I absolutely adore my mum.
She is one of my favourite people. I look up to her. I admire her. I really love spending time with her. My husband even jokes that if we lived in Spain there’d be good chances that I’d make us all live at my mum’s, and that she’d definitely be OK with that, too. Along with himself, my mum is my biggest fan, she’s always supported, encouraged me and believed that I could be the best of whatever I chose to be. I know it is such cliché to say that you’re friends with your mum, but I genuinely couldn’t live without her. We talk about everything and anything, we laugh, we have fun. We always have, through all stages.
This kind of relationship has provide me so much reassurance in my own motherhood and I want to explain why in case it resonates with other parents.
Our generation of mothers (& fathers too, but let’s be realistic – mostly us) is constantly bombarded with advice on how to go through pregnancy and parenthood, and a big focus of this is how we must enjoy motherhood at every stage and how we shouldn’t complain about things that one day we will miss because our kids “won’t need [us] anymore”. Me - I’m not worried about that. I moved abroad by myself when I was 22, I am now 35, still living in a different country, where I built my own business and married the love of my life, with whom I share 5 year old twins, and I still very much need my mum every single day. I talk to her every single day and she can guess my mood from one-word texts. If I can project that kind of love and build the type of relationship with my twins that my mum did with us, I know I will get to enjoy every stage of my twins’ lives, wherever they are and whatever they go through. I just need to figure out what her secret formula is.
Mums are definitely a little magic, too. Do you notice how your kids often act amazed at how things are back in their place in the mornings after they went to bed leaving the house as if a stampede of bulls on steroids had burst through the back door? I still get that when my mum is around. When we stay at her house and go downstairs for breakfast, by the time we come back up to the rooms to get dressed, our beds are made. I don’t know how she does it. She was downstairs, making us all breakfast and helping me with the twins the entire time, right? How...? Pure mum magic.
She often comes to stay with us, too, where I get to experience that magic again. If I look into my bowl of cereal for more than 5 seconds, she’s already made our beds and left their little pjs neatly folded on their pillows. At bedtime, when we go upstairs to put the twins to bed, by the time we come back down everything is tidy and clean. There’s even a glass of wine waiting for me with arms wide open. Absolute heaven.
Mothers in general are amazing, but our own? They’re the real deal, aren’t they? I’m 5 years into motherhood but I still don’t feel on the same level as my mum. It’s like she’s a real mum, a mum premium, the kind who actually has (and always has had) her shit together. Me? I’m just winging it, trying to survive, wearing leggings every day, preparing snacks around the clock, figuring out what’s for dinner (again), and doing my best not to lose my mind from constant overstimulation. I never pictured my own mum like that, but I do know one thing we have in common...
I often stare in awe at my twins when they’re laughing out loud, it is the most beautiful sound I ever heard, I could stare at those happy faces forever and that view alone would be enough for me to survive on. As it turns out, this never changes for mothers, I notice my mum looks at us the same way all the time, and it even goes higher than that. At family reunions, I can see my granny sitting at the top of the table, looking at all of us, smiling as proud as can be, and I know that, as she’s looking at all her babies, grandbabies and great grandbabies laughing out loud she’s thinking, “I made this, and I could stare at it forever”. Little does she know, every single one of us, still do need her every day.
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