My mum loved being a mother. I must have heard the story a thousand times about the day I was born and she wanted no one, not even Dad, to be around her. She just wanted to be alone and enjoy this extraordinary new bond she would cherish until the day she died six years ago.
It’s something I’ll never feel. It’s something I’ve never had the urge to feel. And so, on Mother’s Day (or Mothering Sunday, as it’s officially called in the UK, as Mum was wont to remind me every year), I could not be happier that I have no children.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been receiving e-mails from Interflora and Sainsbury’s, among others, giving me the chance to opt out of receiving Mother’s Day related missives. While they are aimed more at people grieving for the mothers they no longer have, I’ve also noticed that there is a reticence in discussing anything to do with the day around those of us who are childless – the assumption being that if you have no children to lavish you with love, it’s going to be a miserable day in which you are bound to feel left out and not part of the breeding gang.
That’s not the case for me. Yes, I will miss my own mum and feel great sadness that she is no longer here (I spent most Mother’s Days with her throughout her life), but I’ll relish my Sunday roast, sitting alone, as other people’s brats run riot in the restaurant, or older children sit glued to their iPhones, wishing they could be anywhere else.
I was never a brat, of course. In fact, I have very happy memories of Mother’s Days from my childhood. On the Saturday, my brother and I would go to town with Dad, pick up a hydrangea pot (no idea why, but it was always a hydrangea) and choose a present. I remember only one: a beautiful smoked grey vase that I chose and subsequently broke my heart when it smashed years later.
The excitement of handing over the presents on Mother’s Day was not unlike Christmas morning, and never a year went past when I didn’t seek out a special card for Mum, telling her (despite our many disagreements and tensions) how much she was loved.
It bothers me not one iota that I will never experience any of that. While I know the immense joy that children bring to many people, mothers and fathers alike, I am all too aware of the realities that often underlie yet another superficially joyous day in our calendar.
I was reminded of this watching the Mother’s Day episode of the brilliant Motherland. Hilarious and painful at the same time, it was a moving portrayal of the enormous expectation and ultimate letdown the occasion brings.
The character of Amanda, the subject of the equally wonderful follow-up Amandaland, played by Lucy Punch, is deeply unpleasant, but in this episode featuring her mother Felicity (the always sublime Joanna Lumley), it’s easy to see why. She’s an egotistical attention seeker because, deep down, all she craves is love.
Clearly desperate to elicit any display of affection from her mother, Amanda goes all out to make Mother’s Day extra special, only to be thwarted at every turn by the overwhelmingly insensitive, unlikeable Felicity. Amanda’s hurt at hitting a brick wall with her every move will make you weep.
Mother daughter relationships are notoriously fraught. My relationship with my own mother had its problems, as she was a loving but controlling person with a quick temper. It always dissipated quite quickly but left me with a fear of confrontation that lives with me to this day. I am so glad I will never experience that with a daughter of my own.
I am very close to many of my friends’ children and am impressed by their intelligence, curiosity and all-round incredible personalities as they make their way in an increasingly difficult world. They’ve seen me as the fun-loving, easy-going, wild auntie figure who enjoys the kind of freedom and lifestyle to which they aspire. When some of them were younger, they wished I were their mother. I used to point out that they really wouldn’t want that, because that fabulous auntie figure, in motherhood, would turn into a monster who would keep them chained to a radiator until they reached their 18th birthdays.
It’s that fear of what horrors lurk on the outside world that would have made me an all too controlling mother. I am also fiercely ambitious and would have been insisting they start applying for law school at the age of seven. As a very competitive person myself, I’m sure I would have sulked had they come home with second prize in the egg and spoon race on school sports day (I don’t care if you are five, love; a loss is a loss).
My writing is, and has always been, my life; I have known from the second I first held a pen that it was what I am here to do. There were men with whom I discussed having children along the way, but never did I consider having one outside of a relationship. I have no objections morally; I just never had the urge to procreate.
Yes, there were times when I wondered if I was missing out – most significantly when most of my single friends started to have children and dropped off my social radar. Some of them never returned, and as I’ve witnessed the constraints placed on their increasingly diluted lives, year on year (especially women, who bear the brunt of the child-rearing stress), I am increasingly grateful that my life didn’t turn out that way.
So, as you all head out today en famille, this Mother’s Day, please feel no pity for the barren spinster in the corner stuffing her face with Yorkshire pudding.
I really wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
