The Cottage

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When someone else’s opinion really mattered to me…..that of my mother

photo: a.a.gallagher 2014

Some years ago, when the world was a happier place my husband who was an Anglican minister at the time, and I decided at our almost retirement stage in life, to test the real estate market regarding our financial capabilities. Retirement was looming and the prospect of being dependent on rented accommodation was unappealing. Insecurity of leasing plus the fact that we would be unable to keep a dog pushed us on towards our seemingly unattainable goal.

Priests don’t get paid huge salaries and so I was working in town away from his Parish to bolster the coffers, only returning home at the weekends. Our plan was to become eligible in the eyes of the bank for a mortgage. Well this was managed at some personal cost and excitedly we bought our little lavender-coloured, weatherboard cottage in a country town closer to the capitol than where we were currently residing.

I exchanged the bedsit for the cottage and proceeded to partially move in. Built in the 1830’s for a shepherd it was extremely small but oozed charm. We were happy with our purchase and started to clear out truck loads of extraneous stuff from previous tenants like grubby old carpets, ghastly make-shift cupboards, and to re-arrange the garden; in other words, make it into the home we wanted.

photo: a.a.gallagher 2014

In a previous life I had jointly owned and lost a pretty colonial house through my first husband’s financial decisions; so after sixteen years as a single mother raising sons  this purchase was super important on many levels.

After upgrades such as installing a new bathroom complete with — wait for it! —an indoor toilet we invited my mother, the snob, to visit.

Her devastating and cutting remark to me as she walked along the verandah to the front door was:

“Dear, I didn’t know you bought a hut!”

So much for bringing joy, appreciation and approbation into a daughter’s life. Her lack of generosity hurt as her opinion had mattered to me at that time. Amazing the effect words from someone close can have on one…

a.a.gallagher

copyright 2019

all rights reserved



writing, opinions, criticisms, relationships, creativity, 

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