The photo above was taken on a beach in Brittany, on a family holiday in the Seventies. (That plastic pastel Pétanque set!)I remember my waffle fabric swimsuit feeling heavy when it got wet with seawater, and how the scooped back sometimes left my shoulders sore after an afternoon spent rock-pooling with my brother—despite the suncream dispensed by my mother from a sandy-nozzled tube of Ambre Solaire (I can still smell it).Decades later, clambering over the mossy rocks with my own children, I found myself yelling out “Watch your step!' and 'Not so fast! Slow down!", as I'm sure my mother did.Do you remember returning to a magical spot, maybe decades later, in the hopes that, in making a new memory, you might relive the old one again, just a little? To somehow find the past in the present, and wonder at it all?Rocks, tides and time.

Carrying each other

This month I will … continue to wonder at all the ways we that we get to carry each other, and how we take it in turns to do so.

Never more so than during those times which are hard in a way Will describes as “shifting our tectonic plates” a little, on a deep, deep level. The ones that leave us feeling aftershocks for a while.In recent months-maybe you, too?-I’ve been so grateful for the way others have carried us (including this gorgeous, now grown-up girl in the pink mac).Also? I’m rubbish at giving piggybacks, so never ask me. I’ll drop you in approximately 3.5 seconds and you’ll need a soft landing.

And finally, for Mother’s Day in the US this weekend.

My beautiful mothers.

Both have loved me bravely and fiercely, through the hardest of circumstances: the first, heartbreak and loss, the second through longing and waiting and loving me just as if I’d been born of her body.

Now, as her memory fragments, she forgets that I wasn’t. All she knows is that I am her daughter, and she is my mother.It has come to that, and that is everything. And I’ve never loved them both more, with the deepest, fiercest daughter love.

Much love for your weekend,

Jen XXX

Thanks for reading and listening to The Story So Far! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and pods.

;

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jennibadenhoward.substack.com