Mother’s Day 2022: Aussie women share letters of love to children, grandchildren
To mark Mother’s Day, five prominent Australian women have shared moving letters to their grandchildren, in which they impart everything they want them to know about life, love, and their wishes for the future.
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Five prominent women in their own right who have brought up other prominent Australians share their words of love from one generation to another to mark Mother’s Day.
Yvonne Tozzi (mother to Aussie model Cheyenne and Tahyna); Bronwyn Bishop (politician); Ruth Wilson (author); Marie Wilson (mum to The Wiggles star Anthony Field); and Yoshiko Stynes (Yumi Stynes’ mum) give an insight into what Mother’s Day really means.
YVONNE TOZZI
Yvonne Tozzi was 42 when she was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2003. She’s now 19 years in remission, but battling cancer and facing your own mortality changes one forever. The mother to Australian models Cheyenne and Tahyna, and Oma to their children, shares the wisdom learnt on that journey with Dahlia, Echo, Oisin and Tadhg.
To my Klein Kindertjes (little children),
Oh, what a journey you have in store, the rollercoaster of life … it’s gonna get a bit crazy at times and super bumpy.
It’s OK to be scared, but trust that in all it’s going to be magical, and there will be moments of so much joy that you will feel you are the only one in the whole world who knows the intoxicating jubilation of being alive. These are the things I want you to remember and take with you forever in your heart.
Be kind, compassionate, caring and never compromise with love.
Your heart will be broken many times and you will break hearts but that is part of the journey. Love hard and love deep.
Be strong, resourceful and respectful – earn respect. Respect isn’t a given, you have to earn those stripes, so work hard for it.
Do not intentionally hurt others as you don’t know their journey or their story. People everywhere have their own battles so don’t take it personally.
Be the teacher of your ability, your talent, and be generous with your time. For time is just a moment of your life’s journey.
Have fun. Laugh, sing, dance, run, skip and be silly. Remember that birthday cake is meant for eating as well as getting your face smooshed into.
Those clothes are meant to create a character so have fun. Don’t take yourself seriously as life is serious enough.
Do not care what other people think of you. They are only on your life’s journey for a minute and you can push them off your journey at any and every moment.
Make yourself proud because that is the reflection of you every time you look in the mirror.
Create memories of joy and have the insight of making memories for others.
A smile goes a long way.
And know in your hearts that I will be that shadow following you everywhere you go. Watching, loving, dancing, skipping and running with you until you will be writing words of life and laughter to your own children and grandchildren.
I love you with so much appreciation, for all you have given me on my life’s journey.
Thank you.
Love your Oma
X
BRONWYN BISHOP
Bronwyn Bishop was a federal member of parliament for more than 30 years but over all her years in parliament, family has always been instrumental. With two daughters, Angela and Sally, the 79-year-old says granddaughter Amelia is one of her most treasured joys.
Darling Amelia,
You are the most wonderful happening to come into my life. The thought of becoming a grandmother was a bit daunting, but your arrival was a burst of great joy for me, your Mummy and Daddy and all our extended family.
You were a beautiful baby girl who had to undergo surgery when you were only two days old to open a valve in your heart to make it work. This was a tense time, but the successful surgery meant that you could come home in a few days and grow into the gorgeous teenager you are today.
I was so proud of you when you were eight years old. You stood and addressed 600 people telling them about the Grace Centre for Newborn Intensive Care at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead where you had your operation and appealed for generous support for the Centre, which they gave. Mummy still works hard to raise funds for this wonderful centre so other babies can get the help they need.
As you started preschool and then kindergarten at the school where Mummy and Aunty Sal went, in your little red shoes, I started to wonder where your life would head. Your ability in mathematics soon emerged, as did your love of music and drama and later a love of books and reading. One of my favourite books is the one you wrote, Friendship And Magic, a book of 18,000 words.
All of these things make me very proud of you as does your sincere belief that people are intrinsically good. Your heart is generous and your ability to argue for individuality is strong and passionate.
