I WILL be at home tomorrow with my mother and grandmother. I can’t believe that I’m in my 40s and still have my grandmother in my life. Growing up, I was a bit of a granny’s girl. I was her shadow and went to her house all the time. Friday evenings usually meant packing a bag, in my case, a basket (I have no idea where the basket came from) and off I would go to granny’s for the weekend.
We were always made feel very special in granny’s. The welcome usually involved food. There was never any shortage of good wholesome food on the go, my favourite being granny’s homemade treacle bread, and she always bought me sweets from the Bread Man – the man who sold bread from the back of his van which pulled up right outside her house.
Yes, I am that old: I remember the mineral man too.
I am the eldest grandchild on mummy’s side of the family, and that definitely brought with it special treatment when I was younger. I loved it.
Granny is a typical 'Irish Mammy' though – the boys in the family are always her favourites, and we know it. It wouldn’t matter what the females of the family achieve – all the boys have to do is breathe and she swoons. We all find it hilarious. Now in her 90s, she hasn’t changed, and she is still very funny. She always has been.
Granny came on holidays with us. If we weren’t at her house, she was at ours. She has definitely been a second mother to me throughout my life. In a way, March is her month in our family, as her birthday was last week, and now we celebrate her again on Mother's Day.
We have so many mother figures in our lives. I have been very lucky to have many teachers in my life who looked after and guided me in many ways. Older, wiser friends and women I have worked with over the years have definitely had a maternal influence on me too.
This year, I have witnessed a couple of close friends become mothers for the first time, and it is a beautiful experience. Tomorrow will be very special for them.
While we celebrate the mammies tomorrow and social media feeds get busy with photos of these brilliant women, many will be missing their mother, or mother figure tomorrow.
Many will lament that they have not yet had and may never have the opportunity to be a mother. Mother's Day will no doubt be a difficult day for couples who have been trying to conceive and for single women who don’t have children but would love them.
I have heard this referred to as a ‘secret grief’. It is not widely understood or accepted because women in their late-30s/early-40s who don’t have children and who are single are too readily labelled as ‘career women’. But this sense of loss is very real.
When all is said and done though, there’s one woman who comes up trumps for me time and time again: that’s Brenda. My mummy is a force of nature. If she wrote a book about her life, it would be a best-seller. She is a self-made business woman, a daughter, wife, mother and grandmother, and she continues to take on these roles to the full.
She is strong, and is a constant rock for all of us. She is kind, but is famous for her tough love too. I have definitely benefited from this over the years. I have found myself in so many situations where I ask myself ‘What would mummy do?’ Eventually, I find the way forward.
I heard a report on RTÉ radio during the week about very toxic relationship between a daughter and mother. It stopped me in my tracks. I have been lucky to have been surrounded by exceptional matriarchal figures during my life. While I do try to remember this every day – there’s nothing wrong with spoiling them some more each Mother's Day.
