What I Really Want For Mother’s Day

What do you want for Mother’s Day?

Legitimately one of the most groan worthy questions to hear. Cue eye roll and/or sidewards glance stink eye emoji, perhaps with added forehead slap for good measure. Let it be known that my husband (and eventually I hope once my children are a bit older them too) should know not to ask me this question. Nor should they purchase me a clothes airer as seen at Kmart in the ‘Mother’s Day gift ideas’ display, as pointed out to me by Elli: Can you imagine a world where that would be a legitimate Father’s Day gift ‘idea’?! Well, my husband would probably get a bit excited about a clothes airer, but that’s beside the point…

What we want for Mother’s Day is not to be asked what we want for Mother’s Day.*

What we want is for you to have a fair idea of what we would want anyway…because: you’ve actually been paying attention. Listening. Not just nodding. Or ‘hearing’. Actually listening. It can come in handy.

The Mother’s Day gifts my dreams are made of are fairly simple. I am a simple woman with simple requests. Things that I spend far too much time daydreaming about, longing for and wistfully scoffing that they are nowhere near on my horizon. Except perhaps for this one Sunday out of the year…

Grocery shopping by myself. With no other members of my family. Just me. Alone. Buying things. Not rushing. With one of those smaller trolleys that doesn’t have a kiddie seat. I could stop and look at things and compare and peruse. Without a banana skin in one hand and a crayon scribbled shopping list in the other. Imagine.

Sleeping for eight hours. In a row. (Heck, this week I’d take two or three hours strung together.)

Getting my eyebrows waxed. Or going to the dentist. Yup, that’s luxurious.

An afternoon in the garden, pottering about, doing all those jobs I look out the window at. Without rushing about like a headless chook because the baby is about to wake up, the baby is about to wake up, quuuuiiick!!!

Have a shower without feeling I am completely wasting nap time. Again: quuuiiick!

Have somewhere to go that requires perfume and heels.

In fact, these would do just nicely thanks. Let’s ignore the fact I have absolutely no social life or occasion within the next five years to wear them. We’re also going to ignore the fact that my feet are now bordering a size 10, because: grew some babies and my feet turned into those resembling an ogre. Who knew?! So, buy me the shoes. To not wear anywhere.

Not changing a nappy for a day. Half a day. Whatever. I’ll take what I can get. On Monday I changed nine pooey nappies. NINE. Let’s just think about that for a minute.

A cook up and baking session in my kitchen with a fully stocked fridge and pantry (see above point on grocery shopping) and no children within cooee. No toddler wanting to ‘halp’, no baby on hip, and no time constraint. Slow and methodical cooking the way I like to, without having to stop every 17 seconds to deal with a stuck baby under the coffee table or a duplo crisis or to pull a gumboot off or to adjust a glittery superhero mask or to sing the hokey pokey or to remember who comes next in Each Peach Pear Plum.

No highchair cleaning. No lifting children in and out of highchairs. No feeding of weetbix or chopping of fruit. No wiping hands or faces covered in peanut butter. No picking banana out of hair. Did I mention no highchair cleaning?

Eating my breakfast without having to share. It’s mine. Mine!

Wandering aimlessly through my day not looking at a clock or thinking constantly that somebody needs a snack, somebody is due for a sleep, when did she last have her nappy changed, which boob did I feed her last from…the routine my children thrive off can often send me batty.

Have a thought to go somewhere, pick up my phone and wallet and get in a car and leave. Far out. Amazing. No wrestling of baby crocodiles into carseats, no nappy bag, no tiny dictator in the backseat, no wondering if the baby has fallen asleep or not.

Similarly, drive somewhere that is not the bakery, a park, a play date, a child’s doctors appointment or activity, with 90’s RnB playing loud. I don’t want no scrubs.

Have the kitchen cupboard door fixed. The oven cleaned. The broken stovetop replaced. Paint the drawers in Harriet’s room. And the chalkboard in the playroom. That qualifies as Mother’s Day worthy, yes? Perhaps not.

An afternoon of uninterrupted blog writing and maintainence. Currently I believe this could be acheived sometime in the year 2027… At this point I would accept just one blog post/coherent thought written in one sitting. The irony that this blog post has taken seven days to write is not lost on me.

A week off from bathtime duties. Could also be substituted with father of children being home by 5.30-6pm every night to sort that one out himself. I’d currently be pretty happy with 6.30pm so I’d say I’m easily pleased.

Ability to crochet two rows or rounds of a project without having to abandon mission and thus lose count of stitches/what on Earth I was actually trying to create. Lost braincells from bearing and raising children does not help this cause.

Much longed for big garden beds along our western fence for perennial borders I have in my mind wouldn’t go astray. Just a thought.

Goodness knows some sort of wine club membership would be well used.

A day in my sewing room to, well…sew. Uninhibited by small people. Just to sew for the small people, without them near me. And without feeling guilty that I’m not doing a million other things instead.

And on that: no thinking. The thinking! Does it ever end?! I fear this one may be impossible. Mother’s are their own worst enemies in this last, but very important, request. I don’t want to think constantly about what needs to be done, who needs what, and when, how that is even going to happen and what if it doesn’t happen? Sure, the world will still turn, of course it will. But y’know: mum guilt. Ai yi yi! Of course, a lot of these above requests are ‘easily’ filled…but the thinking and the guilt and the thinking is still there.

Motherhood, hey?

I love it, bizarrely so, but the love beats deep.

Here’s hoping you get exactly what you want for your Mother’s Day, especially if that’s a new Kmart clothes airer. Lucky you.

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*Alternatively, any sort of spa/massage/facial voucher wouldn’t go astray, nor would a new Mac, a new camera and/or a lunch at Tamsin’s Table with some girlfriends. In case you were wondering.