So today is Mother's Day
I think the reason I don’t care for Mother’s day is that it
boils down a lifelong reciprocal relationship into one day a year. I’m not
bought into the idea that the way you celebrate Mother’s day reflects how well
loved you are, or how much you know about loving.
Me & My Mum |
Mother’s day, is one of those times where we’re all supposed
to feel like we’re part of a club. Where we’re all united by our shared experience
of being mothered, or being a mother.
One of those clubs I couldn’t be in if I tried. But I think
both are a bit of a con. They suggest that mothering or being mothered is a
universal experience, and I simply do not believe that is true. It is true that
I don’t know how it feels to be a mother, but my friends who have children
don’t know how it feels to parent each other’s children either. My experience
of loving my husband is different to their experiences of loving theirs. There
is no equivalency when you talk about love, it’s always different – it’s unique
because it has to be, a reflection of a relationship between two complex
individuals.
My family is a perfect example of that. My mum loves us all
equally – but our relationships with her are as unique as we are.
Actually I take that back – she doesn’t love us all equally.
What a horrible trite phrase. Love is not measured in cups and ounces. I’ll
rephrase – she doesn’t love any of us more- or less than any of the others. She
loves us differently.
The measures of our love are different for myself and my
sisters for the rest of the year, for me it’s about how often I can get mum to
laugh at something she feels she shouldn’t, how often she comforts me by reminding me that time
passes and that when I look back I'll see things differently. I know that my sisters look at
different things, have their own in jokes and special memories. And yet this
one day a year we’re supposed to pick a generic card out of the rack and have
it express everything about our relationship, and it can’t. If even we as
sisters couldn't agree on one perfect card, then it has to be nonsense for
the rest of the world.
We could probably agree that '90's fashions weren't that kind on any of us though.... |
My beautiful unique mum on my wedding day (no idea what my nephew is doing with his nose there) |
My relationship with my mother isn’t generic. And neither is
yours. The universal mother concept sentimentalises a relationship
that is huge, and scary and feral in its immediacy. You may have a great
relationship with your mother, you may have a terrible one – you may never have
met her. The one thing we all share is that we were grown inside a woman’s
body, and that probably our relationship (or lack of) with that woman has
shaped us profoundly. But this day where we reduce those mothers into identikit
cookie cutter benign princesses is insulting to them as unique individual
women. By all means let’s celebrate our relationships with our mothers. Celebrate
it today. But not with generic sentiment, and mass produced mother’s day tat.
Go do the stuff your Mum loves to do with her, make her laugh over the phone,
buy her a spanner if she’d prefer that to a ‘world’s best mum’ mug (who wouldn’t
really), or maybe make your own card – or write her a love letter. I just did.
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