Mothering

It was Mother's Day this weekend. Which, per tradition, meant that the first thing my daughter did was stumble to her schoolbag and scrabble around until she found the card she'd made for me. My son, however, is now in secondary school, where Mother's Day Card-making is no longer on the curriculum. Getting up slightly later than his sister, it took him a couple of hours to even realise what day it was, so his gift to me was guilt-tripping-fodder...

Obviously, the kids have gone back to school, though we're still figuring out my son's new bus route. We had the letter explaining his stop and times at Christmas, and I carefully put it away for future referral, so three months later, we have no bloody chance of finding it. I got the info emailed to me from the council, but it's an unmarked stop, school route only, and no other kids get on and off there. My son nearly got run over the first morning when flagging the bus down, and he's yet to get the driver to stop on the way back. Luckily, the next village is less than a mile down the road...

With such stress factors, it's not surprising Mother's Day almost went forgotten. I should note that their Dad would help them get a card, but as US and UK Mother's Days are on different days, he doesn't necessarily know it's coming. I had barely remembered it myself, and when I had, it was worrying about what to do for my own mother.

These days, I don't harbour expectations for Mother's Day. I'm glad I am a Mum, and while it's really touching to get gifts or other sentiment-driven actions, appreciation is meaningless when forced and the kids are really too young to truly understand what I do for them. Nor should they... I'm supposed to be setting them up to lead their own lives, not to be indebted to me. I get plenty of little moments that touch me and make me feel loved throughout the year. They don't make the stress of parenting any easier, but they do make them worth it.

Anyway, being older than my kids, I'm very aware of my obligations towards my own mother. We're not actually used to being on the same landmass for Mother's Day. We therefore had to celebrate, but taking her out for tea wasn't exactly an option. She suggested we bake her a cake, and I hit the internet with the goal of finding a boozy but easy cake recipe. So on Saturday, we had an excursion to Homeleigh Food Hall in the morning and spent the afternoon in the kitchen, first soaking cherries in brandy, then mixing them into a cake. It failed to rise because I didn't pay close enough attention to the recipe, but that didn't matter, because we finished by pouring the brandy over the cake.

Last year, with Mother's Day in lockdown, I ordered a puzzle box by post, thinking to give her some at home entertainment. I had severely underestimated the difficulty of the box, and she gave up, putting it away until we could all be together again. Lockdown isn't quite over, but I'm still a single adult household, so we bubbled up a couple of weeks ago. (I've been worried about bubbling with Mum and Dad due to their vulnerability, but they've both had their first vaccinations now, and there have been no new cases local to us in weeks.)

Long story short, Mum and I spent Mother's Day afternoon eating alcoholic cake and figuring out codes from overly cryptic clues. We only got halfway through the box... we'll have another go at it this weekend, when they come over to help me with the rambling rose that's annexed the back end of the garden and most likely has its sights set on world domination.

It's odd how productive our weekend was, after a hectic, stressful and exhausting return to school. But that's the worst of having nothing to do all day every day... there's no reason to do anything today instead of tomorrow. When we just have a weekend, we have to make the most of it. I'm still a little worried about keeping up with everything when I make my own return to school (probably next week), but so far, we've only benefited from having more structure—or perhaps more variety—in our lives.