Mother's Day

It's Mother's Day, apparently.

I have two cards, each decorated with scrunched up tissue paper to resemble flowers. Both are cut out in the shape of the word MUM. This makes them look like the design of a floral tribute for the deceased. Quite frankly, they are horrible, and remind me of nothing but funeral flowers and the day we cremated our mother. This card design is the brainchild of Art Teech, and has done nothing to improve my judgment of her.

Intrigingly, we can only find two cards, although three were painfully made. As usual, Squirrel has lost hers, or put it somewhere, and can't remember where. She's always defensive about this, and says that squirrels do not forget where they put their acorns; the magpies take them. I don't put too much effort into looking for it, and she doesn't think it's worth the effort either.

Then Dig telephones. He's away, lecturing on commas. He says that first class on BA is better than business class, because they have the good years on the wines, and follows it up with what a tough life it can be when there's no one to greet you at the hotel. Anyway, he doesn't wish me happy Mother's Day, and by then I've forgotten, or put the crematorium out of my mind.

The day's slipping by, unregarded, when Oo rings up and sings 'Happy Mother's Day' in a big, bright, cheery voice. Oo is brilliant, and has style, and does not do things by halves. And she is the only person I know who has more bizarre disasters befall her than me.

Oo tells me she's sitting in a cafe, having left home for the morning. She's ripped up her Mother's Day flowers. She says she felt it was her privilege, having bought them for herself the day before.

Now I can't really explain Oo, because I feel she should do that herself, if she ever had a mind. But I would love to read Oo's blog. It would be a different order of magnitude from Grit's, I can tell you. Where our car breaks down, Oo's car blows up. While we deal with an irritating can opener, Oo's tennant is smashing up her house. While we sulk about the local school, Oo gets a place at one of the UK's leading institutions, marches in, and complains. The woman definitely has style. And as she describes her latest disaster, and we laugh, it's a tonic, and I start to feel less funerial.

So I start to cheer up a lot after Oo's call, and make Mother's Day fruit salad with mango. I put on Cuban dance music and get the children to dance around the kitchen with grapes on their heads. In the evening we do special things, like setting the table with the best place mats and lighting the candles. When the fruit salad comes out, the children think Mother's Day must be very special indeed. And they're right, it is now.

Thank you Oo for redeeming the day! (And please blog!)