132,585
edits
Changes
From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to searchBarbara J Zitwer talks to Bookbag about meeting the ladies at the Hampstead Heath Ladies Pond on the day her mother died (view source)
Revision as of 16:02, 29 August 2020
, 16:02, 29 August 2020no edit summary
My decision to keep going, to allow her burial to take place as I believe she would want, led me to discover the Ladies Pond in Hampstead Heath. On that beautiful and sad October afternoon, I gazed at the serene outdoor pond that is surrounded by foliage which keeps it a secret to anyone who isn’t specifically looking, I met a group of elderly ladies who were swimming in the freezing water. They invited me to join them. I had never met any of them before but they looked so familiar, they were like silver haired angels. May Allen and Wynn Cornwell had been swimming at the ladies pond for over fifty years together. They were laughing, giggling, splashing and happy. They seemed ageless and hearty, full of energy and youth. Who were these old women who had never grown up?
They seemed more like characters out of Peter Pan than octogenarians who were worried about agingageing. I borrowed a bathing costume and dove into the water to join in and it hit me - these women here in England were so much like my mother it was as if they were cut from the same cloth. As I walked away from my first swim at the Ladies Pond, I smiled and shook my head looking up to the sun in the cloudy sky, I felt my mother was with me that day - ''You've given me a story Mum, and now I'm going to have to write it''.
{{commentfeature}}
[[Category:Barbara J Zitwer]]
