Happy Mother’s Day!

This Sunday is Mother’s Day.

This year it has certainly crept up on us all. Everyone I knew thought it was next weekend!

I remember when I was a little girl, and Mum was helping me buy a present for my Grandmother for Mother’s Day, and I remember asking her, ‘Why are we buying something for Nan? You’re my Mum!’

I used to go to Girl’s Brigade when I was little. A Christian group that focused on developing a relationship with God, while making friends and overcoming challenges. And every year, they used to do a Mother’s Day night where we would make special gifts.

I remember our leader telling us this.

“It is Mother’s Day, but remember, this day is not just about Mother’s. It is about all the woman in your life that give it meaning. This can be your Aunt’s, your Grandmother’s, your Big Sisters, every womanly figure who has taught you, and helped in the development of becoming the kind, and good young woman that you are today.”

And she was right. My Mother, my Grandmother, and my Aunt, collectively, helped raised me, and made me into the responsible, level headed, driven woman that I am today.

They all taught me that I can do anything I want to do, be anything I want to be, that I do not have to slip into the role that later in life, many woman think that they are forced to do. That a woman can still raise a family, and educate herself at the same time. That you can still be a good wife, and have a job that you have worked, and studied so hard for. That you can rise up and up in the workplace, and still manage a smooth household.

They’ve taught me how to cook, and clean, and how to study properly, and how to have fun, and how to fix my clothes, how to get food coloring stains out of chef’s whites, how to tie my shoe laces, how to convincingly tell a teacher that I was sick yesterday when really Mum told me to take the day off so we could shop and eat Chinese food.

So to them. My Mother, my Grandmother, my Aunt. I thank you all very much, have a wonderful Mother’s Day, and don’t worry, all your efforts on me were not in vain!