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quordleona03 · 4 months

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Not quite a Christmas story

My mother was born in 1935. In 1940, she and her mother went as refugees from WWII to Canada, where my mother spent the next five years in a Catholic boarding school and my grandmother worked in a munitions factory and they saw each other on Sundays. My grandfather was in the navy. After the war, my grandparents had two more children, hated each other, and divorced in 1969 when their youngest child turned 18.

My mother came to Scotland in 1959, taught school for a year, met my father, went back to Canada to get married, and came back to Scotland in 1964. She had three children, and when we were young, she gave us a wonderful childhood with - moments.

At Christmas she would devise each of us a stocking with small presents she had bought through the year, just right as stocking-stuffers, and also always fruit and nuts tucked into the toe. She taught each of us to cook - I have been baking expertly since I was eight years old. She taught each of us to read, and never banned us from reading any of the books that crowded our family home. She gave fantastic birthday parties, and because my birthday falls inside the Christmas holiday season when everybody is partied out, she also used to organise a second party for me elsewhen in the year - at Hallowe'en, or in the summer holidays. She liked to give thoughtful perfect presents but when I made clear my favourite present was a book token and an afternoon in the biggest children's bookshop, that's what she gave me, plus oddments to unwrap so it wasn't just booktoken envelopes to open on the day. She took us to a cottage in the Borders every summer, a 4-room cottage with no electricity, water heated by the fire in the living-room, and we spent golden weeks there.

She got me my first set of adult library cards, two years early, when she realised I had literally run out of books to read in the children's library. She gave me blank lined notebooks for journals, and my first two manual typewriters, and bought me paper and pens. She read aloud to me: The Once And Future King, and Ivanhoe, and The Lord of the Rings.

And then there was a birthday party that was cancelled at the last minute because my mother realised she had left too much undone and couldn't do it: the teacher told the class and told me separately and sent me home early and must have told the children not to tease me about it. There was any number of times I got screamed at for offences I didn't understand at the time (and only sometimes understand now). There was the strange distancing that happened between ten and seventeen, as I became less and less able to fit the mold of the daughter she wanted. I came out to her at seventeen - she was almost the first person I told: and she was horrified, and I lived for the next two years in an atmosphere of unremitting disapproval. The disapproval didn't end when I was 19: I left home.

My mother was homophobic til the day she lost consciousness: she just got better at hiding it over the years. The measure of her love for me is that despite wishing all of her life that I would stop being a lesbian, she never could bring herself to disown me.

My mother dealt with my neurodivergence - I am dysphraxic - by deciding it wasn't real: I spent decades of my life not sure why I was always so clumsy and so kackhanded with anything requiring delicate coordination. She didn't want me dysphraxic any more than she wanted me lesbian.

I found a page in one of her journals, a Christmas fantasy of her family in ten years time: of her oldest child married and with kids, her youngest child married with another kid. I was not in this fantasy: the unsatisfactory daughter.

My mother was a hoarder: it took me months to clear her last home of stuff. I found the teddy bear she'd had since she was five, tucked away in the clutter, and gave it to the undertaker to include in her coffin at the funeral. It seemed to me she should go with one of the things she'd loved and kept in life. My mother hoarded things. She and my father, who died ten months before her, lived in a large flat that was cluttered wall to wall with things - with books, of course, and with food, with clothes she no longer wore, gifts she had never given, inheritances and things picked up in charity shops, the once-useful and the might-be-useful and the someday-useful. And papers. And journals. And spent lottery tickets. She hadn't held down a job since the 1980s, and she had - from her journals - sometimes elaborate fantasies about what she'd do when she won.

We were waiting for the paramedics to take my mother to the hospital after the last bad fall she had, and because it wasn't an emergency they were very late. I made us cocoa and toasted cheese sandwiches in my mother's kitchen, while we were waiting. The last meal I made for her. I can't remember what the first one was, when she first showed me how to cook.

A couple of months later, I invited a couple of volunteers from a soup kitchen/food bank to come over and take what they wanted from the kitchen. I had meant to have it better organised but when they came, they looked at me, and at my mother's kitchen, and one said "You haven't been able to get started on this, have you?" and I said no, and they said "we'll do it". They boxed up everything they could take with them, and sorted the rest into cardboard boxes of what a charity shop would likely take and what should just go to the dump, and somewhere, I hope, some of that hoard of mugs are still in use, being drunk from with hot tea by someone who could really use a cuppa.

My mother died on this day, on 23rd December 2015, and over the years I have dealt with the anniversary of her death in different ways: I've gone on holiday, I've gone swimming, I've gone for a walk, I've gone to see Cats the Movie, I even one year worked a full day at work because Christmas fell on a Sunday and they were offering full hours to anyone who wanted to work the last Friday.

