Clover Stroud: ‘Mothering is a familiar kind of mess and chaos that I can believe in’

On Mother’s Day, the writer and mum to five children reflects on maternal love in all its absolute, painful, proud, joyous, profound, tedious and tiring glory

Writer Clover Stroud, 46, is a mum of five. Picture by David Levenson/Getty

Clover Stroud

Of all the handmade cards my children bring home from school, I think that their Mother’s Day cards are the ones I will treasure the most.

Their Easter and Christmas cards, decorated with splodgy potato print chicks or wobbly Christmas trees are precious, but it’s the cards they bring home on this special day, covered with multicoloured tissue-paper flowers, or the bright crayon lines of a rainbow, with their spidery writing inside expressing heart-bursting love, which will make me cry. And those strange, very specific tears of motherhood, are unlike the tears I shed for anyone else, since they are made of melancholy as much as joy and pride.