Mother Of Mine

Well we can put the rhubarb wine away now as that’s another Mother’s Day over. It’s a day that should be filled with joy and happiness. The most important bit of that sentence, of course is, SHOULD BE, because for me it’s a day when just about everything that can go wrong usually does.

As I leave it too late to book a nice restaurant, and the days of getting away with McDonalds and a free toy seem to have paled for my wife, the whole Mother’s Day thing is a minefield.

First up my own mum told me, as she does every year, that she didn’t want me to waste money on a present, which is very kind but leaves me every year asking “but does she mean it?”. She says that flowers just die and chocolates make her fat, but if I sent her paper roses and a box of Diet Chef meals she just might be offended, no?

This year she excelled herself with a new one. After the usual pleas for no presents to be sent she said, “And I don’t need a card either - I’ve still got the one you sent last year”. So I was then faced with a double whammy of potential minefields. So what to do?

I turned to friends who told me the solution was to send her a poem that I should write myself. I tried constructing a work of art but it all looked like a Christmas cracker insert and I couldn’t get anything to rhyme in a way that my mum would have liked. Poems are easy when they’re about girlfriends as you can always get something romantic to go with their name, but unfortunately I couldn’t get away from rhyming Mum with Bum.

In the end I decided to send something that would remind her of how important and indispensible she has been in my life. I sent her my washing.

Here in my own home we are past the stage of our kids making necklaces from sweeties and painting the word Mum on stones from the garden and calling them paperweights. The kids are a bit more mature now, even if their Dad isn’t, so they bought Mum a teapot and made a card.

I booked a restaurant which was great for atmosphere and food tho’ I could have done without the kid with the hula hoop knocking dishes over and generally confusing the dining table with a Tumble Tots picnic.

I also got the flowers. The last bunch of roses I bought was for our wedding anniversary and they died quicker than the smile on a flying ant in a room full of spiders. So I had to source these ones with all the care and research of Doctor Who looking for a heart surgeon. I’ve noticed, by the way, that the good doctor, the man with two hearts who should be able to give twice the love, gets rid of his companions before they get too close. Saves on poems and dodgy roses.

He’s not daft as it also means he’ll never have a mother in law to worry about, wondering if Mother’s Day falls on the same date on Earth as on Gallifrey or Mars. In fairness mine never says “don’t send me anything” but we still have to make sure she gets a call.

Marriage should come with a warning. Get hitched, have babies by all means. But they don’t tell you when you get married that you’ll end up with three Mothers’ Days to worry about do they?