Mothering Sunday is irrelevant. It is merely a cash cow for restaurants and flower sellers, writes Kathryn Holmquist
One Mother's Day I was walking with the children on Killiney Hill near the quarry when a man came speeding down the hill, having lost control of the wheelchair he was pushing. Clinging to her wheeled seat, was an elderly and infirm woman, her eyes wide open in a startled posture of adrenalin overload. She didn't even have a seat-belt.
As I tried to think of what I could possibly do to stop a runaway wheelchair, the son in charge of it regained control, but then pushed the chair to the peak of another hill. He attempted to brake the chair, but when that didn't work simply balanced it. Then he dashed away, calling out to me as I stood about 20 metres away:"Watch her in case she rolls!"
Honestly, I don't think there is anything I could have done if she had. It turned out that the man was racing back to his car for a walking stick. Having completed one fun-ride, the man was now going to take his mother out of the chair for a forced march along a slippery muddy path that I had barely managed, even closer to the quarry.
Well, you don't have to be a psychoanalyst to figure it out. On one level, the man was genuinely trying to give his mother a taste of spring. Yet his filial ambivalence may have been showing itself a little more than he realised.
"Does he do this to old ladies every Sunday?" my seven-year-old whispered.
The only day worse than Smothering Sunday is Valentine's Day, although I'm not sure which day actually sees more broken hearts. Forced romance between mother and child can be just as uncomfortable as artificial passion between partners. Both days encourage high expectations that end in disappointment as often as not.
A few years ago, when my brood were way too young to have any awareness of Mother's Day, I found myself pushing a trolley through Tesco at 11 a.m., "my" day completely unrecognised. There I was with a fistful of free-range organic chicken, which I would then have to go home and cook myself, when someone should be treating me to a slap-up Sunday lunch in Patrick Guilbaud's. Especially after all that pain I suffered in natural childbirth, not to mention the sleepless nights and the sore nipples.
Feeling sorry for myself, I bought flowers - to make a silent point when I returned home with the food supplies. In my black mood, I nearly crashed into a fellow mother and colleague who was also in a blue funk trolley daze for the very same reasons I was.
"Do you think anyone would remember?" she said lightly, her artificial smile a rictus of repressed anguish.
Of course, all of this was actually my fault. Mother's Day brings out the worst in me. When on the first Mother's Day after my first child's birth, my husband gave me a token (a book token, probably), I replied to him: "I'm not your mother!" So that pretty much cancelled Mothering Sunday lunch for the next couple of decades.
Mothering Sunday, which started out in medieval times as the one day of the year when young indentured servants were allowed home for a few hours to see their mothers, has become irrelevant in an age of mobile phones (although please give your mother something a little more than a text message). It's merely an excuse to sell greeting cards, chocolates, flowers and overpriced restaurant meals.
The worst thing about it is that it causes the motherless and childless more pain than pleasure. The entire day seems invented to remind the motherless of their grief, and the childless of their infertility. I remember one motherless and childless Mothering Sunday when someone in church handed me a rose and I nearly lost it completely. And if a relationship between mother and child has broken down, it's a two boxes of tissues and a bottle of gin day, full of loneliness, bad memories and recriminations.
But my greatest objection to Mother's Day is the sheer condescension of it, as though all we mothers do for the rest of humanity can somehow be acknowledged with a card or a bunch of flowers from the garage forecourt shop.
Who are they kidding?
That said, I do love the cute little cards that the children make themselves in school and bring home proudly to show Mum. Although I treasure just as much the love notes and pictures that appear spontaneously during the year.
Which is what every mother really wants. Spontaneous, genuine gestures for no particular reason.