Now you are 14, I can see traits of both Mummy and Daddy reflected in your personality. I know Daddy would have been so proud of you, just as Mummy is. You certainly have inherited your mother’s trait of wanting to help people and I love having you with me as a collector for the Salvos’ Red Shield Appeal.
Your great-grandmother, who was an opera singer, would have been overjoyed to hear your lovely singing voice which has earned you a choir pocket for your blazer.
I grew up learning about the achievements of my ancestors, who are also yours. I hope you will take pleasure in finding out about the contribution your extended family has made. They were an inspiration to me and I hope you will be inspired by them too. Some of their history goes back to the early 14th century.
Through your life there are bound to be challenges just as there have been for me but the love and support of your family will always be there to back you up as it has for me. You have an inner strength which I love and admire which will help you to always believe in yourself and what you can do.
Our country is a wonderful country where you can, as long as you really set your mind to it, achieve anything. Many times people told me what I wanted to achieve was too difficult or impossible but I knew it was possible and kept going.
I love you Amelia. I am a very proud grandmother who will always be here for you.
Much love, Bibi
MARIE FIELD
Marie Field, 88, is a mother-of-seven, with 22 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. She and husband John had always planned to have a big family, and when her youngest Anthony arrived, she had six little ones under five. It was baby Anthony who loved music, and grew up to be the famous Blue Wiggle.
When the kids were young, it was the busiest and happiest time of my life. I loved having the house full of beautiful babies.
All my babies were very responsive to music, and I used to sing a Beatles song to Anthony – She Loves You – and he’d sing the next line back to me, “yeah, yeah, yeah”.
Our house had an enormous veranda where we celebrated all the birthdays, weddings, and family functions. We were a very happy family. John was a wonderful husband and father, and our seven children all adored him, and so did I.
During the holidays the children used to ride their bikes all day. I would ring a school bell to call the children in for meals.
Anthony has always loved dogs and we had quite a few. I banned dogs from entering the house, but each night when I checked the children before I went to bed, I would find a dog with Anthony – both of them fast asleep.
I feel that learning music is just as important as learning to read and write, so all seven children learnt music from the age of five. Four of them learnt piano and three of them, including Anthony, learnt violin. They had a wonderful teacher, Sister Dominic, who taught them – me included, as I had learned piano until the time I was married.
I used to play the organ for mass, the choir, weddings and funerals. Anthony used to sit beside me on the organ stool until he discovered that if he pressed the pedals, he could make a noise as well as me, and he did so with great gusto. He was banished to the care of one of the young nuns and not happy, bit her!
While my sons were at boarding school, they discovered the Rolling Stones. Every time the Stones released a new album, their father would buy it and drive down to the college with it for the boys to enjoy.
Three of my sons, Anthony, Paul and John, started a band called The Cockroaches. John wrote their big hits like She’s the One. We loved seeing them perform on TV shows like Countdown and reading stories about them in magazines.
In 1988, Paul’s daughter Bernadette tragically died from SIDS while the band was touring. Anthony returned to university and completed his degree in Early Childhood Education, and in 1991, Anthony created The Wiggles with Jeff, Greg and Murray.
My husband John had just retired and went on the road with the band for a year to sell their merchandise.
Most of the early Wiggles videos had my grandchildren in them and I loved seeing them grow up in the videos and TV shows.
Anthony asked his brother John to write songs for The Wiggles and he wrote hits like Hot Potato and more than 300 songs.
Anthony produced all of their music and is still the creative drive of the group he created.
He asked his brother Paul to manage The Wiggles, which he did for 24 years and my granddaughter Clare danced around the world with them for many years, while Anthony’s daughter Lucia is dancing ballet with them now.
My granddaughter Sofia looked after their social media and her brother Leonardo is an assistant director, while their cousin Michael performed.
My first grandchild, Luke Field is now the general manager of The Wiggles and his brother Dominic recently stood in for Anthony as the Blue Wiggle when Anthony had Covid.
I’ll be 89 soon and so proud of them all and it all started with the little boy who sang “yeah, yeah, yeah!”
