In Australia we celebrate Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May. Growing up in the UK, we celebrated Mother’s Day, or Mothering Sunday, on the fourth Sunday in Lent, just before Easter.
Who cares what the date is……thank God we’ve got one! Our one day of the year when we can sit back and say without guilt to our offspring, “What’s for tea?” Isn’t that the number one phrase that is guaranteed to drive even the most patient mother to drink?
Many children take the opportunity of making their mother breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day, which can be a joy or a nightmare, depending on whether breakfast in bed is your thing or not. It’s not mine. It reminds me of a little ditty:
‘They woke her up early that day
With a half-cooked boiled egg on a tray
She cried tears of delight
Though it wasn’t yet light
The dawn was two hours away……’
I remember the first year my brother and I were allowed to buy our own Mother’s Day gifts without any guidance from our father as to what might be appropriate. We hot footed it round to the village shop, and bought what we presumed was the perfect gift for any mother. A packet of Brillo Pads and a dishing washing sponge on a stick. Needless to say there were no tears of delight on that occasion either.
I’ve kept all the gifts and cards my children made for me when they were at primary school. The champagne corks on a string transformed into birds with stick-on beaks, eyes and feathers; the set of pipe cleaner rings made by my then four year old son; the little hand prints and poems; but by far the most hilarious would have to be the computer generated card from Tiffany, when aged eight. A rose adorns the outside and the inscription within is a classic:
‘Dear Mum,
You are like a rose. You bloom every now and again….’
Ouch! But you must take into consideration that this card was for a mother who didn’t let you watch ‘Home and Away’ or have roll-ups in your lunch box.
Mothers are carers, but some are seemingly more caring than others. Am I a mother who dropped everything immediately at the sound and sight of my screaming child clutching a mildly scraped knee? No. It had to be loss of limb or arterial bleeding before my sympathies and attention could be attracted. A decent sort of injury was required in this household. We bred ‘em tough out in the bush.
Why this callous attitude, I hear you ask? Well, it’s a generational thing isn’t it? My grandmother dislocated my mother’s arm whilst trying to stuff her into a winter coat, and shouting “Stop screaming, Jane and just put the dratted coat on…”
My own mother sent me to school with a bunch of grapes and a very nasty looking arm saying “Stop fussing, Victoria. The swelling will soon go down.” When it hadn’t after three days an X-ray revealed a green stick fracture.
When my son broke his leg after falling off his motorbike; exactly a year after his sister, imbibed with champagne, had broken her leg falling off a pair of high heeled shoes at a party; exactly three years after she had broken her collar bone falling from the top bunk bed onto my son; wasn’t I entitled to scream to the heavens:
“Why do you kids always need doctors, X-rays, surgeons and hospitalisation on the January long weekend when everybody is out of town for God’s sake?”
I can’t help wondering how my children will bring up and fuss over their little dears.
Maybe they’ll be like the mother of three notoriously unruly youngsters who, when asked whether she would have children if she had the choice to do it again, replied “Yes……but not the same ones”.
Who cares what the date is……thank God we’ve got one! Our one day of the year when we can sit back and say without guilt to our offspring, “What’s for tea?” Isn’t that the number one phrase that is guaranteed to drive even the most patient mother to drink?
Many children take the opportunity of making their mother breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day, which can be a joy or a nightmare, depending on whether breakfast in bed is your thing or not. It’s not mine. It reminds me of a little ditty:
‘They woke her up early that day
With a half-cooked boiled egg on a tray
She cried tears of delight
Though it wasn’t yet light
The dawn was two hours away……’
I remember the first year my brother and I were allowed to buy our own Mother’s Day gifts without any guidance from our father as to what might be appropriate. We hot footed it round to the village shop, and bought what we presumed was the perfect gift for any mother. A packet of Brillo Pads and a dishing washing sponge on a stick. Needless to say there were no tears of delight on that occasion either.
I’ve kept all the gifts and cards my children made for me when they were at primary school. The champagne corks on a string transformed into birds with stick-on beaks, eyes and feathers; the set of pipe cleaner rings made by my then four year old son; the little hand prints and poems; but by far the most hilarious would have to be the computer generated card from Tiffany, when aged eight. A rose adorns the outside and the inscription within is a classic:
‘Dear Mum,
You are like a rose. You bloom every now and again….’
Ouch! But you must take into consideration that this card was for a mother who didn’t let you watch ‘Home and Away’ or have roll-ups in your lunch box.
Mothers are carers, but some are seemingly more caring than others. Am I a mother who dropped everything immediately at the sound and sight of my screaming child clutching a mildly scraped knee? No. It had to be loss of limb or arterial bleeding before my sympathies and attention could be attracted. A decent sort of injury was required in this household. We bred ‘em tough out in the bush.
Why this callous attitude, I hear you ask? Well, it’s a generational thing isn’t it? My grandmother dislocated my mother’s arm whilst trying to stuff her into a winter coat, and shouting “Stop screaming, Jane and just put the dratted coat on…”
My own mother sent me to school with a bunch of grapes and a very nasty looking arm saying “Stop fussing, Victoria. The swelling will soon go down.” When it hadn’t after three days an X-ray revealed a green stick fracture.
When my son broke his leg after falling off his motorbike; exactly a year after his sister, imbibed with champagne, had broken her leg falling off a pair of high heeled shoes at a party; exactly three years after she had broken her collar bone falling from the top bunk bed onto my son; wasn’t I entitled to scream to the heavens:
“Why do you kids always need doctors, X-rays, surgeons and hospitalisation on the January long weekend when everybody is out of town for God’s sake?”
I can’t help wondering how my children will bring up and fuss over their little dears.
Maybe they’ll be like the mother of three notoriously unruly youngsters who, when asked whether she would have children if she had the choice to do it again, replied “Yes……but not the same ones”.
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