'I have loved you since the day I came out from your tummy.' 'If you went to Mummy School, you would be top of the class!' 'Home is where mummy is.'
These are some of the beautiful sayings, which I am sure are repeated time and time again, in praise of motherhood.
When I was a child, I used to get very confused when she had to send me to school and leave me with the teacher until the afternoon was nearly over when she duly came and collected me. I used to think she did not like me any more!
Secondary school was better when I would go home and dinner would be ready. My mother would tell me about what happened during the day and even let me do the washing up and look after my brothers and sister when she popped out for her secret driving lessons! My father would not have a clue.
Time flies and we are all older - my brothers now have their own children and whenever we meet, we would recount the stories of mother and father to the young ones. Life is quite different today. Somehow, we all work too hard and there is never enough time to simply teach the children how to 'smell the flowers'. But luckily, we can all still revel in the thought that we all have, in some cases had, a mother and the memories of the many things our mums do for us will live on.
My favourite ode goes as follows:
Mum, I've been doing my figures and they are mind-blowing.
16,424 meals,
5,400 loads of laundry
14,700 hugs,
6,570 bedtime stories
18 birthday cakes,
and all from
1 Mum.
