Mother...

Mother…

There is lots of gushy stuff about motherly types.  There is Mother’s Day when we celebrate the wonderfulness of mothers.   There are earth mothers and stay at home mothers and working mothers and single mothers.  All of the titles have an underlying message of strong people proud of their off spring, striving to do right by their children.  They are filled with guilt when anything comes between themselves and the children, including going to work.  A job to make family life easier and nicer can fill a normally logical woman with pangs of guilt throughout the week as she does her paid work to rush home to start the unpaid work at home.

I have done all the mother things.  I have built Lego houses, played on the swings, pretended to enjoy racing matchbox cars, combed Barbie’s hair, been on really scary rides at Alton Towers, organised excruciatingly stressful birthday parties, decorated birthday cakes, phoned people I do not know to invite their children to said excruciatingly stressful parties, talked to people I have nothing in common with merely because their child is friends with mine but what is it all for?

The answer to this is what I am looking for because now the off-spring are teenagers I have become a total embarrassment to them.  I can’t be seen walking along the street with them for fear of them being seen by their teenage mates and that would mean being judged as totally uncool and result in scrutiny of my dress sense. “Is it trendy?”  Well obviously not but for a mum it may pass.

I am now judged not enough fun to go out with and their preferred company is their mates.  There was a time when they were just too young to go out unaccompanied and I had to take them.  There is now no mention of how horrible it was for me going out for a meal and having to put up with their bad behaviour in a public place such as lying under the table, sulking,  fighting with sibling over Coke and having to prise sticky fingers from the rim of glasses, spilt Coke, having to get up and accompany them to the toilet in the middle of my meal not to mention when they were babies and having to balance them on one knee while becoming highly skilled in eating with only a fork..  Then there was the fuss of asking for a high chair and having to clean the floor around the table before we left so we didn’t leave the place looking like a gypsy camp.  But now, is there any thanks for all that?

As a mother I have to fill the role of being out of touch with popular music even though I really like Arctic Monkeys.  According to my kids I am a bad dancer just because once at a party about 5 years ago, just for a laugh, I did that cross over hands and knees move (it was just for a laugh!) they think that is how I dance.  They are under the impression that when I go out I am incapable of having a normal conversation and persist in telling my friends to sit up straight and hold their knife and fork properly.  They cannot see that in my mother role I have to act in a certain way but do not act that way when I am out with people who are not my children.  (Although there was that time that I cut up someone’s steak for them absent mindedly thinking I was out with my children).  But generally I am a fun person to go out with.  All my friends think so, they do really.

Am I trapped in my ‘mother role’ always to be boring in their eyes?

The photograph is my 15 year old daughter performing bad behaviour in a public place and obviously embarrassing me.  The other one is all of us having a meal out while the kids pretend they are not embarrssed.