YES, I got the card, the flowers and the tastefully chosen gift on Mother's Day. What a palaver it’s turned into, with all these compulsory constituents considered the measure of one’s love for one’s mother.
There wasn’t such a fuss when it was called Mothering Sunday and not an extravagant secular blow-out, lining the pockets of card-sellers, florists and restaurateurs.
During the more difficult periods of rearing my only child, I often thought it would’ve been nice to be born a bear or a bird, whose young, when weaned and taught the basics of survival, were turned out into the world to fend for themselves.
Alas, the last carefree day a human mother knows is the day her first child is born.
My own mother was a small formidable lady of boundless energy and decided opinions. The eldest of eight with a mother in fragile health, she shouldered responsibility early and got used to wielding authority – valuable practice for rearing five children of her own.
She was a walking contradiction of wisdom and sheer fabrication concerning health, safety, morality, manners and appropriateness.
In a single phrase she could stop you in your tracks, cut you to ribbons or make you laugh till you cried.
She had an aphorism for everything – food, health, dress and decorum.
Many of these were warnings and sanctions, e.g. swallowing chewing-gum made your intestines stick together; eating apple-pips made a tree grow out of your ear.
When dining at home, piling too much on the plate led to “You’re a greedy gorb and less’ll do you.”
Yet, unable or unwilling to finish your dinner brought the tart rejoinder, “You’ll follow the crows for that yet.” Asking for a ‘piece’ drew the response, “Butter or jam? You can’t have two kitchens.”
When eating in company, I was instructed: “Remember to leave a bit on your plate for Mr Manners. Always refuse seconds.
Just say ‘Thank you, I’ve had enough’.” How hard it was with the hostess encouraging me to another iced bun and mother giving me ‘the look’. She wasn’t above downright deception.
Never knowingly having tasted a lentil, I declared I hated them. Once weekly we had what my mother called ‘French potato’ soup and I lapped it up with relish. I didn’t discover the truth till I was nearly 14.
Where health and safety were concerned she pointed out the dire consequences of sitting on cold stone steps (a chill in your kidneys,) setting your back against a radiator (melting the marrow in your bones) and hogging the fire (measling your shins.) Being a pallid child, she always described me as ‘green as a gilgowan or ‘the colour of bad jam’.
Teen years were a battle. Any garment too short, too tight or too revealing elicited the comment: “Not on you what would tighten the handle of a spade.”
I turned my hems up. She let them down again. Adventurous fashion statements affronted her.
“There’ll be more lookin’ at you than’ll give you anything. Don’t have me to call your father to see you in that figary.” I nearly left home over the hot-pants.
To this day I stand in fitting rooms wondering what would my mother think? And yet she wore herself out for me.
I never washed a sock, ironed a shirt, cleaned a house or cooked a dinner till I was 27 and my father died.
She lived just long enough to see Daughter Dear born and called after her, but not long enough ever to hear me broadcast or become a columnist.
I know what she’d have said. “What are you thinking of – telling people all your business?”
It’s perfectly true that you neither understand nor appreciate your own mother until you become one yourself.
It’s also true that, despite your iron resolution not to emulate her in any way, motherhood turns you into her replica and all the things she said (and you swore never to say,) come tumbling unbidden out of your mouth.
Oscar Wilde got it right when he said: “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.”
