Dreams for my Mother

My parents divorced just before my ninth birthday.
I immediately took on the role of Husband Finder for my mother.
There were not many men I felt were suitable. In fact, I stopped the hunt immediately after deciding that my best friend's divorced father was The One.
Of course, this wasn't just decided on a whim - there were positive points as to why I thought he would make a suitable husband.

• He was the manager of a national sweet & chocolate factory. This meant that we would have sweets and chocolates on a regular basis, which was more than the once a month we were getting at home. It wasn't Cadbury's, but it would do.
• A pool. Running through the sprinkler on scorching hot summer days would be replaced by jumping into a wonderfully clean, clear pool.
• He owned a decent car. Not an orange two-door beetle like my mother. His was a normal, beige Audi. It had four doors.

That was about it. More than enough reasons, I felt.

I had it all worked out: My mother would sell the rambling house we lived in and we would all happily move to the northern suburbs to our new house with the pool.

There were other factors that weren't so convenient - that I chose to ignore - like the fact that my mother had never expressed any attraction to the man, that he was a smoker (he gave up later, but that didn't seem to make any difference to my mom), that between the 2 of them there would now be 7 kids living in the house which would mean the house-with-the-pool-in-the-northern-suburbs would not be big enough for all of us.

Of course, none of this came to pass and when I admitted to my mother that every night I prayed for her to find a husband, her response was, "Good heavens, child! Stop that at once!"

So I did.

But, it didn't stop me often fantasising that she would meet some one that was interesting. A reader, a lover of history. I imagined a learned man, caring, with a good sense of humour.

I found him, dear reader, I did!
Okay, he's married and he probably has the entire ladies OAP population after him, but I can still dream...