Mothering Sunday

Today is Mothering Sunday in the UK. It varies with Easter so is very early this year. This also meant that it falls a day before my Grandmother's birthday and the weekend my Mum moved into her new home. This meant that my sister and I cooked a meal for them at my Mum's new place. Between watercress soup (cooked last night while watching Sense and Sensibility), garlic and rosemary lamb and birthday cake accompanied with rose Cava we were all very full. Going to church and still getting a posy of flowers to take home for my Mum reminded me of all the years I've done that (the only year I got given a posy as a Mother figure I was still at school teaching Sunday School!).

This past year I've gained a new appreciation for my Mum. She always is very insightful into my actions, pre-empting things that haven't really crossed my brain yet. When it comes to relationships with the opposite sex we're even more alike. During my break-up she was amazing and is totally supportive of me moving abroad. Although she isn't one for traveling she's said that if one of her daughters moves abroad she'd visit them. So if all goes to plan in a couple of years she'll be visiting the west coast of the USA.

I thought it would be weird with my parents living apart (they've been separated for nearly 2 years now but were living in the same house until it was sold). While she's been living at Grandma's we've gone out for coffee, cocktails, desert and the cinema far more than we would have otherwise. I think its marked the transition phase more than anything else (despite me not living at home in a under 18 sense for a long time).

I admire my Mum for going back to college and doing the equivalent of a first year of a degree and that she wants to complete it when she retires. Mum's side of the family is full of strong women, its a matriarchal Welsh clan. I was lucky enough to know my great-grandmother and there are some treasured photos of four generations of us together. My Grandma is very strong willed, she refuses to accept her age (but grudgingly obliges in cases such as last month when she was knocked over by a Great Dane).

I feel very privileged to have Mum and Grandma as my maternal role models. They're not perfect but more and more I see how they have shaped the person I am today, and the person I want to be. Now I'm happy when people say they can definitely tell we're related and I hope I can have a valuable relationship with any future children I have.