This year, I'm tired and in recovery from COVID. I've made bread, done laundry, done the dishes, had two naps, tried to read a Mira Grant novel, changed the cat litter trays, taken the rubbish out, gone for as long a walk as I could manage, and I'm still sitting here, contemplating my mother's life and death and legacy and wishing for, I don't know what.

My father's life is so much easier: he had a happy childhood, work he loved, a retirement spent writing and walking and caring for his wife. My father's life makes a satisfying story: he wrote some of it down in a memoir for his children.

My mother's life was strange and muddled and broken and full of cluttered things and unfocussed anger and a lot of misery. And yet: I still miss how she would say my name, sudden and joyous, "Oh, it's you!"

#my mother's life #my mother's death #unsatisfactory daughter #loved daughter

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thoughtkick · 2 months

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Your naked body should only belong to those who fall in love with your naked soul.

Charlie Chaplin in a letter to his daughter, Geraldine

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nouverx · 3 months

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Obligatory Alastor and Niffty art because their little moment in the finale was everything to me I can't wait to see them interact more in the next seasons

Also bonus sketch bc I just know he kept the crown on the whole evening

#hazbin hotel #hazbin alastor #alastor #niffty #hazbin art #my art #digital art #autodesk sketchbook #they are such a perfect psychopathic father-daughter duo #HE IS SO FOND OF HER YOUR HONOR #also I'm really proud of my coloring damn I havent been drawing in such a long time I'm glad I havent lost it #I love Alastor so much he is so cutie patootie #hazbin fanart #hazbin hotel fanart

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dasketcherz · 9 months

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it was a pretty cool dlc, i enjoyed it a lot

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perfectfeelings · 5 months

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Your naked body should only belong to those who fall in love with your naked soul.

Charlie Chaplin in a letter to his daughter, Geraldine

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beelittle · 4 months

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It’s christmas and i needed to get something out

So here’s the forger family, in all their slightly disastrous holiday spirit.

#fanart #spy x family #sxf fanart #anya forger #loid forger #yor forger #bond forger #forger family #loid works tirelessly everyday as a top level spy #to save his 6 (secretly 4/5) year old daughter from her own unfortunate decision-making #yor is there for the vibes #and i love her #merry chrysler

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stealingpotatoes · 24 days

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What do Luke, Leia, and more importantly PADMÉ (and the whole gang really) react to Anakin having siblings - and those siblings being literal Dathomiri Force Gods that Anakin also was instrumental in killing

can u imagine if they DIDN'T die tho

(donation doodles! // tip jar)

#i need to draw the mortis gods abt 3000x more i love their designs sm #anakin skywalker #the daughter #the son #leia organa #luke skywalker #padme amidala #mortis #mortis gods #padmé amidala #skywalker family #mortis cousins au #star wars #my doods #thanks for the ask!#mortis arc

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coffeecatcraze · 2 months

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It is not lost on me that Charlie and Vaggie were initially not doing great against Adam and Lute...and then proved Carmilla was so fucking right.

Vaggie is absolutely FUCKED here. She's been in this position before, with Lute looming over her spitting vitriolic judgment, Vaggie's blood on the ground. Back then, she couldn't stop Lute from taking away her wings, her eye, her home, and her purpose. But now? She has more than that; she has love, because she has Charlie.

When Lute threatens Charlie, everything changes. Vaggie fucks her up immediately...and shows "mercy" knowing that being forced to live with part of herself gone (her arm was CRUSHED, no way was she getting it back), the shame of defeat, and the knowledge that someone she's been looking down on so completely is responsible for it all is a fate MUCH worse than death for Lute.

And Charlie? Charlie's insanely powerful but has no clue how to use her power to its full potential because she's never had a reason or desire to fight until now. Even when she's being strangled, when she's pissed-off and vengeful, she can't really tap into that power. But then Adam comes at her dad and is about to catch him off-guard.

He's about to hurt—possibly kill—her dad, who she's finally building a good relationship with; her dad, who just showed up to protect her despite the risk of politically turning this battle from an act of defiance by a willful princess to an act of full-on rebellion by the King of Hell himself. She reacts on instinct to protect her father and stops a hit that destroyed Alastor's shield. And she does it effortlessly.

Carmilla was right. For these ladies, at least, the need to protect someone they love, no matter what kind of love it is, is exactly what rallies them to come at enemies who were just kicking their asses and absolutely dominate.