YOSHIKO STYNES
Yoshiko Stynes met her husband David in Tokyo in 1962. Five years later they came to Australia, settling in Swan Hill, Victoria, to start a new life. Today, she is a mother of four, including radio personality Yumi Stynes. Here she shares intimate insight into her own childhood, showing beloved granddaughters, Anouk, 20, Dee Dee, 17, and Mercy, 7, just how different it was to theirs … and why she’ll never forget it.
Dear Anouk, Dee Dee and Mercy,
On Mother’s Day, I think of my mother.
Your great-grandmother Chiyo was one of the first women to graduate from the University of Japan. She studied home economics in the early 1900s.
At the time, it was so rare and unique for women to have such a high degree of education that people expected a lot from her. They assumed she would be brilliant at any kind of cooking, sewing and producing foods. But her degree taught her knowledge and literature, not skill! It wasn’t a trade school, it was literally economics!
Chiyo experienced the World War I as a young girl and World War II as a mother looking after her six children.
My mother was good at cooking with whatever she had. We had little food. I remember we had miso soup with potatoes because that was all she had. We always had to queue to get supplies. The government provided one ticket per family, that we exchanged for a limited amount of food. There was always a shortage of clothes and food because of the war.
I was born two years before WWII ended. My memories are of always being hungry as there wasn’t enough food for my mother to feed six children, though it wasn’t only my family, the whole country was hungry.
I remember Chiyo used to hop on an overcrowded train at least once a week, travelling from Tokyo to a small country town called Nagano where she had grown up and a few cousins of hers lived. You might have heard of Nagano because it is well-known for skiing and good quality rice. As you can imagine, it was cold. Very cold!
It took my mum six or seven hours to reach Nagano to get food from her farmer cousins to feed us starving children. She used to carry the food in a rucksack so that both her hands could be free to hang on to the train, it would be that crowded. Her cousins grew cabbage, potatoes, onions — simple food. They had basics and not much to spare but they would spare some for my mother and all of her kids.
When I think of my mother in her later years, she had a crippled body and was always in pain and I think it was that hard work, walking through the snow with a heavy backpack on her tiny body, wearing poor clothes and shoes. By the age of 60 she was bedridden with agonising pain.
She told us that not a grain of rice was to be wasted, that we should be grateful to the farmers who worked so hard in the rice fields to grow the grain of rice.
My mother was always kind to people. Even though there wasn’t enough food in the house, when she had visitors, she prepared home cooked meals for them. No wonder she always had visitors!
By the way your great-grandfather was a Buddhist priest who lived in a small temple on the outskirts of Tokyo. They were separated but I didn’t really know this and was not aware of my parents’ separation until I was six or seven.
He only connected to Buddha (it seemed to me at the time) and didn’t get involved in family affairs, so I don’t have vivid memories of spending much time with him. When very little I spent one year living with him.
My teenage sister Kyoko cared for me during this time, feeding and nurturing me and on Mother’s Day I still think of her as my second mum.
We literally bathed in a barrel that had a fire under it and drew water from a well.
Poor Kyoko! Just living was hard work. Kyoko died last year but I couldn’t get to Japan for her funeral because of Covid. She reminds me that you don’t have to have had a baby to be like a mother to someone.
In Japan we didn’t celebrate Mother’s Day. The mother had to go out to work to earn money because the father was away. Mother’s Day was about every day survival. We didn’t have money for partying or celebrations.
On Mother’s Day in Australia now I also think about my three daughters who are all mothers.
Your mum, Yumi, was quite rebellious as a teenager, did all sorts of things against her parents’ will. After the completion of schooling, your mother decided to have a few adventures. How terrifying this was for her parents. For instance, can you imagine how terrifying it was to find out that Yumi was hitchhiking solo – BY HERSELF – from Melbourne to Thursday Island!
Or on another occasion, your mother travelled to Thailand, I am not sure what town or village, and she camped in a tent in the bush for several weeks, also alone. (She only told me what she did a few years later.)
