4 The Times Magazineother’s Day approaches- It’s next week! Quick!
Buy something! – and
as the first one held
during lockdown
trundles towards us,
we are given, for
the first time, the
opportunity to observe
how weird it is.
Under normal circumstances, we’d be
so busy booking restaurants and afternoon
teas and planning trips to visit our mothers
that we would not have time to ask the
question, “Mother’s Day – WT actual F?”
But blessed with 2021’s greatest gift - infinite expanses of empty time to dwell,
gloomily, on everything – we can now,
finally, boggle at how this century-old
commercial tradition, invented in America
in 1908, doesn’t... make sense, when you think
about it. Almost every aspect of it doesn’t...
really... work.
- Grown men have to pretend to be
babies with credit cards. For the first few
years of a child’s life it is, understandably,
hard pushed either to comprehend the
concept of Mother’s Day or do anything
about it. Therefore, when Mother’s Day rolls
around, all the daddies of small children have
to imagine that they are an 18-month-old
child, working out what that child would
want to give its mother – if it understood both
“Mother’s Day” and “consumerism” – and
then buying it, “From the baby”.
We take for granted that this is a normal,
natural thing to do but, of course, it’s deeply
weird. Thirty-five-year-old software engineers
from Kent called Rory have to write, “I love
you, Mummy,” in childish handwriting on
a card for the woman they have sex with,
as the child in question lies on its back,
quietly pooing itself. And this child had,
apparently, bought a 32-year-old woman
a bottle of Chanel No 5. Would a child buy
a bottle of Chanel No 5? No. I’ve seen
children in shops. Without exception, they
buy either Haribo sweets or slime. If then
told, “This isn’t for you, darling, it’s for
Mummy,” they would then buy either
Haribos or slime.- Mother’s Day is, obviously, a day
where we treat mothers. Mothers expect,
quite rightly, the treating. Treatness must
be done, by law.
On the other hand, part and parcel of
being a mother is to live in such a constant
state of self-denial that it is, in many ways,
agonising for a woman to accept a treat.
When given something lovely, a mother
must say things like, “I don’t want a fuss,”
or, “You shouldn’t have. All that money!
Just for flowers! Such a rip-off! Please, next
year, don’t bother. Just a phone call – that’s
all I ask.”
However, if you take these pleas seriously
and, 365 days later, cancel the flowers and
the visit and just ring up to say, “Hiya!”,
the mother will be so deeply hurt and
offended that the sighing, shrugging and
murmurs of, “Soon, I will be dead and things
will be so much easier for you,” will last well
until Easter.
Mothers are simultaneously both horrified
by and fully expecting of Mother’s Day treats.
I call this situation “Schrödinger’s Martyr”.
Until you understand this madly contradictory
yet absolutely standard emotional binary, you
won’t truly understand women.- Mother’s “Day” isn’t actually a whole day.
Instead, the event phases in and out of
existence throughout the Sunday, depending
on a) the time, and b) the people concerned.
For instance, during breakfast, that time
is 100 per cent Mother’s Day – as every
sodden tray in Britain, borne upstairs by
children at 7.30am and laden with horrible
burnt pancakes and a madly inappropriate
glass of champagne, will attest.
However, once the children have ostensibly
watched you “enjoy” the breakfast, but in
reality hung around on the bed until you’ve
said, drunkenly, “You guys are AMAZING! SO
CLEVER! Mummy is SO LUCKY!” until their
egos are buffed to a high shine, they will
disappear, perhaps to the ruined kitchen, to
“finish the job off” by simply throwing flour
in the air and laughing, and Mother’s Day
will fall into abeyance for an hour or so.
Between 11am and 2pm, it’s definitely not
Mother’s Day, as evidenced by the fact that all
the mothers, now with a pounding champagne
headache, will be putting on a wash, making
lunch, hosing flour off their children and
appliances, and almost certainly having to
referee at least one argument over whose
turn it is on the PlayStation.
Mother’s Day sees a brief resurgence at
teatime – when there may be some “special”
cake – but, by 4pm, all mothers will be aware
that, as far as their children are concerned,
Mother’s Day has become quite boring, and
they can’t really be bothered with it any more.
If Wikipedia were being truly factual about
Mother’s Day, it would describe it thus: “An
event on the second Sunday of every March,
which fades in and out of existence, depending
largely on whether or not the children
involved have access to sugar.” - Sex, question mark? Should you have
sex on Mother’s Day? A tricky one, this.
Obviously it’s a “special day” – like birthdays,
the first day of a holiday and Red Nose Day
- and so the concept of celebrating with a
M
CAITLIN MORAN
SERIOUSLY, I JUST DON’T
GET MOTHER’S DAY
A century on, the annual mum-fest doesn’t really make sense
If it’s all about “Mummy
having a rest”, sex on
Mother’s Day opens up
a tricky worm-can
ROBERT WILSON