Happy Fucking Mother’s Day…

So yes, we are all in agreement that I never update my Parent blog and that I bore you all with my insanity here instead…so get over it.

You may remember that last year’s Mothers Day Tea at Kindy with Looney was twee and wonderful and followed by a burst of child-induced reality as most fleeting interludes of calm and sweetness are, when parenting in the real world (or you may not – whatever). This year was similar in essence. I still have a big head in my portrait and Looney still refuses to sing a note in public, because that would be totally uncool or something; but also because I still marvelled at the artwork produced by The Most Beautiful Four Year Old That Ever Lived - the pieces of paper were painted and collaged to the best of his ability to depict Yours Truly; along with creative writing about which television programmes I watch and the fact that I “go out to The Pub” (nothing slides past this little one); that my hair is very long and my eyebrows are purple (yes, purple), oh and that I am ten years older than the numbers on my birth certificate would have me believe.

Q: What makes your Mummy happy? Looney : Cuddles from me.

Yes baby boy, spot on. (and my new cardboard slippers that you made me too – thank you).

However, to coin a not very British phrase: Mother’s Day hype shits me.

I hate the card manufacturers making money and wasting trees; capitalizing on children’s feelings of guilt, duty and dissatisfaction with more pure ways of communicating their feelings. It’s such utter bullshit.

More than anything, I cannot stand the advertising campaigns which give a massive nod to the Over- Americanism of the whole sorry affair, with a photograph of some ridiculous thirty-something woman who has clearly never given birth in her life, wearing a twin set or pyjamas that the majority of actual mothers I know would not even wipe their arses on, with a slogan reading “Spoil Mum” across the page.

Fuck me. Spoil Mum?!! The “mum” in question needs a fucking orgasm…seriously, the woman in this years’ overkill ad campaign looks as pure as newly fallen snow. Some one ought to remind Twat-Mart that real Mothers, by their definition are likely to have at least had sex once in their lives, contrary to this saccharin imagery which makes “mum” look like a freaking uptight nun on happy pills.

And just to complete the rant, since when was having a baby some altruistic notion anyway, so much so that we must be thanked for it?

Patted on the back for the hard work, reminded that we rock, told that we’re still beautiful?

Yes, perhaps that would be nice, but putting aside a whole day to be thanked for procreating? I’m obviously missing something.

We do it [Mother's Day] though, in our house; it’s bad enough that all four boys think I am Satan for not taking them to church at the weekend – if I started messing with other Sunday rituals I would be in big trouble. They would be mortified to think that I didn’t want to have cold toast with thick globules of butter on it on Sunday morning. They enjoy dipping the Teabag (just once it seems) into scalding water for me to sip on gingerly in my semi-conscious state, at some point before 6am, too. They love to snuggle down and press their cold feet against my previously warm and comatosed body whilst I unwrap reams of sellotape from my gifts. And so do I. The whole thing is positively joyful. It’s just unnecessary to thank me, that’s all.

It’s fair to say that we lose a lot when we become a parent. During pregnancy it’s our waistlines, the elasticity of our skin, our social lives;the ability to lay down without getting heartburn; breasts; memories; we lose our minds…then it’s our time; sleep; for a time it’s our sex lives; our confidence and of course we frequently lose our patience…but we wouldn’t change a thing, right?

Because there is nothing else like it on earth. No drug’s going to give you this high [trust me]. And [ladies], no man in the world is going to look at you at six in the morning with the same awe of your own offspring and tell you sincerely that you are the most beautiful woman in the world…

For all of us that don’t fit a Twat-Mart stereo-type; for those of us who pushed a human being or four from within us; or those of you that went through a billion pages of paperwork and red tape to adopt; or ended up on the operating table and went through weeks of recovery in order to meet your child; for those of you who used your own womb, or borrowed another; to those of you who planned to become a mother and those who didn’t, and whether you are married, polygamous, in a same sex relationship or on your own…

Happy Fucking Mother’s Day.

~ by Femme on May 10, 2008.