It has been Mother’s Day, and I have had a very nice day indeed.
By a fortuitous chance of fate I looked on Facebook before I opened my Mothers’ Day Card, and thus learned to my interest that Ritalin Boy’s Other Grandma had opened her card in bed, only to discover it had been pre-loaded with glitter. Thus warned, I opened mine over the bin in the kitchen, which turned out to be a very sensible thing to have done. Even so we still had to hoover.
I have already mentioned that I had neglected to send my own mother a card, however I had remembered the flowers bit of the event during an uncharacteristic moment of organisation last week. They arrived promptly despite it being Sunday, somewhat to my satisfaction, and she phoned to be pleased and not a little bit surprised during the morning, so I could be both smug and virtuous despite not having managed to remember the card bit, which was rather nice, and a bit of a novelty if I am honest.
Oliver’s card said ‘Happy happy happy Mothers Day love from O. Ibbetson’, which was sweet, and a brilliantly coloured picture which eventually we worked out was the garden, which was obvious once we knew what it was, what we had initially thought might be a red waterfall was of course a brick path. Then Facebook had some very nice messages on it from Number One Daughter, with a lovely picture of Ritalin Boy, and Number Two Daughter, and my friend Elspeth, and Ritalin Boy’s Other Grandma, and even Number Two Daughter’s friend Laura, who has become Number Two And A Half Daughter over the years. All in all by the time I got dressed I was feeling very maternal and happy and at peace with the world, which is a splendid start to any Sunday.
It was quite easy to feel tranquilly maternal, because of course none of them were here, which helps very much. Even Oliver, who is home for his exeat, had buzzed off to renew his acquaintance and stay the night with his best friend Harry across the road. Harry is a splendid fellow with a runny nose and three brothers, and I would have thought Oliver had had enough of being with crowds of noisy boys: but apparently not because Harry’s mum took them all off to go swimming after that and Oliver was absent until teatime.
Since we were still boy-less we were at a bit of an unexpected loose end, so we went off to Kendal once we were dressed, to do some shopping and visit Mark’s Dad. We couldn’t do much for his mother to celebrate Mothers’ Day, because with extraordinary common sense she has bought a motorhome and pushed off to spend the winter somewhere loafing about in the south of Spain, and has not felt it necessary to share her address, which seems to me to be a splendid idea: but his Dad is here although unfortunately in a nursing home, so we went to visit, which was sad as these things always are, but made his Dad smile. When we came out we had the usual conversation that you have on leaving these places, about ways in which you can avoid being in one yourself. This one is a nice one, and the staff are friendly if overworked and talk to him as if he was seventy five years younger than he actually is, but nevertheless I don’t fancy it at all and think I would far rather be a nuisance and a burden on my children when I get old and smelly, so if they are reading this – and in an emergency of course there is Number Two And A Half Daughter as well so my options are still wide open – so, all senders of cheery Mother’s Day greetings: be warned.
We came back home and ate solidly for ages, because we had run out of everything and have been living on peanuts for a day or so, and so coming back from Asda with sausages and hot cross buns was wonderful, and we sat around feeling sated and full for a bit and then did some garden things, Mark to his never-ending shed project and me to my seed planting, which is my exciting thing of the moment.
I will no doubt write much more about that in the days to come, because it is filling my thoughts very much at the moment.
I bet you just can’t wait.
