SO, YOU can picture the scene. It's Sunday morning.
The clinking of crockery followed by the thud of footsteps on the stairs heralds my once-a-year treat: breakfast in bed. And here they come now – three sleepy faces, appearing from behind the door carrying a tray, somewhat precariously, between them.
If I'm lucky, they may even have put a flower in a vase to sit alongside the food and their cards.
Awww. It sounds idyllic, doesn't it? Shows you how misleading journalism can be. Because let's rewind for a minute. Firstly, it's only 6am. Secondly, half way up the stairs, they stopped to have a fight over who should go first, during which much of the mug of lukewarm tea got sloshed over the side. Thirdly, 'breakfast' now consists of one tea-sodden bowl of cornflakes and a charcoaled piece of toast, lightly smeared with jam that should probably have been thrown out after they used it last Mother's Day. And lastly, at approximately 6.10am, they will slink out of the room, safe in the knowledge they have done their bit for the year, and return to their normal routine of scrapping over toys and poking each other just for the sake of it.
To be honest, the best Mother's Day present I can imagine would not be a mug bearing the legend The World's No 1 Mum (which would only hang in an accusing manner from a rack in the kitchen reminding me that I was, in fact, not) but a note left on my pillow which read: "We love you so much, we've left home for the day." In other words, to my mind, a really good Mother's Day would involve the absence of any of the trappings that remind me that I am a mother; particularly the kind of trappings that leave me with tea to mop up and breakfast dishes to wash.
I hate to sound churlish, but my gripe with the whole concept of Mother's Day is that it's not actually about mothers at all. It's an exercise in letting children off the hook. It is there to salve their consciences; to allow them to pat themselves on the back because for a few short seconds/minutes/hours (delete according to the age of your child) they have noticed you exist. As if a Hallmark card with a bear on the front in any way compensates for 12 months of dirty clothes strewn over bedroom floors or the hiding of rejected bits of food under carpets.
The message inside may read: "Thanks for all the things you do/ And all the things you say/ This card is here to tell you/ You're loved every single day". But what it actually means is: "Here's a card to keep you sweet. NOW will you wash my football strip?"
Of course, this extends to grown-up sons and daughters too. Except their message is: "We may neglect to call for weeks on end, use you as a babysitting service and then blame you for spoiling our kids, but please accept this box of Roses – picked up at the last minute at the local supermarket – as a token of our gratitude and undying affection."
When I first became a mother, I was given a book of quotations, many of which made me cry (although admittedly I was so hormonal at that time even the sight of a suckling pig reduced me to tears). It took me the best part of a decade to realise that not only was every single one of the quotations palpably untrue, but together they formed part of a global conspiracy to convince us motherhood is a cosy, comforting state and that those who give birth are idolised by their children and held in esteem by society at large. When, in fact, anyone who has done it for any length of time knows it represents a lifetime of servitude and being taken for granted, punctuated by the odd cup of tea.
The sheer scale of the commitment motherhood – and to a slightly lesser extent fatherhood – entails finally dawned on me the day I read the back of a packet of powdered porridge and wondered where I could find the responsible adult it insisted should be present while my baby was being fed – and then realised it was supposed to be me.
But the length of tenure didn't hit home until one recent Saturday when I had sneaked out of the house for half an hour to buy something to wear. In front of me in the queue for the changing rooms was a woman in her fifties – an empty-nester, I thought somewhat resentfully – with an armful of outfits to try on. She had almost reached the cubicle when her mobile phone rang. It was her grown-up daughter. Her bathroom had sprung a leak, what should she do? Phone a plumber? Really? Couldn't her dad just come round?
Her dad was working, apparently. The conversation dragged on. But suffice it to say that, in the end, the woman left her outfits with a shop assistant and ran to her daughter's aid. I repeat: a lifetime of servitude. I say this in a not entirely negative way. There is, after all, a great deal satisfaction to be derived from devoting yourself to other people, just so long as you're not expecting too much in return. That way, madness lies.
And motherhood does have its rewards; its moments of undiluted joy. It's just that they are too ethereal to be rehearsed and scheduled for a particular day or summed up in a greeting card. They are there in the unexpected: a sudden fit of the giggles; a story so exciting their eyes light up and bodies sway with the telling of it; an unexpected flash of maturity or a spontaneous gesture of affection.
These moments cannot be staged, bottled or displayed on the mantelpiece as trophies. Most of them are so intangible they can't even be captured in a photograph or shared with friends. They are fleeting, transient things known only to you. That's what makes them so precious; and it's what makes this whole motherhood business worthwhile.
