AS THIS is the first Mother’s Day that I will spend without either of my children at home, I have taken some precautions against despair. The first was to send a stamped addressed envelope to the younger to ensure she would remember me.
The second measure involved relaying text messages via them to their father to guarantee the receipt of an appropriate and generous gift in their absence.
And I have also encouraged the girls to be together, even though I am far away, so that I might be the focus of their attention — once their shopping trip is over — on this, my special day.
I won’t be celebrating, as such, for I’ll be too busy pining, but I will get by, keeping myself distracted with housework maybe, listening to sad music and looking through old albums of baby photographs.
If this all sounds like a gigantic fuss for an event that could be dismissed as another commercial opportunity, like Valentine’s Day or Father’s Day, it is. But show me the mother who claims to be indifferent to the occasion and I will show you a fibber or a fraud.
Advertisement
After 18 years of mothering, this is a date I look forward to with unrealistic expectations, much more than my birthday (another year older), other people’s birthdays (too expensive) or my wedding anniversary (often forgotten).
From the early “I love you, Mummy” letters and presentations of their second-favourite toys (to be handed back at the end of the day), to the very early wake-up calls accompanied by burnt toast, cold tea and flowers picked from vases, Mothering Sundays have brought affirmation, as if it were needed, that I am the most cherished person in my immediate family.
For a few precious hours, or maybe minutes when they were young, there would be no squabbles and my every wish would be granted, unless it related to tidying up anything.
As the years have whizzed past, there may have been progressively fewer displays of overt affection and the cards may have become less gushing, but I knew they cared, especially since one or both of them has always been around to say so.
Entering the unfamiliar territory of a long-distance Mother’s Day, I’ve found that it helps to live it vicariously. I telephoned my sister, whose eight-year-old daughter had compiled a “How to have a perfect Mother’s Day” schedule on her iPad.
Advertisement
“No 1: make heart-shaped toast and tea. No 2: go out for a Chinese meal. No 3: spend time relaxing as a family together.”
That sounds pretty perfect to me, but, as my sister and I agreed, it’s far removed from our own attempts to spoil our poor mother. We once filled her bedroom with paper flowers, paper baskets and cut-out paper people and, indulgent though she was, it was not really appreciated.
The next year she suggested kindly that what she wanted above all, even more than paper, was a couple of hours’ extra sleep.
Once we’d left home she certainly wouldn’t have expected, or received, a present from our father in place of tokens of daughterly love, which makes me feel sorry for modern husbands and the pressure they are under to mark their wife’s Mother’s Day, as well as their mother’s.
Although I know I must sound demanding, I have never asked for largesse on this day, not the material sort anyway, and would prefer to be forgotten rather than be given something ghastly. Into this category must surely fall something I’ve just heard about called a “hug-a-gram”, whereby a “hugger” is paid to visit the mother at a location of their son or daughter’s choice and deliver a hug in a style that best represents them.
Advertisement
There will come a day, I hope, when my children will be too preoccupied with their own lives, and perhaps their own children, to put me first on Mother’s Day. But by then the ritual card-sending and so on will be deeply ingrained and I will not be overlooked altogether.
I don’t think I ever missed a Mother’s Day when my mum was alive, and now that she’s not, she will definitely be in my thoughts today. But she is more likely to come to mind when I recall things that we did together, when I open books that she gave me or catch the scent of a perfume she wore.
My sister said she felt her presence during The Magic Flute at the Coliseum in London the other night because they had both been to see it years ago. It’s in those many moments shared that mothers are best adored, and that’s how I would like my daughters to remember me when I’m not around to nag them about Mother’s Day.
■ Are old friends the best friends? Gyles Brandreth said he has known Julian Fellowes for more than 60 years, so long in fact that they apparently shared a bath when they were two or three.
Clearly I am not old enough to have known anyone for 60 years, although my sister and I shared baths a very long time ago, before central heating was invented.
Advertisement
With such relationships there is nowhere to hide and no point in reinventing yourself (look at Mr Darcy and Mr Wickham) and, if you’re good friends, almost no effort required. My husband has a pal of nearly 50 years and they ask few questions of each other.
Brandreth didn’t actually say he was friends with Fellowes, but their lengthy acquaintance makes me envious nonetheless. I have lost contact with chums from school and even university, and have only come to regret that as I watch my daughters’ friendships develop. It’s too late for me to start a 60-year acquaintance now, but I hope some of theirs stand the test of time.