However, I believe working on the radio station on Thursday Island and the experiences she went through having those many adventures was a way for a young girl to build up to where she is now.
But I would be very interested to know how your mum would react if you told her that you are planning similar adventures? Ha, ha.
Like my mother, Yumi is a very kind person who always invites me to join you when the family goes on holidays. We are close and I am very grateful that she gives me opportunities to get to know you kids better and to be closer. I know she feels happy when the family members and friends surrounding her are happy.
My granddaughters, I hope you all have a lovely Mother’s Day with a small time in reflection on how much mothers care about their children.
You don’t actually have to celebrate on Mother’s Day. Mothers are mothers every day.
With much love, Yoshiko
RUTH WILSON
Author Ruth Wilson, 89, settled into a cottage in the Southern Highlands and spent time re-reading Jane Austen’s six novels, reflecting on her own life through the words. The result was The Jane Austin Remedy, her recently released memoir and inspirational account of the lessons learnt from Austen. Here, she shares life lessons with granddaughters Jessica and Kate.
My dear Jessica and Katie,
What a blessing it is to have two adult granddaughters. On this Mother’s Day, I am thinking about how you have both inhabited my heart since you were children. You are now women who have made career choices that I find fascinating and commendable: Jessie in the field of international relations, and Kate delving deep, as a psychologist, into human relations. The connection is as strong today as it was then.
Perhaps your choices resonate with me because the concepts of “relations” and “relationships” have puzzled and fascinated me all my life. For nine decades I have been thinking about the significance of relationships, sometimes painfully but often to my own edification. So I am happy that, at an earlier stage of your lives than I did, you are learning that the concept of relationship, in whatever form it takes, is complex and often ambiguous.
And if I may, I would like to share with you something of what I have learned about the nature of relationships: to bequeath my thoughts about relationships as a sort of legacy.
Let me start at the very beginning. Relationships within families can be a blessing, we all know that. At the same time they can present huge emotional challenges to adults.
Despite shifts in beliefs and theories, Freudian views of early family relationships have not lost currency. And the poet, Philip Larkin, nails it when he suggests that mums and dads, even though they don’t mean to (and expressing it more politely than the poet), often do mess up their children’s lives.
It seems to me though that our memories of childhood, often daunting and haunting, can be redeemed. I left it until late in my life, but eventually I re-read my own parents in the light of what I thought I had learned about them, consciously and unconsciously, and about the culture that produced them.
I wish I had done it sooner, replacing introspection and resentment with reflection and, hopefully, empathy. In that way I think I have come to terms with negative emotions and developed a sense of wellbeing about the better parts of the relationship.
Just a tip that might highlight some happy memories and nourish your inner lives at the same time.
Then there are relationships with friends. They are important, even to people like me. I enjoy my own company much of the time, but I still need friends in my life, people I can trust with my affection and my secrets.
I remember how both of you grappled during your childhood and especially your adolescence, with feelings of insecurity and ambivalence about friends. So here is a suggestion gleaned from my own experience. If you want to understand and reassess your own values, it’s not a bad idea to examine the nature of your friendships; even to ask yourselves why you cling to relationships that shake you up.
No one scrutinises friendship more meticulously than novelist, Jane Austen. She exposes the dangers of charm while allowing her readers to see how seductive it is. Good friends don’t just entertain; they add lustre to the nature of a relationship.
Take it from me, even at my age it is not too late to relinquish friendships that bring no joy, and to make new friends who do.
And so to the final item in my legacy to you both on this special Mother’s Day.
I wish I had thought sooner about the significance of our relationship to ideas. Sometimes ideas can be too resilient; the resilience of patriarchy, for example. That’s why I advocate a continuing re-examination of the ideas that you hold dear, encouraging you to re-read them in light of changing circumstances.
That may be the best legacy I can pass on to you: the idea of re-reading yourselves from time to time, just as you might re-read a much-loved book; finding new and different meanings; continuing to grow and flourish, continually renewing your understanding of yourselves and your lives.
With grandmotherly love, Nanna
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