I have brought up my daughters to share my own mother’s kind of disdain for, or lack of care for, Mother’s Day. When they were little I think I felt differently and that might have something to do with the fact that, when they were little, I (think, at least, I) did probably carry a slightly larger part of the childcare weight. And definitely more of the emotional admin side of it. So, then, I really really wanted that cup of tea in bed and I nice hand-made card created at the behest of a teacher or early years professional! I never really cared about chocolate or flowers or wine or being taken for lunch or dinner or anything like that. I just mostly wanted a damn lie-in, then. (Back when my youngest would wake up at 5 am most days and I would have two hour of entertaining her before her sister surfaced and took the role-play baton from me.) And really, even then, I wanted that more on my birthday, than Mother’s Day.
My mother, funnily enough, got a lot more into Mother’s Day as she, and we, got older. To the point where she wanted and needed a visit and appreciated the times when I bought her lunch on Mother’s Day. When we were kids she didn’t like it at all and felt it was a ridiculous holiday. I don’t recall her rejecting cads (which my sister, who is twelve years younger than me, does recall), but then, as I was mostly home-educated, so I would only have had a tiny window of time to be made to create a card by the teachers (and, actually, I think it was that which she was rejecting, and perhaps would have welcomed something we had created from our own heads and hands much more; not positive though).
These days, I can’t take my mother out for lunch or jump on the bus to Painswick to go sit and have a little chat with her, or even pick up the phone and say ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ and so I have that bit of sadness to contend with on this day. But I miss her far far more on other days – family birthdays, in particular, because we always made a big thing of birthdays – than an arbitrary day like today.
So, what else do I think of Mother’s Day these days? My youngest asked me the other day if I wanted anything for Mother’s Day and I gave a ridiculously unhelpful convoluted answer that tried to explain that I didn’t really mind but that I wouldn’t be hurt or offended to get something, but equally wouldn’t be sad to not get something. Last year, I was on my travels on Mother’s Day and I did appreciate getting a What’s App message from each of them, because we weren’t together, so maybe it will become more important to me once I am an ‘empty nester’.
As my sister said in her Facebook post today, Mother’s Day is complicated and we tend to overthink it. How much simpler it might have been if we had grown up in a more traditional and conforming household where you just knew that Mother’s Day meant you bought a card and a bunch of flowers and made your mum breakfast in bed/took her out to lunch/dinner. And the overthinking is because, even if we have been brought up not to care about or for Mother’s Day, there are a huge number of women out there who have and for whom it is a really really hard day. And others who have and for whom it is a really important day and one that they genuinely love and look forward to and appreciate the celebration of all that they do and have done over the years. So, if and when I write social media or blog (or Substack) posts about all the reasons why am not so into Mother’s Day I risk offending or upsetting them.
So… know this. If you are suffering and grieving today, I am here with you and for you and feel this with you. Whether it’s for the children you have lost or the mother or grandmothers you have lost, or the mother you have never had. There are so many reasons and ways for this day to hurt. Equally, if you are feeling and embracing the joy of this day and relishing the love and praise and gratitude you are receiving from your children, then I am here with you and for you and feel this with you, as well. You all have every right to be in these feelings, whether good, bad, or mixed.
But… I have thought about it and for me I think that the reason I am not so into Mother’s Day (but absolutely want to be celebrated and praised and showered with love on my birthday), and I think possibly why my mother felt a similar way is because I do not see my identity as ‘a mother’. I am me, and I happen to be a mother, that is only one of many elements of who I am. I am a creative person who loves books and reading. I am a feminist, an atheist, a vegetarian. I love to travel. I love to draw. I love to dance to loud music. I love playing board games. I love chatting with my friends and sitting round a table eating and chatting with family. I love walking in the countryside, as long as it’s flat. I am rubbish at regularly exercising. I am rubbish at social chitchat, but will listen to moans and rants and excitement and passion and will provide a shoulder when you need one. I also happen to be a mother. And I happen to be married, which technically means I am a wife, but neither of those two words are me. Who I am is Tasha Goddard.
I am also the equal partner in a two-parent partnership (yes, I know there’s a Father’s Day, too, but it does not have anywhere near the same politics and emotions behind it, somehow), who chose, together, to have children and to bring them up. While I absolutely do and have always done a lot for them, I do that through choice (maybe it is the equal partnership thing that helps particularly) and therefore don’t expect gratitude for it. Whatsmore, I can’t get away from the feeling that Mother’s Day is intended to deepen an further ingrain the societal imbalance that we have mostly managed to get past in our particular family. The one that assumes that women will do all the childcare and all the housework and all the emotional labour and all the other care work – while also, these days, often holding down and excelling at a career. And they don’t get paid to do this. They just get one day of maybe a cup of tea in bed and a bunch of flowers.
So, all of that is why I was incredibly happy to be given a bunch of flowers on Friday by my eldest, who had bought International Women’s Day flowers for all her friends and thought that perhaps ‘Tasha would appreciate some, too’, and why I am not stomping or crying or in any way upset not to have had anything more than a slightly joking ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ from one of them followed by ‘I was talking to Chris – ha ha’. Because International Women’s Day is far far more important to me than Mother’s Day and the fact that my kids know and understand that is, well, all I could actually ask for from Mother’s Day.
I hope you have had/are having the Mother’s Day that you want. (And I also realise that a bunch of you aren’t actually having Mother’s Day today because it’s not the same day in every country.)
Love this❤️🧡💛💚💙💜 , I am not 12 years older than you though 🤣