daffs

on 12 months of mothering

hello! savour members can now access these posts in audio form - just scroll down to listen.

I grew up giving my mum daffodils on Mothering Sunday. Depending on how late Lent fell, it would either be still wintry or well into Spring, and the same long, broad wicker basket that held Creme Eggs on Easter Sunday would be neatly laid with bunches of daffodils - each just fat enough to fill a five-year-old’s fist.

At the end of the service the basket would be pulled out from the floor of the pulpit that only the visiting bishop ever used and the children in the congregation would be invited to give flowers to their mothers. The stems would be wet and slick against a palm, the smell of the pollen so fresh among the centuries-old dust ingrained in the air.

Sunday was my first Mothering Sunday after giving birth, and I’m still figuring out what that means. Over the weekend I’d posted my umbrage with it all - of International Women’s Day and Mothering Sunday falling within 48 hours of one another in a year when women are having to do the basic, essential work of survival and caretaking in the midst of war, in the midst of several wars. It feels so wrong, somehow, to be celebrating our womanhood when the knowledge that your child won’t get bombed in their sleep has become a privilege.