Joe Zammit Ciantar lovingly remembers his late mother and his childhood years in Gozo on Mother’s Day.
When we were still at home, my siblings and I used to call her ‘ma’, and among ourselves and cousins, we always referred to her as ‘il-mamma’ … mother.
Carmela was born on January 31, 1922 – feast of St John Bosco – and grew up in Sannat, a devotee of St Margaret, the patron saint of the village. At school she must have shown very good qualities because the ‘authorities’ used to ask her to teach what she would have learnt to a group of her school mates. And she used to love talking about it.