Over burning coals... and a blustery beach (From The Northern Echo)

Over burning coals... and a blustery beach

4:16pm Thursday 10th November 2011 in Dad At Large By Peter Barron

HOW far would you go for your children? Do you love them enough to walk over burning coals for them? Go cold and hungry for them? Give them your last penny?

The truth, of course, is that most parents would do anything for their children. As soon as that baby comes into the world, you know that you’d die for it if you had to.

This is something I’ve been thinking about since an ill-fated trip to Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool, a week or so ago.

I was having a week’s break from work and I asked my mum if she fancied a drive to the seaside with Dylan, a friend’s border collie I get to borrow from time to time.

I think my mum loves Dylan nearly as much as she loves me, even though she’s known me for nearly 50 years and Dylan’s only a year old.

Anyway, it was one of those blustery winter days, with the wind whipping across from an iron-grey North Sea. Dylan was running up and down the dunes with endless energy.

Suddenly, while in mid-conversation with my mum, I realised that he’d disappeared. He normally comes when he’s called but our voices were lost in the wind. Initial concern turned to panic as I ran up and down the dunes, shouting his name.

My heart leapt when I spied a collie running behind a couple of people in the distance. I must have run half a mile to catch them up, only to discover it wasn’t Dylan after all.

I was beginning to have terrible thoughts about how I’d break the news to Dylan’s owners that I’d managed to lose their dog when a wave from my mum signalled that he’d turned up. He’d gone back to the car to look for us while we’d hunted in the opposite direction. Phew!

But that was only the beginning of the drama. After fish and chips in a seafront cafe, I realised that my brand new mobile phone wasn’t in my coat pocket – it must have fallen out while I was running around, looking for Dylan.

We spent an hour scouring the dunes, my mum ringing my phone every five minutes, but it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

The phone was given up as lost and we went home.

But this is how much my mum loves me... The next day, without me knowing, she decided she wasn’t going to give up. She caught a bus from where she lives into Middlesbrough town centre and bought a fold-away walking stick that she thought would be useful for digging in the sand.

She then caught the Hartlepool bus, which took ages via Stockton, Billingham and goodness knows where else, all so she could get back to Seaton Carew to carry on the search for my phone. Her valiant mission ended in vain, but it’s the thought that counts.

“I couldn’t sleep worrying about it – I just wanted to get it back for you,” she told me when she got home that evening, desperately disappointed.

My mum’s just turned 80 but I know she’d would walk over burning coals for me; go cold and hungry for me; give me her last penny. I also know that she’d catch a slow bus to Seaton Carew on a cold winter’s day and dig in the sand for hours in the hope of making me happy.

How lucky am I to have a mum like that?

THE THINGS MUMS SAY

A frustrated mother overheard shouting at a toddler on the streets of Darlington. “Oh, don’t be so dysfunctional.”

THE THINGS KIDS SAY

ERICA Royle tweeted to let me know that six-year-old daughter Emily had been keen to tell her the facts of life.

“Babies come from a special factory,” she announced.