didn’t pay him back. She tried to justify it to herself by suggesting she could give me part ownership of her house at the amount of the “loan”. I declined.

Naturally, there’s more Shit. These are just the most extreme incidences, but they’re all I’ve got the energy for at the moment.

Since the previous efforts with the white chocolate orange almond mudcakes weren’t entirely satisfactory (sunk in the middle; overly sweet), I thought I’d try something else: time to abandon the chocolate and just try orange-almond.  I’ve started with Martha Stewart’s version (http://www.marthastewart.com/343647/orange-almond-cake) even though it only reviews with 3 1/2 stars, because it seemed like a good place to start.

I’m not doing the candied orange topping, because it’s for a wedding cake, and I’d only bought 3 oranges at the supermarket, so I put a mandarin in as well to be the other orange half.  That did seem to produce the required 3 cups of orange pulp, so all good there. The rest of the recipe was pretty straight-forward. I used golden caster sugar rather than plain sugar, and I used the eggs I had, which were probably on the smaller side of US “large”.

It’s now cooked. The recipe said about 1 hr. I put it in for 50 minutes at 180C on “Classic Bake”. I suspect it may be slightly overcooked, as just as the timer went off I smelt the start of a slightly burnt smell.  We’ll see if that’s actually the case once it’s turned out.

Later…

I’ve turned it out. It is a bit browner round the sides than ideal. Next time, I don’t think I’ll use “classic bake” (actually, when has it ever given me a good result?) and just stick with fan bake, and check it earlier.

Later…

Ha! When I went looking for appropriate icing for this cake, I found it’s not the version she uses for wedding cakes.  Oh well, I’m sure we’lll enjoy eating it anyway!

I have enrolled in the cake decorating course (beginners).  We had the first session last week, at which we made cupcakes, and watched the instructor make buttercream icing.  Tonight we’ll be making buttercream icing ourselves (eww) and using it to ice a cake.

To ice a cake, we must bake a cake in advance, preferably 20cm.

Therefore, I decided it was time to try out the second attempt of the White Chocolate, Almond and Orange cake described in my previous post.

While making the cake, I discovered I had made an error in the previous attempt, which would explain why it was so sweet.  For some reason, although I’d reduced the sugar by cup volume, I made an error in calculating the sugar by weight – I used 3/4 of the original recipe, rather than 3/4 of half the original recipe.  That will explain why it was so sweet.  So my “attempt 2” version in fact has the weight I should have used the first time.  We’ll see how that works out.

I won’t be tasting the cake proper until I cut it with my workmates tomorrow: I’ll let you know how it goes.

However, I did have some white chocolate left over, and some orange zest, so I decided to try making some mini cupcakes using the same recipe.  I will get to taste those today!

Later…

Now that the cakes are cooked, I can report that they are sunken in the middle.  BBC good food (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/how-make-cake-top-10-problems-fixed) tells me that this is either because the oven door was opened too soon (nope), or the cake didn’t go in the oven as soon as it was ready (it did, though arguably there could be something in this) or there was too much rising agent (?!).  The last one is possible, since in adjusting the amounts of self-raising flour and almond meal, there would have been more rising agent than in the first attempt (which also sunk in the middle, though that could have been due to opening the door).

Icing them will still be OK, because you just cut off the bits that aren’t flat.

Since I’ve now bought more fabric than needed for Daughter’s dress, and can’t make it yet anyway, I thought I’d practice by making something for myself.

Naturally, that means starting with the shift.

I had that striped linen left from before, only used to attempt a blackwork manuka.  I bought another half metre of it – given it’s about 3m wide, the price isn’t as extortionate as it would be otherwise – and am now in the process of making a shift for myself, to the same pattern as Daughter’s.

The only difference from Daughter’s pattern, apart from size, is that I want a high collar.

The smock pattern generator at elizabethancostume.net (“Drea’s”) only covers square-necked smocks, so no luck there.

The Tudor Tailor, a copy of which I finally bought from the authors (to save myself accruing yet more overdue fines for it at the library), has men’s shirts and women’s smocks.  The women’s smock has a high collar option, but is made to a slightly different pattern to Drea’s (the shoulders are cut in at the same angle as the gores).

