Mother’s Day and mixed emotions

Mother’s Day always holds mixed emotions for me. On the one hand I have 4 beautiful children, who are basically my world! On the other hand, my own mum died when I was 19 and I miss her everyday.

My lovely mum would have loved to be Grandma to my children, but didn’t get the chance.

Yesterday I was woken by the arrival of my twins, at first light, standing next to my bed. They were clutching little gift bags, full of all the lovely things they had made at school and at their arts and craft club. Beautiful felt butterflies sewn so carefully, with little ribbons to hang, along with key rings, bath bombs, an owl plaque and earrings. Each little bag was decorated with drawings of cats and owls (their favourite things) and the Mother’s Day cards they made were adorable, featuring flowers made of buttons (well done class teacher – great choice of design!). The girls were so proud of their creations and I will certainly treasure them forever. I even got a grunt of “Happy mother’s day” from my son’s along with a card and chocolate (which my pre teen has now half eaten – apparently it’s the thought that counts ha ha!).

We then spent a lovely afternoon at a car boot sale (son’s choice, not mine) followed by a visit to a local farm’s ice-cream parlour. The cinder toffee ice-cream was divine!

The icing on the cake was a gorgeous bouquet of flowers from my husband to say thanks for being a great mum to our children. So all in all, I felt really appreciated because lets face it as a mum it can sometimes feel you get taken for granted, particularly by the teenagers.

Later in the evening I began to reminisce about my childhood and my own mum. I then got out a folder of old photo’s and looked through them with my daughters. It struck me that I don’t look at these photo’s often enough and that they are starting to fade, alarmingly in some cases. I decided to take photo’s of them and put them on the computer, the brightness of the screen seemed to bring them alive somehow. I then posted a few on my personal Facebook account and received some gorgeous messages from some childhood friends. I admit to having a little cry, but was then left with the feeling of being incredibly proud of my mum and the amount she achieved in her short life. So many people thought so fondly of her and her acts of kindness affected a lot of peoples lives. In short I feel so lucky that she was my mum, even if it was for only 19 years. She’s a very hard act to follow, but I have been blessed with the best role model and teacher.