...on the art of mothering

SHE HAS A dressing on her forehead. When I see it, I think I probably shouldn’t have recommended cosmetic surgery for that blemish. It seems a teeny bit of a misdiagnosis seeing as the specialist recommended a biopsy. I always hated that word.

Of course I am all concerned and then I go and forget on which day she is getting the procedure. She is chirpy when I eventually call. It hurt a bit getting it done but it was good to get the brown mark checked out we agree. We are both glass-half-full people. It will be nothing. The results are due in a couple of weeks. She is not worried.

Who’s she? The cat’s mother? No. Mine, actually. The dressing reminds me how I dislike seeing any vulnerability in her. I am more comfortable observing and admiring her great strengths. She doesn’t survive, she lives. She doesn’t moan, she celebrates. She doesn’t take, she gives.

I am in awe of her parental generosity. There are moments, and this is only after a measly two years of motherhood, when I sometimes feel I have nothing left to give. So how did she do it? Eight children. An unreliable if extremely loveable husband, then a sick husband and then a dead husband. She says the older ones helped as soon as they were able. She says you just get on with it. She says it was her great pleasure and privilege. She says that’s just what parents do.

I’m nearly 40. Sometimes I worry about how dependent on her I remain. She has the toughest, most absorbent shoulders for crying on, the Andrex of shoulders. I am nearly 40. I still cannot hide anything from her. Still expect correct answers to impossible questions. Talking to her still makes bad stuff seem that little less awful. It’s mother-daughter alchemy, a potion I’d like to bottle so I can dust it down from the shelf when she is gone. I don’t like to look at the dressing, not because I think something sinister is lurking there – I know there isn’t – but because it reminds me that one day she will go. We all have to.

I don’t do enough to show my love. Most of the time she gives, most of the time I take. About two years ago, when she turned 70, we pulled out all the stops. Booked a horse and carriage. Filled it with grandchildren. Picked her up outside her flat – surprise! – to take her on a magical mystery tour. We clip-clopped along to Holles Street, where we were all born and where my brother and his wife now stood with a huge home-made banner reading “Nine Months You Carried Us – Thanks Mum!”. Then we clip-clopped across Merrion Square, down the canal, where she discovered a friend sitting on Patrick Kavanagh’s bench with his guitar. As she sat in the carriage, open mouthed, he sang the sweetest rendition of Raglan Road. Some American tourists stood and stared. This? This sort of thing happens in Dublin all the time, we intimated as we clip-clopped on.

We stopped again to sing a bit of Percy French, then it was a few times around the roundabout in Grosvenor Square where one of her grandchildren sat playing the uilleann pipes. Then on to my sister’s house where we had bunting strung across the road and balloons and Champagne. It wasn’t part of the plan, but then the carriage driver, who said he’d never experienced anything like it in his decades on the job, produced a huge bunch of white roses for her. The day, a great day for a great person, had only just begun.

Oh, listen, she is not perfect, she who I grew up thinking was perfect. There are blind spots. It turns out that when you scratch the surface of even the best mothers in the world, underneath there is just another flawed human being. But even in that there is a lesson. No matter how hard I try to hide my true self from my own children, eventually they will uncover my dodgy bits.

It is better to be myself, give them access to all the areas, an imperfect present. Mummy makes mistakes. Mammy doesn't know everything. Mama isn't perfect. It scares me how amazing they think I am. Sometimes when I am hungover, with bleary mascara eyes and egg yolk encrusted pyjamas, they look at me, stroke my unwashed hair and say: "Mammy. Is. So. Pretty." When one twin is getting a hug and the other one approaches, the one being hugged clings ever tighter to my chest. "That's my Mummy, get your own Mummy," she says. I love my domestic rock-star status all the more because I know it is so fleeting. Time will fly and soon, if they've inherited the best of my dodgiest bits, they will be slamming doors and telling me they didn't ask to be born. Ad nauseam.

Anyway, She. My mother. Who is a masterclass in mothering. Who doesn’t believe in Mother’s Day. Thank you.

In other news . . .

If you haven’t yet seen Vincent Browne interview Jedward, go directly to your computer, do not collect your cynicism, do not pass OMG. Possibly Browne’s finest hour