Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

My mother writes my father a birthday letter while he was still in the hospital for his injury. We get more glimpse into their dynamics and personalities. To read the full version of the letters, check out SWALK (Interactive version).

Letter from Chesser Loan July 1943

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In her early letters, my mother was careful about how she wrote her letters, but now she seems to be competing with my father for unreadability! 

My mother writes: “Happy returns on your birthday.” My father was born 26 July. So it seems this letter was written in July. She also says he’s “twenty-seven tomorrow”. In other words, she wrote the letter on July 25th. My father ‘burnt his hand’ on July 24, but my mother probably hadn’t received news of the accident until a little later.

The letter clears up two things. My mother wasn’t living at Strone or Queen Street at the time of the accident, and my father probably wasn’t picking up furniture at Mardrumho Cottage, Strone (where she had lived sometime before), as she would have probably mentioned this in one of the letters. So, he was probably there on other business.  

She apologizes for not sending a birthday card, but says telegrams are now forbidden. She also adds: “However maybe you will understand now how it feels to have your birthday forgotten.”  

Joking mother

My mother makes a rare joke. To my father who was turning 27, she says “You don’t look a day over thirty.”

The joke perhaps refers to the fact that my father had a receding hairline in his late twenties, although he never became ‘seriously bald’. In this context, I have inherited some of his genes; my hair has been receding for several decades, but is still holding the defences against total obliteration.

Woes of a Mother

My mother mentions that Sandy is walking. He may have started walking around the age of one, that is, the letter was written in July 1943. Interestingly, she mentions she is ‘not so well in the mornings’. Perhaps this is about her second pregnancy? Morning sickness can start as early as four weeks into pregnancy. My brother, Stuart, was born March 15, 1944. This seems to make sense – July 1943 . In other words, Sandy’s walking (one year) coincided with the morning sickness due to her second pregnancy.

All I can say is that I’m glad I wasn’t born a woman! After looking after a demanding baby for one year, who started walking around poking his nose into everything, my mother then felt terrible in the mornings, due to her second pregnancy! And all this without any help from my father who was away playing at ‘war games’!

Other topics

My mother talks about the problem of buying eggs and asks if he has any fruit. She also talks about a ‘man from the corporation’, which may be some sort of mortgage payment.She also mentions that the butcher is selling the hens; these must have been hens they had ‘in the garden.’