Mother’s day is an odd time for me now. It’s full of marketing and assumptions like most holidays and as a consequence can be a tough time. That being said I had this great memory pop up.

It was from a particularly tough time for my family in 1984. My dad was in the US and the rest of my nuclear family was living with his parents (long story). I was 13yo and not going to school at the time but picked up the red box edition of Dungeons and Dragons. It was just as I was getting through the Lord of the Rings, a copy that was my dad’s and so obviously had special meaning for me. I was leaning to take solace in my imagination at a time when nothing in the external world made any sense, and was essentially falling apart.

My first game was with my mom, sister, and grandparents. My grandparen
ts played Lancelot and Guinevere (Freud would have written an Opera’s bookclub best seller).

My mother on the other hand played a dwarf. Before making any decision she’d “take a swig from my wine skin” and then get on with the job of kicking the shit out of some orcs (or zombies etc). Comedy and determination while being surrounded by high lunacy; pretty much sums it all up for her.