This photograph of my mum and me in 1960 brings a reminder of Heaney's beautiful poem When all the others were away at Mass.
Unlike the empty house described in the poem, my mum and I were together in the middle of her busy home bakery in north Belfast. Out of shot there was a queue of customers beside us, and, behind mum, shop assistants filled shelves with soda farls and wheaten loaves.
From a baby I toddled around my mum’s feet behind the counter before progressing to an upside-down Inglis biscuit tin , which became my special seat.
I played with my dolls, but as I grew, I listened, elbows on knees, to the customers’ colourful woes, which mum gave a sympathetic ear to. I always admired the way she was with people.
Home from primary school, I used that tin as a base to teeter on tip-toe to reach the top shelves. But sometimes I liked to just stand on it, to try to be as tall as her.
By the time I was nine years old, I was allowed to serve customers all by myself. I remember challenging mum to find mistakes in my counting up. Her quick glance at the long line of fat blue numbers carefully totalled on the tissue paper usually delivered a broad smile to me. At other times, and depending on the customer being served, my correct total was scored out and a swift minor reduction was made with no explanation.
At 14 I knew it all. I sneakily applied lip gloss for the benefit of next door’s butcher’s boy and at 16 I was giving back cheek. I never saw the sadness at the corner of her eyes that came with her knowing that I was no longer all hers.
At the tender ages of 85 and 57, we still talk and laugh about those days and remark how different a shopping experience is now. Sometimes I find myself adopting a similar pose to the boy in the poem, sitting on a chair I have pulled up beside her, listening while she reminisces, her head bent towards my head, her breath in mine.
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