The Imperfectly Perfect Mother’s Day
The idea of a day in which mums do nothing and get treated, that we get pampered by our offspring and spend a genuinely nice time together is great in theory, but in practice?? Hmmm…
Two years ago on Mother’s Day, I got up earlyish, took my youngest son with me to visit my mum, where we had lunch, cooked very ably by my dad. Following this, I travelled over to Knutsford to my best friend’s son’s birthday party. The party mum was noticeably a little stressed – no Mother’s Day pampering for her then. As I arrived back in Northwich to put my feet up, I got a call from my eldest son, a uni student, asking when I was driving over to Chester, as he was working in the restaurant til 8pm, but as it was Mother’s Day he’d like to see me. So, my younger son and I set off to meet him.
I entered the multi-storey car park, got into the parking bay, and reversed right up to the point when there was a loud bang and the rear windscreen exploded. With the absence of the windscreen, I could clearly see the sign that read “Do Not Reverse Park – Overhanging Ledge”. In my defence, a lot of other cars had reversed in too, but they obviously weren’t as distracted and fraught by Mother’s Day as this particular mum and had seen the offending ledge.
As I sat there, partly in shock and partly in anger at my own stupidity, I questioned, as one would in such circumstances, if this was possibly the worst Mothering Sunday ever to have happened to anyone. To add insult to injury, the son we were visiting didn’t finish for another 45 minutes and we were left sitting in a very draughty car waiting for him.
He did eventually show up and after a glance and a rather surprised reaction to the state of the car, the decision was made not to go for a planned celebratory afternoon tea, but to drive him straight back to his halls. On the way, as the rain started to drip into the gaping hole in the back of the car and the rear window brake light swung back and forth, like a disco light, partially covered with a rugby sock I’d found in the boot, I was telling my sons of the day’s disappointments in no uncertain terms.
All the way to the halls, they were listening, a little sheepishly, to my complains, and when we arrived, they persuaded me to come upstairs ‘just for a second’. They then both disappeared inside his room only to emerge a few minutes later with flowers, chocolates and a card.
I felt extremely guilty about the way I’d spoken to them. After all – the older one had just wanted to see his mum on Mother’s Day and the younger was a very keen participant of the heart-worming conspiracy. It was just unfortunate that the day was so long and busy, and felt like nothing but stress.
It made me think, is all this really necessary? The elaborate preparations, present hunting, expensive lunches, brunches, dinners and afternoon teas… After all, shouldn’t we really appreciate our mothers (and others) all the time? Well, of course it’s nice to have a day dedicated to you, but I think my fondest memory of Mother’s Day, didn’t involve any of the above.
It was some time ago – my boys were much younger and I was woken up to breakfast in bed. My sons had made it themselves; a Full English, cereal, orange juice and tea. The egg was hard, the toast chewy, the bacon slightly burnt, the cereal had been prepared first and became a soggy mush by the time of serving, the O.J. was actually sublime and I think by the colour of the milky water that the teabag had jumped back out of the cup for fear of scalding. The whole thing was imperfectly perfect. Unexpected, inexpensive, made with love.
I probably spent the rest of the day doing all the chores that I usually do on Sundays, but that single act became more important and memorable for me than all the flowers or treats in the world would have been.
I suppose whatever your tastes — expensive or not — it’s still the little things that make a Mother’s Day. Enjoy it how you can, but aim for perfection and it starts to feel like Christmas three months on, just lighter. Especially if we have to manage another Mother’s Day like last year, when the clocks went forward — I mean, what was that about?!
