What not to give her
1.The mother-in-law for lunch. Or anybody else for that matter unless the preparation, cooking and cleaning is entirely managed by someone other than her.
2.Flowers. There is something about drying and dying flowers that is too poignant an image of ageing to give to a woman who is most likely past her teens.
3.Breakfast in bed. It’s like reading in the bath: never as good as you think it’s going to be. Breakfast anywhere else is a great idea though with the obvious caveat about scrupulous tidying up. Some people see an image of unsupervised children making pancakes as adorable, others as a one-way trip to a gloop-crusted house and/or the A&E department.Anything that could possibly come under the category of ‘gadget’.
4.Homemade rose petal perfume. It stinks like dank dog, while staining clothes and putrefying with age.
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5.Anything that even hints at female secondary sex characteristics. This would include, for example, the paper pants that I gave my mother one year (aged 8), or an Intima Breast Pillow (‘the cure for chest wrinkles’).
What might be joyfully received this Sunday
1.A day without decisions. What are we doing today? I don’t know, you tell me.
2.The oven cleaned or the fridge defrosted. Yukky, horrible, unsatisfying jobs. Yet extremely satisfying if done by someone else.
3.A spa treatment. Not a voucher for one that she might never get round to using, but a paid-for, fully booked indulgence with all the attendant childcare.
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4.Anne Enright’s Making Babies - the most joyful, funny and clever book about motherhood. And the time to read it.
5.A lie-in is a given, but what about doing the double by offering an afternoon nap too?
6.An i-Pad. Obviously expensive, but then so are diamonds and for a new mother in particular this makes the lonely long nights of baby-feeding so much more tolerable.
7.A big thank-you for all the things that are done every day but never normally noticed.
Christina Hopkinson’s The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs is published in paperback by Hodder.