I laughed out loud at The Observers Emma Beddington recollection of her  Mothers Day experiences- (Observer,https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/mar/27/mapping-out-my-life-in-mothers-days-emma-beddington )- moments she recalls and those she would rather forget. It’s an article which many will relate to and with and when you have travelled the full stretch of child rearing , like Emma , you look back and find that its the weird memories that make you smile.

Like many Mums, my memories of the years running up to the teens were filled with hand made presents; some created at home others at the childminder’s or at school. The kind of gifts that make you smile even if you if you don’t know what you are looking at.

The small clay pots, the little boxes filled with chocolates, the glitter covered portraits, the ‘interesting’ cardboard animals with my name written on them. (Yes, I was once portrayed as a cute kitten and a not so cute tortoise).

I think when I look at  them; I am reminded of something of them, their capability, their personality .

Of course one of the many consequences of having more than one child is that sometimes there is fierce competition to get the best gift, which is quickly replaced in teen years with reminding each other that Mothers Day even exists.

Anyway for me , the early competition quickly faded into a phase of collaborative gift giving and as the teen years settled in, more standard presents arrived – a box of chocolates, perfume, a stuffed monkey (!), a wind up monkey on a surfboard bath toy (there’s a theme here) until the years arrived when they appreciated the things I really liked and I received books and LPs.

In the last couple if years though there has been a return to the creative years and alongside the book or monkey on a surfboard (brilliant) I have received a little something more.

And this year I waited for it.

Sitting at the dinner table, eating a meal cooked by eldest and middlest, we chatted , smallest becoming increasingly itchy to get ‘on with it’. I admit, I feel slightly excited at his revelation, what could it be? perhaps a message from Pop Idols Wagner , mentioned by eldest a couple of weeks prior.(https://www.wagnerxfactor.com/)

At the moment, I am mentally prepared for , no I am hoping for something way out of the ordinary. Last year, after dinner, I came face to face with myself on the screen of a laptop at the table , and as said picture of faded, I was told to press play. Ten slides later I had been taken back twenty odd years,  via a power-point of my best ‘Mumming moments’ (the verb , to Mum has since become entrenched in family talk). Number one was my difficulty in receiving houseguests without recourse to a super-clean; a complete deep clean of the house, even the rooms which the visitor wont be using. This included a link to their favourite you tube representation of me https://youtu.be/GBwELzvnrQg

So, plates clared away, i came back o the table to find smallest seated middlest seated not so odd and eldest still in the room all v odd , I was told to sit and as I did a beat box from smallest who held the rhythm while middlest rapped and eldest danced

“Hip, hip, hooray, it’s mother’s day , here is what we say………….”.

And so on.

Usually I end on what my Dad would say is a soupy or philosophical point but there is nothing to be added here. Other than to say it was a priceless moment that words can add nothing to nor can take away from. 3 kids being themselves a moment that i will never forget.