A bone-handle knife. It has a long, non-serrated, round-tip blade with “Geo. Wostenholme & Sons, Sheffield-England” stamped on one side. Perfect for spreading butter and marmalade on toast. It is the last of a set of 4 knives that my mother carried with her from England in August 1946 when she sailed from Liverpool to Halifax on the HMS Letitia, a hospital ship full of War Brides and children of Canadian servicemen. She also carried me, a 4-month old baby.
When my mother made that ocean voyage to a new life in a new country, she had not seen my father for a year. He had returned to Canada with the RCAF to be demobilised after serving on an RAF Bomber Station for 4 years during WW II. In the intervening year, my mother had lived with her WAAF friend, Peggy, and waited for me to be born before she was granted passage on a ship to reunite with my father.
As a child, I loved to listen to my mother’s stories of that ocean voyage. I sometimes listened in on her conversations over coffee with her women friends, some of whom were also War Brides from England, Scotland, France and Holland. My mother talked about the women sleeping in 3-tiered bunk beds with the babies, including me, in small hammocks slung at the end of the beds. She talked about the seasickness that afflicted many of the women but not her. But, it was the food onboard the ship that was most memorable for my mother. Until the day she died, she remembered the exquisite taste of her first banana in 7 years. She said that it was the white rolls and butter that the women craved so that the ship’s cook ended up baking white rolls for every meal.
My mother and I sometimes talked about the possibility of making a 2nd trans- Atlantic ocean voyage together – when I retired, we said. But, my mother died before we could make the trip. A few years after I retired, I decided to make that ocean voyage, by myself, in memory of my mother and her voyage with me in 1946. It was on the luxurious Queen Mary 2 and it sailed from Southampton to New York City – but it was close enough. I carried with me a small black and white photo of my mother holding me as a newborn, which I placed on the bedside table of my cabin. I also carried the one remaining bone-handle knife.
That knife was one of the things I claimed when my siblings and I dismantled our parents’ home after the death of our father. Whenever I see it lying in my cutlery drawer, I think of my brave mother and the ocean voyage she made, with me, to a new life in a new country. And, it is still perfect for spreading butter and marmalade on toast. (489 words)
