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As my mother used to say
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As we enter day two of the second national lockdown, Sarah Maguire our CEO, reflects on her mother's sayings and wisdom they contain.
Hello, the vlog this week is called ‘As my mother used to say’. My mother’s been living with dementia for many years, and I often wonder what she would make of the world we are living in if things were different for her now. She’s got many sayings, which unfortunately or fortunately, I’ve inherited, although my girls think I just make them up. One my mum’s favourites is a variation on the saying ‘the same old same old’ – she used to say ‘the same old two and nine’.
Both sayings are used when things remain the same, or they become boring or possibly annoying. Mum’s saying, ‘the same old two and nine’ seems to sum up how we’re feeling as we enter day two of the lockdown. Mum also has a favourite song, which I’m not going to sing, but I’ll just read out the lyrics – ‘you are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are grey, you’ll never know dear how much I love you, please don’t take my sunshine away’. Now my grandmother used to sing that song to me and to my sisters and mum sang it to her grandchildren, so my children, who grew up thinking it was their special song and they only discovered recently that she sang it to each of them!
For the next few weeks, I am going to choose sunshine over boredom and annoyance. And I’m going to try to remember a quote that I came across,
“Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.”
See you soon.
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