So, I went looking online to see what I could find there, and encountered a conundrum.  Men’s shirts are all made with neck gussets.  Some women have included neck gussets, and some haven’t.  The Tudor Tailor women’s pattern doesn’t include neck gussets, and goes for a rounded cut neckline.  The women’s smock in the museum at Bath apparently does (I can’t find any detailed photos online), though they’re not obvious in this reproduction:

(http://www.kostym.cz/Anglicky/8_Krejcovstvi/01_Catany/VIII_01_70B.htm)

as does the one at the Victoria and Albert

The V&A smock appears to have a straight-cut neckline; the reproduction Bath looks like it’s rounded.

I consulted the good folk at the Elizabethan Costuming group on facebook, and they also endorsed the use of neck gussets.

I like the voice of experience, so my next question was: What size should they be?  I suspect that the 2″ sided right-angled triangles in The Tudor Tailor men’s smock would be too big for a fine-boned frame like mine.

Time to try a “toile” or “muslin” as a test.  I got a bit of the Sally Army sheet set, and cut a slit in the middle and down the front of a guess at the appropriate length – subsequent reading tells me the front slit should be longer, to reach about my breast-bone.

I then put it over my head as is, to see the result.

(Apologies for the blurring in the first photo)

1.  As you can hopefully see (despite the blurring. Son was somewhat unenthusiastic about acting as photographer) it doesn’t sit well.  It is about two cm wider on each side than the finished shoulder width of the actual shirt, but still, those shoulders clearly want to stick up rather than sitting along the shoulder line, so that’s one thing to deal with.

2.  When the neck is closed, it sits high on the throat – it really wants to sit higher still than in the photo, as visible in the creases coming out from the side of the cut, but the width of the cut prevents it.

3.  The side view shows just how poorly the whole thing works.  It’s the old Cartesian problem: how to get straight surfaces to adequately match a curved surface.

4.  If it were a different project, a solution might be found through something like this (or the alternative, which is taking fabric out at the shoulder line), but that’s not going to work with this project.

:

None of these photos on their own helped me much with the question of how big to make the gussets, but they did give time for my brain to perculate, and I came up with the following:

If I measure my neck around, it comes to 36cm.  That should be 18cm at front and 18cm at back, but I suspect there’s more at the front really, and indeed when I measure from one side to the other across the back it’s more like 16cm, which leaves 20cm at the front.

If I look in the mirror and measure the straight horizontal distance from one side of my neck to the other, it’s 13cm.

Back neck: 16cm – 13cm=3cm, /2 (to see how much each side)=1.5cm

Front neck: 20cm – 13cm=7cm, /2=3.5cm

So I think ideally the gusset would provide an extra 1.5cm each side at the back, and an extra 3.5cm at the front, for a total of 5cm each side (or 2″ in imperials).

However, I doubt it’s possible with my limited skills to arrange it so the gusset width sits more at the front than the back.  Also, the front “corners” are going to need to be cut away somewhat so that they sit against my neck and not against my throat – I don’t know that gussets would change that problem.

And even if the width (or rather, that side of the triangle) is correct (dubious), it still doesn’t tell me how long to make the other two (identical) sides.

Time for some more guesswork.

The Tudor Tailor women’s pattern takes a curve out at the back (1″ less at the centre back) to is 3.75″ from the centre.  If I draw that on the toile I can see it would take the total measurement of the back of the neck to – wait for it – 16cm.  The front is cut down 2″, making the total front neck measurement… 20cm.

This is such a tidy match that I think I’m going to have to try it. ….

And indeed, it suddenly sits a whole lot better.

However, I think some small gussets would still be a good idea, mostly because although it sits better now, I realise that it’s going to need at least a little seam allowance at the front for the hem on the front slit.  That’s going to pull the sides in by about 1cm each side.  Though I suspect a better way to deal with that is to put a little pleat in the back to match the seam allowance at the front, and move the side seams out a cm on each side.