Mothers' Day!

Mothers' Day!

Depending upon your point of view, either a great celebration and an opportunity for children to show their appreciation of what their mother does for them 365 days of every year, or a commercially driven, opportunistic waste of money.

Flowers triple in price, chocolates are pushed at you from every store and supermarket and unsuitable and probably disgusting smelling toiletries are disguised in nauseating packaging marketed as "Just what Mum needs".

I think it's all bunkum, and I refuse to allow my own children to spend their money on something which is so transparently commercial and unnecessary. If they insist, a small bunch of flowers is all I will accept and then we all make time to sit down and eat together. I would much rather have consideration and thought throughout the year instead of spending the family's money on things which I don't need and will probably never use or eat.

This probably stems, of course, from my rubbish relationship with my own mother. We were never close - I was much closer to my Dad - and that distance grew as I got older and made my way through life in a way of which she never approved. We approached life totally differently, and had completely different interests. When I split up with my first husband, she couldn't cope with it or understand at all, and didn't make the effort to try. She never rang me for 18 months, not once, to find out how I was or how I was coping. When I saw her during that period to pick up children or whatever, she barely spoke to me. And I think it was that above all else which rang the death knell for our relationship and for which I never forgave her, even to this day several years after her death.

So I have a slightly jaundiced view of motherhood and what I have outlined above is something that I have vowed I will never repeat with my own daughters. They know that I will always tell them what I think and I will not always approve of what they do, but I will always be there for them. In all their difficulties over the past few years, I hope I have demonstrated that. But I still don't want them to waste their time and money on some stupid American celebration of motherhood which is as insincere and hollow as Simon Cowell!

We will see each other today and have a nice dinner (cooked, I think, by The Hubby for a change [he is very capable, just usually makes out he isn't]) but that's all it will be. I will make sure my grand-daughter has a card to give her mum and maybe a small bunch of flowers, but that's all. And we will enjoy it just as much as if we'd made a big thing of it or bought a massive bouquet or expensive box of Thorntons which no one would eat because they are on a diet.

It's a shame that not everyone thinks in this way - we'd all save a lot of cash and form much more lasting relationships with our family if we treated them with kindness and consideration the whole year instead of focusing it all on one day. But I appreciate I can't change the world, and so I will just deal with it in my own way and do what I want to do quietly, with no fuss and without imposing my approach on others. Hopefully they will appreciate that, and do the same.