Last Sunday marked the date, which, in the minds of young people, is impossible to see coming. It currently doesn't help the fact that whoever decides when certain days are, keeps changing the date of said day. Wikipedia, the fount of all knowledge, describes the date as being 'most commonly in March, April or May'. That is 3 months, a total of 92 dates that Mother's Day may or may not fall on. Helpful as always, Wikipedia. Now children, those with great organizational skills who will, undoubtedly, go on to do well in life, combat this by being in a state of constant readiness, with card signed and everything; ready for the date they've researched (but definitely NOT on Wikipedia) Well, that's what some children do, but I am certainly not one of 'those' children.
As you can by no doubt imagine by this stage, I completely forgot about Mother's Day this year. I say that like I remember every other year, I don't. I always get the last minute reminder though, usually in the form of a Tesco ad in between episodes of Top Gear were they attempt to panic us onto buying their over-priced cards and whatever brand of horse they have on the shelves that week. This year however the reminder did not come in the form of a last minute Tesco ad, God I wish it had, but alas, this year the Universe had thought of all whole new way to make me look bad.
You see my mother works as a child-minder and I came home last Friday to see a beautiful bouche of flowers sitting on the kitchen table with a card saying "Happy Mother's Day to my second Mother". I couldn't believe it! The card suggested that it was Mother's Day and, if so, I was being shown up by an 18-month-old baby girl. Not good. I'll not lie, the thought did occur to me, I mean it's not like it would take much. A little bit of Tipex to get rid of that 'Second', maybe add on a 'From James', she'd never know and It would definitely bring that 1 and a half year old down a peg or two!
To my credit, I did not go ahead with this plan, it wouldn't have been right. Also because I couldn't find any tipex. This was not shaping out to be a good Mother's Day. Granted this wouldn't be the worst Mother's Day my mother has ever experienced. You see the date of my birth coincidentally fell on Mother's Day nearly 18 years ago now and I can't imagine a worse first Mother's Day gift for me to give my mother than 18 hours of labour and childbirth. Yeah, I set the bar pretty high for bad Mother's Day's. Thank God.
Thankfully, like every year, my Dad came home with cards for me, my brother and sister to quickly scribble our names into, put in a envelope to then immediately walk into the living room, hand to our mother, watch her open them and then walk out to return to whatever we'd normally do on a Sunday afternoon. As you can tell, we're a very emotional family.
One other thing we do though is do something as a 'family' and this year we decide to go to the cinema. We are also a very original family. A problem arose however when my mother chose what movie she wanted us all to see together. You see she wanted to see Oz: The Great and Powerful, a perfect family film filled with nothing but wonder and joy but she forgot that our family includes my Dad, my brother and myself and let's face it, we wanted to go see the new Die Hard. The perfect male film filled with nothing but death and destruction.
But, of course, seeing as it was Mother's Day, we decided that it was only fair that we gave Ma and our sister some money for tickets and sweets and sent them down the yellow brick road while we went off to watch a middle aged man kill random Russian nationals in new extravagant ways. It's nice to treat your Mum, isn't it?