Friday 25 October 2024
“Half term already?” laughs one of my friends.
Already? Coping with new jobs and being very much out of my comfort zone, I can assure you that the last eight weeks have felt like eight months! What I need right now, to recharge these batteries is ..something familiar! And nothing can be a better familiar than family. So roll on a city-break reunion with my squad as we all descend upon Small boy, the newest university child, for a long weekend.
Some of us drive down and one of us flies in but by Friday evening we are all together, catching-up over some fine food and wine in a riverside eatery. And it feels great to be a four again.
Saturday, after a lazy morning and a lovely hotel breakfast, we shop a little and chat a lot. As night falls and this liveliest of cities ramps up for Halloween celebrations, we head to ‘Urban Tandoor’. Top-rated on Trust Pilot, this restaurant, is rammed and bursting with life. The Indian food is delicious and the atmosphere unbelievable – on at least two occasions, the diners all break into communal song – including us … and we love it!
On a crisp, sunny Sunday, a proud Small boy takes us on a tour of the University itself. The science buildings are beautiful, set in leafy parks and greenery and my son points out places where he sits for lunch, takes a class or attends labs. He clearly loves it!
It is also here that we come upon the bronze life-sized statue of Henrietta Lacks. Hailed as the ‘mother of modern medicine’, Lacks was a young black woman and mother who died in 1951 of an unusually aggressive form of cervical cancer. While her disease was a tragedy for her family, for the world of medical research – and beyond that, every one of us on the planet – it was something of a miracle.
Because, in the years since her death, Lacks’s cells – taken from her tumour while she was undergoing surgery – have been responsible for some of the most important medical advances of all time. The polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping and IVF: all these health milestones, and many more, owe everything to the life, and death, of a young mother. Henrietta’s cells however were taken without her or her family’s knowledge or consent and as a result her name is also synonymous with ethical issues, eloquently expressed in the statue’s inscription
More than a cell.
To all the unrecognised Black Women who have contributed to humanity, you will never be forgotten.
It is very inspirational. To remember that we are all actually, ‘more than a cell’ and have a contribution to make, whether this be like Small boy dreaming of a Nobel Prize or me, now old and wise enough to recognise that it is these very family bonds and deep relationships which anchor us to humanity and ensure that we are ever-remembered.
So as night falls and I hit the road back North, I definitely feel re-balanced and back in kilter. A new job, a new car, a new music gig these are all just transient superficial changes. The important stuff, your core values and closest ties…they rarely falter and will always be there to steady you at the rockiest of times …
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Smashing Single Parenthood 