Life was a lot simpler when what we honored was father and mother rather than all major credit cards.

I have been a parent since I was 25. That's a large chunk of my adult life. Mother or father, it transforms you completely.

My mother, who is nearly ninety now, still talks continually about my father. All my life, I've been aware of her grief about his absence and her strong pride in his conduct.

I used to say that my own father was dead, because he might as well have been. He was in Argentina and didn't play a part in my life. He and my mother divorced when I was only two.

Now when I was a teenager, I was angsty as any teenager was, but after 17 years of having a mother who was in and out of my life like a yo-yo and a father who was faceless, I was angry.

As a child, I was an observer, a listener for the stories of grown-ups. I led a quiet, solitary life with my mother, interrupted in the evenings by the arrival of my father who preferred to live in a state of emergency.

My father was an army officer who left the forces when I was six and never really fitted back into civilian life. My mother had five children and a mother with Alzheimer's, who lived with us, so I imagined that she had a lot to do.

I grew up in a bookless house with a father and brother who have spent most of their lives in prison, psychiatric hospitals, or living rough, and a mother who has spent her life slaving and scrimping to pay the bills, living a nervous and troubled life.

My father was a construction worker most of his life. My mother, when she came from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, to the United States, never had a chance to go to college either and became a clerical worker. But they did nothing but build this country.

When my father died, my mother came back from being Mrs. Birkin to being Judy Campbell. She was a stunning actress. She came out of her shell. She was herself again: this very independent, funny, intellectual lady - and was able to perform again, which was her life before meeting my father squashed it out.

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