My mum and dad have been married 46 years. Photo / Supplied
My mum and dad have been married 46 years. Photo / Supplied
I've loved radio for about as long as I can remember.
Living in Wellington, I used to steal Mum and Dad's transistor radio from the bathroom at night when I was 8, take it to bed and listen to the cigarette-laden tones of broadcasting legend Pam Corkery's talkback show.
It was all so alluring to me how she shut people down at night with the most pointed (and least subtle) of wit, and the bizarre (yet brilliant) rubbish some people who called talked about and how that perfect mix of laugh and cackle of Pam's would jolt me awake when sleep finally took my 8-year-old brain to dreams.
Then I would listen to the late, great Paul Holmes in the morning. Or Lindsay Yeo, Raylene Ramsay and 'Buzz-o-Bumble Bee'.
Which I found out years later wasn't in fact a bee that Lindsay was chatting to and doing the birthday calls with at all. It was Lindsay short circuiting a torch. Genius.
If you don't know who any of these people are, I'm sorry. Google, it's worth it! You are also less likely to know this next one, but you might relate to her more than the rest combined. My mum. Laraine.
All of those memories above are filled with my mother.
She was the one who tried to successfully parent me by telling me not to steal the radio anymore and actually go to sleep.
She was the one making me the breakfast while I listened to Holmes. And she was the one I told, at the age of 4, that I wanted to be on the radio, like Paul Holmes.
Mum is proud of me, I'm proud of me. What more could you want? We all want recognition from our parents/parental figures, right?
Regardless of the disagreements you have with them, the massively different life stages you'll always be at and the fact they drive you round the bloody bend with their fussing and bickering, you want to know they think what you do is great, on at least some level.
And Mum, despite her encouraging me years back to go in to 'journalism, because it's a more, traditional and solid career', does think what I do is great. So I'm lucky.
Me on mum's lap, Dad (Don) & my sis (Katie) on dad's knee. Photo / Supplied
My mum and dad have been married 46 years. Mum was an army wife all over NZ and the globe for 25 of those, she worked at the Parliamentary Council Office in Wellington for 29 years.
She's spent time being the sole 'bread winner' in our household, way before that was remotely normal. She and Dad adopted my sister because they thought they couldn't have kids — not realising they were a month preggo with me at the time — resulting in having two kids eight months apart.
Surprise! She is opinionated and old-school and those two things are equal parts seriously awesome and brain shatteringly annoying to me.
She's had and beaten breast cancer ... Twice. She puts up with the endless amount of jib I give her.
She orders 'a nacho' instead of 'nachos' at a restaurant (*eye roll*).
She's my mum and I love her. She's one of the reasons I have such a love of radio and one of the reasons I strive to be good at and enjoy everything I put my mind to.
She has also maintained with the vehement, keeping-up-appearances fervour (that only an early baby boomer possesses), that if I ever prank her on the radio, print a photo of her she doesn't like, or embarrass the family in anyway on air, that she will take me to court without hesitation and sue me for all I'm worth.
Which at this stage means all she'd be winning is debt.
Hence this beautiful wee family pic of us from over 30 years ago.
