So it is Mother's Day?

There was a large display of flowers for sale in the shopping centre on Friday. Presumably it was there yesterday as well. It was obviously intended that people should buy these for "Mother's Day"...and people were. 

The flowers were not cheap, indeed some were expensive. I know the staff pretty well as they are part of the greengrocer in the centre. Two of them have spoken to me about how good the display looked - and it did - but they were also wondering at what some people were spending.

I also saw other "gifts" in the chemist and the bookshop. The clothing stores were advertising discounts and one of the eateries had a "bargain" along with the cinema.  

"Show how much you love her" they proclaimed. Really? 

We were never allowed to do it. We did try once. I was in my early teens. We put our limited pocket money together and bought Mum a book we knew she really wanted to read. Mum told us never to do anything like that again. She did not approve of Mother's Day or Mothering Sunday. They were commercial events and we should let her know we loved her all year round, not just on one day. I suppose we should have known better. Mum was like that. (She really did not like birthdays or Christmas or any other sort of fuss.)

It became a bit more awkward when Middle Cat married and her partner's family did make a bit of a fuss of their mother. It was nothing extravagant, a bunch of flowers and the girls would cook up a special meal. Mum was expected to be part of this and she was but I knew she did not enjoy it. She participated because she did not want to upset the other relationships. Once home she would say something like, "Thank goodness' that's over for another year."

 Middle Cat and her sisters-in-law may get flowers today but their children tend to be constantly in touch. The love is obvious. The same will be true of my brother's partner. His first wife is deceased. His two and their children have no hesitation in showing their love for R.... 

I am not a mother. I have been "in-loco-parentis" but it is not the same. What is the same is that I was given flowers, flowers grown by the child herself. The flowers were nice to have, very nice, but what was much better was the love and effort which went into growing them and putting them together and giving them to me. That was immensely special. I just regret there are no photographs of those flowers.  

It is easy to just buy flowers at the florist or the greengrocer. It doesn't require any particular effort. I wonder sometimes what Mum would have done if we had grown flowers and given them to her. I suspect it might still not have worked for her because of her dislike of any fuss but it might work for many mothers. Perhaps we should learn to grow more flowers?