Did my Mummy love me?

These are my children...and no, they're not like that with each other all the time...they are typical brother and sister.  They scream, they shout, they fight, they play, they love...just like most brothers and sisters.  And while there are days that I wish they would just be capable of sitting next to each other on the same sofa without poking, annoying, tormenting, each other...I know that they each adore and would be lost without the other.

My main fear...if you can call it that...when I had children, was the worry that eventually, when I was gone, if anyone asked them the question in the title of this post, they would have to think about it...unsure of the answer.

Whether this stems from the fact that I lost my own mum when I was very young, and she'd always been the demonstrative one; or because my dad raised us alone and being a single parent to three kids left little time to stop and say those three little words...I don't know.  Is it because I questioned how my own father felt about me, that I wanted to make sure my kids never wondered the same...probably.

The thing is this, I look back now and, yes, my dad came from a generation where you didn't stop and hug your kids constantly.  You didn't end a telephone conversation with "I love you", or stop what you were doing just to shout it across the room...but I realise now, as an adult, that because it wasn't said, doesn't mean it wasn't felt. 

But I still made sure from the moment they were born, that my arms were my children's safe harbour. That the only thing that matters in this big ole world, is the spot on my left shoulder just in the crook of my neck, that their heads made their own and still automatically fall on now.  My son calls it the Ally and Flo spot.  I tell them I love them every day, probably more often than they want to hear it, but then it's reciprocated as they slot it in their daily chatter every now and then...and my arms are always open.

So when I'm long gone..will my kids ever wonder, "Did my mummy love me?"  Not in a million years.