I've had a good Mother's Day, although it has not been prize-winning. It would have been better if I hadn't had to work, most definitely. It was only a six-hour shift, but it was six hours away from my family, and I really didn't want that today!

Everything else has been lovely, however. James made french toast this morning with his own personal recipe which is so delicious; I have a feeling that it is far, far removed from low-fat; and he and

misterviking conspired to make me a rare steak and sauteed mushrooms for dinner; the steak was unbelievably good but the mushrooms weren't as good this week as they were last week, when they were perfect. Aislinn gave me three pretty rings, brightly coloured, and James has bought me a copy of Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea [via computer]; I am looking forward to reading that. I got a nice card from Diana.

And now I feel like my emotions are about to explode so before I explode all over you nice people, let me say Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers and pregnant people [I'm thinking of you, winnowill2 , being a great mum to little not-quite-yet Catherine!], and be kind to your mothers!

 

I feel somehow compelled to answer this, despite the fact that my mum and I hardly ever speak any more, and despite the fact that my memories of my mother are generally not positive ones. But this question has been niggling away at me all day, both at home and at work, so I think I should answer it, even if it's just to get it out of my system. 

When I was growing up, I couldn't understand my mother's obsession with material objects and with cleanliness. She was always cleaning the house, I mean all the time that she was awake and not at work, and she had to have the best of everything. My poor dad was always redecorating, and it was highly unusual that we didn't have either a room in the house being redecorated or the yard being re-landscaped, always by my father, and by my brother as he got older. I didn't get involved because I didn't want to spend any more time around my mum than I had to. And I loathed her focus on clean clean clean and own own own. 

One morning I saw my mother run her hand, lovingly, across a buffet table that my father had just finished making for her. My dad was a real craftsman, and the finish was as smooth as silk. There was such a look of love on my mother's face; I'd never seen that expression on her face before and I didn't understand why she was looking at a piece of furniture that way, even if it was pretty and new. That mental picture of my mum and the buffet table has always stayed in my head. I was old enough - a young teen - to wonder why she was looking at the table that way, and I started asking questions about her upbringing, etc. I found out that my mother had been raised by two alcoholic parents [MY grandparents????], one of whom had a mistress, and the other of whom was abusive, and who kept their house terribly, and where she couldn't bring her friends home - because her home was a rubbish heap and her parents were drunk. Her goal had been to have a home better than that. Bipolar like me [we didn't know that then], she had gone for overstatement and had become obsessive about it, but this was the cause. It explained so much and helped me explain a lot about my mother that I didn't understand.