If you’re talking bunting (mama’s gone a hunting)

I’m not terribly interested in Wills & Kate.

In fact, I have never been particularly interested in any royal wedding since Charles and Diana got married when I was still a little girl- I think I used up all available nuptially-related monarchist excitement over that one. Once I hit adolescence I was way too anti-establishment, and by my mid twenties Di had died in that awful crash. The lot of them just slipped off the radar for me and I really can’t see the point.

However, back in 1981 it was a different story.

My parents had been divorced for a couple of years by then and I was living with my mother in New Haven, Ct. This was not going very well. I was desperately, keenly homesick for England, homesick for my family-as-it-had-been, wishing desperately for context and comfort, all of which was pretty thin on the ground in my new circumstances. I hated being in America, I loathed being a foreigner and I felt that everything that was important and exciting was happening back in London while I was stuck in this horrid little university town against my will.

Hey! That sounds familiar. Bugger it, what have I DONE to myself?

On top of the usual longing to be back in Blighty, there was now another reason to want to be at home – a ROYAL WEDDING! I couldn’t believe I was missing this! I had fond memories of the street party we’d had for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee just a few years before and I had my mug safely in the cupboard. How could it be that I was not going to be there with my friends, playing in the road, eating too much cake, watching the new princess on the telly in her fairytale dress and generally celebrating my Britishness? Life was SO UNFAIR!
Instead of this, my mother had arranged to go on holiday to Cape Cod for a week with another divorced mother, her three kids and their granny . The only good thing about this is that I was friends with one of the twin daughters (and remain so to this day). The rest of it was going to be utter torture. I hated sand, I hated beaches, I hated the stupid house we were staying in that HAD NO TV,  I hated it not being a proper family holiday and most of all I hated it not being London and near the Royal Wedding. Even more gallingly, one of my American friends had gone to the UK for this week and was going to see what I should rightfully have seen.

I did quite a bit of moping. So did my friend, in a true act of loyalty.

Finally on the wedding day itself, the mothers (who had seemingly been cruelly ignoring our woes) suddenly rallied and announced that they would make sure that we got to see the wedding, no matter what.

But we didn’t have a TV. Nor did any of our neighbours.

This did not deter them.

They drove around trying to find somewhere we could watch it.

My friend’s younger brother suggested going to a motel. The mothers vetoed this on the grounds of not wanting to rent a room at great expense for a whole day just to watch an hour or two of TV. He ventured we might rent a room by the hour. This caused much mirth, including a great deal of superior, forced laughter from we elder girls to show him that we understood why this was inappropriate (we didn’t, but it was fun to torture him).

As the hours ticked by, we got more and more worried, and our options narrowed.

Finally, in desperation, the mothers pulled up outside a fairly rough looking roadside bar and we were instructed to remain in the car while they went inside, grim faced.   I am not sure exactly what transpired, but a few minutes later they emerged triumphant and all four children and granny were escorted into this serious dive of a place and the station was duly changed from sports to the wedding. None of us kids had ever been in a bar before (um, yes, because it was totally illegal) and even in my euphoria, I did note the acute discomfort of the bartender and whiskery, hardened morning-drinking patrons at the sight of three squealing little girls and one very small boy sitting on the edge of their barstools, squinting at a tiny colour TV showing a wedding on the other side of the planet. But they were no match for the determination of our mothers who, while they themselves couldn’t have cared less about Chas n Di, would not see their daughters disappointed.

Later that day my friend and I squabbled over who would get to keep the newspaper cuttings of the wedding, and the magical dress. I won out in the end – my mother having bought the paper, and I kept the cuttings for years and years.   I would come across them from time to time, and what I would remember is the bar on that hot day, the sticky vinyl beneath my bare thighs and the excitement, the nostalgia, the sadness, the sheer weight of emotion that the hour in the bar brought.

But what I hadn’t really thought about until very recently is what the mothers must have thought and felt about it. My mother wasn’t in the best shape of her life, and neither was my friend’s. They probably didn’t think it was the best fun they’d ever had to go on very hot holiday with four complaining kids in a house with no a/c or TV (!!!) , where money was tight and the enforced focus of the week for these recently divorced ladies was to find a way for their kids to watch a fairytale wedding on a set they didn’t have. But they made it happen anyway. They marched right into that bar, told a bunch of hard-drinking men to change the fucking channel, make way, our kids are going to WATCH THAT DAMN WEDDING IF IT KILLS US.

That was some kick-ass mothering.

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