#hazbin hotel #vaggie #charlie morningstar #chaggie #protective women being protective #the way they each always IMMEDIATELY reacted upon realizing the other was in danger in that battle was just <3 #and lucifer and charlie's father-daughter bond?? love it #also reminds me of when charlie was about to wreck val for his abuse of angel #and when vaggie was ready to try and impale the fucking radio demon to protect charlie #and how charlie forgot anything else existed on the battlefield whenever she saw vaggie in danger

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jesse-is-inarguably-purple · 4 months

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imagine ur garthy o’brien, just trying to fuck this hot ranger you met at your brothel that you own, except her teenage kids/wards/bosses keep knocking on the door to your bedroom and interrupting you guys and THEN you learn that she’s actually in a committed relationship but didn’t tell you, so THAT sucks but THEN one of the teens comes and finds you in the middle of the night yelling about how his friend is gone and they can’t find him and he might be in danger, so you help him teleport to his friend, and then when they all get back, looking extremely upset and dejected, you apologize to the ranger’s daughter for making her feel uncomfortable by fucking her mother and in the process SHE reveals to you that her mom’s boyfriend is actually this really cool werewolf guy that you KNOW and have fucked on multiple occasions

#and THEN first thing in the morning you find the goblin teen paralyzed in the courtyard #anyway im rewatching fhsy in preparation for junior year and WHAT a trip #the way garthy just casually refers to ayda as the librarian of the compass points library #THATS YOUR MOM/DAUGHTER #my HEART #also god i love sandra lynn so much #AND tracker #AND ragh #AND each and every one of the bad kids #missed them <3 <3 <3 #dimension 20 #d20 #fantasy high: sophmore year #fhsy #d20 fhsy #garthy obrien #original

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ratsiclesss · 4 months

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i'm gonna post this on twt so i guess I'll put it here too

#art #artists on tumblr #digital art #fanart #artsits on tumblr #one piece #one piece fanart #idk #dracule mihawk #one piece mihawk #perona #perona one piece #bug eyes #bug eyes creature #oh i love creatures #bug dad and bug daughter

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rqg179 · 1 month

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the way brennan lee mulligan plays single mothers needs to be studied because i have been thinking about the delivery of "maybe we could bump up the priority on de-cursing the old ... my only daughter in the world" for 4 days now

#sandra lynn is so. shes fascinating to me and i love her #the way her voice goes so soft as she says my only daughter in the world ..... she loves her kid so much!!!!!!!#my post #d20 #fantasy high #fhjy #also her framing it as 'for ol mom's sake' trying to get fig to prioritise herself if its framed as for someone else ......#putting them both in a jar and shaking it

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butchostile · 5 months

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professionalidiot32 · 28 days

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aw look she’s learning metronome :D

SHIT

#cogita CANNOT catch a break whenever volo is in a 10 mile radius #my togepi used special rend once and i still lost the battle #pokemon #traditional art #art #pokemon volo #pla volo #volo #pokemon legends arceus #legends arceus #cogita #togepi #i don’t care WHAT you say togepi is volos daughter and he loves her. argue with the wall #i love getting obsessed with a random little guy every month or so

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withdenim · 3 months

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Local man desperately trying to stop the cycle before it gets to his kids (it’s already there)

#with great power comes You Are Still A Child. Be A Child. Do Not Kill This Part Of Yourself Because You Think I Won’t Love You If You Don’t #‘there comes a time when we all must grow up’ and that time has no obligation to come at 15 #ninjago #lego ninjago #my art #lloyd garmadon #dragons rising #ninjago lloyd #ninjago sora #lloyd and sora have so many fuckinf parallels man I’m crazy #they keep doing the same things they keep being like each other #that’s his kind of daughter TO ME

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theapocalypseisonlythebeginning · 17 days

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The Ghoul sewing Lucy's finger onto his hand... right after she gave him the meds he needs to not turn Feral... aka after he's shown kindness, maybe for the first time in decades, a century, more... after he's going through flashbacks of his pre-war life... after we see how sweet his daughter was...

Is it a fucked up way for him to a) remember a moment of kindness and quite literally embody it, and, b) a way for a dad to carry something of his daughter that he's proud of (ie the moment Lucy showed she had what it took to survive)

You cannot tell me Cooper isn't gonna become Lucy's new dad.

#cooper howard #the ghoul #fallout #fallout show #lucy maclean #fallout prime #fallout spoilers #if you ship them please go ahead #but i love the idea of cooper and lucy dad/daughter relationship

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perfectfeelings · 9 months

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Your naked body should only belong to those who fall in love with your naked soul.

Charlie Chaplin in a letter to his daughter, Geraldine

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